Letters158 Letter CLVIII. To pope innocent, on the murder of master Thomas, prior of s. Victor, of Paris.s (A.D. 1135)

To his most loving Father and Lord, INNOCENT, Supreme Pontiff, BERNARD, unworthy Abbot of Clairvaux, sends greeting, with the assurance of his prayers and his feeble services.

" To GEOFFREY, by the grace of God Bishop of Chartres, and Legate of the Apostolic See, STHPIIEN, by the same grace, unworthy minister of the Church of Paris, and now an ill-starred herald of misery and affliction, sends greeting in the Lord.

" i. I know not how to find fitting words to bring to your ears and heart the weight of this new calamity. My news is of things hard and difficult to speak of, painful to all to whom the reproach of Jesus Christ and our holy Mother Church is a hard and grievous thing, and especially to us placed under the habit and seal of religion, to whom these things are likely to be more serious, as the injury more specially affects us; I speak of the fall of one man, whose death portends oppression and ruin to us all. Master Thomas, Prior of the monastery of S. Victor, a man well tried and proved, beloved as a friend by all v;oo(l men, my most devoted and zealous coadjutor and champion in the defence of the Holy Church, has been, you must know, cut off by the hands of wicked men, put to death in the flesh, but, as we have sure and certain hope, alive in Christ. For Christ, in whose cause he died, will not be absent from him in glory; for as he breathed out his last in my arms, he protested with a loud voice that he died for the sake of righteousness, most confident of his own righteousness past and present, in which he had fought against the ungodly within the Church of Christ, leaving a proof to us that in that righteousness he would be perfected. This was the first and this was the last cause of his sufferings; for he was then with me on behalf of righteousness itself. For I, mainly by his urgency, which he was wont to show in these things, and with the command and assent of the King, who had also been similarly moved by him, had been to correct and set in order the house of nuns at Chelles, having taken with me several Religious, viz., the Abbot of S. Victor, and of S. Magloire, and the sub-prior of S. Mai tin's, and many other monks, canons, and clerks; and when the business had been finished to the best of our ability, and I was on my way home, as we were near the Castle of the lord Stephen, which is called Gournay, we were suddenly attacked by the nephews of Archdeacon Theobald, who were lying in wait for us. And as we were going on our way, in peace and unarmed (it being the Lord's Day), they suddenly rushed on us with drawn swords, and paying no respect to God, nor His holy day. nor to me, nor to the Religious with me, they slew the innocent in the midst of us, and threatened me too with death if I did not speedily take me out of their sight. But we, having more trust in God, threw ourselves into the midst among their swords, and rescued him, half-dead and dreadfully hacked. Then standing round him we bade him make his confession, and forgive the wickedness of his enemies. Then he joyfully forgave all who had sinned against him, and sought forgiveness for his own sins, and received the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, and then testified with a loud voice before all that he died for righteousness' sake, and so gave up the ghost.

"2. Hence, therefore, although we have sure and certain hope of his salvation and glory, wherein we rejoice and although we know that right dear in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints, yet the grief and deep mourning, which are consuming us for the loss of our friend, and the great dishonour done to us all. are tempered by no consolation that we can feel. For I behold myself slain in him, and even much more slain than he, for by his death I see myself exposed to dangers from which he has been set free. It remains, therefore, that since you see me now desolate and in misery, you delay not to come at once to console and counsel me. For as I cannot bear to see the place of so detestable a crime, 1 have fled to Clairvaux, and shall await you there, that we may take counsel together what we ought to do to wipe out this intolerable dishonour done to our holy Church. This onslaught threatens us all with death, and it will come unless the Lord prevent it. I, therefore, bid you, and with all my power beseech you, to hasten without any delay to Clairvaux, for dangers, which brook no laggard counsel, are threatening me on every side."

Having received this Letter, Geoffrey hurried to Clairvaux, and by Apostolic command bade the Bishops of Rheims, Rouen, Tours, and Sens to assemble in force at a Synod to be held at Jouarre. Then when they assembled, Hugh, Bishop of Grenoble, and the community of Chartreuse, wrote, "asking and beseeching them to unsheathe the sword of ecclesiastical rigour against the sacrilegious murderers." Innocent, too, informed of the facts by S. Bernard, replied to the decree of the Fathers, confirming it and making it still more severe. John Picard, in his notes to the Letter of Innocent, and others who follow him, assign this murder to the year 1130, but it is placed by Baronius in the year 1135. But this (former) opinion cannot be admitted. For from ep. 159 it is evident that Thomas was killed on a Sunday, and on the 2Oth August, as we read in the Necrology of S. Victor: "The anniversary of the death of Magister Thomas, Prior of this Church, who was cruelly slain by the enemies of righteousness for his defence of righteousness, and so both by his life and death he left behind him a noble example of an honourable and patient life for his successors to strive to imitate." On Picard's authority, too, the Kalendar of S. Guinail, of Corbeii, agrees with this. The day, therefore, that was consecrated by the blood of Thomas ought to bear the same dominical letter as the year 1130; but it does not, for the dominical letter of that year is E, but the corresponding letter of 20th August is A. Picard adds two other arguments in support of his contention. One that the death of Prior Thomas preceded that of Hugh, of Grenoble, since he wrote with the Carthusians to the Fathers assembled in council at Jouarre to urge them to avenge Thomas. But he says that the Life of S. Hugh, by Guy, Abbot of the Grand Chartreuse, places his death in the year i 132; and therefore the death of Thomas is to be referred, not, indeed, to the year 1131, when Innocent was in Gaul, accompanied the whole time by Bernard, and would not need to be petitioned by so many letters, but to the year i 130, in which Innocent was made Pontiff. The second argument is that Innocent, about the beginning of the year 1131, visited Paris, and went to the Church of S. Victor, and ordered the body of the blessed Thomas to be carried from the cloister into the Church on March 9th. It had been buried, therefore, in the August of the preceding year. But neither argument is conclusive; certainly not the first. For what is there to hinder our saying that this Letter was written by the successor of S. Hugh, who bore the same name? Nor can the second be pressed closely. For, granted that Innocent ordered the body to be moved into a more honourable place, yet it cannot be affirmed that he did so in person; nay, the mandate was sent from Italy, as is manifest from D'Achery (Spicii., Vol. v. ep. on p. 567), where we find that he rebukes the Archbishops of Rheims and Sens for their delay in carrying out the excommunication of the murderers of Thomas. He concludes: "Therefore we command that the body of the above-named good man, who now bears testimony to his righteousness and innocence before the Supreme Judge, and whose life was a life of obedience, and who was slain in the service of his Bishop, be honourably buried in his Church. Given at Pisa Dec. 21." Therefore we must say that this murder took place, not in the year 1130, but in the year 1133, in which the dominical letter corresponds with the letter of the 2Oth August, and in which year, too, a second Hugh was occupying the See of Grenoble in succession to S. Hugh; in which Innocent was at Pisa for the Council held there; in which, lastly, Bernard was sent from Italy into Germany to arrange terms of peace between 1. The wild beast which has laid waste Joseph, unable to meet the eager attack of our dogs, is said to have fled to you for shelter. What madness has seized the wretched creature, a wanderer, and stranger, and fugitive on earth, to cause it to fly thither of all places where it should have most to fear! Most accursed one! thinkest thou that the seat of strictest justice is a cave of robbers or a lurking-place of lions? Do you dare, with jaws still foaming, and mouth yet marked with the blood of the son you have but just now slain, to flee to the breast of the mother and appear before the eyes of the father? Yet if it is penance that he seeks, let it not be denied him. If it is a hearing, let him, if you please, obtain such an one as Moses gave the people worshipping their molten image, or such as Phinehas gave the fornicating Israelite, or such as Mattathias gave to him who offered sacrifice to devils, or, to take an example from your own house, such as Ananias and Sapphira gained from blessed Peter, such an audience, lastly, as the Saviour gave those who bought and sold in the temple. Do we not know that the sins of certain men go before them to judgment? Does not the voice of your brother's blood cry out against you from the ground? I believe that the spirit of our martyr, whom but a few days since you cruelly delivered to death, joins with the souls of the others who have been slain, in crying with a loud voice from under the altar, and in demanding vengeance, and that the more urgently as his blood has been more newly-poured forth on the earth.

2. But he will reply. Was it I who actually slew him?

No, not directly, but it was your friends who did, and for your sake. Whether at your instigation, may God see and judge. If you are to be excused, whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongue is a sharp sword, then the Jews ought not to be held guilty of the death of Christ, inasmuch as they were wary enough to withhold their hands from it. This man had been wont to abuse his office of Archdeacon, to grind the presbyters with unlawful exactions, and when this was put an end to by the zeal and diligence of the blessed Thomas, a lover and upholder of righteousness, this man held him in hatred, and was often in the habit of threatening him with death. Many, whose testimony is not to be rejected, declare that they have heard him so threaten. Lastly, let him say, if he can, what other complaint his nephews had against Thomas, that they should lay their impious hands on the saint of the Lord. If, then, the man who, as nearly all suspect, is the occasion, the instigator, and the plotter of this wickedness is to go, as he impudently presumes, unpunished by the Apostolic authority, what provocation will be given to sin in the Church without fear of punishment? One of two things must inevitably follow: either that none of the noble or powerful of this world will hereafter be admitted to ecclesiastical honours, or that the clergy will everywhere have free permission to abuse their sacred office for every unworthy end; lest, perchance, any one kindled with zeal for God should attempt to present them, and for so acting be slain as a champion of righteousness by the soldier's sword. And then what is left for the spiritual sword, for ecclesiastical censure, for the law and discipline of Christ, for the reverence due to the priesthood, and for the fear of God, if no one dares to whisper a protest against the evil lives of the clergy from dread of the secular power? For what can be more monstrous or more disgraceful to the Church than that each one should maintain his own ecclesiastical dignity by armed violence instead of by moral integrity? Wherefore, my lord and father, I pray you to give such a decision, according to your wisdom, concerning this man as shall be to the Church's profit, so that the salvation given now may flow down to our children, and that another generation may hear not only how audacious was the crime, but also how terrible was the vengeance. Otherwise, if the poison be allowed to have full play, if no antidote is given, it will destroy many—which God forbid.