Letter CCLXIII. To the Bishop of Soissons, for the Abbot of Chezy

I besought you, when I might, perhaps, have enjoined you, and I thought that my prayer had been granted. But since I find that it has not, it seems that I shall not have now to ask simply and in common with others, but to cry aloud. For I cannot bear a refusal, lightly or with equanimity, and hitherto I have not met with one. Do, then, what you ought; do what you are wont to do; for custom has made you my debtor; do it, I repeat, if not because you are asked, yet because you are enjoined. Return, therefore, to judgment, for it does not seem just that the Abbot of Chezy, who is a pious man, a friend of mine, and your son, should lose the rights of his monastery because of a word spoken by him incautiously and inconsiderately, and without the assent of his church. And although his accuser sticks obstinately to that word, being one who has no confidence in the righteousness of his cause, it ought not, I think, to prevent the Abbot from receiving a just decision; especially when those by whose dissimulation the matter has been brought before you know very well that he did not mean what he said, nay, rather was opposed to it. I hope that you will not be put out with me because of this, nor be vexed. May God so rejoice your soul, and may He so preserve you free from all troubled feelings, O father, greatly to be loved and honoured, as by all the servants of Christ, so in particular by me.¹