Letters50 Letter L. To the same, on the same subject (A.D. 1128)
Letter L. To the same, on the same subject (A.D. 1128)
He demands that it should be allowed to the Archbishop to appeal to the Apostolic See.
It would be desirable, if it seems good to your authority, that the cause of the Archbishop of Sens should be discussed in your own presence, so that being, as he is, obnoxious to the King, he may not seem to be a man delivered to the will of his enemies by having to answer for himself to his adversaries in the presence and power of the King; but as whatever you direct must be inviolably adhered to, so it may be firmly hoped that whatever course you decree may issue in some good. This only we demand very humbly of your bounty, with all our Religious, viz., that if it shall happen that this Prelate should be crushed by the sovereign power (as it has happened only too often) he may be permitted to seek refuge in your fatherly bosom, because hitherto we have never heard that you have refused this refuge to a person oppressed. Otherwise let Joseph, the just man, see to it, what he must do now to save the Child and his Mother, because even now in the province of Sens Christ is sought for destruction. For, to say more plainly that which is the fact, it is clear that the King persecutes in the Archbishop of Sens his new piety, because he advanced him by all possible means and dismissed him into his Diocese with the assurance of freedom from every disturbance, as long as he lived in his former worldly life and conversation.
Oportebat quidem, si ita vestrae visum fuisset auctoritati, ut in vestri praesentia causa domini Senonensis discuteretur; ne infensus videlicet regi, in regis praesentia et potentia suis pro se adversariis, responsurus, traditus homo videretur in animam inimicorum ejus. Sed quoniam, ut tenendum irrefragabiliter quidquid praecipitis, sic sperandum indubitanter bonum de omni re quam decernitis: id solum a vestra, Pater, pietate deposcit omnium, qui apud nos esse videntur, religiosorum humilitas, ut si se ad vultum forte potentis (ut assolet) senserit praegravari, confugere sibi liceat ad viscera Patris, quod utique hactenus oppresso nemini negatum audivimus. Alioquin videat Joseph vir justus, quid sibi etiam nunc faciendum sit de puero et matre ejus, quia ecce etiam nunc in Senonensi provincia Christus quaeritur ad perdendum. Nam, ut quod verum est, manifestius proferamus, rex in archiepiscopo ex eo aperte novam persequi religionem dignoscitur, quod eum in antiqua saeculari conversatione et habitu, sicut promoveri omnimode voluit, sic ab omni penitus securum infestatione dimisit.