127. The Letter of Gislebert, a noble and literate youth

To the venerable and beloved father, Lord Peter, brother Gislebertus sends greetings.

After the letters of my lords (whom I am granted to have as brothers and companions, if I may call them so) addressed to Your Reverence – shining with the brightness of such illuminating eloquence– were passed on, we also send this our text of such a poor tongue. I hope that you will freely grant forgiveness that it was executed with a presumptuous and rustic pen. I ask that you look over it –though I fear this too!– especially lest the tardiness of the letter is seen to proceed less from the tepidness of our burning love for you and rather, more for the reason mentioned below. You know this very thing, that although among my companions, I am of a younger age, interior in wisdom, lesser in merit, it is fitting that I more follow after them, than move first. And so, I yield to my betters, I grant honour to my elders and I do not presume before anyone, until I know that all have written you. Behold, I write the last, not since I love you less but for that reason I said. Therefore, after those things which you charged in your letter to our common father individually, you greeted the sons of the father, and certainly your brothers and companions, and you honoured us so exaltedly with the great name of hermits. I admit that I called myself a son of the father, I even admit that I called myself a brother – an adolescent one – to brothers so senior that I seemed to be more of a son to them. On this account I cannot disavow the name, “companion” and therefore I admit at any rate that I am greeted among those you greeted [by this name]. But I am not able to mention anything thusly that also I might admit that I will be a hermit. We inhabit forests, as you wrote truly about the situation, and the leafy cover of trees is a more familiar shelter for us than the stones or bricks of homes. Not yet, however, have we, in eremitical fashion, become like a sparrow all alone on the housetop[1]For putting human fellowship far away is as important as the density of the woods surrounding the hermit, in the making of a solitary. But how are we solitaries, who after we entered the vast solitude of this desert, have such frequent interaction with men behind us that we are seen to have built more a city than a desert retreat. For he sent such a great number of legates falling upon us from across the sea and across the Alps, that I must keep silent about that most turbulent crowd, which flocks together in large numbers from the whole surrounding region interrupting us on account of their legal battles disputing either the end of an agreement or a judicial judgement and [so many in number] that scarcely the court of any great king might suffice to offer such a great number of responses. For what reason, therefore, do you impose the name hermits on us? Perhaps now that your foot has begun to become proper, the tongue hastens towards a grave lameness, such that deviating from the true, it said something which it ought not? For indeed a tongue which slips up is more gravely lame than one who fearfully treads the ground with a swollen foot. Let it be thus, that we might be true hermits and that we may be addressed with the name, “hermits”. You, however, mightiest warrior, keenest knight, most victorious combatant, who for so long trained to fight mightily on the fraternal battle line and so greatly were you distinguished with the glory of victory palms, why do you not leave the war camp? Why do you not gird yourself with that your spiritual sword? Why do you not finally join us solitaries so that you may enter the single fray against the common enemy? Behold! we all await you and all yearn for your arrival. And if you will have come, you will then prove that you consider we companions to be true hermits.

[1]Psalm 101.8