Letter CDLXXXIII. To Pope Lucius II

(A. D. 1144)-

To his very dear father and lord, Lucius, by the grace of God, Supreme Pontiff, Bernard, called Abbot of Clairvaux, health, and his humble duty.

We have rejoiced in the Lord and given thanks in every thing, being strengthened by the grace of Almighty God, who judges in equity, and by your efficacious cooperation, in this as in all things, and having great delight by that Curia so distinguished.

We were then expecting the hoped-for issue of the matter; we were expecting that the flowers of Roman wisdom should by a faithful administrator, be converted into fruits, that our joy might be fulfilled: since rejoicing over flowers must be with fear and is more full and perfect when the flowers come to the birth, wherefore it is said in the Canticles: Let us see if the flowers have brought forth fruit (Cant. vu. 12). We were expecting that this vine of Winchester, or rather of that which is commonly called in songs a second Rome, should form grapes, but changed into bitterness it became a wild vine, and brought forth wild grapes. O happy Winchester, chosen to be decked with the ornament of a great name, that it should be called a second Rome I O powerful one, who makest of none effect the commands of the powerful among the fathers, changest their opinion, pervertest their decisions, pourest disgrace on the truth, and sanctionest with loud and unhesitating voice, the judgment which Rome had pronounced should not be sanctioned, without consideration and weighing of the prescribed oath! For the Dean, having been invited to take the prescribed oath, not only declined the oath in public, but was prepared to swear to the contrary. Yet that Philistine was not ashamed in his wilfulness to raise up the idol Dagon beside the ark of the Lord. Was not this because his face was become as that of a harlot? He stands shamelessly, he offers himself for sale to every passer-by, he sits for the hire of a harlot. What does not the evil hunger for gold enforce? Winchester has usurped the worthy name of Rome, and nothing is suffered to be done without him. Absolution and the dignity of the Church are made matter of hire, and are thought to be voluntary. Not happy Winchester therefore, but unhappy; which debases costly pearls, which gives that which is holy to dogs, which does not drive out of, but introduces into, the temple the sellers and buyers of doves, and opposes (for shame!) in a marvellous way the Curia, the unconquered senate of Rome. O father, O glory of Rome, defender of righteousness, who alone sustainest so many and so great affairs, who guardest the state with the arms of righteousness, and adornest it by thy character, whom my dull mind may call the avenger of these infamies, who makest the scourge of cords, and with the strong hand of Roman power overturnest the table of those buying and selling! If the chiefs of Rome had cast lots, your discretion would have assigned the lot of this office to you beyond all others. O happy are we, in the first place, with so righteous a protector for so great a cause! Happy are we, again, in there being so powerful an avenger of such great presumption! If then the spear is in your hands, we call upon you to lift up this spear against those who resist the Roman power. For behold, behold I say, that man, that enemy, a forerunner of Satan, a son of perdition, an adversary of law and right, he lifts up on high his. head; and the judgment pronounced by the apostolic mouth which speaks in equity, which was spoken and promulgated, and lucidly determined and made firm by you in common audience all for the defence of righteousness alone; that judgment he has repudiated, blamed, blackened, unsettled and contemned: and has set up that pretender, that dullhead, a man such as the sins of the people have deserved. Rome is indignant and Phineas is fired with zeal, at seeing that which was planted and reared in common by the strong among her sons, destroyed and rooted up by one who trusts in mammon only. Which judgment, as if that unworthy one envied your authority alone, they say that attacker of the Roman diadem has resisted, and has set up that idol for the very reason, that your discretion saw that it should be opposed and broken down beyond others. In which how much appears to be detracted from the dignity of the Roman name, I leave to your prudence to be discussed: and would that that song may cease out of men’s mouths, in which Winchester is extolled as more powerful than Rome. Why, they say, do we, who have a legate, go to the Apostolic see? What the lord [Bishop] of Rome orders and confirms, our legate, though a steward, perverts and weakens. Him whom the very wise Curia of S. Peter does not receive without a judgment, Winchester, evading that judgment, though promulgated, sets up and exalts. Let not then so patent an evasion pass into a precedent, lest the Roman dignity be torn by the hands of its assailants, and the authority of S. Peter absolutely fail before such injuries and new disgraces. In order therefore that the cause of religion in the Diocese of York may not grow lukewarm, or rather that it may not be dispersed and disappear altogether, strike heavily at the continuance of that headstrong person with the hammer of your severity, and for the mere love of true righteousness, break into pieces that idol, or rather the seat in which he unlawfully seeks to sit. And if any one should come to Rome on their behalf to ask for the pall, firmly resist them, and condemn both Ananias and Sapphira together with their money, as it becomes your Holiness to do.

Furthermore, I am apprehensive and fear, as do also the whole body of Religious in the realm, lest that ancient seducer [the Bishop of Winchester] should in some way carry his point by the substitution of a new intermediary into the fnatter before disputed, or even into the fulness of power. Let your prudence therefore firmly resist this serpent who is working to bite both your heel and that of the whole kingdom; and bruise his head that the Church in that realm may not be entirely oppressed and fail altogether. May your Holiness have health and prosperity.¹

Footnotes

1. The date of this letter is fixed to A.D. 1144, by the fact that it is addressed to Pope Lucius II., whose brief pontificate began and ended in that year. The subject of it is rather indistinctly visible through the heated rhetoric of which it entirely consists; but is unquestionably the disputed election of William, nephew of King Stephen, to the Archbishopric of York, whose competitor was Henry Murdoch, Abbot of Fountains, and a former disciple of S. Bernard at Clairvaux. Respecting this dispute see Letters 235, 236, 238, 239, 240, 252; and note to the first named letter. The ‘Dean’ referred to was William (called ‘ of S. Barbara ’), the Dean of York: afterwards Bishop of Durham; the Bishop of Winchester at that time was Henry of Blois (A.D. 1120— 1174), who was the most powerful supporter of his kinsman William, and in fact, consecrated him to the see of York. Hence the invectives against him in the letter. (E.) ↩