Letter CCCXXVII. Reply of Bernard to Abbot William

(Circa A.D. 1139.)

Bernard praises the treatise written against Peter Abaelard, an if promises to confer ivit/i liitn after Easter.¹

To his very clear WILLIAM, Brother BERNARD.

In my judgment, your indignation was both just and necessary. And your treatise, which refutes and belabours the mouth of them who speak unrighteousness, shows that it is not an empty indignation either. I have not yet had the time to read it with the attention that you require, but have only run through it in haste; nevertheless, 1 like it much, and think it a powerful instrument for the destruction of that unhappy teaching. But as you well know, I do not rely entirely on my own judgment, especially in such weighty matters; and I think it will be worth while, when a time of meeting can be arranged, for you and me to meet at some convenient place and discuss all these matters.² think this cannot be done before Easter, if we are to give ourselves without distraction to earnest prayer, as this holy time requires. For the present, then, suffer me to keep silence still for a while upon all these questions, of which the greater number, not to say all, are entirely new to me.1 But God is able in His great power to bestow upon me the wisdom and the light which you shall ask for me in your prayers. Farewell.

Footnotes

1. Formerly No. 392; the former No. 327 is now No. 339. ↩

2. It is clear from this that it was William who was among the first to call attention to the errors of Abaelard; which, indeed, William himself virtually asserts in the previous Letter, where he complains of the silence of Geoffrey and Bernard. ↩