Letters4 Letter IV. To Arnold, abbot of Morimond. (Circa 1127)

He recalls Abbot Arnold, who had rashly left his monastery and was wandering abroad, to the care of it.

To the Lord Abbot Arnold, Brother Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, desires the spirit of compunction and prudence.

1. First of all I have to inform you that the Abbot of Citeaux has not yet returned from Flanders, whither he had gone, passing by this place a little before your messenger came to us, and because of this he has not yet received the letter which you charged to be presented to him, and hitherto is ignorant of the great novelty which you have presumed to undertake. He would be happy, I consider, to be ignorant of such deplorable rumours as long as possible. As for yourself, that you should forbid me to write to you, and should declare useless the efforts I should have made to try to dispose you to return, because you say that your course is irrevocably taken, makes me despair. Perhaps, indeed, I ought not in reason to obey you in this; but in truth, the grief I feel will not suffer me to keep silence; and more, if I knew for certain where I should meet you, I would rather have come to you, than have sent this letter, to try if I should have more success in person than my letter is likely to obtain. Perhaps you smile at my unfounded confidence, inasmuch as you are conscious of your own strength of purpose, and hope that no force, no prayers, no persistence would be able to bend it. But I am not distrustful of His power who said: All things are possible to him that believeth (S. Mark ix. 22). And I do not hesitate to apply to myself that saying: can do all things in Him who strengtheneth me (Philip, iv. 13). Although I myself am not ignorant of the obstinacy of your stony heart, yet would that I could now take you aside to plead with you, whether successfully or not. Then I would put before you face to face not only in words but in looks and in countenance what I have in my heart against you, whether uselessly or not, I cannot tell. Then I would fall at your feet, I would embrace your knees; and falling upon your neck would kiss that head which is so dear to me, and which has borne many years with me the gentle yoke of Christ. Weeping, I would beg and entreat you with all my energy, by Jesus Christ, to spare His Cross by which He has redeemed those whom you, as far as in you lies, are destroying; has collected those whom you are dispersing. You are destroying, I say, those whom you desert, and dispersing those whom you take with you, for each of whom I fear an equal peril, though of a different kind. And, lastly, spare also us your friends to whom you have left nothing but grief and tears, although undeserved. If it had been permitted to me, I could have influenced you, perhaps, by the feelings of the heart, though not by reason; and the tenderness of a brother would, perhaps, have softened that iron heart which now refuses to yield even to the fear of Christ. But, alas! even this opportunity you have taken away from us.

2. O, powerful support of our Order! Listen patiently, I beg, to your friend, though absent, who cannot bear your entire departure, and who feels with you to the very marrow your sufferings and dangers. Do you not fear, O, great support of our Order, that by your fall its entire ruin will surely and speedily follow? But I, you say, do not fall; I know what I am doing, I have a good conscience. Be it so. I believe you in what you say of yourself, but what of us, who by your departure must groan under the heavy weight of scandal, and trembling expect still heavier perils to come? Or do you know all that, and yet pretend not to know? How do you pretend that you have not made ruin for yourself when you have drawn ruin upon many others? You were not placed in this post to do what was useful to yourself, but rather that which was useful to others; then ought you not to seek not the things which are your own, but those which are for Jesus Christ? How, I ask, will you depart in safety, who have taken away by your departure every kind of security from the flock committed to you for ever? Who will protect them from the attacking wolves, who will console them in tribulations, provide for them in temptations, and resist for them the roaring lion who seeks whom he may devour? They will be exposed, without doubt, to the bites of the wicked, who devour the flock of Christ as bread. Alas! what will be the fate of those new plantations of Christ, which, by your hands, He had set in divers places, in the spots of horror and solitude? Who will dig around, who nourish them, surround them by a hedge, and cut back with care the greedy shoots which exhaust their strength? Either, when the wind of temptations shall blow, these ill rooted ones shall easily be rooted up, or growing up among thickets of thorns will be choked by them, as there is none to clear them away, and thus will bring forth no fruit.

3. This being so, consider what is this good which you have done, and whether it can be called good, in the midst of such evil consequences. However worthy the fruits of penitence that you flatter yourself you will make, will they not be necessarily choked in the midst of thorns? Do you not, in fact, sin, even if you offer rightly, if you do not rightly divide the victim Will you say that you rightly divide when you trouble yourself only about your own soul, and deprive those sons who were committed to you of a father's care? O, unhappy ones, and to be pitied; the more that they see themselves orphaned even while their father lives! Then, farther, ought you not to have doubted whether you were doing well, even for your own soul, to venture on a step so unexampled without the advice of your brethren and co-abbots, without the permission of your father and master? It must also raise against you the indignation of many, that you have led away withyou weak youths and delicate young men. Or, if they were strong and robust, then they were indispensable to the house now desolate; but if (as I have said) weak and delicate, they will not be fit to endure the fatigues of a hard and laborious journey. And we cannot believe that your remaining over them is because you wish still to direct their souls, since we know that you propose to lay down the burden of the pastoral charge of them, and henceforth to live for yourself alone. And, furthermore, it would be unfitting that without being called you should presumptuously resume in one place a burden which against rule you have rashly laid down in another. But you know all these things, and I do not wish to press upon you superfluous words; but, in conclusion, I faithfully promise that if you ever give me the opportunity of converse with you I will strive to find for you a means of doing as far as may be with permission, and therefore in peace of mind, what you are now attempting lawlessly and with peril. Farewell.