Letter to abbot Peter (Sicut precipere)

To the venerable lord and sweetest father, Peter, the abbot of the holy Church of Cluny, Peter of Poitiers, a sinner and infirm monk, offers the affection of filial love in Christ

As you saw fit to command, beloved father, I made public these trifling poems – now corrected at last – and copied them in their place at the beginning of your letter collection. I composed these verses in praise of you and of the Omnipotent Creator, from whom you hold every good thing, when youbrought me – still a youth– out from the mirey clay and from the pit of misery. [Ps. 39] I place them next to your poem, by which you most ably denigrate the brutish barbarism of our critics. Even though your verses diminish the tarnished brightness of our silver by their golden light, still they greatly please my soul, since they act like an drawn sword[1 Chron. 21: 16] against our enemies. But if anyone scandalized by this deems it unfitting that I might dare title something with my name and attach something to your writings, let him know that it is done not from my audacity, but at your command, which I regard a sin to contradict. Indeed I, not only in all things, but especially in this matter, do not hesitate to obey you, not from an excess of arrogance –may God always keep it far from me – but out of devotion to obedience, especially since I know from their writings that many men of proven religion and humility have zealously done the same in the past. I certainly aspire to imitate them in this little work of ours more than those writers in our own times who – I do not know whether by caution or by ignorance – hide their names, falling into the madness of apocryphal writers. Either to deceive or due to heresy (from which, as it is said, all their ideas arise), those fleeing from being proven wrong do not ever offer their own name. Therefore may none hasten to judge me before some time passes, and may he leave me instead to God and to my conscience, and if he should wish, let him copy Ovid without a title.

O most beloved father, your littlest son, to whom you gave birth in Christ the Lord by a second baptism, prays that omnipotent God watches over you and ceaselessly maintains your memory, for now and forever. Be strong always in the Lord.