BENEDICTUS

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The abbatial office was disturbed in various ways, both by the monks themselves and by the Bamberg Vicariate assisting those monks. It reached a point where the Abbot was not permitted to obey God and the Church, so that he might duly care for the eternal salvation of the souls committed to him and promote divine worship to the best of his ability by faithfully executing the Decrees of the Council of Trent issued on this matter. This is certainly a most deplorable affair, especially when one lives in a Catholic and simultaneously Episcopal principality. For this reason, the Abbot, having left special instructions for the interim administration of the Monastery and having duly arranged all other matters regarding the support of both the religious and secular family and the necessary expenses to be made, set out on his journey on May 28, 1740. He intended to ascend to the place which the Lord has chosen, namely, to the Apostolic See, the teacher of all the Faithful, to obtain the assistance of the Supreme Pontiff. Sustained by this, he would thereafter be able, without further delay, to administer and dispense what was entrusted to him according to the Law of God, the Church, and the Holy Order, faithfully, justly, and usefully. Furthermore, while the Abbot was staying in Innsbruck Oeniponti Innsbruck in the Tyrolean metropolis for two months to treat his severely damaged health (an action taken in addition to the previous appeal made to the Holy See, which was further confirmed by the very act of embarking on this journey), he once again made a most decent formal notification to the Most High Bishop of Bamberg. He provided this candid declaration: that he wished to treat the entire business of restoring discipline and confirming the restored Provostry Praepositura a subordinate monastic house without noisy litigation, and even without initiating an action to recover the exemption of his Monastery, in a peaceful manner. What more could be expected from an Abbot who was so peaceful and so submissive toward the Most High of Bamberg?

But behold, scarcely six weeks had passed after these letters were most certainly delivered by hand to the Most High, and indeed communicated to His primary Ministers, and scarcely had the Most Holy BENEDICT XIV been elected around the beginning of September 1740, when, contrary to all Laws and in total subversion of the order of Law and Justice, Abbot ANSELM was despoiled of his entire Abbatial administration by the authority of the Most High of Bamberg while he was on his very journey to the Holy See at Verona in Italy. This same harsh lightning bolt also struck the newly restored Provostry of Saint Faith. Among other executors of this excessive spoliation, two Benedictine Abbots were employed, one from Lower Austria and the other from Franconia. These acts of violence, to be dreaded for all time, were committed without any prior warning or citation served upon the Abbot, who was legally absent. This most violent execution took place without any sentence having been previously promulgated against the Abbot. Therefore, in whatever capacity the Most High of Bamberg proceeded, whether as the ordinary Visitor of the Monastery or as the Judge of first instance in a controversial cause, he acted in every respect against divine and human Laws. All acts performed in this manner are partly invalid, partly illicit, entirely violent, and truly spoliative, just as it is read that a sentence was once expressly passed against the Archbishop of Canterbury in a similar case in Chapter 7, "On the Restitution of Spoliation." Moreover, the aforementioned spoliation was specifically qualified by itself due to the contempt shown toward the Holy See (to which the Abbot had already appealed) and was further aggravated by other disruptive acts, which followed later and were foreign to all Law. Among these, one may deservedly include both the ordination of the junior brothers into the priesthood, contrary to the arrangement the Abbot had already made for relevant reasons, and the admission of novices not only to their year of probation but even to their solemn Profession, which was done by the Most High of Bamberg himself (without the Abbot's knowledge, without his consent, and indeed notwithstanding the contradiction interposed by the Abbot regarding this matter). See Letters W and Z, while other matters regarding temporalities and civil affairs are omitted here in Letter W, etc. O, the "excellent" effects, as they say, irregularly sought from the subjection of the Monastery and its violent seizure! To say nothing of the corruption of the monks, who resisted the Father Prior to his face with rash audacity when he wished to interpose a protest according to the Abbot’s instructions. O, the "excellent" sons of their own (that is, of their own Monastery), the "domestic enemies," as they say! O, the excellent way of reforming collapsed discipline and correcting an Abbot who had earned the highest merit from the Abbey and the entire fatherland, that is, the Bishopric of Bamberg! The Most High himself, shortly before in 1739, had declared him full of merit in writing and had approved his prudent and pious intention in the novices accepted to Saint Faith. See Letter S. If the two aforementioned Abbots (Letters S, D, D) had only wished to hear their Confrere of the Order, the Abbot of Saint Michael, from a distance beforehand, as the law of nature and divine law dictates, they would never have dared to commit such excessive spoliation, both against a completely innocent Abbot and against a newly restored Provostry, which was still a tender plant of the holy Order regarding its people, money, and precious objects, especially in those circumstances of fact and time when the Abbot was an actual traveler to the Holy See with an excellent title from Chapter "Causae omnes," 20, in the Council of Trent, Session 24, on Reform, and from the Bull of Pius IV on the Confirmation of the Council of Trent, which begins: