66 To Gilo the Schismatic (1138)

I must speak, I will not remain silent; I must write, I will not remain at rest if charity is despised, or had been able to spurn, if charity is harmed or had been able to injure. But since, following Scripture, “it is not aggravated” and again following it, “it endures all things”, I am not able to be condemned not to condemn or, be injured or injure. I do not bring up or conjecture that the virtue of my humility arises because of [your] such high rank, but since I am conscious about myself that even though I have not served it with you, nonetheless, hereafter, I have wished to fool it.

To this end, this (and the quality of this time) is attested towards you by my affection, in which since real charity scarcely dared to appear, in no way is it able that charity feigns itself as the simulacrum of charity. This idea is found in the writing of Salomon, “A friend is not known in the good times, nor is the enemy concealed during the bad.” And you will recognize, if you consider it, that I never was distant during your good times and never did I fail you in your bad times. This plainly, this following my judgement (and also according to the judgement of the wise), this I say, is the integral aspect of true friendship: if a friend does not communicate more with a friend during the goods times than the bad, and if he knows the evil of his friend no less than his own.

May a fraternal admonition, repeated and said so many times, move your heart at least at this late time let a happy migration move your body not to the enemies but from them to the citizens and parents.

But if my counsel, no longer new but now growing old, does not please you, I write or certainly I announce through ruminations that since few friends and many enemies surround you, just as I give the counsel of returning so I am able to give you, if it is necessary, also the means of coming. If you think anything like that God turns from you, show it, since, as I enjoin something in the end of the letter with the bite of truth, if also you contemn it, we are not able to love you more than you love yourself, and now unable to recall you, if you choose to suffer so obstinately.