Letters165 Letter CLXV. To Falco, dean, and Guy, treasurer, of the church of Lyons. (A.D. 1138)

Great as you see, dearly beloved, is the plague that is threatening our Church, and great is the care needed; and not only is the plague great, but close at hand, so that we must with tears press on the heavenly Physician and say: "Lord, come down ere it die." There is one thing which makes our grief the more acute, and almost causes us to despair of a cure, and that is that the source of our tribulation is where we ought to have looked for its relief. For who is it, O, unhappy Church, that has brought this evil, of which you complain, upon you? It is no enemy, not one who hates you, but your bosom friend, your leader and metropolitan himself. Why comes this evil from the south and not from the north? Surely there is no grief like unto my grief, since it is from those, and none others, on whom I most relied, that I have suffered these things. O, Lyons! my holy Mother Church, what a monster have you now chosen for a bridegroom for your daughter! No mother do we find you in this, but a step-mother. How far has this son-in-law of yours now degenerated from the honour, weight, and integrity for which you were once so renowned? Am I to say that that is an honourable marriage and an undefiled bed which has been brought about in such a way and with such a man? In defiance of all law, and order, and reason all things have been so confounded, nay, as all ' A reference may be conjectured to Ps. Ixxv. 7: Neither from the east, nor from the west, nor yet from the south. But the resemblance in the Vulgate is much less strong: Neither from the east, nnr from the ivest, nor from the desert hills. Compare, however, Ps. xlviii. 2, upon the north side lieth the city of the great King; Jer. vi. I, Evil oppeareth out of the north; Ps. cxxvi. 4, Turn again our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south; and the comment of Gerhohus on the latter passage.

There is not space to go into the subject here, but the north was taken in Mediaeval times to be mystically the quarter whence evil came. In exorcisms, and the Renunciation during the Baptismal Office, if I mistake not, the officiant was directed to turn towards the north; and the north side of churchyards was usually chosen for the burials of criminals and persons under ecclesiastical censures.—[E.]

know, all things have been so fraudulently and rashly ordered and ventured on, that it would be most unseemly for a bailiff even, or receiver of tolls, to say nothing of a Bishop, to be appointed in this way. How can I sufficiently sing your praises, dearly beloved, who have alone mourned with your afflicted Church, and have once and again stood up in her defence when oppressed, rising on the other side, and opposing yourselves as a wall for the house of Israel? In that whole congregation not one has been found like you, to keep the law of the Most High, to obey the sacred canons, to put on the zeal of Phinehas and smite the fornicators with the sword of the tongue. And since these things redound more and more on all sides to the glory of God and your fame, it only remains for you to give a worthy ending to so good and praiseworthy a beginning, and do all you can to join the tail to the head of the victim.