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Letter CCCXXVIII. To THE ROMAN PONTIFF^ Against the person elected Bishop of Rodez

(Circa A.D. 1140.)

Hitherto I have not hesitated to write to you in season and out of season, at the request of my friends: but now, the interests of the Christian religion would forbid me to be silent, even if I wished to be so. Cursed be he, says the Prophet, who keepeth back his sword from blood (Jer. xlviii. 10) [when he ought to strike]. To-day malice is profiting, the desires of evil men prosper, and there is no one to oppose them, no one who rises up to defend the rampart of the house of Israel. Even in your days most1 corrupt men have made violent efforts2 to climb up into the most holy places: they have stricken hands with death, and made a covenant with hell. Why then this patience? The clergy of Rodez3 have elected a man for Bishop who is consentient with their vices; and have not been ashamed, it is said, to conceal the truth even from your eyes, both as to the business of the election and as to the person elected. That man, chosen not by God, but by men, has many witnesses of the infamous life he has led, none at all of his repentance and change of life; and in plain fact, it is more decent to be silent concerning him than to speak. God forbid that such wicked men should, under your pontificate, be promoted, and that one should be set for a shepherd of souls, who values at nought the shedding of the blood of Christ, and the price of his own soul's redemption. What to them is a cunning insinuation of injury and suppression of their appeal, if they can thus ingratiate themselves with the Curia, and interest them in their cause? Do not believe the word of falsehood: for, according to the statement of people of veracity, as there was no appeal, so no suppression of it could have followed. It is important that you should sanction with the weight of your authority what the Bishop :i has done at the advice of the Religious. I wish at the same time to commend more and more the same Archbishop to you: and I should neither wish to ask this, nor to be heard by you, it he was not one who respects and discharges diligently his function.45

Footnotes

  1. This Letter was placed immediately after that of a certain A. To the Allot of Rieti, and inscribed To the Same. But it appears from the Letter itself, which treats also of an election of a successor to Adhemar, Bishop of Rodez, that it is also from the hand of Bernard, and was addressed to Pope Innocent or Pope Eugenius. In Letter 240, n. i, Bernard congratulates Eugenius on having finished the matter of the Church of Rodez, by deposing, as it seems, an unworthy person who had been elected Bishop, about whom this and the following Letter is written. ↩

  2. Man il'ii s et pediius. ↩

  3. Rutilenscs. But we ought to read Ru/ine/ises, as we find from the following Letter. Kutila was a monastery in the Diocese of Treves. See Z.//V, B. iv. n.47. ↩

  4. I.e.., the Archbishop of Bourses, of which See the Bishop o(Rodez was a suffragan. VOL. II. 55 ↩

  5. A new Letter; the former No. 328 is now No. 339. ↩

Chapter 328 of 491