Letter CXCVII. To Peter, Dean of Besanqon
(A.D. 1141.)
Bernard blames his injurious conduct towards the Abbot of Char lieu.
I hear such an account of the pilgrimage of the Abbot of Charlieu1 that I look upon him as already dead. What ever danger threatens him, whatever suffering he has to .undergo, is (to my great grief) imputed to you most of all. I neither expected this, nor deserved it at your hands. I .thought you one thing, I find you another. Those who were present at the affair bear their testimony against you that you have not behaved in it straightforwardly or justly. And I partly believe it. For the Venerable Abbot of Beau- «vais- is by no means pleased with you. Do not, I implore you, do not persecute the servants of God, to whom you read that He said: He that toucheth you to u diet h the apple .of my eye (Zach. ii. 8). Do not pluck up by the roots whatever good feeling I formerly had towards you. And 1 write this, not because I love you not, but to take away whatever may cause me not to love you. For I tell you, as your friend, that it is not expedient for you nor for your Church that the Pope should hear how you have acted.
Footnotes
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Charlieu, in the Diocese of Besanon, was a daughter house of Clairvaux, .and founded A.L>. 1131. Its first Abbot was Guy, mentioned in this and the following Letter. He being attacked and unjustly oppressed by a monk named Peter, went on appeal to Innocent with commendatory letters from Bernard. His enemy, however, was able to get the case sent back to judges in Gaul, and it was entrusted to John, Bishop of Valence, by the Abbot of Bonneval, a Cistercian monastery, who, with the Bishop of Grenoble, was to compose the differences. And then it first came to pass that questions which concerned their Order were submitted to the Cistercians for decision, because of .their tried uprightness. And this becoming an established custom, was the cause of that famous and honourable exception to the law that no one may be a judge in his own cause, or in any cause in which he is interested, viz., if the judge is of such a nature that no suspicion is likely to attach to him, e.g., if he is a Cistercian monk this law may be dispensed with, and such a judge is not to be refused. (Tiraquellut de Pccnu, temp. aut. remitt. 15, n. 60 and many others.) Sentence having been given in favour of the Abbot of Charlieu, the aforesaid Peter again appealed to Innocent, and Bernard wrote to him Letter 199 to request him to confirm the just sentence of the Bishops. Beauvais is situated in the Diocese of Besanon, close to the city. For •C'harlieu, see Life of S. Bernard, B. iv. n. 40; for Beauvais, n. 7. ↩
Chapter 197 of 491