To his father and lord William bishop of Mende, full of days, Berengar, [wishing that] ‘his youth be renewed like the eagle’s’.

1. In a foreign place my body is absolutely safe from robbers, but my spirit is in danger here with you in a holy place. Wherefore in the sight of the whole world I proffer you the staff of my defence, so that the teeth of the holy may not venture to bite one whom the ferocity of swords allows to enjoy the breath of life. Be then the Ulysses of my cause, so that Circe, though daughter of the sun, may not dare to change my body with muttered magic, so that envy may not be able to blacken the star of my conscience. 2. I should truly be less aggrieved if the jaws of a wolf were drinking my blood than if I were being chopped up in pieces by the teeth of sheep. Correct then your sheep, good shepherd, and stop them bleating at me, for I am not a wolf lying in wait but a dog protecting sheep. Finally, relying on your favour, I shall hoist the sails of my utterance, and amid the Scyllas of barking tongues voyage forth, with unshaken reason at the tiller.

3. This band of religious places many dire charges on my person, and honours the head of an innocent man with a holy diadem of crimes. They say that my tongue is ‘an unquiet evil’ and is too much in the damp, the tongue that vomited up a book against the abbot of Clairvaux. In fact they assert that this abbot is so holy that he has already come near to heaven and gone beyond what men may think of him. Those who say this, though their religious habit be white, stain their tongue with folly, even though they desire to be doves with no element of serpent. 4. Is not the abbot a man? Does not he, like us, ‘sail over this great sea, which stretcheth wide its arms’, amid ‘creeping things without number?’ His ship may be having a pretty fair voyage, but the calmness of the sea is in doubt. The south wind has not yet assured him that it will not shake his craft.