Letter CCCLXX. To the Same

(Circa A.D. 1147.)

He recommends to Suger the Abbey of Ste. Genevieve.¹

To his very dear father and lord SUGER, Abbot of S. Denys, Brother BERNARD, called Abbot of Clairvaux, health and the assurance of his friendship.

It behoves you to fulfil the duties of him who has left you in his stead,² or rather to do the work of the Lord your God, who has chosen you for the functions which you have to discharge. It is plainly the work of God to have restored religion and order in the Abbey of Ste. Genevieve-du-Mont; that new plantation finds in you its great guardian and helper. I entreat you that what you have well begun you will finish still better, and that you will oppose yourself as a wall for the defence of the house of Israel that man may not prevail against it. Be so kind, I entreat of you, as to raise up again the courage of the Abbot4 of that place, who is easily cast down: that will be especially conducive to the honour of your person as well as to the saving of your soul, particularly at this time.

Footnotes

1. Formerly No. 357; the former No. 370 is now No. 337. ↩

2. Louis the Younger, before departing to the Crusade, had confided the Regency of the Kingdom to Abbot Suger. It is to this that Bernard refers when he says in the previous Letter that the care of Suger extended over all the religious houses of France, and in Letter 376, to the same, he calls him "the highest personage in the realm." In the same way he is addressed under the name of " Majesty '' by Ulger, Bishop of Angers (Letters of Suger, No. 3). ↩