Letters268 Letter CCLXVIII. To pope Eugenius.

Bernard warns him of the promotion of a certain unworthy person which had been surreptitiously made.

Let others fear your majesty and scarce come with trembling lips and fingers, by long windings and many turnings, to the business in hand. I, however, only look to your good and your honour, and, therefore, plainly and openly state my case, and am not afraid to say, as though to one of ourselves, without any hesitation or circumlocution, what it is necessary for the Apostolic See to do. I say without any hesitation that you have been grievously imposed upon. Who has induced you to thrust into an ecclesiastical dignity a man stamped with ambition, convicted of it, and condemned because of it? As though it were not enough by itself that the man should have wished to heap honours on himself! Is he not the same man that Bishop Lambert, of holy memory, caught in detestable wickednesses which his ambition had urged him to, and whom he, therefore, solemnly degraded, not only from the rank that he then held, but also, as was fitting, from hope of all future promotion? You are simply revoking his sentence. And because of the anxiety of the holy brethren of "The Crown," who call to you for this, because of the respect due to the holy and learned Bishop, who was the prime mover in this matter, and also for conscience sake (conscience, I say, your own, not another's), there only remains that to satisfy my own conscience, I remind you of the saying, Be angry and sin not (Ps. iv. 5). For you sin if you are not angry with the man that suggested such a fraud and stole from you such an unworthy sentence.