To Guy, Abbot of Trois-Fontaines
ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX
contrary to his state and the commands of his abbot, spending I the money he made from the practice of his art upon himself, if you love him you ought to rejoice now that by the mercy of God he is cured. For I bear witness that never now does he wander abroad but, peacefully persevering in the monastery, he lives without complaint among poor men the life of a poor man. So far from having betrayed the faith he first pledged with you, he has now ratified it; together with obedience and 1 without which he is deceived who conversion of manners, trusts in his stability, he now keeps that faith whole and entire.
So I beg you, brothers, calm your anger and stop worrying me.
But if you will not, then do what you like, write what you like, abuse me as much as you like, charity suffers all things, beareth all things. And for my part, I am determined that from henceforth I shall love you with a pure love, treat you reverently, and regard you as friends.
[72] To Guy, Abbot of Trois-Fontaines A letter of advice and consolation to Guy who is in great distress because "when he came to the Communion at Mass, he discovered that through an oversight of the server there was no wine in the chalice. In the twelfth century the chalice was prepared by the servers before Mass.
It has been suggested that water instead of wine had been put into the chalice. This is a mistake that can be very easily made by the half light of candles in the early dawn when a white wine is used. It is true that there is nothing in the letter to suggest that this is how the mistake happened, but it would explain what would otherwise be
1. Monks, as distinct from Friars and Clerks Regular and post-Tridentine Orders, explicitly vow only obedience, stability, and conversion of manners.
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8l a very extraordinary carelessness of the server who prepared the chalice, and also why Guy did not notice the mistake at the fraction of the Host.
The Guy to whom this letter is addressed is the same person as the Guy mentioned in Letter 66. He succeeded Roger as Abbot of Trois-Fontaines in i 129, and was elected Abbot of Citeaux in 11 34, but was deposed some months later by the General Chapter. The abbey of Trois-Fontaines was founded from Clairvaux in the year
1 18 and is to be distinguished from the other abbey near Rome called Tre Fontane and dedicated to SS. Vincent and Anastasias.
I SYMPATHIZE with your sorrow, my dear friend, because I know the cause of it; but only if it is not excessive.
Unless I am mistaken it is that supernatural sorrow or sorrow 'according to God' spoken of by the Apostle. There can be no doubt at all that such sorrow will be one day turned to joy.
And so, dear friend, 'do not let anger betray you into sin', as the Psalmist says. On an occasion like this you would sin just as much by being too angry with yourself as by not being angry at all. Not to be angry with oneself when one should be is complacency, but to be more angry than one should be is to add sin unto sin. If complacency in sin is wrong, how could it not be wrong to accumulate one sin on the top of another?
If guilt is made to depend on the matter of our actions, your sorrow, even were it immense, would not be to blame, because it would be sorrow for an immense fault. For the fault would be great in proportion as the matter concerned was sacred. But now in judging what you have done you should, according to my opinion, consider rather your own intention than the dignity of the sacred matter because the motive not the matter, the intention and not the results of the action constitute its moral character, according to those words of our Blessed Lord:
'If thy eye is clear, the whole of thy body will be full of light; if thy eye is diseased, the whole of thy body will be in darkness'.
ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX
My prior and I after having thought a great deal about it by ourselves and discussed it at length between ourselves, can see in it ignorance on your part and carelessness on the part of the servers, but certainly no malice. You surely know very well that as there is no good but what springs from the will, so there can hardly be any great evil in a matter which is clearly involuntary. Otherwise were involuntary good actions to merit no reward and involuntary evil actions to deserve heavy punishment, for one and the same cause evil would be reckoned but good not recognized. Let him who believes this say if he wish, not that 'wisdom has overcome evil', but that evil has overcome wisdom.
2. But so as to ease your unquiet conscience and in case what has happened should be a warning of some more grave evil lurking in the monastery, I give you as penance the seven penitential psalms to be said with seven prostrations every day until
Easter and seven disciplines. And let him who served your Mass make similar satisfaction. As for him who prepared the chalice before Mass and forgot to pour in the wine, he seems to me to be the one most at fault so, if you agree, I leave him to your judgement. And if word of this thing should have got out among the brethren let each of them receive the discipline once so that it shall be fulfilled what is written:
'Bear ye one another's burdens'. And now as regards your action when you had discovered what had happened, in pouring wine on to the particle of the sacred Host in the chalice;
I commend it and in such a difficulty I do not think you could have done better. Although of course the wine would not have been turned into the blood of Christ by its proper consecration, yet it would 1 They have become holy from contact with the sacred body. i. During the Canon of the Mass the priest breaks the sacred Host into three pieces .
. two large and one very small piece. The small piece he drops into the chalice. Therefore if the chalice was empty, Guy would have found at the Communion that only the particle of the sacred Host was there.
If there was water in the chalice, as some think, the particle would have been in the water.
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say that some writer or other has thought differently, namely that the presence together of all three elements, bread, wine, and w rater, is necessary for the Sacrifice, so that the lack of one
M ould invalidate the whole. But this is a matter on which each one must believe as seems best to himself.
If the same thing had happened to myself, in my own poor opinion there is one of tw To things I should have done to remedy the situation: either I should have acted as you did, or else I should have repeated the consecration prayer from the words Simili vwdo postquam coenatum est ...
1 and so have completed the Sacrifice.
I would have no doubts in this case about the validity of the consecration of the bread, for by her very rites the Church teaches me what she has herself received from the Lord, namely that although bread and wine are both
| consecrated together, they are not both consecrated together at the same time. Therefore since first the bread is consecrated, so as to become Christ's body and then the wine so as to become his blood, if through forgetfulness the wine is presented later, I cannot see that the delay would annul the preceding consecration of the bread. And I think that if it had pleased the Lord to have postponed a little the consecration of the wine or to have omitted it completely after the bread had been consecrated, so as to have become his body, his body would have nevertheless remained and what had not yet been done would have in no way affected what had already been accomplished.
I do not deny that bread and wine mixed with water ought to be presented together, on the contrary I maintain that this ought to be done; but I say it is one thing to blame negligence if this is not done, and quite another to deny the validity of the sacrament. It is one thing to discuss whether a thing was well done, and quite another to deny that it was done at all. This is all I have to say on the matter at present, and I have said it without any prejudice to what you or others wiser than myself may think. i.
'In like manner after he had supped .
.'.
ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX
To the same To the Lord Abbot Guy, a spirit of knowledge and of pity, from Brother Bernard.
I AM certainly moved to pity when I consider the pitiful condition of this poor wretch, but I rather fear it will be in vain. And yet my pity does not seem to me to be wasted, even though it benefit only myself without helping the wretched object of it. Yet I was not moved to it by any thought of selfinterest, it was the sight of a neighbour's wretchedness, a brother's misery, which smote my breast. Pity is an emotion that moves tender hearts irresistibly to compassion for suffering, but it cannot be induced by the will and it is not subject to the reason. Reason and will, although they can prevent emotion from having any effect on a man's actions, yet they cannot stifle it. And so as long as he for whom I pour forth my prayer remains unconverted let them keep away from me who would console me by saying that 'my prayer shall return to my own bosom'. As long as the wicked man remains in his wickedness, I will not listen to those who would flatter me by saying: 'Good will befall the good'.
I will not, I say, be consoled, while I witness my brother's misery. So if, dearest son, your kind heart is moved to pity or, I should say, because it cannot be otherwise moved but by pity, although the poor man seems to you to have made a habit of his wretched comings and goings from the monastery, yet because he thinks he has a grievance, you should listen to what he has to say, not only patiently, but even willingly.
I think we ought to take every reasonable opportunity to save a man in such desperate circumstances, a thing which (as we both knowfrom experience) will be difficult enough in the Order, but far more so outside. So I advise you to call all the brethren together in council
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and not to be ashamed to withdraw any previous sentences you may have given against him, so that his obstinate pride may be healed by your humility and some means be found for receiving him back without violating the Rule. Do not fear that by so doing, by thus preferring mercy to justice, you will displease the merciful and just God.
I will tell you, for an example, of a similar thing that I remember happening to myself. One day
I commanded, with angry voice and threatening looks, a brother who had upset me to leave the monastery. He immediately betook himself to one of our granges and remained there. When I found out where he was I wanted to recall him, but he said that he would not come back unless he was first reinstated in his old position, and not put in the last place as if he had been a runaway; for he had been turned out of the monastery, so he said, without consideration and without his case being heard, and that as he had not been given a fair trial when he was turned out, he ought not to be made to submit to judgement when he came back. As I could not trust my own judgement in the matter owing to my natural feelings about it, I submitted it to the consideration of the brethren. And they, when I was absent, ruled that the brother should not be subjected to the discipline of the Rule on being received back, as his expulsion had not been according to the Rule. If therefore such kindly consideration was shown to a monk who had only once left the monastery, how much more ought it not to be shown to a monk in such desperate circum-
stances as yours. Farewell.
1. The candour with which St. Bernard tells this story seems to us wholly in keeping with his saintly character. But others have thought differently and from early times, through a mistaken idea of the nature of sanctity and a greater zeal for edification than for truth, on purely a priori grounds suspecion has been cast on the authenticity of this passage.
Even Mabillon relegated it to the notes of his edition of the letters averring that it was out of keeping with the character of the saint, and found in only five out of the eight MSS. But now a recent discovery in the library of the Abbey of Runa of a manuscript of the thirteenth century (No.
13) containing the complete text establishes the authenticity of the passage beyond all possibility of cavil.