ABSTRACT
In 1957, Jean Leclercq edited a remarkable letter found at the municipal library of Nîmes in a manuscript volume which, apart from this text, included works of Augustine, the Templar rule and Bernard of Clairvaux’s De laude.1 The letter was already known, but it had been until then regarded as a sermon and deemed untrustworthy, because its heading attributed it to Hugh of St Victor and the very complete bibliographies of Hugh’s works did not mention it. The fact that no other copies had survived raised additional suspicions among scholars. Jean Leclercq offered a different point of view by considering it a letter, not a sermon, written by Hugh of Payns, the first Master of the Temple, and sent to his brethren who were apparently growing dissatisfied with the spiritual value of the Order. Leclercq’s proposal was soon questioned by Clément Sclafert, who argued in favour of Hugh of St Victor’s authorship, thought that the epistle was written after the De laude but not later than 1141, and offered another Latin edition and a French translation of the letter in an article of 1958.2 Jean Leclercq gave weight to these arguments when he republished his article in 1966. Although he kept the text unaltered, he reckoned in a postscript that ‘l’attribution à Hughes de Saint-Victor est la plus vraisemblable’.3
