A letter from Peter the Venerable (early 1136)

Translated letter:

To our venerable and dearest sister, lady/lord Adela, brother Peter humble abbot of Cluny, greetings and all benediction from the lord. We have sent nothing to your love up to now about the death of our beloved lord king of the English, because the great sorrow from which we are still not able to extricate ourselves prevented it and it troubled us not without cause to be the first relayers of such calamity. If it pleases you to know what we know, you should be aware that we have not been able to find out anything except that for eight days in which he lay ill in bed in a certain town near Rouen the lord archbishop of Rouen assiduously attended him. Fortified by him with all the ecclesiastical sacraments, in the best state of penance and faithful confession, he left the world on the fourth nones of December. His body, as he had disposed, was taken to Rouen and from there was conveyed by count Robert [of Gloucester] his son to England to be entombed at Reading. All Normandy resounds already with civil and external wars. We have up to now heard nothing certain about the state of the kingdom across the sea. For those who recounted these things to us swiftly fled from Normandy. We have, however, already sent two messengers, one to the lord of Rouen, the other to the lord of Winchester, who will soon tell us whatever they have learned from them about those things. For the eternal salvation of the dead king we have established many things which Cluniacs have never before done for anyone. What you should do for him it seems superfluous for us to indicate.

Original letter:

Venerabili et karissimae sorori nostrae dominae Adelae, frater Petrus humilis Cluniacensium abbas, salutem, et omnem a domino benedictionem. Quoniam de obitu super diletti nostri domini regis Anglorum, nichil adhuc dilectioni uestrae mandauimus, causa haec fuit, quoniam et multus meror quo nondum nos expedire possumus hoc prohibuit, et tantae calamitatis nos primos relatores esse, non immerito piguit. Verum quia si quid scimus uos scire placuit, noueritis nichil nos aliud adhuc nascere potuisse, quam per octo dies in quadam uilla iuxta Rothomagum lecto eum decubuisse, dominum Rothomagensem archiepiscopum ei assidue adhesisse. Munitum ab eo omnibus aecclesiasticis sacramentis in optima paenitentia et fideli confessione, quarto nonas decembris de saeculo migrasse. Corpus eius sicut disposuerat Rothomagum delatum, et inde a Roberto comite filio suo apud Radingas tumulandum, uersus Angliam deportatum est. Normannia tota ciuilibus et externis iam bellis fremit. De statu regni transmarini, nichil adhuc certi audiuimus. Nam qui nobis haec retulerunt, citissime a Normannia aufugerunt. Misimus tamen iam cursores duos, unum domino Rothomagensi, alium domino Vuintoniensi, qui festinanter quicquid de eis et ab eis cognouerint, nobis in proximo renuntient. Pro regis defuncti aeterna salute tanta constituimus, quanta nunquam Cluniaci pro alio constituta sunt. Quid uos pro eo agere debeatis, superfluum est ut nobis uidetur mandare.

Historical context:

Peter announces to Adela, who is long since a nun at Marcigny, the death of her brother, king Henry I, with information about his death and burial, and gives her news of civil unrest in Normandy.

Printed source:

The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Giles Constable, 2v (Cambridge: Harvard, 1967), Harvard Historial Studies, 78, v.1, p.22, ep.15

Date:

early 1136