SOURCE: Moritz, Theresa. “The Church as Bride in Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermons on the Song of Songs.” 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. 3-11. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1980.

[In the following essay, Moritz examines Bernard's ninth sermon in his Sermons on the Song of Songs and argues that it reflects Bernard''s conviction that the Church is Christ's true bride.]

In the Sermons on the Song of Songs, Bernard of Clairvaux identifies the Bride, whose marriage the Song celebrates, as a figure both for the Church and for the individual soul. Bernard's ‘spiritual’ application of the text to the union of Christ and the Church usually remains of secondary importance to modern scholars,¹ because they regard the Sermons as a program for the soul's achievement of private, contemplative union with God. Bernard's application of the Song to the soul is undoubtedly central to the Sermons and represents one of Bernard's principal contributions to the history of Song of Songs literature. Still, the real significance of Bernard's instructions to the soul is lost if they are separated from what Bernard says about the mystical union of Christ and the Church. When he first identifies the subject of the Song, Bernard places the marriage of Christ and the Church before the union of Christ and the soul. Furthermore, when Bernard interprets a text under two explicitly different allegorical senses, he consistently speaks first of the Church and Christ and then uses their union as a model for the relationship which he urges the individual soul to seek. Throughout the Sermons, generally, Bernard bases his commentary on the conviction that Christ's union with the Church, accomplished by his coming in time, channels the grace of salvation to men in all times, and that the personal interaction of Christ and his Church provides a temporal witness and example of love God wishes to share with every soul. When Bernard's spirituality is evaluated in the context of his teaching on the Church as Bride, it is revealed to be free of the contradictions and tensions between contemplation and action, between withdrawal from and participation in this world, which many observers claim to have discovered in his life and teachings.

This paper will examine Bernard's Sermon Nine for its exposition of the phrase from the Song, ‘your breasts are better than wine,’ because this sermon's praise of the Bride marks a significant departure from commentary tradition, which in turn witnesses to the unprecedented dignity and responsibility Bernard attributes to the Bride as lover. Bernard's exposition, here as elsewhere, depends on his conviction that the Church is Christ's true bride, in the fullness of union; from the example of the Church, Bernard draws the lesson that love of Christ imparts not only personal completion but also the power and duty to undertake, with Christ, loving care for all men.

Bernard interprets the phrase ‘your breasts are better than wine,’ as a speech which the Bride could have addressed to the Bridegroom, but which also might have been said to her by the Bridegroom or his companions. He explains: ‘We are free to assign these words to the person whom we think they best suit. For my part, I can see reasons for attributing them either to the Bride or to the Bridegroom or to the latter's companions.’² Although the text gave Bernard no guidance on the correct attribution of this remark, the commentary tradition of the Song furnished him with a consensus that the Bride was speaking to the Bridegroom. Bernard reflects this tradition when he praises the Bridegroom's breasts as ‘two proofs of his native kindness: his patience in awaiting the sinner and his welcoming mercy for the penitent.’³ Bernard may also have borrowed some materials from the previous comments on this phrase to formulate his praise of the Bride's breasts, but he makes a marked departure from his authorities in that he specifically states that the Bride is here being honored.⁴

The quality of the Bride which Bernard finds celebrated in the phrase ‘your breasts better than wine,’ is not a beauty or an ability to satisfy her lover, intrinsic to herself, as it was in the case of the Bridegroom. Rather, both the Bridegroom and his companions praise the breasts of the Bride because in them they perceive a proof that the Bride has achieved a full love-union with her Beloved and been transformed by this exchange of love. The result is that the Bride, filled by love, overflows with affection and understanding which may benefit others not yet proficient in loving Christ. Bernard says, ‘Our breast expands as it were, and our interior is filled with an overflowing love; and if somebody should press upon it then, this milk of sweet fecundity would gush forth is streaming richness.’⁵ The Bridegroom's companions address the Bride to urge her to recognize that this infusion is a favor given for the sake of others: ‘The favor you demand is rather for your own delight, but the breasts with which you may feed the offspring of your womb are preferable to, that is, they are more essential than, the wine of contemplation.’⁶ Here, Bernard not only departs from tradition by explicitly praising the Bride, but he also gives surprising priority to the Bride's loving service to others. He places this loving care after, not prior to, a full sharing of Christ's kiss, and he treat it as a progression toward union with Christ, rather than a falling away from union.

Modern commentators tend to respond to spiritual texts which use physical imagery by leaving the text and its literary tradition in order to search for the attitudes, or the delusions, of the author about women, marriage, or the world, so that they can use these attitudes to explain the author's selection and development of allegorical images.⁷ There are two shortcomings to this method: first, a text's own unity of theme and image is not consulted for what information it may give on any particular image, with the result that interpretations of particular images contradict the synthesis of theme and language for which the image was originally created; second, wholly plausible, even explicitly stated, reasons a medieval author might have had for his allegorizations are forgotten or ignored, while scholars seek what he ‘really intended’ or ‘unconsciously betrayed’ in his imagery.

There has been some interest in the text under consideration here because of Bernard's attribution of feminine characteristics to Christ; the imagery is examined in the expectation that it will reveal Bernard's views on women and marriage, which are presumed to be the source for any images of women or feminine characteristics he uses.⁸ At least in Sermon Nine, literary tradition, rather than personal observation or insight, lies behind what Bernard says about the breasts of the Bridegroom. Commentators from Origen onward had applied the words of praise to the Bridegroom; the frequency with which they allude to other biblical texts in which the breasts of God are praised suggests that the rationale behind the interpretation was that Scripture consistently used this figure to represent divine mercy and compassion.⁹ Furthermore, commentators consistently chose so to assign the speeches in the Song that praise and thanksgiving were addressed to the Bridegroom, God, as the source of all love, while expressions of longing, lack, or desire were spoken of the Bride, either by the Bride herself or by the Bridegroom.¹⁰

Bernard's unconventional application of the phrase to the Bride has excited less comment, perhaps because scholars have supposed that it would be as natural and as logical for Bernard as it is for them to direct praise of a feminine attribute to the Bride, a feminine figure. The fact that medieval exegetes shied away from making this connection should alert us to the significance and originality of Bernard's interpretation. Although certain elements from what previous commentators said in praising the breasts of the Bridegroom are echoed in Bernard's praise of the Bride, still Bernard transforms these materials by applying them explicitly to the soul, as Bride. Gregory the Great, for example, had identified the breasts of the Bridegroom as holy preachers; Bernard says that the breasts of the Bride ‘flow in the preaching of God's word.’¹¹ The importance of the shift is that Bernard directs attention to the role the Bride plays, in union with Christ, as a source for the diffusion of God's love and knowledge in the world.

Sermon Nine employs an extended metaphor of pregnancy and child-care in order to represent, first, the witness the Bride carries in herself that she has shared the fullness of Christ's kiss, and, second, the capacity she possesses, because of her love, to share Christ with others. We have already seen that Bernard is not here speaking only from the traditional practice of commenting on the Song. Further, Bernard goes beyond the literal situation of the Song, which follows the lovers only as far as the consummation of their marriage, to present images of the bride's fecundity and nurturing of children.¹² Any effort to attribute this imagery to Bernard's own family life or his appreciation of human marriage, as he had observed it around him, however, clashes immediately with Bernard's explicit contrasts between physical, worldly experiences of love and nurturing, and the spiritual realities he is discussing. ‘Here is a further reason why I insist that the breasts of the bride are superior to worldly or carnal love; the numbers who drink of them, however great, cannot exhaust their content; their flow is never suspended.’¹³

The key to the image is the idea the image was fashioned to represent. Bernard is describing a love which embraces the fullness of union between partners and which inspires them to bring their united love into all their activities. This is the ideal of love which he holds before the soul as a goal never to be realized fully in this life, but it is an ideal which he observes as a temporal reality in the Church as the Bride of Christ. In his allegorization of the breasts of the Bride, Bernard most resembles Origen, who mentions, without elaboration, that Christ could have directed this praise to his Bride, the Church, although not to individual, sinful souls.¹⁴ Bernard follows Origen in basing his description of the love celebrated in the Song on the Church's relationship with Christ; as a result, Bernard speaks on a love union already realized in marriage, already consummated and already fruitful in offspring. The soul, although it may never achieve in this world the fullness of love. still is directed to work toward that achievement, in the Church.¹⁵

Bernard makes the analogy between the Church's love union with God, and the soul's spiritual marriage, explicit in Sermons Sixty-seven to Sixty-nine, which interpret the Bride's speech, ‘My Beloved to me, and I to him.’ Bernard argues that the Church may speak so boldly of a reciprocity in love, because ‘the Lord has need of her.’¹⁶ Although the Church may not claim a priority in love and must admit that, at every moment, the Lord anticipated the Church and prepared her to love, still Bernard finds that the Church by loving God, satisfies God's need as well. The need the Church can satisfy is to bring to God the communion of saints, restored from death of sins, to complete heaven. Bernard says, ‘Heaven has no children. They belong only to the Church, to whose children it was said, “I gave you milk to drink, not meat.” And it is these who are invited by the Prophet to complete the praises of God, where he says, “Praise the Lord, ye children.”’¹⁷ Bernard describes the love relationship of soul and Christ which entitles the soul to speak also the words, ‘My Beloved to me, and I to him,’ in terms analogous to those he has used of the Church. In common with the Church, the individual soul can claim no love of God that anticipated or preceded God's love, yet the soul can return this love and also serve God's need by caring for all men. The analogy is noteworthy, not only because Bernard establishes a parallel between Church and soul, but also because he identifies them as one and the same, that is, the Church is the community of believers,¹⁸ and all believers must share in the work of the Church.¹⁹

Even in those passages in which Bernard does not speak explicitly of the Church as the Bride, his understanding of the Church's love union with Christ as the exemplary model for all men's love for God is central. Bernard's evident optimism and confident call to all men to follow him in loving and serving God may have stemmed, personally, from experiences of contemplative union with God, but he does not urge other men to optimism by his own example as a mystic or by holding out the hope that all will be revealed through contemplation. Rather, his trust in Christ's love begins with the historical fact of Christ's coming and depends on Christ's establishment of the Church, to whom he sent his Spirit as an abiding presence. The opening sermons on the Song especially ground Bernard's belief that the Bride enjoys the fullness of Christ's love in the events of salvation history, which joined Christ to his Bride, the Church, in a relationship which, Bernard says, has never since ceased to be filled with love.²⁰ The role of the Church, as mystical Bride, is both to witness to the proper conduct of a lover and also to channel to men the grace which enables them to love.

The strategy of teaching which Bernard employs throughout the Sermons is based on his conviction that God has chosen to bring men to himself by manifesting himself to them in time, through a joining of the Spirit and the flesh. This union was accomplished perfectly in the Incarnate Christ alone.²¹ Still, the fullness any creature might possess of this love is known and shared, in time, by the Church, as the Bride of Christ. Bernard consistently directs his readers to the understanding and love of God accessible to them in the Church. The allegorical language he employs is grounded in the Church's Scriptures and in the Word made flesh. If we look for what Bernard has learned about God's love from his observations of material, visible love relationships, we will be disappointed by the shortcomings of the flesh which a comparison between it and the spirit makes explicit. Bernard's language, however, has a different starting point: he seeks to make all things new in the spirit, and so fashions a language which challenges creation to realize in every activity the love God gives. What Bernard teaches about love as a reciprocal sharing and a principle of conduct which may guide lovers in all their activities is applied by Bernard directly only to the particular life-style of the celibate monk, but, properly understood, it is a view of loving which could be applied profitably to the love men and women share in marriage.

In The Great Chain of Being, Arthur O. Lovejoy contrasts two theories of value which might have been drawn from the medieval philosophies of God as the source of all love.

The one program demanded a withdrawal from all attachment to creatures and culminated in the ecstatic contemplation of the indivisible Divine Essence; the other, if it had been formulated, would have summoned men to participate, in some finite measure, in the creative passion of God, to collaborate in the processes by which the diversity of things, the fullness of the universe, is achieved.²²

He goes on to say that the Middle Ages chose the first program, making ascent to the Good and escape from the many to the one the ideal of all human activity. Lovejoy is speaking of sharing in God's joy in creation, not only the act of creating but also the existence of creation in all its diversity. Although Bernard of Clairvaux would be considered by many scholars to be perhaps the most influential medieval spokesman for love as contemplation, he is, in fact, an innovative and challenging spokesman for a program very much like Lovejoy's alternative love as sharing in God's creativity. It is not so much creativity as redemption which Bernard asks the soul to share with God, and Bernard expects the creature to delight as much in being God's creature as in his role of sharing God's tasks of loving and caring for creation. Still, Lovejoy's categories are helpful, because they demonstrate that the core of Bernard's teaching on love is not love as longing, as escape, as frustrated desire, but rather love as possession, as enjoyment, as fecundity and shared responsibility.

Notes

1. Corneille Halflants, ‘Introduction,’ to On the Song of Songs I, tr. Kilian Walsh, Cistercian Fathers Series: 4 (Cistercian Publications, 1976) p. x; Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, tr. K. Misrahi (New York: Fordham U. P., 1960) pp. 107-109. These are offered as formulations of a widely-held view.

2. SC 9; SBOp 1:44; PL 183:816 (CF 4:55-6): ‘Et haec verba cujus sint, auctor non loquitur, relinquens nobis libere commentari, cui potissimum personae conveniant. Mihi vero non deest, unde illa congruenter assignem sive sponsae, sive sponso, sive etiam sponsi sodalibus.’

3. SC 9; SBOp 1:45; PL 183:817 (CF 4:57): ‘Duo sponsi ubera, duo in ipso sunt ingenitae mansuetudinis argumenta, quod et patienter exspectat delinquentem, et clementer recipit poenitentem.’ Many commentators, including Origen, Gregory the Great, Ambrose, Bede, Rupert of Deutz and William of St Thierry, speak of the breasts of the Bridegroom. See below, for more specific parallels between Bernard and other commentators.

4. Although Origen suggests that the phrase might be applied in some limited sense to the Church as Bride, he does not elaborate the significance of such an attribution to the extent that Bernard does. Origen's dual sense of the text, referring both to Christ and to the Church, was not often repeated before Bernard. Marian interpretation, such as that offered by Rupert of Deutz, in his Commentaria in Cantica, Liber 1; PL 168: 841, or by Honorius of Autun, in his Expositio in Cantica Canticorum; PL 172: 361, may have also suggested to Bernard the possibility of applying the phrase both to Christ and to the Bride.

5. SC 8; SBOp 1:46; PL 183:818 (CF 4:58): ‘Persistentibus autem repente infunditur gratia, pingescit pectus, replet viscera inundatio pietatis; et si sit qui premat, lac conceptae dulcedinis ubertim fundere non tardabunt.’

6. SC 9; SBOp 1:47; PL 183:818 (CF 4:59): ‘Quod enim postulas, te quidem delectat; sed ubera, quibus parvulos alis, quos et paris, meliora, hoc est necessariora, sunt vino contemplationis.’

7. Leclercq, in Love of Learning, pp. 95-96, alludes to the dangers of this approach, although his own recent interest in psychological analysis of Bernard's views on marriage seems fraught with the very dangers he had warned against previously. See Nouveau visage de Bernard Clairvaux: Approaches psycho-historiques (Paris: Cerf, 1976). The practice is evident in the many books of feminist history devoted to ideas of love, women, and marriage, during the Middle Ages, in which Bernard is condemned for his anti-feminist position.

8. Caroline Bynum, ‘Feminine Names for God,’ a paper presented to the Conference on Consciousness and Group Identification in High Medieval Religion, held 6-8 April 1978, Toronto, Ontario.

9. Origen, Homélies sur le Cantique des Contiques, SC 376, 2nd edition, ed. Olivier Rousseau (Paris: Cerf, 1966) pp. 76-80, mentions other biblical stories in which the breast, or chest, of the Lord is a resting place for men. See Rupert of Deutz, Commentaria, and William of St Thierry, Exposé sur le Cantique des Cantiques, ed. J. M. Déchanet (Paris: Cerf, 1962) para. 37, p. 122; PL 180:488.

10. Although the image itself might suggest that the author intended a praise of women in their role as mother, the context of the image reveals that the intent of most commentators was to attribute the best of all qualities and activities to God and to leave for mankind only need and desire. Far from praising women, the image may serve to denigrate women's activities in the world, along with all other worldly activities as infinitely inferior to the spiritual realities of divine love. See below, n. 14.

11. Gregory the Great, in William of St Thierry's Excerpta in libris S. Gregorii papae suae super Cantica canticorum, (PL 180:443) ‘Ubera sunt praedicatores sancti.’ In Sermon 9, Bernard says, ‘Quia meliora sunt ubera praedicationis,’ SBOp 1:47; PL 183:818 (CF 4:59).

12. William of St Thierry, by comparison, denies that the marriage described is followed by physical consummation. Exposé, para. 7, pp. 78-80; PL 180:455.

13. SC 9; SBOp 1:48; PL 183:819 (CF 4:60): ‘Merito proinde meliora carnis, saeculive amore asseruntur ubera sponsae, quae nullo unquam lactentium numero arefiunt, sed semper abundant de visceribus charitatis, ut iterum fluant.’

14. Origen, Homélies, pp. 72, 78.

15. See especially Sermon 50, on ‘affective’ and ‘effective’ charity.

16. SC 68; SBOp 2:199; PL 183:1110 (CF 40:21): ‘Non ignorat quod Dominus se opus habet.’

17. SC 68; SBOp 2:199; PL 183:1110 (CF 40:21-2): ‘Coelum non habet infantes, habet Ecclesia, quibus et dicit: “Lac vobus potum dedi, non escam.” Et hi ad laudem quasi complendam a Propheta invitantur, dicente: “Laudate, pueri, Dominum.”’

18. Ibid.

19. This is the theme of the many sermons Bernard preaches on the duties and responsibilities of Church officials, e.g., Sermons 47, 51, 77, and many others.

20. Sermon 78, passim.

21. Sermon 2.

22. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. P., 1936) pp. 83-84.

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