Letter CCXXVIII. To Peter, Abbot of Cluny

(A.D. 1143.)

Bernard complains that he did not reply to him.¹

To the Reverend father and lord PETER, by the grace of God Abbot of the Cluniacs, BERNARD, called Abbot of Clairvaux, sends his humble greetings.

1. I should wish to think that you are pleased to joke in your letter; if such is the fact, and if I ought not to see anything unkind in what you say, then I allow that you are treating me well and like a friend. Do not wonder at this. For your sudden and unexpected condescension makes me doubtful about this. For it is not long ago, when writing to you, I saluted your Greatness with due reverence, and you answered me not a word. Not long before that I again wrote to you from Rome, and not even then did I get a single word in reply. Do you now wonder that when you lately returned from Spain I did not presume again to trouble you with my chatter? For if it is a fault not to have written for some cause or other, to have had no mind to write, nay, more, to have despised writing, you will surely not be altogether without blame. You see what I might urge with justice (since you require it of me); but I prefer to go and meet goodwill when returning than to delay its return while I try needlessly to excuse myself or to accuse another. I have merely said this so that I might not keep anything in my mind without giving it utterance, for this true friendship forbids^ For the future, let all suspicion be now removed, for charity believeth all things (1 Cor. xiii. 7). I rejoice that you have been stirred to a recollection of our former friendship, and to recall the friend that you had wronged. Now that I am recalled I gladly return. I am happy to be recalled. Hence forward I remember no wrongs.² Here am I, now as then,. the devoted servant of your Holiness. I give thanks that inc lines are fallen to me in a pleasant place, inasmuch as I am again admitted to your intimacy, as you kindly write that I am. If by any chance I had grown lukewarm, as you complain, no doubt I should quickly become hot again when nourished by the warmth of your charity.

2. And now I must say that what you have been pleased to write I have received with outstretched hands. I have read it eagerly; I read it again with pleasure, and the oftener 1 read it the more pleasure it gives me. I must say that I like your pleasantry. For it is at once agreeable from its gaiety, and serious from its gravity. I do not know how it is that you manage to mingle grave and gay in such a way that your pleasantry does not savour of lightness, and, while you preserve your dignity, the pleasantness of your mirth is not lessened. Further, you so preserve your dignity that the saying of holy Job can be applied to you: If I laughed on them they believed it not (Job xxix. 24). Well, you see that I have replied, and I think that now I may rightly demand more than you promised. It is right that you should know how things are here. I have determined not to leave the monastery again except for the annual meeting of Abbots at Citeaux. Here, supported by your prayers and good offices, I will wait for the few remaining days of my warfare, till my change comes. May God be gracious to me, and not withdraw from me your prayers or His mercy. I am broken in strength, and I have a valid excuse for not travelling about as I used to do. I will sit still and be silent, to see if perchance I may experience what from the fulness of his sweetness the holy Prophet says, It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord (Lam. iii. 26). And, that you may not seem the only one to joke, I suppose that you will not again venture to chide me for my silence, and, after your manner, to call that sloth, which I think the Prophet Isaiah more fittingly and more properly calls the cultivation of righteousness (Isaiah xxxii. 17), about which you read in his Prophecy, where he says from the Lord: In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength (Isaiah xxx. 15). Commend me to the prayers of your sacred Convent of Cluny; salute it first from me, the servant of all, if you think fit.

Footnotes

1. Manrique (Annals A.D. 1135 c- 3) thinks that this Letter was written in the year 1 135; but the order of the Letters seems opposed to his view. And certainly if it be compared with the next Letter, which is Peter's answer to this, it will be seen directly that it was written after the disturbances about the election at Langres, which took place A.D. 1138, as was said above, ep. 164. For Peter the Venerable answers thus: "When will my sincere love f6Y you be extinguished, or the warm affection of my heart be drowned by any rivulets of adverse rumour, since many waters of tithes have had no power to extinguish it, nor the violence of the stream of Langres to drown it? " Moreover, in the last part of the same Letter Peter mentions the translation of the Koran, afterwards dedicated by him to S. Bernard, which was finished A.D. 1143, as the Cluniac Library testifies, and to this year the Letter seems to belong. ↩

2. We need not spend much time in investigating the wrongs mentioned here.. For the context of both Letters, this and the following, shows plainly enough that the words are spoken in a pleasant and rhetorical way. I am aware that there had been some cause for dispute between the two saints, e.g., the election at Langres (ep. 164) and the exemption of the Cistercians from paying tithes to the Cluniacs; but I can never admit that they deserve the name of injuries. As far as the tithes are concerned, the fact is this: Innocent, when in Gaul A.D. i 132, on learning the poverty of the Cistercians, gave them a precept freeing them from the payment of all tithes. Amongst others the Cluniacs protested against the exemption. Hence there was ground for the complaint which the Abbot Peter laid before Innocent first, then before Haimeric in moderate terms,, and lastly before the heads of the Cistercian houses in general Chapter; and when he found that they were somewhat displeased at his action, in the next year he sent them a Letter of apology, by which brotherly love was repaired and kept inviolate. The outrage which was afterwards committed against the Cistercians by the monks of Gigny will be dealt within the notes to ep. 283.. For the rest, it seems desirable to have the Letter of Peter which was theoccasioa of this being written: it may not be amiss, therefore, to inclnde it in the list of S. Bernard's, that before all lovers of true Christian friendship, especially before Religious, there may be placed this most perfect example of the two friends, Bernard and Peter. Cardinal Baronius has so spoken of Peter as to pronounce him in " that holiness which worketh by love, no unworthy rival of Bernard." If further evidence of this is wanted see Peter's own works, lib. i. ep. 28, and lib. iv. ep. 46. ↩