Letter CDIX. To Borgon of Abbeville

[Formerly No. 350].

Bernard tells him thai he ought not to attach too great importance to seeing him with the bodily eye: he makes request for a certain piece of uncultivated ground for his Religious.¹

To the illustrious Lord who is dear to me, Borgon of Abbeville, Bernard, called Abbot of Clairvaux, health and the assurance of my prayers.

It has been mentioned to me that it would be agreeable to you to see and have some talk with me; because you are so kind as to regard me as one of the servants of the Highest. And I reply that I am touched by this proof of your humility and by the good report of your nobleness, of which I have heard; so that I too should have great joy in seeing you.

'But this feeling of merely human kindness which we share, although good, is not altogether perfect. For this sight of another with the bodily eye is brief and fleeting, and is such as other living beings may > also have. But we ought to look for and sigh after that most joyful vision of the Heavenly society j and to labour for it by good works, so that we may at length attain unto it.

You possess in the parish of Courrenne, a piece of ground which is deserted and uncultivated and altogether useless to your predecessors and yourself until now, and of which, my dear and intimate friend, the Abbot of Anchiles-Moines,² has spoken to you: if you would have the great kindness to bestow this as an alms upon the Church of Anchiles-Moines, this your bounty shall benefit both your own soul and the souls of your ancestors and of your descendants.

Footnotes

1. Borgon of Abbeville, which town is on the Somme, is praised with his wife Elizabeth in an old MS. Breviary in the library of Corbie, written five hundred years before, as being the founder of the house to which this Breviary first belonged, viz., the Priory of S. Peter at Abbeville. ↩

2. This was a Benedictine Abbey which was then in the Diocese of Terouanne, and which was afterwards in that of S. Omer. It was founded at Terouanne on the river Lis> about A. D. 700: at first for nuns, who were afterwards replaced by monks when the Monastery was re-built after the invasions of the Normans. ↩