Prefatory Epistle

Translation status: first draft complete. Constable, Letters

To his most reverend lord and the sweetest father Peter, the abbot of the sacred Church of Cluny, from Peter of Poitiers, sinner and feeble monk, as if from the most devoted son to the best father.

I saw, most beloved father, and I examined with much zeal the little book –it leaving my hands scarcely a single time– which the more frequently it is read, the more completely it attracts the soul of the reader; the more subtly it is considered, the more sweetly it tastes.And O all-bearing scripture, most deserving of praise, which as Flaccus himself said, Never fear the clear keenness of a judge.[1] You –the font of wisdom, the font of eloquence, the font of learning– immediately outshine all the lanterns of our talents with the brightness of your brilliant eloquence. I certainly imagined that I knew something, until now. But now, not only do you look like a most learned man to me, [but] truly what might we be–all of our time who either are capable or imagine themselves capable of something in letters– in comparison to yours. Indeed, I when I consider your most lucid, most wise and most melodious sayings, and then I return to my inept and boring puerilisms, truly I am ashamed that I imagined to know anything. And indeed, now I have long been aware that the keenness of your ability, but also the very studies, stand out among philosophers of our Gaul –especially in these times in which all rush towards death. On account of which truly, I saw the aforementioned codex, not in the manner that it is equal to them –I prefer your excellence– but also I do not hesitate to compare it with those most perfect works of earlier times. Thus indeed we see that you have attended assiduously to the knowledge of all the liberal discipline, in such a way that we should have known that your heart is enlightened ceaselessly with hidden inspiration only by Him through which the gifts of knowledge are distributed to everyone; we find it miraculous that this man is still almost a youth, and what is more marvelous, in the time of our world in which we perceive the study of letters utterly abandoned or left for dead, he is able to take in so many things, more than it is able to be believed. For as I should remain silent about divine letters, which always you have in view by retaining both testaments in your memory, who ever discoursed anything more subtle than Plato, more logical than Aristotle, more beautiful and abundantly than Cicero? What grammarian was more instructive, what rhetorician was more ornate, what dialectician was more forceful, what arithmetician was more mindful, what geometrician was better ruled, what musician was more melodious, what astronomer was more perceptive? But also if we dare to say something about the holy fathers, you restore something akin to each of the four rivers of paradise which irrigate the whole world after the holy evangelists, since you advance as speedily as Jerome, as profusely as Augustine, as profoundly as Ambrose and as clearly as Gregory. Awaken therefore, most eloquent man and endeavour fully to pay out to your faithful companions –not only by speaking but also by writing– the servings of your learning in which certainly you abound more fully than all your predecessors. You will thus be able to offer much benefit not only to us, but also to those far away, not only to the living but also to all future Christians, if you –like your fathers– leave for posterity, exactly as the Holy Spirit inspired you, such monuments of your shining genius in your sermons, letters and various treatises. To this end, supernal providence constituted your sanctity in the sublime watchtower of his Church so that you may defend those hastening along the path of Zion to the joys of the eternal Jerusalem against the incursions of the Babylonian invaders, and you are able to lead back all the wandering travelers to the path of the royal way by not remaining silent all day and night. Make an effort, therefore, O great splendor of our world, O bright star divinely arisen in the world, lest uselessly the treasure entrusted to you remain hidden, but instead when paid out in more and more small offerings [coins] through which your industry increased hundredfold, may it acquire the highest state of immortality for us and you. I know that I am truly reckless since I dare to exhort you in such a way, but be not ignorant with respect to me, most serene pity, about what I greatly presume. For not immoderately do I fear that you, most beloved father, reject ostentation with every effort, lest perhaps as if under this intention of excesses you prefer to remain hidden. It ought to be foreseen, most discreet man, lest while you fled that excess praised by men, you omit those things by which that faithful paterfamilias, that evangelical servant merits to be much praised by the good. Consider, I beseech, that if the holy fathers had written nothing before, thinking of reasons like this, but they would have passed over with inactive silence however much the good life, no doubt, neither would they have acquired so many people for God, nor would they have held among us so celebrated and sweet a memory. By writing however, they merited to please God through the double fruit of holy preaching and they offered an example of pious imitation to all coming after them. Thereby is that they impressed such a great love of Him onto all the hearts of the faithful when God speaking in them is attended to, and the teachings of the Holy Spirit are honoured. And so, through divine grace’s miraculous workings, it happens that while they inflame the charity of God in the minds of lose reading or listening, the very amiable and greatly desired ones are the cause of the love of Him among the faithful of God, and this we are able to admire with pious agreeableness. The live in their words although already dead, they spiritually show their presence to us daily, though they are not seen corporally. Truly, what am I doing when I urge such things to your majesty and when I extol it with excessive verbiage as if it were a difficult or strange thing for the office of your person, since Cluniac abbots have maintained a zeal for writing under special prerogative from ancient times? They certainly are not compelled by authority alone to write, but even if they did not do so, they would necessarily be ashamed, as degenerate offspring and one much different from the parental image are. Concerning the most glorious fathers of whom, he alone suffices as an example to us, who also lived as the first founder of our city, and who firstly merited to be the prince of this whole republic, the first father of this monastery, the first parent and nurse of all the sons in Christ, [namely]blessed Odo, I say, the foremost of holy men, glorious in learning and miracles. Since who, not only among us but also through almost all the Latin Churches, is recognized to be the most celebrated especially for studies of this sort, to have transmitted to his successors, as a just inheritance, the grace of this responsibility, and to whose beginning is seen to have dedicated. But if you object that some of them wrote almost nothing, let be absolved Aymard, along with both Hughs, to whom namely the perfection of this erudition lacked; let Maiolus be absolved, since perhaps he did have free time for this. But you, how do you state your excuse, who –if compared to them– you alone among them hold your tongue? O holy lord Father, venerable in merit and most beloved, may the merciful and omnipotent God watch over now and forever your blessedness praying for me.

[1]Horace. Ars poetica.