Letters43 Letter XLIII. To THE SAME HENRY. He writes on behalf of the Abbey of Molesme. (Circa A.D. 1128)

St Bernard of Clairvaux († 1153) · Epistolae · c. 1120-1153

Letter XLIII. To THE SAME HENRY. He writes on behalf of the Abbey of Molesme. (Circa A.D. 1128)

The kind reception which you gave to my last request gives me room to hope to obtain what I now ask. I would first express my most earnest thanks for your previous kindness, and then venture to beg that you would make me a second time your debtor, namely, by permitting the Abbey of Molesme to possess freely the Church, on account of which they are grieved to have lost the favour of your - A house of the Benedictines, in the Diocese of Langres, founded by Abbot Robert, who was also Abbot of Citeaux; it was that reason which caused Bernard to care always for the interests of that Abbey. See Letters 44, 60, and 80. Peter de Celles speaks of it thus in his fourteenth Letter to the monks of Molesme, B. vii.: " Molesme is a hen full of plumes and furnished with wings. How many and great offspring has it produced? From it has emerged the original germ of Citeaux.'' The reference in this Letter, as in the following, is to the Church of Senan, which was formerly a Priory in the Diocese of Sens and Deanery of Courtenay.

Serenity, and which it is certain that they possessed in the time of your predecessors. Farewell.

Prioris precis nostrae benigna susceptio praebet ampliora sperandi fiduciam. Praemissa itaque devotissimarum gratiarum actione pro experta benevolentia, iterum audeo petere quod iterandis gratiis secundo me faciat debitorem: quatenus videlicet Molismensi Ecclesiae ipsam ecclesiam, pro qua se vestram Serenitatem quoquo modo obnubilasse dolebat, eadem libertate tenere concedatis, qua praedecessorum vestrorum temporibus eam certum est tenuisse. Valete.

Samuel J. Eales (active by 1879; M.A., Principal of S. Boniface College, Warminster, in 1882), Life and Works of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, edited by Dom John Mabillon, vols. I-III, London: Burns & Oates / John Hodges, 1889-1896. Digital text: OCR of Internet Archive scans saintbernardlife00bernuoft, saintbernardlife02bernuoft, lifeworksofsaint03bern, word-repaired against second copies (lifeworksofsaint01bern, lifeworksofsaint02bern, LifeWorksOfSBernardClairvauxV3). Original text: Corpus Corporum (University of Zurich) TEI of the Patrologia Latina, via the CatholicCorpus mirror. Public domain in the US and Canada: published 1889-1896; translator active by 1879, an M.A. and principal in 1882; necessarily died before 1972. Latin: Migne, Patrologia Latina 182-183 (1854), public domain.

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