Letters59 Letter LIX. To guilencus, bishop of Langres (A.D. 1129)
Letter LIX. To guilencus, bishop of Langres (A.D. 1129)
He counsels him, in order to take away any occasion for scandal and calumny, to abandon to the Church of S. Stephen at Dijon, certain articles which Gamier had left there on dying.
To his lord and father GUILENCUS, by the Grace of God, Bishop of Langres, Brother BERNARD, Abbot of Clairvaux, health and his entire devotion.
On hearing of the death of the Archdeacon Dom Gamier I have thought it necessary to address a prayer to your Paternity and even to press upon you my advice, if you will deign to attend to the suggestions of one so humble. As relates to the goods which the late Abbot possessed in the Church of S. Stephen at Dijon, have the generosity to renounce the rights that you have over these things. I know well that they ought to return to you as I remember was arranged and settled in writing in the Chapter of Langres, when your son Harbert was constituted the first regular abbot of that house. But because I know that for you on any account to assert your rights over these properties which that Church has so long held would be an occasion of grave scandal to the Canons and of great reproach to the Abbot, whom they would accuse of having by coming among them established a bad precedent, since it was because of him and at his coming that their Church sustained so great a loss, I beg you, therefore, and at the same time advise and entreat you, to spare so great a scandal to so many feeble servants of Christ, and at the same time to free this vicar of Christ from such a reproach by conceding to this Church what has been theirs so long.
Domino suo et patri GUILENCO, Dei gratia Lingonensi episcopo, frater BERNNARDUS Clarae-Vallis abbas, seipsum.
Audito obitu domini Garnerii archidiaconi, necessarium duximus vestram Paternitatem precibus praevenire, imo praemunire consilio, si tamen dignum putatis monitis nostrae acquiescere parvitatis: quatenus videlicet de rebus sancti Stephani Divionensis, quas ten ebt, placeat liberalitati vestrae misericordiam superexaltare judicio. Siquidem non ignoramus, quod in manum vestram debeant redire, juxta quod in Capitulo Lingonensi dispositum, et scripto firmatum fuisse etiam nos meminimus, quando filius vester Harbertus in ecclesia illa primus abbas regularis constitutus est. Sed quia canonicis gravis scandali, et abbati magni improperii occasionem fore cognovimus, si ad ea quae diu tenuit illa ecclesia, quacunque occasione manum vestram extenderitis; conquerentibus quippe illis de illo, quasi qui malum principium dederit adveniens, cum ejus causa et ad ejus introitum tam grande ecclesia damnum incurrerit: pietati vestrae supplicamus, et supplicando consulimus, ut et tot pusillis Christi a tanto scandalo parcatis, et hunc vicarium Christi a tanto improperio simul liberare curetis, concedendo ecclesiae utique, quod hactenus juris ecclesiae fuisse cognoscitur.