| 1505/32. The Benedictine abbot of Farfa, Adenulph, had invited Bernard to send a group of monks to found a Cistercian abbey, but the pope had frustrated the plan by fetching them to himself and founding St Anastasius or Tre Fontane in Rome. To make amends the abbot of Farfa sent 600 marks so that if founding a monastery in his own country had not been considered fitting Bernard could use the money for the same purpose on his side of the Alps. The scene is of two Benedictine monks sitting at a desk handing over the money which had come from a safe hanging on the wall which may be seen with its door open. Through the doorway the money is taken by robbers, and in the background Bernard's scroll has the words from the 'Vita Prima': 'Benedictus Dei, qui nobis pepercit ab hoc onere, vehemens fuit illa tentatio. Nam et illis, qui abstulere, levius indulgendum. Sunt enim Romani, et pecunia videbatur immanis, ac...' (Blessed be God who has spared us this burden, for the men who have stolen it are thereby the more readily to be pardoned. They are Romans, and the amount seemed to them enormous and the temptation great).
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