SOURCE: Stiegman, Emero. “Humanism in St. Bernard of Clairvaux: Beyond Literary Culture.” In The Chimaera of His Age: Studies of Bernard of Clairvaux; Studies in Medieval Cistercian History V, edited by E. Rozanne Elder and John R. Sommerfeldt, pp. 23-38. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1980.

[In the following essay, Stiegman argues that theological humanism underlies Bernard's writings, noting that he held a deep sense of human worth and profoundly humanistic ideas about the genesis of human love.]

Humanism, like all terms which historians invent to label a complex but broadly identifiable set of attitudes, is subject to ambiguity; the attitudes are affected by changing historical conditions. Since the common ground among humanisms develops in inverse proportion to the number which history records, one may come to question the usefulness of the label. Yet in religious thought humanism is a serviceable and perhaps necessary category. To Christian theologians, for example, an author would be humanistic to the extent that he validated the human. There are two foci of meaning—one, where the human is considered with respect to the divine (here humanism refers to a position on issues concerning the relation of nature and grace); the other, where the content and structure of the human itself is considered (here humanism refers to a position in anthropology, one which dignifies the body in a more unitary concept of body and soul, as against one which may be called spiritualistic, where all dignity is reserved for the soul in a more loosely conceived relationship of body and soul). The two foci sometimes move extremely close together.

Much contemporary Christian theology is humanistic by these meanings. It attempts to remedy, for example, what it thinks of as too extrinsicist a view of divine grace. And something of this humanism inspired an earlier generation of French commentators when they singled out Bernard of Clairvaux for the emotional warmth of his devotion to the humanity of Christ.

Something only. All told, they did not understand the full range of the theological context into which Bernard set this devotion, as the censures of J. Ch. Didier make clear.¹ The humanism attributed to Bernard was of merely superficial significance. With qualifications, something similar may be said of Edgar de Bruyne's concept of a Cistercian humanism:² It provides us with a considerably more appreciative understanding of Bernard's ‘warmth’, but does not take us beyond acknowledging the advantages of traditional monastic literary culture over a narrow intellectualism. What de Bruyne sees is there; Leclercq traces its continuity in the Benedictine tradition.³ What could be further explored is whether a truly theological humanism in St Bernard underlies this cultural surface. The question is not idle. It is prompted by the grave difficulties regarding the spirituality of St Bernard to which some notable present-day readers have confessed. A more extensive awareness of Bernard's text, occasioned by several excellent academic celebrations of the eighth centenary of his death (1153), has produced at times a one-hundred-eighty degree turn-about in criticism of the abbot, from devotionalism to spiritualism. One may be disturbed to hear Bernard exalt the soul so lyrically while at the same time concluding that the kindest comment on the body is to say nothing—de corpore taceam (11.5); or to hear him argue that that by which man is like God, and that in which God takes delight, is man's soul as distinguished from his body because, like the soul, ‘God is spirit’ (cf. Jn 4:24);⁴ or that in contemplation, divine wisdom is possessed, not in ideas or images, but in a wholly spiritual likeness, through spirituales similitudines (41.3). A comprehensive study of Bernard's uses of homo and humanus would demonstrate that these are virtually derogatory terms in his text.⁵ He does not exult in the human—only in the spiritual. Even a sympathetic reader like Déchanet finds in this a ‘dualism of flesh against spirit.’⁶ Congar speaks of an ‘extremely spiritual conception of the Christian life,’⁷ and Chenu, with less sympathy, of a ‘disincarnate spiritualism.’⁸ The spiritualist leaning may be seen as structuring his thought to such an extent that the warmth of his literary personality loses all theological significance.

I would like to suggest, to the contrary, that the reason Bernard gratified his love for literature and then expressed human ideas and emotions with serious artistry is that he possessed the central attitude of the theological humanist—that is, a profound sense of human worth. Christopher Brooke calls the student's attention, however vaguely, to a bernardine humanism beyond the literary. It con stitutes, he confesses, ‘the strangest paradox of all in St Bernard: Austere as he was, he allowed free play to certain human emotions … even, in the process, doing something to humanize the austerity of medieval theology.’⁹ Again: ‘Bernard, if he had understood the term, would have repudiated the label humanist. Yet … he seems to have more in common with Abelard and Heloise than with many of his contemporaries.’¹⁰ Let us approach this ‘strangest paradox’ by pointing out two areas of Bernard's thought where so strong a consciousness of a fully human self is valued and cultivated that an effective counterpoise is set up in relation to elements which, alone, might create an ‘extremely spiritual conception of the Christian life.’¹¹ We shall consider first the process of Christian growth; and, second, the genesis of human love—concentrating upon the Sermones super Cantica Canticorum.

THE PROCESS OF CHRISTIAN GROWTH

Bernard's dynamic concept of the image of God in the soul is an exalted view of the human self. He is repeatedly awed by this relationship between the Word and the soul—‘So close a kinship of nature!’ (‘Naturarum tanta cognatio’).¹² The Word is the truth, wisdom, and justice of God, and the soul is ‘capable and desirous of these’ (earundem capax, appetensque).¹³ The soul's magnitudo consists in this capacity for God; it can never be lost. But its rectitudo, the appetere iustitiam, is lost in sin. Most significant in man's possibility for self-respect is this notion that there is in the very construction of the soul a natural drive to God and a capacity for him. It is natural, in Bernard's view, because it is what God has made in the historical order.¹⁴ By the activity of this ‘appetite’ for God, the similitudo Dei—the simplicity, immortality, and freedom which were partly lost in sin—is increased or restored¹⁵ (see Sermons 80 through 82). The perfect soul is similis ei.

If we condense familiar stages of the process into a brief exposition, we shall be able to delineate St Bernard's conception of its normality.

The movement toward God in the soul begins in self-knowledge, in Christian Socratism.¹⁶ The author writes: ‘I want the soul to know itself first of all, because this is demanded both by reason of usefulness and by reason of order’ (Volo proinde animam primo omnium scire seipsam, quod id postulat ratio et utilitatis, et ordinis).¹⁷ The subject is studied under the text ‘Si ignoras te, egredere’ (Sg 1:8) from sermons 34 through 38.¹⁸ Self-knowledge produces first an insight into the un-godly misery arising from false pride; this begets humility as the starting point of a love leading back to God.¹⁹ If one stops at Bernard's description of the first data of self-knowledge,²⁰ one will not see the saint as optimistic; but this is a beginning. In the sermons the endless insistence upon realism in reflections upon asceticism is striking.²¹ In the knowledge needed by the soul in search of God, there is little interest in an intellectual grasp of the nature of things in the abstract; usable knowledge, in this context, is not ‘the truth,’ but each man's truth. In the return to God Christ is the way, and advancement is measured by obedience. All asceticism is geared to a conformity of the will to God's will—‘transformamur cum conformamur.’²²

But characteristic of St Bernard is that at this point he does not insist upon the perseverance of the faithful drudge. It is not now simply a matter of effort: ‘Neither diligence nor nature conquers malice; wisdom does’ (Sapientia vincit malitiam, non industria vel natura).²³ And sapientia is the sweet taste of divine things, the experience beyond faith. Obviously, the meaning given to faith in such contrasts arises, not out of ontological reflection (where faith is true knowledge of God or personal engagement with him), but out of psychological experience (where it is suffered as inextricably bound up with human ignorance)—as one finds in St Paul's comparison of faith and hope to charity (1 Cor. 13:12-13). Bernard thinks of mere faith as a transition, and one that will not be effective with ‘human’ beings very long. Life in Christ must move beyond faith: ‘Faith has been constructed; now let life be brought forth’ (Aedificata est fides, instruatur vita).²⁴ Also the understanding necessary to move on from lowliness is an experiential sapientia. The companions of the bride, imperfect souls—‘quoniam minus sapiunt, minus et capiunt’—to the extent their spiritual experience is thin, their perceptions dim.²⁵ Bernard, who demands that men see things as they are, and is thus unflattering, carries his realism to the point of seeing men as the affective beings they are, and in this is most compassionate, for he discovers the realism of God's manner with men.

For example, he will say that to kiss the divine Bridegroom the soul must ascend to the lips, kissing the feet and the hands first. But the fear²⁶ and penance instilled at conversion, represented by the kiss of the feet,²⁷ are tempered by the abbot's advice that they not be continuous, least the heart be overtaken by sadness and be hardened again.²⁸ Then, fraternal charity is not encouraged merely from a faith which is ‘sicca sed fortis,’²⁹ but from a consideration beginning in that natural human sympathy which Bernard is confident will arise in self-knowledge—‘Ex consideratione suiipsius.’³⁰

Asceticism as progress in the virtues is represented by the kiss to the divine hands. The vices may be subjugated but not exterminated.³¹ The renunciation of self-will is not a stage, but must continue through life, when fear has been replaced by love.³² The union the soul seeks is a ‘communio voluntatum.’³³ The vision toward which the soul moves is charity: ‘Caritas illa visio.’³⁴ The soul meanwhile must be roused to effort, because the turning of the will to God is the work of grace within the soul, but it is also the work of the soul. The fruit of union comes only after the flower of virtue.³⁵ Effort, or psychic energy, is a great gift of nature, says the abbot, and it must be employed: ‘Ut quid enim dormitet industria? Grande profecto in nobis donum naturae ipsa est.’³⁶ Even the ultimate kiss to the lips will be a conformitas: ‘Conformity marries the soul to the Word’ (talis conformitas maritat animam Verbo)³⁷ The ascetical progress and the final union are put in proper relationship with Bernard's oft-repeated, ‘Similes ei erimus, quoniam videbimus eum sicuti est.’³⁸ Sermon 83 is a résumé of the entire process.

This overview of Bernard's concept of Christian growth makes possible certain considerations about the character of his asceticism. First, the structuring of the idea of the image of God in the soul, according to which the soul has a capacity for and a drive towards God, supplies a theology for the element of self-reliance implicit in traditional monastic ascetical doctrine in the West. Before, there may have been too pragmatic an acceptance of the necessity of avoiding a pax perniciosa, a necessity which had taken refuge in theories attacked as semi-pelagian.³⁹ In St Bernard, the soul which does not strive frustrates a movement from within which is indeed a movement of grace, but conceived as planted by God in the very nature of the soul. A remarkably humanistic theological postulate! Second, the possibilities that Bernard sees in self-knowledge indicate a strong sense of personhood. Even God is known in the self, for there, more than in any of his other works, his beauty is discovered and his call is heard. Third, the notion that man grows toward God, according to a process which may be determined because it is the development of a dynamism that is within him, is a notion of human grandeur. There are normal stages; the fruit comes after the flower. This is an assumption in Bernardine asceticism. The soul's industry is not the effective force in growth; grace is. But grace will work through the soul's industry. This is predictable on the grounds that the soul's effort in itself manifests God's effective desire, preceding the soul's desire, to be united to it. This emphasis on the normal is an emphasis upon a ‘self’ concept—a self who is addressed and who answers to the Word of God in the dialogical drama of redemption as seen imaged forth in the dialogue of the Song of Songs.⁴⁰

THE GENESIS OF HUMAN LOVE

One simple fact will account for the absence of any great preoccupation with an austerity problem in the thought of most commentators on St Bernard. These writers have seen the abbot's asceticism strictly in relation to his doctrine on love. We have several excellent analyses of the Sermons, all of them centering upon Bernard's exposition of the ways of divine love—the most well-worked theme in Bernardine scholarship.⁴¹ Though it does not suit our purpose to allow the approach to dominate this enquiry, much of the problem in the saint's ascetical language may, by appeal to doctrinal consistency, be bypassed in virtue of the clarity, force, and comprehensiveness of his teaching on love. Love stimulates the soul's ascetical reflection and its effort, which is then undertaken in order to grow in this divine love. This understanding is indispensable. But rather than attempting once again to document the fact that love is the source, means, and the end of asceticism in the Sermons,⁴² let us look at yet another aspect of love. We can observe an important evidence of Bernard's strong and positive sense of the human self in his concept of the genesis of human love (amor carnalis) and of its function in the soul's divine aspirations.

Bernard conceives love as having four degrees of perfection; the center shifting from self to God.⁴³ the imperfect beginning of love is systematically described in De diligendo Deo and in De gratia et libero arbitrio. ‘Amor est affectio naturalis,’ says Bernard, ‘una de quatuor.’⁴⁴ The naturalis is further explained: ‘We possess naturally, from within ourselves, simple affective motions; they become enriched by grace. … Grace puts in order what creation provided’ (Simplices namque affectiones insunt naturaliter nobis, tamquam ex nobis, addimenta ex gratia. … Gratia ordinat, quas donavit creatio).⁴⁵ This love is of man as caro, considered apart from the salvific action of grace; it is, then, amor carnalis. With this we justify the expression ‘human love’ as a clarification of Bernard's amor carnalis. Bernard describes how far this love reaches: ‘It is amor carnalis by which man loves himself before all things and for his own sake’ (Est amor carnalis, quo ante amnia homo diligit seipsum propter seipsum).⁴⁶ This is the beginning of love, according to a Bernardine law: ‘Prius quod animale [that is, ex anima], deinde quod spirituale.’⁴⁷ Here also is the logical antecedent of fraternal charity, and in this sense its beginning: ‘Sic amor carnalis efficitur et socialis, cum in commune protrahitur.’⁴⁸ As this human love receives its ordinatio in grace, even as it progresses toward the highest perfection of divine love, the self is not to be annihilated or eliminated. The highest degree of love is that man should love himself only for God: ‘Nec seipsum diligat homo nisi propter Deum.’⁴⁹

Without an awareness of this highly developed Bernardine sense of the fundamental role of natural affectivity, one cannot put into proper perspective the ‘spiritualism’ according to which the soul, participating in a ‘kinship of natures’ with God as spirit, is constituted with a natural appetite for him.⁵⁰

The love we have been describing does not bypass human resources; it is clearly an eros—not an immediate leap to agape.⁵¹ The love treated of in the Sermons is what the author reads in the Song: ‘Holy love, which one observes to be the single subject of this entire book’ (Amor sanctus, quem totius huius voluminis unam constat esse materiam).⁵² But in Bernard's advancing degrees of love, one does not destroy and replace the other; grace works through the affectiones. The author feels compelled to make this explicit when he explains that there are three kinds of love: ‘This human love,’ he says, ‘is good. … It advances when it becomes rational as well; it is perfected when it also becomes spiritual.’⁵³ We read extremely little in Bernard about this ‘rational’ love, which the larger context reveals to be proper of a faith not yet perfected in wisdom. The unfeeling condition of mere faith, he is persuaded, can be only a transition from the affectivity of nature to the experience of the spiritual senses—that is, of sapientia.⁵⁴ This stress on the role of human love (affirming, as it does, what is of man) cannot be excluded from consideration when one reacts to impressions of anti-humanist thought in some Bernardine formulations. The emphasis is clearly perceived, though rejected, in the Lutheran thought of Anders Nygren. ‘The foundation of this view of love,’ Nygren says, ‘is something as earthly and human, far too human, as natural self-love.’⁵⁵ One who claims that Bernard slights the human must ask whether Nygren's interpretation, though to the Roman Catholic mind it expresses an excess, does not force a re-examination of Bernard's spiritualism.

The two outstanding examples in the Sermons of this eros which becomes possessed by divine agape are Bernard's description of amor carnalis socialis as a channel of grace, and his discussion of amor carnalis Christi. Notice in the first instance how the author, with perceptible feeling, dwells upon and develops the origin in nature of that which, ‘spirante quidem gratia desuper’ (under the breath of grace from above), becomes the Christian virtue mansuetudo (humble gentleness):

In intimate human feelings fraternal love finds its primordial origin; and from that natural sweetness which is part of every man's disposition toward himself, as from moisture in the soil, it invariably receives the vigor by which it grows. In this vigor, while grace breathes upon it from above, it brings forth fruits of gentleness, so that what one naturally desires for oneself, by a certain law of humanity, one would not consider denying to another man, a sharer of his nature; but when he was able and had the opportunity, spontaneously and freely would he share. There is then in nature, before sin dries it up, a free-flowing and excellent balsam of near-sweetness, softening man to feel himself one with other sinners rather than hardening him to feel that he is unlike them.⁵⁶

This balsam is quasi suavitatis (of near-sweetness), for the author reserves suavitas for the experience of the Word in the soul.

Amor carnalis Christi, however, suffers no such qualification. Love for the Verbum caro gives rise to a true suavitas; it is already a grace: ‘Although this kind of devotion to the humanity of Christ [erga carnem Christi] is a gift and a great gift of the Spirit,’ says the author, ‘I nevertheless call this love human [carnalem]—with respect to that love by which is experienced not only the Word as flesh but the Word as wisdom.’⁵⁷ The very fact of the humanity of the Word⁵⁸ is spoken of as ‘gratia praesentis suae carnis.’⁵⁹ Nevertheless, there is something of nature in love for Christ. The author explains that the invisible God, knowing that men could not love nisi carnaliter, became a visible man among them in order to draw their love toward his humanity, ‘atque ita gradatim ad amorem perduceret spiritualem.’⁶⁰ As we have mentioned, Bernard's genial conception of the divine pedagogy of the Incarnation has not always been understood.⁶¹ It is precisely in the context of his most lyrical attempts to portray the humanity of Christ that the abbot insists upon the necessary progression from amor carnalis to amor rationalis and spiritualis. He does not hesitate to apply to Christ ‘Caro non prodest quidquam.’⁶² Even in the satisfaction he takes in the imaginative projection of Christ's humanity, he does not relent in his drive toward a wholly spiritual contemplation. In attempting to understand so complex a literary personality, one must place beside this spiritual emphasis another clear fact of the text: In the cultivation of joy in the thought of the human Christ, the first classic is that Bernard who exclaims, ‘How beautiful must I acknowledge you to be, Lord Jesus, as you assume my shape!’ (Quam formosum et in mea forma te agnosco, Domine Iesu!).⁶³ And Bernard's concept of this satisfaction is that it is the spontaneous emotion of the natural man, amor carnalis, through which grace has chosen to operate.

It seems significant that, in the central matter of love for God and neighbor, Bernard gives importance, not only to that grandeur of a spiritual self which is the soul's capacity and desire for God, but to a special goodness of the psycho-physical self (caro)—that is, an affective energy which may be possessed by divine love. In the concept amor carnalis, he goes far beyond a grudging acknowledgment that man as caro is not evil because God created him. His theology of the genesis of human love is simply and profoundly humanistic.

CONCLUSION

I have offered what I believe to be the strictest criteria of a theological humanism. And I would contend, after this rapid exposition of two themes from the Sermones super Cantica Canticorum, that in these conceptions St Bernard is a humanist. In his view of the process of Christian growth, he validates the full range of human faculties as intrinsically instrumental to divine grace. In his view of human love, those affective motions which we today conceive of as operations of the psyche at the depth of its embodiedness—human feelings—initiate what becomes the love of God. This is the maximum validation of man's psycho-physical nature possible within Christian speculation.

Yet, when all is said, I shall not deny that St Bernard is in large part spiritualistic. Obviously, the way we conceptualize Christian experience is culturally conditioned. Every saint is fated to work within the philosophical assumptions of his age. But perhaps the more intimately an author's text grows out of authentic experience the more surely will it record elements of consciousness which are poorly integrated by the reigning philosophy. However offensive such a premise is to true believers in the Platonism of the Fathers, which suffuses Bernard's text, the premise allows or invites one to look for a larger Bernard than the one portrayed (falsely, I believe) by devotionalism on one side and (less falsely) by spiritualism on the other. It invites us to give weight to the two humanistic elements I have described here, and to recognize that, however inconsistently, crucial areas of Bernard's thought escape what might have been considered the hegemony of a spiritualistic system. We have seen that for Bernard certain primordial human feelings bespeak the operation of grace; in them God himself is at work loving those humans toward whom they instinctively move. This is rather unlike anything associated with the platonic soma. How splendidly inconsistent!

Inconsistency is, of course, an intellectual flaw. But in the great it is frequently the price paid for giving witness to all the data of experience. If St Bernard is, through a set of philosophical assumptions, a platonic spiritualist, he is, through the experiential depth of the saint and the unruly objectivity of the artist, a Christian humanist. As interpreters of each succeeding age ask themselves whether they have fitted his vision to their systems, their more difficult question may be whether they see all that he saw.

Notes

1. See J.-Ch. Didier, ‘La dévotion à l'humanité du Christ dans la spiritualité de saint Bernard,’ La Vie Spirituelle, Supplément (August-September, 1930) pp. [1] - [19]. This study of St Bernard's devotion to the humanity of Christ suffers from an unawareness that the saint proposes meditation on Christ's humanity only as the natural starting point in the spiritualization of love. What we say of love, below, should make that clear. Didier chooses his central text well, sermon 20 of the Sermones super Cantica Canticorum (SC), where Bernard speaks most concretely and affectively of the human Christ.

   We too, in this paper, choose to work predominantly with the SC. References to the work will be indicated in parentheses according to sermon and numbered paragraph—e.g. (20.7)—using the edition of Jean Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, and H. M. Rochais, Vols, I and II of Santi Bernardi Opera, eds. J. Leclercq and H. M. Rochais (Rome 1957-58).

2. See Edgar de Bruyne, Etudes d'esthétique médiévale, 3 vols. (Bruges: Rijksuniversiteit te Gent, 1946), III: 38-57.

3. See Jean Leclercq, ‘L'humanisme bénédictin du VIII^e au XII^e siècle,’ in Analecta monastica 1 (Rome, 1948) 1-20; R. W. Southern has incorporated these views into his work, The Making of the Middle Ages (London, 1953) pp. 203-207; as has R. R. Bolgar in The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries (Cambridge, England, 1954) pp. 117-18. Jean Leclercq expanded his treatment of the literary humanism of the monks in The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham, 1961) passim.

4. SC 4.4: ‘Verum quia spiritus est Deus, et nullis simplex illa substantia membris distincta corporis. …’ This understanding of Bernard rests upon an examination of several texts in my unpublished dissertation, The Language of Asceticism in St Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermones super Cantica Canticorum (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1973) pp. 131-35.

5. In The Language of Asceticism (n. 4, above) pp. 108-19, the uses of homo and humanus are studied.

6. See J.-M. Déchanet, ‘The Christology of Saint Bernard,’ in Saint Bernard Théologian, Cistercian Studies, I (May, 1961) 37 [an informal translation of ‘La christologie de S. Bernard,’ Analecta Cisterciensia 9 (1953) 78-91].

7. Yves Congar, ‘The Ecclesiology of Saint Bernard,’ in Saint Bernard Théologian, Cistercian Studies, I (May, 1961), 89 [‘L'ecclésiologie de S. Bernard,’ Analecta 9 (1953) 136-190].

8. ‘Le spiritualisme désincarné.’ See M.-D. Chenu, L'Evangile dans le temps, Vol. 2 of La Parole de Dieu, 2 vols. (Paris, 1964) p. 562. See also ‘The Platonisms of the Twelfth Century,’ in Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century, translated by Jerome Taylor (Chicago, 1968) p. 62.

9. See Christopher Brooke, Europe in the Central Middle Ages, 962-1154 (London, 1975) p. 314. Problems in the meaning of humanism have been discussed by David Knowles, ‘The Humanism of the Twelfth Century’ (1941), and ‘St Bernard of Clairvaux: 1090-1153’ (1953), both in The Historian and Character, and Other Essays (Cambridge, 1963) pp. 16-30, 31-49; and by R. W. Southern, Medieval Humanism, and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970) pp. 29-132.

10. Brooke, p. 319.

11. Congar, p. 81.

12. SC 50.2. See P. Delfgauuw, ‘La Lumière de la charité chez saint Bernard,’ Collectanea 18 (1956) 42-69, 306-20. The author notes, regarding Bernard's astonishment at the grandeur of the soul, that praesumere is one of the saint's favorite words, occurring over one hundred times in his work.

13. SC 80.2. See 27.10.

14. See also SC 44.4, 82.5.

15. Sermons 80 through 82.

16. For a bibliography on Christian Socratism in Bernard, see Friedrich Ohly, Hohelied-Studien (Wiesbaden, 1958) p. 152, n. 2.

17. SC 36.5.

18. See Dil. II, 4, in SBOp 3:122.

19. J.-M. Déchanet, ‘Les Fondements et les bases de la spiritualité Bernardine,’ Citeaux in de Nederlanden 4 (1953) 292-313. The author contrasts Bernard's more practical approach to self-knowledge with William of St Thierry's vision of a discovery of greatness.

20. SC 36.5.

21. H. von Balthasar, Herrlichkeit (Einsiedelm, 1961) I: 275, believes Bernard saw in the oft-repeated statement ‘Est enim sapiens cui quaecumque sapiunt prout sunt’ (Div 19.1) the foundation of Christian spirituality.

22. SC 62.5. See Corneille Halflants, ‘Le Cantique des cantiques de saint Bernard,’ in Collectanea 15 (1953) p. 258.

23. SC 82.7. See Wis 7:30.

24. SC 17.8.

25. SC 19.7; see 8.6.

26. SC 6.8.

27. SC 3.2-3.

28. SC 11.2.

29. SC 50.4.

30. SC 44.4.

31. SC 37.1, 58.10.

32. SC 58.11. See Kurt Knotzinger, ‘Hoheslied und bräutliche Christusliebe bei Bernhard von Clairvaux,’ in Jahrbuch für mystische Theologie 7 (1961) 30.

33. SC 71.10.

34. SC 82.8.

35. SC 46.5.

36. SC 83.2.

37. SC 83.3.

38. SC 82.7; 1 fn 3:2.

39. Owen Chadwick, John Cassian (Cambridge, 1950) p. 186, says, regarding Augustine's attack against certain formulations of Cassian: ‘The first western ascetical theologian [Cassian] rejected Pelagianism …. But neither he nor many of his medieval successors clearly remarked the reef which could wreck the study of Christian asceticism, the translation into life itself of the theoretical abstraction from grace. The emphasis is mine. See also Louis Bouyer et. al., Histoire de la spiritualité chrétienne, 4 vols. (Paris, 1960-66), where in I: 594-95, Bouyer also remarks upon a lack of theological structure in Cassian's practically oriented asceticism.

40. ‘Ct. [Canticle] is dramatic in the sense that it is conceived as dialogue.’ Roland E. Murphy, ‘Canticle of Canticles,’ in Raymond E. Brown, SS, Joseph A. Fitzmyer SJ, and Roland E. Murphy O. Carm., ed., The Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1968) I, art. 30:3. The ‘drama’ of personal redemption, in which there is a type of conflict between a loving God and obstinate man, does not seem to be typified in the Song by any conflict or dramatic structuring beyond dialogue form.

41. J. Ries, Das geistliche Leben in seinen Entwicklungstufen nach der Lehre des hl. Bernhard; J. Schuck, Das Hohelied des hl. Bernhard von Clairvaux; E. Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard; J. Leclercq, St. Bernard mystique; Corneille Halflants, ‘Le Cantique des cantiques de saint Bernard’; P. Delfgaauw, ‘La Lumière de la charité chez saint Bernard’; Kurt Knotzinger, ‘Hoheslied und bräutliche Christusliebe bei Bernhard von Clairvaux.’ Ohly, p. 149, n. 1, presents a bibliography on Bernard's concept of love and on the history of the concept of caritas ordinata.

42. Etienne Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, translated by A. H. C. Downes (New York, 1940) p. 22.

43. Dil VIII-X; SBOp 3:138-44.

44. Dil, VIII, 23.

45. Gra VI, 17; SBOp 3:178. A good example of the pre-technical character of Bernard's use of theological terminology may be noticed in his use of naturalis. Here naturalis pertains to what man receives in creation as distinguished from the elevation of redemptive grace. The image of God in the soul, however, is a ‘natural’ capacity for, and striving for, God (SC 80.2)—a concept of nature which is not distinguished from the elevation of grace. It seems an over-simplification, then, to say that natural-supernatural is a distinction foreign to Bernard, as is said by A. Van den Bosch, ‘Présupposée à la christologie bernardine,’ Citeaux in de Nederlanden 9 (1958) 5-17, 85-105, at p. 5.

46. Dil VIII, 23.

47. Cf. 1 Cor 15:46, Dil VIII, 23.

48. Dil VIII, 23.

49. Dil X, 27.

50. SC 80.2.

51. Christine Mohrmann, ‘Observations sur la langue et le style de saint Bernard,’ SBOp II:xx, notes that love in the Sermons is Origen's eros rather than the traditional diligere, though deligere remains the normal expression.

52. SC 79.1.

53. SC 20.9: ‘Bonus tamen amor iste carnalis … Proficitur autem in eo, cum sit et rationalis [cf. fidei ratio]; perficitur cum efficitur etiam spiritualis.’

54. Corneille Halflants, ‘Le Cantique des cantiques de saint Bernard,’ Collectanea 15(1953) 274: ‘Il ne croit pas qu'il soit possible de comprimer impunément cette force incoercible qu'est l'amour passion.’ Henri de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale, 4 vols. (Paris, 1959-64) II: 408, notices in other medieval writers an intermediate sense which is merely ‘a sort of parenthesis.’

55. Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans., Philip S. Wetson (Philadelphia, 1953) p. 650. Nygren here generalizes upon the notions of St Bernard (pp. 645-48) and Aquinas (pp. 642-45) on unselfish love for God. He proposes instead a Lutheran concept of complete discontinuity between the action of grace (Agape) and human love (eros). Nygren does indeed understand the persistence of human love in Bernard's conception of the love of God. He fails however to see Bernard's idea of how the affectiones relate to the action of grace. In generalizing upon the era, he claims its mysticism ‘attacks not only selfishness, but selfhood’ (p. 650). This conception of the union of the self and God is foreign to Bernard, who repeats that union with God is not a fusion of natures, but a conformity of wills (for example, SC 83.3). Bernard's mystical aspiration is not the loss of self, but a holding of all in common as with spouses, particularly the common will (for example, SC 7.2).

56. SC 44.4: ‘Ex intimis sane humanis affectibus primordia ducit sui ortus fraterna dilectio et de insita homini ad seipsum naturali quadam dulcedine tamquam de humore terreno, sumit procul dubio vegetationem et vim per quam, spirante quidem gratia desuper, fructus parturit pietatis, ut quod sibi anima naturaliter appetit, naturae consorti, id est alteri homini, iure quodam humanitatis, ubi poterit et oportuerit, non aestimet denegandum, sed sponte ac libens impertiat. Inest ergo naturae, si peccato non obsolescat, istiusmodi gratae et egregiae quasi suavitatis liquor, ut molliorem magis ad compatiendum peccantibus quam ad indignamdam asperiorem se sentiat.’

57. SC 20.8: ‘Licet vero donum et magnum donum Spiritus sit istiusmodi erga carnem Christi devotio, carnalem tamen dixerim hunc amorem, illius utique amoris respectu, quo non tam Verbum caro iam sapit quam Verbum sapientia.’

58. SC 25.8, 28.11, 47.6.

59. SC 20.6.

60. SC 20.6, 6.3.

61. J.-Ch. Didier, ‘La dévotion à l'humanité du Christ dans la spiritualité de saint Bernard,’ (n. 1 above), offers several criticisms like the following: ‘Il n'a pas autant insisté—ni, peut-être, autant saisi par elle—sur la grande réalité toujours actuelle qu'est pour le chrétien le Christ glorieux, chef du corps mystique, et sur le mystère de la vie de Jesu’ (p. 6). In SC 20, Didier's reference, the touching vignettes on the life of Christ are part of a structure leading to 20.7-9, which develops the notion, ‘Spiritus ante faciem nostram Christus Dominus’—the actual reality of Christ. Again, ‘Mais jamais notre saint n'insiste alors sur cette unité de vie qui fait du chrétien un même être mystique avec le Christ’ (p. 6). The precise opposite is true, and states the central subject of every sermon in the Sermons. Didier is able to bring to his support E. Mâle, L'Art religieux de la fin du moyen âge en france (Paris, 1922) p. 28; and P. Pourrat, La Spiritualité chrétienne (Paris, 1921) p. 38; II, 31. Gilson's vigorous objections (1932) to Pourrat's view of bernardine theology opened an era of study on Bernard. The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard gives an exposition of the system which Pourrat imagined lacking (see pp. vii-viii on Pourrat). Mâle's work is celebrated as a study of religious art; it has not been proposed as an analysis of mystical theology.

    In explanation of Bernard's ‘devotion’ to the humanity of Christ are A. Van den Bosch, in many articles—for example, ‘Le Christ, Dieu devenu imitable d'après S. Bernard,’ Collectanea 22 (1960) 341-55; Halflants, pp. 272-76; Knotzinger, p. 36; and J. Leclercq, S. Bernard et l'esprit cistercien (Paris, 1966) pp. 94, 96. [Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercian Spirit, CS 16].

62. SC 20.7, cf. Jn 6:64.

63. SC 20.9.

General Abbreviations

CF: Cistercian Fathers Series. Cistercian Publications: Spencer, MA-Kalamazoo, MI. 1969-.

CS: Cistercian Studies Series. Cistercian Publications. 1969-.

MS(S): Manuscript(s)

PG J.-P.: Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca, 162 volumes. Paris, 1957-66.

PL J.-P.: Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina, 221 volumes. Paris, 1844-64.

RB: The Rule of St Benedict for Monasteries

SBOp: Sancti Bernardi Opera, edd. J. Leclercq, H. M. Rochais and C. H. Talbot. Rome, 1957-79.

Abbreviations

The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux

The works of Saint Bernard are abbreviated according to the sigla adopted by Jean Leclercq and H. M. Rochais in Sancti Bernardi Opera (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957-1979).

Abb: Sermo ad abbates

Abael: Epistola in erroribus Abaelardi

Adv: Sermo in adventu domini

And: Sermo in natali sancti Andreae

Ann: Sermo in annuntiatione dominica

Apo: Apologia ad Guillelmum abbatem

Asc: Sermo in ascensione Domini

Asspt: Sermo in assumptione B.V.M.

Bapt: Epistola de baptismo

Ben: Sermo in natali sancti Benedicti

Circ: Sermo in circumcisione domini

Clem: Sermo in natali sancti Clementis

Conv: Sermo de conversione ad clericos

Csi: De consideratione libri v

Ded: Sermo in dedicatione ecclesiae

Dil: Liber de diligendo deo

Div: Sermones de diversis

Epi: Sermo in epiphania domini

Ept Ma: Epitaphium sancti Malachiae

Gra: Liber de gratia et libero arbitrio

IV HM: Sermo in feria iv hebdomadae sanctae

V HM: Sermo in cena domini

Hmn Mal: Hymnus de sancto Malachiae

Hum: Liber de gradibus humilitatis et superbiae

Humb: Sermo in obitu Domni Humberti

Innoc: Sermo in festivitatibus sancti, Stephani, sancti Ioannis et sanctorum Innocentium

JB: Sermo in nativitate sancti Ioannis Baptistae

Mal: Sermo in transitu sancti Malachiae episcopi

Mart: Sermo in festivitate sancti Martini episcopi

Mich: Sermo in festo sancti Michaëlis

Miss: Hom. super missus est in laudibus Virginis Matris

Mor: Ep. de moribus et officiis episcoporum

Nat: Sermo in nativitate domini

Nat BVM: Sermo in nativitate B.V.M.

I Nov: Sermo in dominica I novembris

O Epi: Sermo in octava epiphania domini

O Asspt: Sermo dominica infra octavam assumptionis

O Pasc: Sermo in octava paschae

OS: Sermo in festivitate Omnium Sanctorum

Of Vict: Officium de sancto Victore

Palm: Sermo in ramis palmarum

Par: Parabolae

Pasc: Sermo in die Paschae

Pr Ant: Prologus in Antiphonarium

p Epi: Sermo in dominica I post octavam Epiphaniae

Pent: Sermo in die sancto pentecostes

Pl: Sermo in conversione sancti Pauli

Pre: Liber de pracepto et dispensatione

IV p P: Sermo in dominica quarta post Pentecosten

VI p P: Sermo in dominica sexta post Pentecosten

PP: Sermo in festo SS. Apostolorum Petri et Pauli

Pur: Sermo in purificatione B.V.M.

QH: Sermo super psalmum Qui habitat

Quad: Sermo in Quadragesima

Rog: Sermo in rogationibus

SC: Sermo super Cantica canticorum

I Sent: Sententiae (PL 183, 747-58)

II Sent: Sententiae (PL 184, 1135-56)

Sept: Sermo in Septuagesima

Tpl: Liber ad milites templi (De laude novae militiae)

V And: Sermo in vigilia sancti Andreae

Vict: Sermo in natali sancti Victoris

V Mal: Vita sancti Malachiae

V Nat: Sermo in vigilia nativitatis domini

V PP: Sermo in vigilia apostolorum Petri et Pauli