6. Letter Fifteen. To His Comrades, against Abbot Bernard
letter fifteen. To His Comrades, against Abbot Bernard The present letter relates to the famous collision between Peter
Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux at the Council of Sens, which was ostensibly concerned with Abelard's Theologia but which had motivations and implications that transcended this one treatise and the teachings associated with it. The chronology of this council has been the object of copious analysis.1 If an opinio communis now builds and holds around a dating of the council in 1141, the sequence of events would take the following shape. (If not, then in most cases a year would need to be subtracted from most of the following dates, since previously the prevailing tendency was to peg the council on Sunday and Monday, 2–3 June 1140.) In Lent of 1140 Bernard of Clairvaux receives from his close friend William of St. Thierry a letter-treatise. In it William impugns thirteen allegedly mistaken
1. The fullest and most recent stocktaking in English, together with a presentation of the council in a broad sociohistorical context, can be had in Constant J.
Mews, "The Council of Sens (1141): Bernard, Abelard and the Fear of Social Upheaval," Speculum 77 (2002): 342–82. Other important studies that have appeared lately are Peter Godman, The Silent Masters: Latin Literature and Its Censors in the High Middle Ages
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 61–103; Wim Verbaal, "Sens: Une victoire d'écrivain. Les deux visages du procès d'Abélard," in Pierre Abélard. Colloque international de Nantes, 77–89; and Pietro Zerbi, "Philosophi" e "Logici": Un ventennio di incontri e scontri: Soissons, Sens, Cluny (1121–1141), Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo: Nuovi studi storici 59 (Rome: Nella sede dell'Istituto, Palazzo Borromini, 2002).
bernard of clairvaux doctrines of Abelard, who was once (but is no longer?) a friend of his.2
Even if Bernard nurses no hidden grudges against Abelard for past injuries to himself or to his supporters, the climate is bound to be tense. The boundaries between teachings and writings look hazy, as do those between a master's teachings and his students' reports of them. It is not possible always to differentiate emphatically between what a teacher teaches and what his listeners understand. As a consequence masters are often held accountable for the impressions (and misimpressions) their followers take away from lectures, in notes, in memories, or in both. The issue of responsibility would be particularly problematic in the case of Abelard, who has been testing the patience of conservatives in the Church by his readiness, when confronting questions or uncertainties in doctrine, to apply logical analysis rather than to content himself with citing authorities.
Matters are not helped by the fact that Bernard is able to present Abelard as being in an unholy alliance with a former student of his,
Arnold of Brescia (about 1090–1155). For rebelling against his bishop in Brescia and for speaking out against the policy of allowing the Church to own property, the canon and abbot Arnold has been ex2. On William's relationship with Abelard and knowledge of his writings and thought, see Jean Châtillon, "Guillaume de Saint-Thierry, le monachisme et les écoles: À propos de Rupert de Deutz, d'Abélard et de Guillaume de Conches," in Saint-Thierry: Une abbaye du VIe au XXe siècle: Actes du Colloque international d'histoire monastique, Reims-Saint-Thierry, 11 au 14 octobre 1976, ed. Michel Bur (Saint-Thierry, France:
Association des Amis de l'Abbaye de Saint-Thierry, 1979), 375–94; Thomas Michael
Tomasic, "William of Saint-Thierry against Peter Abelard: A Dispute on the Meaning of Being a Person," Analecta Cisterciensia 28 (1972): 3–76; and Piero Zerbi, "Guillaume de Saint-Thierry et son différend avec Abélard," in Saint-Thierry, une abbaye du
VIe au XXe siècle, Actes du colloque international d'histoire monastique, Reims-Saint-Thierry, 1977
(Saint-Thierry, France: Association des Amis de l'Abbaye de Saint-Thierry, 1977),
395–412, repr. in Pietro Zerbi, Ecclesia in hoc mundo posita: Studi di storia e di storiografia medioevale raccolti in occasione del 70o genetliaco dell'autore, ed. Maria Pia Alberzoni, Bibliotheca erudita: Studi e documenti di storia e filologia 6 (Milan, Italy: Vita e pensiero, 1993),
549–76. On his correspondence with Bernard, see Jean Leclercq, "Les lettres de Guillaume de Saint-Thierry à saint Bernard," Revue bénédictine 79 (1968): 375–91, at 375–82, and M. Basil Pennington, "The Correspondence of William of St. Thierry," Studia monastica: Commentarium ad rem monasticam investigandam 18 (1976): 353–65.
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pelled from Italy by Pope Innocent II (1130–1143), and he has come not just to Paris but indeed to Mont Ste. Geneviève, where he is a master at the church of St. Hilary. (It is conceivable, but far from provable, that Abelard also teaches there and that their stays overlap.)
At Sens he is reputed to have defended Abelard against Bernard. In a metaphor that manages to allude simultaneously to Abelard's actual noble birth and his combativeness as a disputant, Bernard casts
Abelard as Goliath, Arnold as his squire.3 One of Innocent II's letters to condemn Abelard prescribed the same punishments for both him and Arnold. About fifteen years later Arnold, who has by now been expelled from France after denouncing Bernard, is captured and put to death as a rebel with the assent of both the Holy Roman
Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa (1122–1190), and the pope, Adrian IV (1154–1159).4
Against this strained backdrop, Abelard and Bernard meet twice in the winter of 1140–1141 and discuss Abelard's allegedly mistaken creeds. From Bernard's perspective, these rendez-vous follow both the letter and the spirit of Gospel-certified procedures for dealing with a wayward fellow Christian (Matthew 18.15–17), which escalate from what could be termed correctio fraternalis (fraternal correction) to denuntiatio evangelica (open denuntiation before the Church):
But if thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou shalt gain thy brother. And if he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more: that in the mouth of 3. See Letter 189.3, in Sancti Bernardi opera, 7: 14, line 1: "Procedit Golias procero corpore, nobili illo suo bellico apparatu circummunitus, antecedente quoque ipsum armigero eius Arnaldo de Brixia" (Tall Goliath walks forward, defended on all sides by all that war-gear of his, with his squire Arnold of Brescia walking before him).
4. On Arnold and Abelard, see Romedio Schmitz-Esser, "Arnold of Brescia in Exile: April 1139 to December 1143," in Exile in the Middle Ages: Selected Proceedings from the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 8–11 July 2002, ed. Laura Napran and Elisabeth van Houts, International Medieval Research 13 (Turnhout, Belgium:
Brepols, 2004), 213–31, at 217–20 and 229–30. On Arnold himself, the classic but dated biography in English remains George William Greenaway, Arnold of Brescia (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1931), while a definitive treatment is given in Arsenio Frugoni, Arnaldo da Brescia nelle fonti del secolo XII, Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo: Studi storici 8–9 (Rome: Nella sede dell'Istituto, 1954).
bernard of clairvaux two or three witnesses every word may stand. And if he will not hear them: tell the Church. And if he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican.
These meetings appear to be cordial, but Abelard does not cede ground on the central points of his doctrine. Afterward, Bernard is entitled to believe that he has shown charity and restraint by trying to persuade Abelard to renounce his heterodox beliefs.
Abelard's reactions differ, especially after he learns from his supporters that Bernard has denounced his writings and teachings
(though maybe not naming him) before the students of Paris, who would have included some loyal to Abelard, and has asked them to turn from the Babylon of student life in Paris to the Jerusalem of monasticism, as indeed a number have done by joining the Cistercian Order. It has been hypothesized that Bernard's attack before the students in Paris is preserved, in a reworked form, in his sermon Ad clericos de conversione (On Conversion, to Clerics).5 Whatever the exact contours and contents of the sermon may have been, to Bernard it would have been the denuntiatio evangelica, the public denunciation that the Gospel according to Matthew stipulated. To Abelard it would have appeared a Judas-like betrayal from a hypocrite who had simulated friendliness in earlier encounters but who had in mind all along to undercut him or worse.
In addition, Abelard has read or heard that Bernard has referred contemptuously to his Theologia as the Stultilogia (Stupidology). In fact, in a letter that survives Bernard makes this very mockery, which also appears in a colophon in the manuscript of another contempo5. The Latin text is in Sancti Bernardi opera, 4: 59–116; the English is in G. R. Evans, trans., Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works (New York and Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press,
1987), 65–97, and in Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on Conversion: On Conversion, A Sermon to Clerics and Lenten Sermons on the Psalm "He Who Dwells," translated by Marie-Bernard
Saïd, Cistercian Fathers 25 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 31–79.
In favor of the hypothesis, see Borst, "Abälard und Bernhard," 512–13, and against it,
Pietro Zerbi, "San Bernardo di Chiaravalle e il concilio di Sens," in Studi su s. Bernardo di Chiaravalle nell'ottavo centenario della canonizzazione: Convegno internazionale, Certosa di Firenze:
6–9 novembre 1974, Bibliotheca Cisterciensis 6 (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1975),
49–73, at 57.
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rary text directed against Abelard's allegedly heretical doctrines.6 The same letter by Bernard deals at length with the errors of Abelard.7
However Abelard became aware of Bernard's hostility, he feels both betrayed and threatened. The letter translated in the present section speaks to Abelard's sense that Bernard has been two-faced, in first meeting amiably with him and then publicly chastising him.
Furthermore, Abelard suffers from a paranoia to which he is richly entitled, as far as the attitudes of the Church toward his writings and teachings are concerned. Consequently, he decides that his best defense is a good offense and that he will compel Bernard to debate him in public.8 In this instance he knows that a group of bishops will assemble in Sens, after Pentecost, for a solemn exposition of the relics of St. Stephen, and accordingly he requests that Archbishop
Henry Sanglier of Sens (1122–1142) convert this gathering into a synod. Thereafter Bernard writes to the bishops of France to rally them in defense of the faith,9 while Abelard distributes a letter exhorting his friends and students to muster at Sens on the Sunday after Pentecost, when Abelard has proclaimed that he will stand ready to defend himself point by point against Bernard's accusations.
Though Abelard rarely displays much shrewdness about political realities, in this instance he must have realized that it could redound to his advantage to have his followers present in large numbers as a counterweight to all the Church officials involved in the proceedings, since (to put it mildly) not all of the ecclesiastics would be predisposed toward him. To whom Abelard would have sent the let6. See Bernard, Letter 190.4, to Pope Innocent II, in Sancti Bernardi opera, 8: 24, line
24. On the colophon, see the anonymous Capitula haeresum Petri Abaelardi, ed. Eligius
M. Buytaert, Petri Abaelardi opera theologica 2, in CCCM 12 (1969). The Capitula are edited on 473–80; the colophon is discussed in the introduction on 457: "Haec sunt capitula Theologiae, immo Stultilogiae Petri Abaelardi" (These are the chapters of the Theology, or rather of the Stupidology, of Peter Abelard).
7. Bernard's other letters against Abelard (Letters 187–90, 192–93, 330–38) survive and are available in translation.
8. The decision is no departure from the reflexes he had displayed in the past, as can be seen in the remarkably similar way he tried to proceed twenty years earlier in a skirmish with Roscelin that Letter Fourteen allows us to glimpse.
9. Letters 187–88, in Sancti Bernardi opera, 8: 9–10.
bernard of clairvaux ter initially cannot be determined, but may be irrelevant: the letter is a circular that was meant to go round (or the contents of which were intended to be bruited about) among the largest possible circle of friends and students. Similarly, where Abelard is staying when he writes the letter is unknown, but evidently he must not be too near to Paris or else he would not need to circulate his request in writing. As was the case in Letter Fourteen, Abelard does not identify his opponent. In that instance the omission was a rhetorical ploy not to dignify a heretic by naming him. Here, although there can be no doubt that the enemy is Bernard of Clairvaux, it may be a slight instinct for self-preservation that prompts Abelard to refrain from setting in writing the name of the most powerful churchman of his day.
The Council of Sens does indeed take place on 25 May 1141, but it turns out to be a far cry from the public disputation Abelard envisages. Although Abelard's supporters do come, neither they nor their master is able to sway the course of events. Rather than allowing for a debate, the proceedings are stage-managed to be the equivalent of the sentencing hearing after a court trial. Or, to draw a more extreme comparison, they even resemble a show trial, in which a list of Abelard's supposed heresies is proclaimed and condemned. This outcome must have been a nightmare for Abelard, whose Historia calamitatum indicates that he had an undimmed and unmitigated recollection of the Council of Soissons in 1121, where he was forced to consign one of his books to the flames.10 Whatever Abelard's motivations, he refuses to take part even by responding, preferring instead to appeal directly to Pope Innocent II in Rome.
Despite the fact that Abelard is known to have enjoyed the backing of various clergymen in the papal curia, the pope receives a fusillade of letters with Bernard's heated rhetoric and alarming allegations to put forward his side of the story. Swayed by these communications, Innocent II issues on 16 July 1141 a rescript in which he condemns Abelard and Arnold of Brescia for heresy, orders the master's books (and those of Arnold, though he is not known to have written any) to be burned, excommunicates his disciples, and 10. Ed. Monfrin, p. 87, line 838–p. 89, line 909; trans. Radice, pp. 20–25.
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commands that Abelard himself be confined in perpetual silence.11
Probably not long after the council, Abelard addresses a "Confession of Faith" to Heloise.12 For reasons that require no explaining, he ceases teaching. Instead, he sets out to defend himself in Rome, but en route he stops and takes refuge in the monastery of Cluny.
Later, thanks to the mediation of Abbot Peter the Venerable (about 1092–1156), Abelard and Bernard are reconciled, and the pope's rescript is lifted.13
Abelard postures himself often in his works as being saintlike, martyrlike, and even Christ-like.14 In the Historia calamitatum he writes,
"And, to draw a comparison between a flea and a lion or an ant and an elephant, my rivals persecuted me with no gentler a spirit than heretics once did St. Athanasius."15 In the present letter Abelard also establishes an explicit analogy between himself and a saint. He opens the text
11. A rescript is a response in which a pope (or another ecclesiastic superior) replies to a question concerning doctrine or discipline.
12. This is the Confessio fidei ad Heloisam, ed. Burnett, 152–55; trans. Betty Radice, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, 211–12.
13. Possibly it was not Pope Innocent II but Pope Celestine II who restored Abelard. Celestine II, the former Master Guy of Città di Castello, had been well disposed toward Abelard (a onetime master of his) and had retained copies of the Theologia and Sic et non even after Innocent II had ordered all copies burned. On the manuscript, see
Mews, "The Council of Sens," 366.
14. On his identification with Christ, see Donald K. Frank, "Abelard as Imitator of Christ," Viator 1 (1970): 107–13. He was encouraged in this identification by Heloise; see Heloise, Letter Six, ed. Muckle, Mediaeval Studies 17 (1955): 252; trans. Radice,
109. A very powerful moment of imitatio Christi not merely in his writings but in his actual life would be his refusal to speak at the trial of Sens, if we accept the suggestion advanced by C. Stephen Jaeger, "Peter Abelard's Silence at the Council of Sens
(1140)," Res publica litterarum 3 (1980): 31–54.
15. Ed. Monfrin, p. 97, lines 1218–1221; trans. Radice, p. 33. The two passages are very close, since both involve saints. Even in other contexts, Abelard displays his precision as a logician in his self-conscious analysis of the similes he deploys. For example, see in Letter Nine the elaborate sentence: "In thus encouraging virgins, he adduces an argument from a likeness that is not derived solely from virgins; for this reason, to achieve a comparison of lesser worth, he takes widows and wives as an example, so that through the matrons of the world he might arouse all the more to this study those who are betrothed to Christ and so that by citing the virtue of laywomen he might dislodge or even destroy the sloth of nuns."
bernard of clairvaux with a reference that likens his travails to the passion of the Spanish protomartyr Vincent, deacon of Saragossa, who died in 304 c.e.
(22 January) during the persecutions of the Roman emperors Diocletian (284–305) and Maximian (286–305), and later includes a comparison of Bernard with Dacian, the Roman governor of Spain who oversaw Vincent's grisly martyrdom.
Among the details of the martyr's life, Abelard may have found particularly relevant to his own situation both that Vincent suffered as a consequence of having accepted the commission of preaching
(which he did because his bishop had a speech impediment) and that during his martyrdom he was offered release from prison but refused when the condition was stipulated that he should consign the sacred texts to the fire: Abelard was haunted by the memory of having had to deposit one of his own books in the flames at Soissons. In art Vincent is often represented holding a codex. Abelard could have known the details of Vincent's legend from many sources, foremost among which would have been Prudentius's (348–405) Peristephanon and Augustine's Sermons.16
In this letter Abelard interjects a quotation that fuses lines from two classical poets. He draws the first line from Ovid, Remedia amo16. See Prudentius, Peristephanon, Poems 4 (Hymn in Honor of Ten Saints and Eight Martyrs of Saragossa) and especially 5 (The Passion of the Holy Martyr Vincent). In Sermon 275, in PL 38: 1254–1255, Augustine indicates that the Acts of Vincent were read in the churches of Africa at the end of the fourth century. Also in his sermons, Augustine testifies that the cult of Vincent extended everywhere in Christendom. The strength of popular attachment to Vincent can be gauged from the evidence of other, recently discovered sermons by Augustine, in which he gives a vivid portrayal of the overexcited congregation. See Augustine, Sermo eiusdem de oboedientia
[Dolbeau 2, Mainz 5 = Sermon 359b] (preached at Carthage, the day after the feast day of St. Vincent), in Augustin d'Hippone: Vingt-six sermons au peuple d'Afrique retrouvés à
Mayence, ed. François Dolbeau, Collection des études augustiniennes Série Antiquité 147 (Paris: Institut d'Études augustiniennes, 1996), 328–44, which reprints Revue des Études Augustiniennes 38 (1992): 50–79, at 63–79; English, The Works of Saint Augustine:
A Translation for the 21st Century: Sermons III/11. Newly Discovered Sermons, trans. E. Hill
(Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 1997), 331–53. For extensive information on the legends and cult of Vincent up to the millennium, see Victor Saxer, Saint Vincent, diacre et martyr: Culte et légendes avant l'An Mil, Subsidia hagiographica 83 (Brussels, Belgium:
Société des Bollandistes, 2002).
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ris 369–70. Abelard also quotes it in his Carmen ad Astralabium (lines 327–28). He takes the second line from Horace, Odes 2.10.11–12, two bits of a Sapphic strophe that he also cites in the Historia calamitatum, where it is featured in a speech allegedly pronounced by Bishop Geoffrey of Chartres at the Council of Soissons.17 Last but not least, the later twelfth-century Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis, about 1146–about 1223) incorporated into one of his many writings an anecdote that he had heard while a student at Paris. As Gerald tells it in a text written in 1191, Abelard resorted to the same two lines in a sharp debate with a Jew, which took place in the presence of King Philip (which would have to mean King Philip I, the Amorous, reigned 1060–1108).18
The hybrid couplet from Ovid and Horace deals with a recurrent topic in Abelard's writings, namely, envy. Abelard announces this theme in the very first sentence of this letter. According to his understanding of his life, it is partly his own pride in his renown but mainly his opponents' envy at that same fame that lead again and again to his ruin. This outlook comes to the fore repeatedly in the Historia calamitatum.19 In the Collationes (also known as the Dialogue between the Philosopher, the Jew, and the Christian), Abelard has the Philosopher refer to the envy that could not destroy the Theologia and to the increased fame that the work acquired through the attempts of envy to persecute it.20
The "Letter of Peter Abelard against Abbot Bernard" is extant in a single manuscript, Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Codex Heidelbergensis 71, fol. 14v–15v. It has been surmised to have belonged
17. Ed. Monfrin, p. 86, lines 803–4; trans. Radice, p. 22.
18. Itinerarium Kambriae, Book 1, chapter 12, in Giraldi Cambrensis opera, ed. James
F. Dimock, 8 vols. (London: Longman, 1861–1891), Rolls Series, 6 (1868): 3–152, at 95; English in Gerald of Wales, "The Journey through Wales" and "The Description of Wales," translated by Lewis Thorpe (London: Penguin Books, 1978), 153.
19. On livor, emuli, and invidia, see ed. Monfrin, p. 70, lines 236–40; p. 83, line 708; and p. 85, line 791–p. 86, line 809; trans. Radice, pp. 8, 20, and 22.
20. Collationes, Praefatio 4, ed. Marenbon and Orlandi, 4–5. See also Dialectica 4.1, ed. Lambertus Marie De Rijk, Petrus Abaelardus, Dialectica, First Complete Edition of the Parisian Manuscript, Wijsgerige Teksten en Studies 1, 2d ed. (Assen, The Netherlands: Van
Gorcum, 1970), p. 469, lines 5–6.
bernard of clairvaux to a German cleric in the third quarter of the twelfth century who took an interest in the correspondence of Bernard of Clairvaux and Pope Eugenius III about the Second Crusade. The other items in the manuscript are mainly letters of Bernard, together with one by Pope
Eugenius III.
The letter has been edited twice: Jean Leclercq, "Études sur Saint Bernard et le texte de ses écrits," Analecta sacri ordinis Cisterciensis 9 (1953):
1–247, at 104–5; and Raymond Klibansky, "Peter Abailard and Bernard of Clairvaux. A Letter by Abailard," Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 5 (1961): 1–27, at 6–7. Klibansky's edition, which is followed here, is flanked on one side by a terse discussion of Abelard's epistolary activity in general and a full consideration of the unique twelfth-century manuscript in which the text is preserved, and on the other side by a detailed evocation of the context in which Abelard produced the letter. Among the many other places where the letter has been considered, see Clanchy in the introduction to the Penguin translation of The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, xli–xlii.
Letter Fifteen To his most beloved comrades their most beloved servant [sends] greeting.21
It is quite demonstrably to the glory of the martyr Vincent that after his deeds had been described, the enemy envied his fame.22
Something of the sort is happening to me also now, to extend in an analogy a comparison from the greatest to the least. Certainly that man, for a long time now a secret enemy, who has pretended until this point to be a friend, even the greatest of friends, has now blazed out into such great envy that he could not bear the 21. By using the term socius Abelard avoids discipulus, which had been the conventional word to designate the students who followed a magister; see Teeuwen, Vocabulary of Intellectual Life, 75 and 135–36. Socius could designate a colleague as well as a student and need not have been restricted to an academic or even an ecclesiastic context.
22. The enemy is Satan, whose very name in Hebrew denotes his role as the adversary of God and mankind.
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fame of my writings, by which he believed his glory to be debased the more as he thought that I was elevated the more.23
For a long time moreover I heard that he groaned heavily, because I had entitled with the name Theologia that work of mine about the sacred Trinity, insofar as the Lord granted it to be composed by me. In the end, hardly able to bear it, he offered the opinion that it should be called the Stultilogia rather than the Theologia.24 Thanks be to God, that the toil of this work of mine could be esteemed so great that it should become worthy of prompting to such shameless and overt envy first the teachers of France, then the monks and those endowed with the esteem of still greater sanctity!25 The Lord will watch over his work, so that what I wrote under his inspiration will not suffer to be obliterated through the ill will of the wicked. The more often he rages against it, we trust that with the approval of God, he will avail not so much to suppress as to exalt that work:
Envy seeks what is highest; winds blow upon the highest heights and lightning strikes the tops of mountains.
You should know furthermore that, before seeing the message of your affection, I had heard already through the report of certain people how many venom-filled reproaches that Dacian of mine spewed out against me:26 he belched them out from the 23. Compare Letter Ten, with its reference to "the charity with which [Bernard] embrace[d him] in particular."
24. Bernard's neologism substitutes the element "foolish" for "God": taken etymologically, the words could be contrasted, roughly, as "Fool-Teaching" and "GodTeaching."
25. Although this statement is too vague to allow for definite conclusions, Abelard could here have in mind that his writings on the Trinity were questioned first by the Schoolman Walter of Mortagne and then later by the monks William of St. Thierry and Bernard of Clairvaux. Walter's letter to Abelard on the topic survives; see Epistola Gualteri de Mauritania episcopi ad Petrum Abaelardum, in Sententiae Florianenses, ed.
Heinrich Ostlender, Florilegium Patristicum tam veteris quam medii aevi auctores complectens 19 (Bonn, Germany: Peter Hanstein, 1929), 34–40.
26. Dacian was the Roman governor who had St. Vincent and Bishop Valerius
bernard of clairvaux depths of his wickedness first at Sens, in the presence of the lord archbishop and many of my friends, and later at Paris, before you and others.27
And so the lord archbishop, in accordance with my request, sent a letter to him: If he wished to persist in accusing me, I would hold myself ready on the octave of Pentecost to respond concerning the propositions that he found objectionable.28 In truth, I have not yet heard what sort of response he has given to that letter. You should know, however, that, the Lord willing, I will come on that day, and I wish and request that you be present. Farewell. dragged in chains to Valencia and imprisoned there. After banishing Valerius, Dacian had many torments inflicted upon Vincent, who eventually died in his cell.
27. The archbishop is Henry Sanglier of Sens.
28. In ecclesiastical usage the octave is either the eighth day after a feast day (with the feast day itself being included in the count) or the entire period from the feast day through the eighth day after it. Here it is the former, 25 May 1141.