was enthroned Archbishop of Tours, where he was to be worried by disputes with Louis le Gros of France over investitures. But he acquitted himself with vigour, especially through his letters. A famous one relates to this struggle of his closing years:
"In adversity it is a comfort to hope for happier times. Long has this hope flattered me; and as the harvest in the fields cheers the countryman, the expectation of a fair season has comforted my soul. But now I no longer hope for the clearing of the cloudy weather, nor see where the storm-driven ship, on whose deck I sit, may gain the harbour of rest.
"Friends are silent; silent are the priests of Jesus Christ. And those also are silent through whose prayers I thought the king would be reconciled with me. I thought indeed, but in their silence the king has added to the pain of my wounds. Yet it was theirs to resist the injury to the canonical institutes of the Church.
Theirs was it, if the matter had demanded it, to raise a wall before the house of Israel. Yet with the most serene king there is call for exhortation rather than threat, for advice rather than command, for instruction rather than the rod. By these he should have been drawn to agree, by these reverently taught not to sheath his arrows in an aged priest, nor make void the canonical laws, nor persecute the ashes of a church already buried, ashes in which I eat the bread of grief, in which I drink the cup of mourning, from which to be snatched away and escape is to pass from death to life.
"Yet amid these dire straits, anger has never triumphed over me, that I should raise a hue and cry against the anointed of the Lord, or wrest peace from him with the strong hand and by the arm of the Church. Suspect is the peace to which high potentates are brought not by love, but by force. Easily is it broken, and sometimes the final state is worse than the first. There is another way by which, Christ leading, I can better reach it. I will cast my thought upon the Lord, and He will give me the desire of my heart. The Lord remembered Joseph, forgotten by Pharaoh's chief butler when prosperity had returned to him; He remembered David abandoned by his own son. Perhaps He will remember even me, and bring the tossing ship to rest on the desired shore. He it is who looks upon the petition of the meek, and does not spurn their prayers. He it is in whose hand the hearts of kings are wax. If I shall have found grace in His eyes, I shall easily obtain the grace of the king or advantageously lose it. For to offend man for the sake of God is to win God's grace."[1]
- ↑ Ep. ii. 33 (Migne 171, col. 256). For the Latin text of this letter see post, Chapter XXXI.
