A letter from Bernard of Clairvaux

Translated letter:

To Beatrice, a noble and religious matron.

 I wonder at the zeal of your devotion, the affection of your love towards us.  O good lady, what is it to you for us?  Whence so much sollicitude from you to us?  If we were children or nephews, if we were joined by any distant line of relationship, your numerous favors, frequent greetings, finally innumerable signs of your love, which we daily experience, would seem not so wondrous to us as properly acceptable.   Now however since we know  you rather as a lady not as a mother, it is no wonder that we wonder, but a wonder if we can wonder enough.   For who of our acquaintance or relations has [such] care for us?  Who ever asks about our health?  Who, I ask, is, I will not say sollicitous but even mindful of us in the world?  To our friends, relatives, neighbors, we have become as a lost vessel; you alone are not able to forget us.  You ask about the being and state of our health, about the path we have recently taken, about the monks whom we have transferred to another place.  About which I answer first briefly, that they have been brought from a desert land and a place of horror and vast solitude into an abundance of things, of buildings and friends, finally into a fertile land and a place of lovely habitation.  So we left them happy and in peace, we returned happy and in peace, except that I for a few days I was troubled by a recurring fever, not small, so that I feared to die.  But again, with God's mercy, I was healed swiftly so that now I feel myself stronger and healthier after the journey I took than before I began it.

Original letter:

Ad Beatricem, nobilem et religiosam matronam.

MIROR tuae devotionis studium, tuae erga nos dilectionis affectum. O bona domina, quid tibi et nobis? Unde tanta tibi sollicitudo de nobis? Si filii, si nepotes, si vel aliqua extrema propinquitatis linea tibi iuncti essemus, tua crebra beneficia, frequentes salutationes, innumera denique tui amoris insignia, quae quotidie experimur, non tam nobis miranda viderentur quam ex debito suscipienda. Nunc autem cum genere tantum dominam, non matrem te cognoscamus; non mirum si miramur, sed mirum si satis mirari possumus. Quis enim notorum vel cognatorum nostrorum curam habet de nobis? Quis umquam de nostra salute interrogat? Quis, inquam, non dico sollicitus, sed vel memor nostri est in saeculo? Amicis, propinquis, vicinis nostris facti sumus tamquam vas perditum; sola nos oblivisci non potes. Inquiris de esse et statu sanitatis nostrae, de via quam nuper egimus, de monachis, quos ad alium locum transtulimus. De quibus primum breviter respondeo, quod de terra deserta et de loco horroris et vastae solitudinis introducti sunt in abundantiam rerum, aedium et amicorum, in terram denique fertilem et locum amoenae habitationis. Laetos itaque et in pace reliquimus, laeti nos et in pace reversi sumus, praeter quod ego paucis diebus, sed non parum, febre redeunte, ita ut mori timerem, aggravatus fui.  Sed Rursum, Deo miserante, cito convalui, ita ut nunc fortiorem sanioremque me sentiam post viam peractam quam ante inchoatam.

Historical context:

Beatrice had approved a gift to Clairvaux made by her sons, presumably enabling the new location for the monks he praises in the letter.  From Bernard’s enthusiastic gratitude, it seems he held her responsible for the gift, which was apparently not the only gift of land or other favors she had given him.  Bernard addressess her with the intimate second person singular you, tu, but uses the more formal first plural we, nos, for himself.  I have retained his plural forms throughout.

Printed source:

Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. LeClercq and H. Rochais (Rome: Eds. Cisterciennes, 1979), v.8, 298-99, #118.

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