Letter CCXXI. To the Same

(A.D. 1142.)

He gravely reproves King Louis, because he listens to bad advice and rejects counsels of peace.

1. God knows how great has been my affection for you from the time I first knew you, and how ardently I have wished for your honour; you too know with what toil and anxiety I throughout the past year strove together with your other faithful servants to obtain peace for you. But I am afraid that our labour in your cause has been fruitless. For you evidently are kicking with too much haste and fickleness against the good and wholesome advice you had received; and I hear that you are hurrying, under I know now what counsel of the devil, to those former evils, which you were but now bewailing, and properly bewailing, that you had been guilty of committing, and this while those wounds are still fresh. For from whom except from the devil can I say that this counsel proceeds which makes us add fires to fires and slaughter to slaughter?! "which causes the cry of the poor, the groanings of the captives, and the blood of the slain, to strike a second time the ears of the Father of the fatherless, and the Judge of widows?¹ (Ps. Ixviii. 5.) Doubtless.that old victimiser (hostis, enemy; of our race, is pleased with these victims (host Us), for he is a murderer from the beginning (S. John viii. 44). And do not take occasion from Count Theobald to pile up excuses for your sins; it is useless; for he says he is prepared, and in every way he begs, to come to the terms arranged between you when peace was made, and he is willing to make satisfaction in all points, according to the decision of all who love your name, i.e., those who acted as mediators between you; so that if he can be convicted of any wrong, and he is confident he cannot, he will not hesitate to make immediate amends to your honour.

2. But you neither entertain proposals for peace, nor keep to your agreements, nor listen to good advice; but by some judgment of God you so turn everything round that you consider disgrace honour and honour disgrace. You fear for what is safe, and neglect what should be feared, and you incur the rebuke which Joab is recorded to have given to the holy and glorious King David, Thou lovest thine enemies and hatest thy friends (2 Sam. xix. 6). For it is not your honour but their own advantage which they seek, who are instigating you to renew your former evil-doing against an innocent person. Nay, it is not so much their own advantage as the will of the devil, in order that they may have (which God forbid) the power of the king as an effectual worker of their hot-headed purpose, which they know that they cannot accomplish by their own strength. They are enemies to your crown, and manifest disturbers of the kingdom.

3. But whatever it may please you to do in a matter which concerns your crown, your soul, and your kingdom, we sons of the Church cannot wholly keep silence about the injuries done to our mother, and the way in which she is despised and trodden under foot; for we perceive that these evils, besides those which we lament piteously have already fallen upon her, are again partly inflicted afresh and partly threatened. We will certainly make a stand, and fight even to death, if need be, for our mother with the weapons allowed us, not with shield and sword, but with prayers and lamentations to God. And I for my part recollect that, besides the daily prayers, which I call my Lord to witness, I humbly poured forth for your peace and salvation and for your kindgom, I also pleaded your cause by messengers and letters to the Apostolic See (I confess it), even to the damage of my own conscience, and (which I ought not to deny) to the anger of the supreme Pontiff himself against me. Now, I tell you, that provoked by your constant outrages, which you do not cease to renew daily, I begin to repent of my former folly, which made me more indulgent to your youth than I ought to have been. For the future, to the best of my little power, I will not hold back the truth.

4. I will not conceal the fact that you are doing all you can to again enter into alliance and fellowship with the ex communicated, that you are keeping company (so I am told) with robbers and freebooters for the murder of men, the burning of houses, the destruction of churches, and the dispersion of the poor, according to the saying of the Psalmist, When thou sawest a thief then thou consentedst unto him, and hast been partaker with adulterers (Ps.². 1 8), as though you had not enough power of your own to work mischief. I will not hold back the fact that that un lawful and accursed oath foolishly taken by you against the Church of Bourges (through which so many and so great misfortunes have already deservedly followed) is still, notwithstanding all this, uncorrected by you; that you do not allow a pastor to be set over the sheep of Christ at Chalons; and moreover that you have the audacity to throw open Episcopal houses for the use of your brother1 and his archers and cross-bowmen, against law and justice, and so expose the property of the Church to be squandered in nefarious uses of this kind. I tell you plainly that if you proceed in this way the wrong will not be unavenged, and, therefore, my lord king, I warn you as a friend and advise you as a faithful servant to desist quickly from this wickedness, so that if [God] is now preparing His hand to strike, you may, like the King of Nineveh, prevent Him with penitence and humility. I speak severely, because I fear severe things for you; but remember that the Wise Man says, Better are the wounds of a friend than the fraudulent kisses of an enemy (Prov. xxvii. 6.)

Footnotes

1. This refers to the burning of Vitry and the people in it; see notes on Letter ↩

2. Viz., Robert; for whom see Letter 224, n. 2, and 304. In Letter 293 (of Duchesne), the fathers complain to King Louis that Count Robert, his brother, "had eaten flesh in their Granges," contrary to the interdict of the Order. See Letter 224, respecting the Church of Chalons. ↩