Letter CCCII. To the Legates of the Holy See, on Behalf of the Archbishop of Mayence

(A.D. 1153.)

He commends to them the cause of the Archbishop, who was oppressed by his adversaries.¹

To my Lords and reverend Fathers, Legates of the Holy See, the son and servant of their Holiness, BERNARD, called Abbot of Clairvaux, wishes health, and that through all things they may please God and bring forth worthy fruits of their mission.

Although far removed in body, I am closely united with you by affection and goodwill; and I desire and pray that your acts and intentions may be directed in everything to justice and right. Having then learned that the unfortunate Archbishop of Mayence has been cited to appear before you in order to reply to the accusations of his adversaries, I have taken upon me to make an appeal to your goodness on his behalf. I believe that you will honour your ministry if, as far as justice allows, you support this feeble and tottering wall by the shoulders of your authority; and that you will not permit the bruised reed to be broken nor the smoking flax to be quenched, as far as in you lies. Let him feel, I entreat you, that my intercession has been of service to him; and let him not be utterly lost by that simplicity of soul, because of which he is said to have been entrapped by false brethren, rather than discovered in any action rendering him worthy of deposit^ :ion.

Footnotes

1. Baronius speaks thus, under the year 1153, of this Legation: "In the same year Pope Eugenius sent a Legation into Germany to judge the Arch bishop of Mayence. For this duty were chosen the Presbyter Bernard and the Deacon Gregory," etc. Bernard was the Prior of the regular Canons of the Lateran, when he was made Cardinal-l'resbyter with the title of S. Clement, in i 145, by Pope Eugenius. As for Gregory, he is believed to be the same who •was made Cardinal, with the title of S. Angelo, by Pope Innocent in 1137. Bishop Conrad, who wrote a Chronicle of Mayence a hundred years later, says that Archbishop Henry was deposed, and lays all the fault upon a certain Arnold, who had betrayed him; but Dodechin, in his Appendix to Marian us in Canonicos, imputes the deposition of the Archbishop to the Legates, whom the Chancellor Arnold had succeeded in corrupting by means of money. Nevertheless, Otto of Freisingen, who was present, asserts that he was justly deposed (l)e Vit. Frid. ii. 9). To the same Henry Letter 365 was written. However this may have been, Henry after his deposition retired into Saxony, and a little time after made a happy and pious death in a Cistercian Convent. ↩