Letters413 Letter CDXIII. To Abbot Rainauld. 1 (Formerly No. 389)

Bernard requests him to receive kindly a novice whom he sends back to him with his resolution renewed and strengthened.

To the Lord Abbot Rainauld, Brother Bernard, health and spiritual graces to the fulness of his desire.

I praise the prudence which has made you reluctant to distress a monk on account of a novice; and still more I approve the humility with which you have borne so patiently the injury (and so great an injury) which has been done to you: but I place incomparably above all the charity with which, being unwilling to break a bruised reed, you have thought of resorting to my counsel to see if I could bring him to a better mind. O prudent humility and humble charity so to spare an insolent monk as not to discourage a novice wavering in his purpose. I have then strengthened his mind as much as I could, and sent him back to you, prepared as far as I know, to amend all those faults of which he is accused; and I advise, and if it is necessary I entreat, your benignity so well proved, that the man be kindly received; and to bring, if it be possible, the brother in question, to whom also I have written a letter of entreaty, to an entire change of feeling. Farewell.

1 Abbot of Foigny, I think; and the same to whom are addressed Ep. 72 and those following.