Letter CCXCVIII. To Pope Eugenius, about Nicholas
(A.I). 1151.)
Nicholas1 has gone out from us because he was not of us, but he has left behind him foul footprints. I long ago knew2 what he was, but I had been waiting either for God to convert him or for him to show himself a Judas. This he has done. Besides books, silver, and much gold, there were found on him when he left three seals, one his own, one the prior's, the third mine, and that not a very old one, but the new one which I had been forced to use because of his treachery and secret frauds. This is why I wrote to you, I recollect, without giving my name, because I was in perils among false brethren. Who can say to how many people he wrote what he chose under my name, and without my knowledge? Who will give me the satisfaction of seeing your Curia thoroughly purged of the dregs of his lies, and of seeing that the innocence of those with me is sufficient to excuse us to those who have been circumvented and prevented by his lies? It was partly proved, and partly he •confessed, that he had written to you more than once in this underhand way. The earth is stained by his disgraceful deeds, and they have become proverbial amongst all; 1 refrain from polluting with them my lips and your ears. He boasts that he will come to you, and that he has friends in the Curia. If he does come, remember Arnold of Brescia; he is a greater sinner than Arnold. No one better deserves life-long imprisonment, no litter sentence could be pronounced against him than one of perpetual silence.
Footnotes
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This is the Nicholas of whom Peter of Cluny made so much, as we see in his Letters. From a monk of Montier Hamey, in the Diocese of Troyes, he became a Cistercian, and Bernard's secretary. He was a powerful writer, and only second to Bernard himself. His Letters are extant in the Cologne edition of the Library of the Fathers, edited by John Picard, of S. Victor, at Paris. But he was a traitor, and for a long time concealed his wolf's disposition under sheep's clothing, and at length manifested his hypocrisy. For it was not once only that he fraudulently used Bernard's seal; and when his fraud was discovered he took to flight. It is commonly reported that he fled*into England, on the account of there being a certain Nicholas a monk of S. Albans, in Hertfordshire, who attacked the opinion of S. Bernard on the Conception of the Blessed Virgin after Bernard's death. It was not, then, without cause that Bernard wrote to Kugenius that he was in peril among false brethren. But since Peter of Cella, who undertook to defend S. Bernard (lib. vi. ep. 23, and lib. ix. ep. 9), calls him English, and indicates that he is well-known to him, and his friend, and as it is agreed that the other was a Gaul, and familiarly known to and beloved by Peter of Cella, as is plain from the Letters that they interchanged, we must come to the conclusion that they were not the same person. To say nothing else, his style is not so biting, but is too courteous to let us think that he could have addressed Peter of Cella so outrageously as Peter complains that Nicholas, the Englishman, had done (lib. ix. ep. 9). But Nicholas passed over from the monastery of Montier Ramey to Clairvaux in S. Bernard's absence, A.D. 1146, when certainly Eugenius was Pope, as is seen from ep. 7, which he wrote to the monks of Clairvaux before his admission. But he fled A.D. 115:, no doubt after the election at Grenoble, about which see notes to ep. 270; and, indeed, he is found to have written his name to ep. 389, where that election is dealt with. ↩
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Guido, to whom ep. 398 was written. ↩
Chapter 298 of 491