Letters388 Letter CCCLXXXVIII (Circa A. D. 1150-)

Letter of Peter the Venerable to Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux.

He rejects titles and praises and declares how much he values Bernard and his friendship.

1 The letter here referred to is not found amongst the published letters of S. Bernard. Peter the Venerable mentions it in the following letter (No. 4). Letter 270 shows that the monks of the Grand Chartreuse had been similarly wounded by a letter from S. Bernard.

2 it is clear from what Bernard says here, that many of the letters, if not of those which remain to us, were the work of his secretaries. Such were those of Nicholas, which we give in the Appendix.

He freely accepts his apology for the tone of his letter.

Brother Peter, the humble Abbot of the Cluniacs, to the venerable Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, a man renowned among the members of Christ, loved after God and in God.

1. What shall I say? I am accustomed to speak: but now I am stricken dumb. Why so? you ask. Because your letter, which would ordinarily have made me eloquent, has made me dumb. Wherefore? I read so much in it, although it was so brief, that if I should try to pour myself out in answer I should seem rather taciturn than talkative. But I am speaking to a serious and religious man. Therefore we must act, as gravity demands; as your profession if not mine, directs. What is not this true? The letter is short, but contains much to be answered. Pardon me, I pray, if I have said other than was befitting. For it is the part of true friendship, not only to endure the amenities of a friend, but also to hide or tolerate even words that are unsuitable. I have received, as I said, from you a most excellent letter, a letter breathing most tender love, and honour more than I deserve. You call me “most Reverend”, you address me as ‘Father’, you call me ‘dearest friend’. I rejoice at it: but in respect to truth, which has passed from Christ into your soul, I am unable to accept the two first, but I say nothing against the third. For I know not that I am most reverend; I cannot be styled Father with regard to you: but to be dearest friend to you I gladly assent with lips and heart.

2. So now I may be silent about the names of most reverend and dearest friend, of which, as I said before, the one does not befit me, but the other I gladly accept; about the name of Father, O reverend brother, I say to you, what Dom Guigo, Prior of the Grand Chartreuse, a man renowned in his generation, and a most illustrious flower of the Religious of his day, once wrote to me. I used often to write to him, and often in conversation, or in familiar correspondence, used to call him Father. He bore this at first, thinking I was about to make an end of writing. But after he saw me to persist in it, and in frequent letters to reiterate the name of Father, the good man at length broke out into these words. For he wrote me a letter, in which amongst other things he inserted this: “I entreat you by that love, with which your heart is filled for me all unworthy of it, that when your Serenity deigns to write to my humble self, you would so think of my spiritual interest, as not to puff up my weakness with dangerous complacency.” And presently: ‘This I seek above and before all things, and entreat you with bended knees, not to honour my unworthy self with the name of Father. Enough and more than enough, if he is called brother, friend, and son, who is not worthy even of the name of servant.” Thus he wrote to me: and I write the very same to you. Let it suffice if I enjoy the name of brother, dear or dearest friend from you; or whatever name like those befits you to send, or me to receive. So much about your salutation.

3- But what about that which follows? “I would,” you say, “I could send my mind to you to read as I do this present letter!” And farther on: “I am sure you would read very clearly the affection for you which the finger of God has written in my heart and in my whole being.”

These words in truth, setting aside the deeper and mystical meaning of the words [of the Scripture are as the ointment upon the head, which descended from Aaron’s beard even to the skirts of his clothing: they are like the dew of Hermon, which fell on mount Sion: even thus do the mountains pour forth sweetness, and the hills flow with milk and honey. Do not wonder, that I so carefully ponder and weigh your words.

For I know they are not uttered from a careless mouth: but from his, who knows not how to speak except from a pure heart, a good conscience and an unfeigned affection. I know, 1 say, and all the world knows with me, that you are not of the number of those, who, according to the Psalm, Have spoken vanity, to each to his neighbour; you are not of those, whose lips are deceitful, they have spoken from a deceitful heart (Ps. xii. 2). Therefore as often as it pleases your Holiness to write to me, I receive and read and welcome your letters not negligently or carelessly, but eagerly and gladly. For who would not read carefully? who would not receive with much affection the words I have before cited, and those which follow? “Now indeed,” you say, “my soul is joined fast to yours and the equality of love has made equal souls in differing persons. For what was there in common between your highness and my humility, if your worthiness had not waived your worth? And so it has come to pass that your greatness and my humility have been united in reciprocal affection: so that neither I am humble without you, neither can you be exalted without me.” Can words of this kind be negligently read? Ought they not to hold fixed the eyes of the reader, to seize his heart, to unite our souls? You see, dearest friend, what you have written, what you felt about this: I cannot do otherwise than take the letter in the simple and literal sense, and accept what so great, so truthful, so holy a man has been pleased to say. Neither, as you yourself have said, do I begin again to commend myself to you. While yet young men we began to love in Christ: shall we now when we are old men, begin to doubt about so sacred, so lasting a love? Far be it from me, (trust one who loves you) so to use your words, for it has never occurred to my heart, nor gone forth from my mouth, to doubt words which you have uttered so seriously. So I embrace, I keep and guard all that you have written in the letter of which we speak. Far rather would I be deprived of a thousand talents of gold, than have these words by any means torn from my heart. But enough of this.

4- As concerning the matter about which your prudence thought me hurt, the fact was this. In respect to the matter, which is well known to you, of a certain English Abbot, your letter said: “They speak as if judgment was over-turned, and justice had perished from the earth, and there were none to snatch the weak from the hand of the strong, the needy and poor from those who oppress them.” 1 But believe me, I was moved at this, as the Prophet says of himself, although I am no prophet I as one deaf did not hear, and as one dumb that openeth not his mouth. And again: I am become as a man that heareth not and as one that has not an answer in his mouth. (Ps. xxxviii. 13, 14). I was not offended indeed at this, but if I had been, full satisfaction was made when you said: “My excess of business is to blame; for when my secretaries do not quite catch my meaning, they of their own accord, are apt to sharpen the expressions, nor am I able to read over what I have directed to be written. For this once pardon me; henceforth I will read over whatever I shall write to you by the hand of others, and will trust only to my own eyes and ears.” Therefore I forgive and easily grant pardon. For it is no great labour to me (I speak humbly) even in great offences, to forgive one who asks, to give pardon when entreated: and if it be no trouble to forgive in grave matters, how much less, rather none at all, can it be in light ones?

1 This letter is not now extant.

letter ccclxxxviii.

5. Concerning the will of Dom Baroni, the Roman subdeacon, which when at the point of death he is said to have made in favour of your abbeys at Clairvaux and Citeaux, those things which he had left with us; I was made aware of this by certain persons who said that this was enjoined upon them by him. Yet I wish you to know that, according to the opinion of persons worthy of credit, you will find that you owe those things more to the kindness of the Abbot of Cluny, than to the will of Baroni. I know indeed, I am not so unskilled in divine or human law as to be ignorant, how by a will both legacies and trusts are binding at death. But yet I read elsewhere: “Nothing is so agreeable to natural law, as to hold as a binding disposition the act of a possessor who himself transfers his property to another person.” I say this, because as the before-mentioned witnesses confess, whatever he had deposited at Cluny he intended to leave to Cluny, unless he removed it in his lifetime. Yet I was unwilling to use this privilege: and that, which, according to their testimony, I believed to be mine, I gave up to you and yours. What I think about the election at Grenoble, which our friends the Carthusians oppose, I have confided to my dear friend, your faithful Nicholas, to be related to you. You may believe what he tells you from me to be my opinion. If any requests have escaped my mind, when I remember them, 1 will ask them of my dear friend in Christ. To conclude, I ask as much as is possible, and desire, what I have already requested of certain of your Order: that in this great body of holy men, who have assembled at Citeaux, you will make mention of me as your sincere friend, and that you will commend earnestly me and the whole congregation at Cluny to their prayers.

See notes to Ep. 270.

Letter CCCLXXXIX.