nd drink were concerned,
against their daily plottings, they sought to destroy me in the
very ceremony of the altar by putting poison in the chalice. One
day, when I had gone to Nantes to visit the count, who was then
sick, and while I was sojourning awhile in the house of one of my
brothers in the flesh, they arranged to poison me, with the
connivance of one of my attendants, believing that I would take no
precautions to escape such a plot. But divine providence so ordered
matters that I had no desire for the food which was set before me;
one of the monks whom I had brought with me ate thereof, not
knowing that which had been done, and straightway fell dead. As for
the attendant who had dared to undertake this crime, he fled in
terror alike of his own conscience and of the clear evidence of his
guilt.

After this, as their wickedness was manifest to every one, I began
openly in every way I could to avoid the danger with which their
plots threatened me, even to the extent of leaving the abbey and
dwelling with a few others apart in little cells. If the monks knew
beforehand that I was going anywhere on a journey, they bribed
bandits to waylay me on the road and kill me. And while I was
struggling in the midst of these dangers, it chanced one day that
the hand of the Lord smote me a heavy blow, for I fell from my
horse, breaking a bone in my neck, the injury causing me greater
pain and weakness than my former wound.

Using excommunication as my weapon to coerce the untamed
rebelliousness of the monks, I forced certain ones among them whom
I particularly feared to promise me publicly, pledging their faith
or swearing upon the sacrament, that they would thereafter depart
from the abbey and no longer trouble me in any way. Shamelessly and
openly did they violate the pledges they had given and their
sacramental oaths, but finally they were compelled to give this and
many other promises under oath, in the presence of the count and
the bishops, by the authority of the Pontiff of Rome, Innocent, who
sent his own legate for this special purpose. And yet even this did
not bring me peace. For when I returned to the abbey after the
expulsion of those whom I have just mentioned, and entrusted myself
to the remaining brethren, of whom I felt less suspicion, I found
them even worse than the others. I barely succeeded in escaping
them, with the aid of a certain nobleman of the district, for they
were planning, not to poison me inde