# The Mediaeval Mind/Chapter 17

CHAPTER XVII
THE QUALITY OF LOVE IN SAINT BERNARD
Through the prodigious power of his personality, St. Bernard gave new life to monasticism, promoted the reform of the secular clergy and the suppression of heresy, ended a papal schism, set on foot the Second Crusade, and for a quarter of a century swayed Christendom as never holy man before or after him. An adequate account of his career would embrace the entire history of the first half of the twelfth century.
The man who was to move men with his love, and quell the proud with fear, had, as a youth, a graceful figure, a sweet countenance, and manners the most winning. Later in life he is spoken of as cheerfully bearing reproaches, but shamefaced at praise, and his gentle manners are again mentioned.
   "As a helpmeet for his holy spirit, God made his body to conform. In his flesh there was visible a certain grace, but spiritual rather than of the flesh. A brightness not of earth shone in his look; there was an angelic purity in his eyes, and a dove-like simplicity. The beauty of the inner man was so great that it would burst forth in visible tokens, and the outer man would seem bathed from the store of inward purity and copious grace. His frame was of the slightest (tenuissimum), and most spare of flesh; a blush often tinged the delicate skin of his cheeks. And a certain natural heat (quidquid caloris naturalis) was in him, arising from assiduous meditation and penitent zeal. His hair was bright ​yellow, his beard reddish with some white hairs toward the end of his life. Actually of medium stature, he looked taller."
This same biography says:
   "He who had set him apart, from his mother's womb, for the work of a preacher, had given him, with a weak body, a voice sufficiently strong and clear. His speech, whatever persons he spoke to for the edifying of souls, was adapted to his audience; for he knew the intelligence, the habits and occupations of each and all. To country folk he spoke as if born and bred in the country; and so to other classes, as if he had been always occupied with their business. He was learned with the erudite, and simple with the simple, and with spiritual men rich in illustrations of perfection and wisdom. He adapted himself to all, desiring to gain all for Christ."
Bernard was born of noble parents at the Chateau of Fontaines, near Dijon, in the year 1090, and was educated in a church school at Chatillon on the Seine. It is an oft-told story, how, when little more than twenty years of age, he drew together a band formed of his own brothers, his uncle, and his friends, and led them to Citeaux, his ardent soul unsatisfied so long as one held back. Three years later, in 1115, the Abbot, Stephen Harding, entrusted him with the headship of the new monastery, to be founded in the domains of the Count of Troyes. Bernard set forth with twelve companions, came to Clara Vallis on the river Aube, and placed his convent in that austere solitude.
Great were the attractions of Clairvaux (Clara Vallis) under Bernard's vigorous and loving rule. Its monks increased so rapidly and so constantly that during its founder's life sixty-five bands were sent forth to rear new convents. Meanwhile, Bernard's activities and influence widened, till they seemed to compass western Christendom. ​He had become a power in the politics of Church and State. In 1130 he was summoned by Louis le Gros practically to determine the claims of the rival Popes Innocent II. and Anacletus II. He decided for the former, and was the chief instrument of his eventual reinstatement at Rome. Before this Bernard's health had been broken by his extreme austerities. Yet even the lamentable failure of the Second Crusade, zealously promoted by him, did not break his power over Europe, which continued unimpaired until his death in 1153.
This active and masterful man was impelled by those elements of the vita contemplativa which formed his inner self. First and last and always he was a monk. Had he not been the very monk he was, he would not have been the dominator of men and situations that he proved himself to be. Temperament fashions the objects of contemplation, and shapes the yearning and aversions, of great monks. The temperamental element of love—the love of God and man, with its appurtenant detestations—made the heart of Bernard's vita contemplativa, and impassioned and empowered his active faculties. It was the keynote of his life: in his letters it speaks in words of fire, while other writings of the saint analyze this great human quality with profundity and truth. In these he renders explicit the modes of affection which man may have for man and above all for God; he sets them forth as the path as well as goal of life on earth, and then as the rapt summit of attainment in the life to come. Through all its stages, as it flows from self to fellow, as it rises from man to God, love still is love, and forms the unifying principle among men and between them and God.
Let us trace in his letters the nature and the power of Bernard's love, and see with what yearning he loved his fellows, seeking to withdraw them from the world; and how his love strove to be as sword and armour against the flesh and the devil. By easy transition we shall pass to Bernard's warning wrath, flung against those who would turn the struggling soul aside, or threaten the Church's peace; then by more arduous, but still unbroken stages, we may rise to the love of Jesus, and through love of the God-man to love of God. We shall realize at the close why that last mediaeval ​assessor of destinies, whose name was Dante Alighieri, selected St. Bernard as the exponent of the blessed vision which is salvation's crown in the paradise of God.
The way of life at Clara Vallis might discourage monks of feeble zeal. Among the brethren of these early days was one named Robert, a cousin of the Abbot, seemingly of weak and petulant disposition. Soon he fled, to seek a softer cell in Cluny, the great and rich monastery to which his parents appear to have dedicated him in childhood. For a while Bernard suppressed his grief; but the day came when he could endure no longer Robert's abandonment of his soul's safety and of the friend who yearned for him. He stole out of the monastery, accompanied by a monk named William, There, in the open (sub dio), Bernard dictated a long letter to be sent to the deserter. While the two were busy, the one dictating, the other writing, a rainstorm broke upon them. William wished to stop. "It is God's work; write and fear not," said Bernard. So William wrote on, in the midst of the rain; but no drop fell on him or the parchment; for the power of love which dictated the letter preserved the parchment on which it was being written.
Whoever has read this letter in its own fervent Latin will not care to dispute this miracle, for which it stands first in the collection of Bernard's correspondence. Bernard does not recriminate or argue in it; his love shall bring the young monk back to him. Yes, yes, he says to all that the other has urged regarding fancied slights and persecution:
   "Quite right; I admit it. I am not writing in order to contend, but to end contention. To flee persecution is no fault in him who flees, but in him who pursues; I do not deny it. I pass over what has happened; I do not ask why or how it happened. I do not discuss faults, I do not dispute as to the circumstances, I have no memory for injuries. I speak only what is in my heart. Wretched me, that I lack thee, that I do not see thee, that I am living without thee, for whom to die would be to live; without whom to live, is to die. I ask not why thou hast gone away; I complain only that thou dost not return. Come, and there shall be peace; return, and all shall be made good. ​"It was certainly my fault that thou didst go away. I was too austere with thy young years, and treated thee inhumanly. So thou saidst when here, and so I hear thou dost still reproach me. But that shall not be imputed to thee. I never meant it harshly, I was only indiscreet. Now thou wilt find me different, and I thee. Where before thou didst fear the master, thou shalt now embrace the companion. Do not think that I will not excuse any fault of thine. Dost thou wish to be quite free from fault? then return. If thou wilt forget thy fault I will pardon it; also pardon thou me, and I too will forget my fault."
Bernard then argues long and passionately against those who had led the young man away and received him with such blandishments at Cluny; and passionately he argues against the insidious softening of monastic principles.
   "Arise, soldier of Christ, arise, shake off the dust, return to the battle whence thou hast fled, and more bravely shalt thou fight and more gloriously triumph. Christ has many soldiers who bravely began, stood fast and conquered; He has few who have turned from flight and renewed the combat. Everything rare is precious; and thou among that rare company shalt the more radiantly shine.
   "Thou art fearful? so be it; but why dost thou fear where there is no fear, and why dost thou not fear where everything is to be feared? Because thou hast fled from the battle-line, dost thou think to have escaped the foe? It is easier for the Adversary to pursue a fugitive than to bear himself against manful defence. Secure, arms cast aside, thou takest thy morning slumbers, the hour when Christ will have arisen! The multitude of enemies beset the house, and thou sleepest. Is it safer to be caught alone and sleeping, than armed with others in the field? Arouse thee, seize thy arms, and escape to thy fellow-soldiers. Dost thou recoil at the weight of thy arms, O delicate soldier! Before the enemy's darts the shield is no burden, nor the helmet heavy. The bravest soldiers tremble when the trumpet is heard before the battle is joined; but then hope of victory and fear of defeat make them brave. How canst thou tremble, walled round with the zeal of thy armed brethren, angels bearing aid at thy right hand, and thy leader Christ? There shalt thou safely fight, secure of victory. O battle, safe with Christ and for Christ! In which there is no wound or defeat or circumvention so long as thou fleest not. Only flight loses the victory, which death does not lose. Blessed art thou, and quickly to be crowned, dying in battle. Woe for thee, if recoiling, thou losest at once the victory and the crown—which may He avert, my beloved son, who in the Judgment will award thee deeper damnation because of this letter of mine if He finds thee to have taken no amendment from it."
It was Bernard's lot to write many letters urging procrastinators to fulfil their vows, or appealing to those who had laid aside the arms of austerity, perhaps betaking themselves to the more worldly life of the secular clergy. This seems to have been the case with a young canon Fulco, whom an ambitious uncle sought to draw back to the world, or at least to a career of sacerdotal emolument. In fact, Fulco at last became an archdeacon; from which it may be inferred that in his case Bernard's appeal was not successful. He had poured forth his arguments in an ardent letter. Love compels him to use words to make the recipient grieve; for love would have him feel grief, that he might no longer have true cause for grief—good mother love, who can cherish the weak, exercise those who have entered upon their course, or quell the restless, and so show herself differently toward her sons, all of whom she loves. This letter, like the one to Robert, concludes with a burning peroration:
   "What dost thou in the city, dainty soldier? Thy fellows whom thou hast deserted, fight and conquer; they storm heaven (coelum rapiunt) and reign, and thou, sitting on thy palfrey (ambulatorem), clothed in purple and fine linen, goest ambling about the highways!"
Bernard also wrote letters of consolation to parents whose sons had become monks, or letters of warning to those who sought to withdraw a monk from his good fight. In one instance, his influence had made a monk of a youth of gentle birth named Godfrey, to his parents' grief. So Bernard writes to them:
   "If God makes your son His also, what have you lost, or he? He, from rich, becomes richer, from being noble, still more illustrious, and what is more than all, from a sinner he becomes a saint. It behoved him to be made ready for the Kingdom prepared for him ​from the foundation of the world, and for this reason it is well for him to spend with us his short span of days, so that clean from the filth of living in the world, earth's dust shaken off, he may become fit for the heavenly mansion. If you love him you will rejoice that he goes to his Father, and such a Father! He goes to God, but you do not lose him; rather through him you gain many sons. For all of us who belong to Clara Vallis have taken him to be our brother and you for our parents.
   "Perhaps you fear this hard life for his tender body—that were to fear where there is nothing to fear. Have faith and be comforted. I will be a father to him and he shall be my son until from my hands the Father of Mercies and God of all consolation shall receive him. Do not grieve; do not weep; your Godfrey is hastening to joy, not to sorrow. A father to him will I be, a mother too, a brother and a sister. I will make the crooked ways straight, and the steep places plain. I will so temper and provide for him that as his spirit profits, his body shall not want. So shall he serve the Lord in joy and gladness, and shall sing before Him, How great is the glory of the Lord."
Young Godfrey was a daintily nurtured plant. For all the Abbot's eloquence he did not stay in Clara Vallis. The world drew him back. It was now for the saint to weep:
   "I grieve over thee, my son Godfrey; I grieve over thee. And with reason. For who would not lament that the flower of thy youth which, to the joy of angels, thou didst offer unsullied to God in the odour of sweetness, is now trampled on by demons, defiled with sins, and contaminated by the world. How could you, who were called by God, follow the devil recalling thee? How could you, whom He had begun to draw to Himself, withdraw your foot from the very entry upon glory? In thee I see the truth of those words: 'A man's foes are they of his own household.' Thy friends and neighbours drew near and stood up against thee. They called thee back into the jaws of the lion and the gates of death. They have set thee in darkness, like the dead; and thou art nigh to go down into the belly of hell, which now is ravening to devour thee.
   "Turn back, I say, turn back, before the abyss swallows you and the pit closes its mouth, before you are engulfed whence you shall not escape, before, bound hand and foot, you are cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, before you are hurled into darkness, shut in with the darkness of death.
   "Perhaps you blush to return, where you have only now fallen ​away. Blush for flight, and not for turning to renew the combat. The conflict is not ended; the hostile arrays have not withdrawn from each other. We would not conquer without you, nor do we envy you your share of the glory. Joyful we will run to thee, and receive thee in our arms, crying: 'It is meet to make merry and be glad; for this our son was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found.'"
Who knows whether this letter brought back the little monk? Bernard wrote so lovingly to him, so gently to his parents. He could write otherwise, and show himself insensible to this world's pestering tears. To the importunate parents of a monk named Elias, who would drag him away from Clara Vallis, Bernard writes in their son's name thus:
   "To his dear parents, Ingorranus and Iveta, Elias, monk but sinner, sends daily prayers.
   "The only cause for which it is permitted not to obey parents is God; for He said: 'Whoso loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.' If you truly love me as good and faithful parents, why do you molest my endeavour to please the Father of all, and attempt to withdraw me from the service of Him, to serve whom is to reign? For this I ought not to obey you as parents, but regard you as enemies. If you loved me, you would rejoice, because I go to my Father and yours. But what is there between you and me? What have I from you save sin and misery? And indeed the corruptible body which I carry I admit I have from you. Is it not enough that you brought miserable me into the misery of this hateful world? that you, sinners, in your sin produced a sinner? and that him born in sin, in sin you nourished? Envying the mercy which I have obtained from Him who desireth not the death of a sinner, would you make me a child of hell?
   "O harsh father! savage mother! parents cruel and impious—parents! rather destroyers, whose grief is the safety of the child, whose consolation is the death of their son! who would drag me back to the shipwreck which I, naked, escaped; who would give me again to the robbers when through the good Samaritan I am a little recovering from my wounds.
   "Cease then, my parents," concludes the letter after many other reproofs, "cease to afflict yourselves with vain weeping and to disquiet me. No messengers you send will force me to leave. Clara Vallis will I never forsake. This is my rest, and here shall be my ​habitation. Here will I pray without ceasing for my sins and yours; here with constant prayer will I implore that He whose love has separated us for a little while, will join us in another life happy and inseparable,—in whose love we may live forever and ever. Amen."
If Bernard was severe toward those who threatened some loved person's weal, his anger burned more fiercely against those whom he deemed enemies of God. Heavy was his hand upon the evils of the Church: "The insolence of the clergy—to which the bishop's neglect is mother—troubles the earth and molests the Church. The bishops give what is holy to the dogs, and pearls to swine."
Likewise, fearlessly but with restraint arising from his respect for all power ordained of God, Bernard opposes kings. Thus he writes to Louis the Fat, in regard to the election of a bishop, with many protests, however, that he would not oppose the royal power—for which we note his reason: "If the whole world conspired to force me to do aught against kingly majesty, yet would I fear God, and would not dare to offend the king ordained by Him. For neither do I forget where I read that whosoever resisteth power, resisteth the ordinance of God." But—but—but—continues the letter, through many qualifyings which are also admonitions. At last come the words: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, even for thee, O king." Thereupon the saint does not fail to speak his mind.
Bernard's fiercest denunciations were reserved for heretics and schismatics, for Abaelard, for Arnold of Brescia, for the Antipope Anacletus—were they not enemies of God? Clearly the saint saw and understood these men from his point of view. Thus in a letter to Innocent II. he sums up his attitude towards Abaelard: "Peter Abaelard is trying to make void the merit of Christian faith, when he deems himself able by human reason to comprehend God altogether. He ascends to the heavens and descends even to the abyss! Nothing may hide from him in the depths of hell or in the heights above! The man is great in his own eyes—this ​scrutinizer of Majesty and fabricator of heresies." Here was the gist of the matter. That a man should be great in his own eyes, apart from God, and teach others so, stirred Bernard's bowels.
Of Arnold, the impetuous clerical revolutionist and pupil of Abælard, Bernard writes with fury: "Arnold of Brescia, whose speech is honey and whose teaching poison, whom Brescia vomited forth, Rome abhorred, France repelled, Germany abominates, Italy will not receive, is said to be with you." Again, Bernard rejoices with great joy when he hears that the anti-pope who divided Christendom was dead.
It is pleasant to turn back to Bernard's lovingness and mercy. His God would not condemn those who repented; and the saint can be gentle toward sinners possibly repentant. He urges certain monks to receive back an erring brother: "Take him back then, you who are spiritual, in the spirit of gentleness; let love be confirmed in him, and let good intention excuse the evil done. Receive back with joy him whom you wept as lost." In another letter he urges a countess to be more lenient with her children; and there is a story of his begging a robber from the hands of the executioners, and leading him to Clara Vallis, where he became at length a holy man.
   "Sad is my soul, and not to be consoled, until I may return. For what consolation save you in the Lord have I in an evil time and in the place of my pilgrimage? Wherever I go, your sweet recollection does not leave me; but the sweeter the memory the more vexing is the absence. Alas! my wandering not only is prolonged but aggravated. Hard enough is exile from the Lord, which is common to us all while we are pilgrims in the body. But I endure a special exile also, compelled to live away from you.
   "For a third time my bowels are torn from me. Those little children are weaned before the time; the very ones whom I begot through the Gospel I may not educate. I am forced to abandon my own, and care for the affairs of others; and it is not easy to say whether to be dragged from the former, or to be involved in the latter is harder to bear. Thus, O good Jesus, my whole life is spent in grief and my years in groaning! It is good for me, O Lord, to die, rather than to live and not among my brothers, my own household, my own dearest ones."
Bernard had a younger brother, Gerard, whom he deeply loved. In 1138 he died while still young, and having recently returned with Bernard from Italy. Bernard, dry-eyed, read the burial-service over his body; so says his biographer wondering, for the saint was not wont to bury even strangers without tears. No other eyes were dry at that funeral. Afterwards he preached a sermon; it began with restraint, then became a long cry of grief.
The saint took the text from Canticles where he had left off in his previous sermon—"I am black, but comely, as the tents of Kedar." He proceeded to expound its meaning: the tents are our bodies, in which we pilgrims dwell and carry on our war. Then he spoke of other portions of the text—and suddenly deferred the whole subject till his next sermon: Grief ordains an end, "and the calamity which I suffer."
   "For why dissemble, or conceal the fire which is scorching my sad breast? What have I to do with this Song, I who am in bitterness? The power of grief turns my intent, and the anger of the Lord has parched my spirit. I did violence to my soul and dissembled till now, lest sorrow should seem to conquer faith. ​Others wept, but with dry eyes I followed the hateful funeral, and dry-eyed stood at the tomb, until all the solemnities were performed. In my priestly robes I finished the prayers, and sprinkled the earth over the body of my loved one about to become earth. Those who looked on, weeping, wondered that I did not. With such strength as I could command, I resisted and struggled not to be moved at nature's due, at the fiat of the Powerful, at the decree of the Just, at the scourge of the Terrible, at the will of the Lord. But though tears were pressed back, I could not command my sadness; and grief, suppressed, roots deeper. I confess I am beaten. My sorrow will out before the eyes of my children who understand and will console.
   "You know, my sons, how just is my grief. You know what a comrade has left me in the path wherein I was walking. He was my brother in blood and still closer by religion. I was weak in body, and he carried me; faint-hearted, and he comforted me; lazy, and he spurred me; thoughtless, and he admonished me. Whither art thou snatched away, snatched from my hands! O bitter separation, which only death could bring; for living, thou wouldst never leave me. Why did we so love, and now have lost each other! Hard state, but my fortune, not his, is to be pitied. For thou, dear brother, if thou hast lost dear ones, hast gained those who are dearer. Me only this separation wounds. Sweet was our presence to each other, sweet our consorting, sweet our colloquy; I have lost these joys; thou hast but changed them. Now, instead of such a worm as me, thou hast the presence of Christ. But what have I in place of thee? And perhaps though thou knewest us in the flesh, now that thou hast entered into the power of the Lord, thou art mindful only of His righteousness, forgetting us.
   "I seem to hear my brother saying: 'Can a woman forget her sucking child; even so, yet will I not forget thee.' That does not help, where no hand is stretched out."
Bernard speaks of Gerard's unfailing helpfulness to him and every one, and of his piety and religious life. He feels the cares of his life and station closing around him, and his brother gone. Then he justifies his grief, and pours it forth unrestrained. Would any one bid him not to weep? as well tell him not to feel when his bowels were torn from him; he feels, for his flesh is not brass; he grieves, and his grief is ever before him:
   "I confess my sorrow. Will some one call me carnal? Certainly I am human, since I am a man. Nor do I deny being carnal, for I am, and sold under sin, adjudged to death and ​punishment. I am not insensible to punishments; I shudder at death, my own or others'. Mine was Gerard, mine! He is gone, and I feel, and am wounded, grievously!
   "Pardon me, my sons; or rather lament your father's state. Pity me, and think how grievously I have been requited for my sins by the hand of God. Though I feel the punishment, I do not impugn the sentence. This is human; that would be impious. Man must needs be affected towards those dear to him, with gladness at their presence, with sorrow at their absence. I grieve over thee, Gerard, my beloved, not because thou art to be pitied, but because thou art taken away. May it be that I have not lost thee, but sent thee on before! Be it granted me some time to follow whither thou art gone; for thou hast joined the company of those heavenly ones on whom in thy last hours thou didst call exultingly to praise the Lord. For thee death had no sting, nor any fear. Through his jaws Gerard passed to his Fatherland safe and glad and exulting. When I reached his side, and he had finished the psalm, looking up to heaven, he said in a clear voice: 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.' Then saying over again and again the word, 'Father, Father,' he turned his joyful face to me, and said: 'What great condescension that God should be father to men! What glory for men to be sons of God and heirs of God!' So he rejoiced, till my grief was almost turned to a song of gladness.
   "But the pang of sorrow calls me back from that lovely vision, as care wakens one from light slumber. I grieve, but only over myself; I lament his loss to this household, to the poor, to all our Order; whom did he not comfort with deed and word and example? Grievously am I afflicted, because I love vehemently. And let no one blame my tears; for Jesus wept at Lazarus's tomb. His tears bore witness to His nature, not to His lack of faith. So these tears of mine; they show my sorrow, not my faithlessness. I grieve, but do not murmur. Lord, I will sing of thy mercy and righteousness. Thou gavest Gerard; thou hast taken him. Though we grieve that he is gone, we thank thee for the gift.
   "I bear in mind, O Lord, my pact and thy commiseration, that thou mightest the more be justified in thy word. For when last year we were in Viterbo, and he fell sick, and I was afflicted at the thought of losing him in a strange land and not bringing him back to those who loved him, I prayed to thee with groans and tears: 'Wait, O Lord, until our return. When he is restored to his friends, take him, if thou wilt, and I will not complain.' Thou heardest me, God; he recovered; we finished the work thou hadst laid on us, and returned in gladness bringing our sheaves of peace. Then I was near to forget my pact, but not so thou. I shame me of these sobs, which convict me of prevarication. Thou hast recalled thy loan, thou hast taken again what was thine. ​Tears set an end to words; thou, O Lord, wilt set to them limit and measure."
We may now turn to Bernard's love of God, and rise with him from the fleshly to the spiritual, from the conditioned to the absolute. There is no break; love is always love. More especially the love of Christ, the God-man is the mediating term: He presents the Godhead in human form; to love Him is to know a love attaching to both God and man.
Guigo, Prior of the "Grande Chartreuse," whose Meditations have been given, was Bernard's friend, and wrote to him upon love. Bernard replies: "While I was reading it, I felt sparks in my breast, from which my heart glowed within me as from that fire which the Lord sent upon the earth!" He hesitates to suggest anything to Guigo's fervent spirit, as he would hesitate to rouse a bride quiet in the bridegroom's arms. Yet "what I do not dare, love dares; it boldly knocks at a friend's door, fearing no repulse, and quite careless of disturbing your delightful ease with its affairs." Bernard is here speaking of love's importunate devotion; his words characterize the soul's importuning of God:
   "I should call love undefiled because it keeps nothing of its own. Indeed it has nothing of its own, for everything which it has is God's. The undefiled law of the Lord is love, which seeks not what profits itself but what profits many. It is called the law of the Lord, either because He lives by it, or because no one possesses it save by His gift. It is not irrational to speak of God as living by law, that law being love. Indeed in the blessed highest Trinity what preserves that highest ineffable unity, except love?"
So far, Bernard has been using the word charitas. Now, in order to indicate love's desire, he begins to use the words cupiditas and amor. When these yearning qualities are rightly guided by God's grace, what is good will be cherished for the sake of what is better, the body will be loved for the soul's sake, the soul for God's sake, and God for His own sake.
So one sees the stages through which love of self and lust of fellow become love of God. A responsive emotion attends each ascending step in the saint's intellectual apprehension of love—as one should bear in mind while following the larger exposition of the theme in Bernard's De deligendo Deo.
The cause and reason for loving God is God; the mode is to love without measure: "Causa diligendi Deum, Deus est; modus, sine modo diligere." Should we love God because of His desert, or our advantage? For both reasons. On the score of His desert, because He first loved us. What stint shall there be to my love of Him who is my life's free giver, its bounteous administrator, its kind consoler, its solicitous ruler, its redeemer, eternal preserver and glorifier? On the other hand, "God is not loved without reward; ​but He should be loved without regard to the reward. Charitas seeks not its own. It is affection and not a contract; it is not bought, nor does it buy. Amor is satisfied with itself. It has the reward, which is what is loved. True love demands no reward, but merits one. The reward, although not sought by the lover, is due him, and will be rendered if he perseveres."
Bernard proceeds to expound the four stages or grades (gradus) of love:
   "Love is a natural affection, one of the four. As it exists by nature, it should diligently serve the Author of nature first of all. But as nature is frail and weak, love is compelled by necessity first to serve itself. This is carnal love, whereby, above everything, man loves himself for his own sake. It is not set forth by precept, but is rooted in nature; for who hates his own flesh? As love becomes more ready and profuse, it is not content with the channel of necessity, but will pour forth and overspread the broad fields of pleasure. At once the overflow is bridled by the command, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' This is just and needful, lest what is part of nature should have no part in grace. A man may concede to himself what he will, so long as he is mindful to provide the same for his neighbour. The bridle of temperance is imposed on thee, O man, out of the law of life and discipline, in order that thou shouldst not follow thy desires, nor with the good things of nature serve the enemy of the soul, which is lust. If thou wilt turn away from thy pleasures, and be content with food and raiment, little by little it will not so burden thee to keep thy love from carnal desires, which war against the soul. Thy love will be temperate and righteous when what is withdrawn from its own pleasures is not denied to its brother's needs. Thus carnal love becomes social when extended to one's kind.
   "Yet in order that perfect justice should exist in the love of neighbour, God must be regarded (Deum in causa haberi necesse est). How can one love his neighbour purely who does not love in God? God makes Himself loved, He who makes all things good. He who founded nature so made it that it should always need to be sustained by Him. In order that no creature might be ignorant of this, and arrogate for himself the good deeds of the Creator, the Founder wisely decreed that man should be tried in tribulations. By this means, when he shall have failed and God have aided, God shall be honoured by him whom He has delivered. The result is that man, animal and carnal, who knew not how to love any one beside ​himself, begins for his own sake to love God; because he has found out that in God he can accomplish everything profitable, and without Him can do nothing.
   "So now for his own interest, he loves God—love's second grade; but does not yet love God for God's sake. If, however, tribulation keeps assailing him, and he continually turns to God for aid, and God delivers him, will not the man so oft delivered, though he have a breast of iron and a heart of stone, be drawn to cherish his deliverer, and love Him not only for His aid but for Himself? Frequent necessities compel man to come to God incessantly; repeatedly he tastes and, by tasting, proves how sweet is the Lord. At length God's sweetness, rather than human need, draws the man to love Him. Thereafter it will not be hard for the man to fulfil the command to love his neighbour. Truly loving God, he loves for this reason those who are God's. He loves chastely, and is not oppressed through obeying the chaste command; he loves justly, and willingly embraces the just command. That is the third grade of love, when God is loved for Himself.
   "Happy is he who attains to the fourth grade, where man loves himself only on account of God. Thy righteousness, O God, is as the mountain of God; love is that mountain, that high mountain of God. Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord? Who will give me the wings of a dove and I will fly away and be at rest. Alas! for my long-drawn sojourning! When shall I gain that habitation in Zion, and my soul become one spirit with God? Blessed and holy will I call him to whom in this mortal life such has been given though but once. For to be lost to self and not to feel thyself, and to be emptied of thyself and almost to be made nothing, that pertains to heavenly intercourse, not to human affection. And if any one among mortals here gain admission for an instant, at once the wicked world is envious, the day's evil disturbs, the body of death drags down, fleshly necessity solicits, corruption's debility does not sustain, and, fiercest of all, brotherly love calls back! Alas! he is dragged back to himself, and forced to cry: 'O Lord, I suffer violence, answer thou for me' (Isa. xxxviii. 14); 'Who will deliver me from the body of this death?' (Rom. vii. 24).
   "Yet Scripture says that God made all things for His own sake; that will come to pass when the creation is in full accord with its Author. Therefore we must sometime pass into that state wherein we do not wish to be ourselves or anything else, except for His sake and by reason of His will, not ours. Then not our need or happiness, but His will, will be fulfilled in us. O holy love and chaste! O sweet affection! O pure and purged intention of the will, in which nothing of its own is mingled! This is it to be made God (deificari). As the drop of water is diffused in a jar of wine, taking its taste and colour, and as molten iron becomes like to fire ​and casts off its form, and as the air transfused with sunlight is transformed into that same brightness of light, so that it seems not illumined, but itself to be the light, thus in the saints every human affection must in some ineffable mode be liquefied of itself and transfused into the will of God. How could God be all in all if in man anything of man remained? A certain substance will remain, but in another form, another glory, another power."
Hereupon St. Bernard considers how this fourth grade of love will be attained in the resurrection, and "perpetually possessed, when God only is loved and we love ourselves only for His sake, that He may be the recompense and aim (praemium) of those who love themselves, the eternal recompense of those who love eternally."
Christ is the universal Mediator between God and man, not only because reconciling them, but as forming the intervening term, the concrete instance of the One suited to the comprehension of the other. Such thoughts and sentiments as commonly apply to man, when they are applied to Christ become fit to apply to God. Herein especially may be perceived the continuing identity of love, whether relating to human beings or to God. The soul's love of Christ is mediatorial, and symbolic of its love of God. All of which Bernard has demonstrated with conjoined power of argument and feeling in his famous Sermons on Canticles.
The human personality of Christ draws men to love Him, till their love is purged of carnality and exalted to a perfect love of God:
   "Observe that the heart's love is partly carnal; it is affected through the flesh of Christ and what He said and did while in the flesh. Filled with this love, the heart is readily touched by discourse upon His words and acts. It hears of nothing more willingly, reads nothing more carefully, recalls nothing more frequently, and meditates upon nothing more sweetly. When man prays, the sacred image of the God-man is with him, as He was born or suckled, as He taught or died, rose from the dead or ascended to heaven. This image never fails to nerve man's mind with the love of virtue, cast out the vices of the flesh and quell its lusts. I deem the principal reason why the invisible God wished to be seen in the flesh, and, as man, hold intercourse with men, was that He might ​draw the affections of carnal men, who could only love carnally, to a salutary love of His flesh, and then on to a spiritual love."
Conversely, the Saviour's example teaches men how they should love Him:
   "He loved sweetly, wisely, and bravely: sweetly, in that He put on flesh; wisely, in that He avoided fault; bravely, in that He bore death. Those, however, with whom He sojourned in the flesh, He did not love carnally, but in prudence of spirit. Learn then, Christian, from Christ how to love Christ."
Bernard shows how even the Apostles failed sometimes to love Him according to His perfect teaching and example:
   "Good, indeed, is this carnal love," he concludes, "through which a carnal life is shut out; and the world is despised and conquered. This love progresses as it becomes rational, and perfected as it becomes spiritual."
From his own experiences Bernard could have spoken much of the winning power of Jesus, and could have told how sweetly it drew him to love his Saviour's steps from Bethlehem to Calvary. The fifteenth sermon upon Canticles is on the healing power of Jesus' name.
   "Dry is all food for the soul unless anointed with that oil. Whatever you write is not to my taste unless I read Jesus there. Your talk and disputation is nothing unless that name is rung. Jesus is honey in the mouth, melody in the ear, joy in the heart. He is medicine as well. Is any one troubled, let Jesus come into the heart and thence leap to the lips, and behold! at the rising of that bright name the clouds scatter and the air is again serene. If any one slips in crime, and then desponds amid the snares of death, will he not, invoking that name of life, regain the breath of life? In whom can hardness of heart, sloth, rancour, languishment stand before that name? In whom at its invocation will not the dried fount of tears burst forth more abundantly and sweetly? To what fearful trembler did the power of that name ever fail to bring back confidence? To what man struggling amid doubts did not the clear assurance of that name, invoked, shine forth? Who despairing in adversity lacked fortitude if that name sounded? These are the languors and sickness of the soul, and that the medicine. Nothing is as potent to restrain the attack of wrath, or quell the tumour of pride, or heal envy's wound, or put out the fire of lust, or temper avarice. When I name Jesus, I see before me a man meek and humble of heart, benignant, sober, chaste, pitying, holy, who heals ​me with His example and strengthens me with aid. I take example from the Man, and draw aid from the Mighty One. Here hast thou, O my soul, an herb of price, hidden in the vessel of that name, bringing thee health surely and in thy sickness failing thee never."
This is a little illustration of Bernard's love of the Christ-man, a love which is ever taking on spiritual hues and changing to a love of the Christ-God. Christians, from the time of Origen, had recognized the many offices of Christ, the many saving potencies in which He ministered unto each soul according to its need. And so Bernard preaches that the sick soul needs Christ as the physician, but that the saintly soul has other yearnings for a more perfect communion.
This perfect communion, this most complete relationship which in this mortal life a soul can have with Christ, with God, had been symbolized, likewise ever since the time of Origen, by the words Bride and Bridegroom, and the Song of Songs had furnished the burning phrases. With surpassing spirituality Bernard uses the texts of Canticles to set forth the relationship of the soul to Christ, of man to God. The texts are what they are, burning, sensuous, fleshly, intense, and beautiful—every one knows them; but in Bernard's sermons flesh fades before the spirit's whiter glow.
   "O love (amor), headlong, vehement, burning, impetuous, that canst think of nothing beyond thyself, detesting all else, despising all else, satisfied with thyself! Thou dost confound ranks, carest for no usage, knowest no measure. In thyself dost thou triumph over apparent opportuneness, reason, shame, council and judgment, and leadest them into captivity. Everything which the soul-bride utters resounds of thee and nothing else; so hast thou possessed her heart and tongue."
What Bernard here ejaculates as to the overwhelming sufficiency of love, he sets forth finally in a sustained and reasoned passage, in which man's ways of loving God are cast together in a sequence of ardent thought and image. He has been explaining the soul's likeness to the Word. Although it be afflicted and defiled by sin, it may yet venture to come to Him whose likeness it retains, however ​obscured. The soul does not leave God by change of place, but, in the manner of spiritual substance, by becoming depraved. The return of the soul is its conversion, in which it is made conformable to God.
   "Such conformity marries the soul to the Word, whom it is like by nature, and may show itself like in will, loving as it is loved. If it loves perfectly it weds. What more delightful than this conformity, what more desirable than this love, through which thou, O soul, faithfully drawest near to the Word, with constancy cleavest to the Word, consulting Him in everything, as capable in intellect as audacious in desire. Spiritual is the contracting of these holy nuptials, wherein always to will the same makes one spirit out of two. No fear lest the disparity of persons make but a lame concurrence of wills: for love does not know respect. The name love comes from loving and not from honouring. He may honour who dreads, who is struck dumb with fear and wonder. Not so the lover. Love aboundeth in itself, and derides and imprisons the other emotions. Wherefore she who loves, loves, and knows nothing else. And He who is to be honoured and marvelled at, still loves rather to be loved. Bridegroom and Bride they are. And what necessity or bond is there between spouses except to be loved and love?
   "Think also, that the Bridegroom is not only loving but very love. Is He also honour? I have not so read. I have read that God is love; not that He is honour, or dignity. God indeed demands to be feared as Lord, to be honoured as Father, and as Bridegroom to be loved. Which excels the rest? Love, surely. Without it, fear is penal, and honour graceless. Fear is slavish till manumitted by love; and the honour which does not rise from love is adulation. To God alone belong honour and glory; but He will accept neither unless it is flavoured with love's honey.
   "Love asks neither cause nor fruit beyond itself. I love because I love; I love that I may love. A great thing is love. Among all the movements, sensations, and affections of the soul, it is the only one wherein the creature can make a return to its Author. If God be angry with me, shall I likewise be angry with Him? Nay, I will fear and tremble and beseech. If He accuse me, I will make no counter-charge, but plead before Him. If He judge me, I will not judge but worship. And when He saves me, He asks not to be saved by me; nor does He who frees all ask to be freed of any one. Likewise if He commands, I obey, and do not order Him. Now see how different it is with love. For when God loves, He wishes only to be loved; He loves with no other end than to be loved, knowing that those who love are blessed with love itself.
   "A great thing is love; but there are grades in it. The Bride stands at the summit. Sons love, but they are thinking of their inheritance. Fearing to lose that, they honour, rather than love, him from whom they expect it. Love is suspect when its suffrage appears to be won by hope of gain. Weak is it, if it cease or lessen with that hope withdrawn. It is impure if it desires anything else. Pure love is not mercenary: it gains no strength from hope, nor weakens with lack of trust. This love is the Bride's, because she is what she is by love. Love is the Bride's sole hope and interest. In it the Bride abounds and the Bridegroom is content. He seeks nothing else, nor has she ought beside. Hence he is Bridegroom and she Bride. This belongs to spouses which none else, not even a son, can attain. Man is commanded to honour his father and mother; but there is silence as to love. Which is not because parents are not to be loved by their sons; but because sons are rather moved to honour them. The honour of the King loves judgment; but the Bridegroom's love—for He is love—asks only love's return and faith.
   "Rightly renouncing all other affections, the Bride reposes on love alone, and returns a love reciprocal. And when she has poured her whole self out in love, what is that compared with the perennial flood of that fountain? Not equals in abundance are this loving one and Love, the soul and the Word, the Bride and Bridegroom, creature and Creator—no more than thirst equals the fount. What then? shall she therefore despair, and the vow of the would-be Bride be rendered empty? Shall the desire of this panting one, the ardour of this loving one, the trust of this confiding one be baffled because she cannot keep pace with the giant's course, in sweetness contend with honey, in mildness with the Lamb, in whiteness with the Lily, in brightness with the Sun, in love with Him who is love? No. For although the creature loves less, because she is less, yet if she loves with her whole self, nothing lacks where there is all. Wherefore, as I have said, so to love is to have wedded; for no one can so love and yet be loved but little, and in mutual consent stands the entire and perfect marriage."
Who has not marvelled that the relationship of marriage should make so large a part of the symbolism through which monks and nuns expressed the soul's love of God? Historically it might be traced to Paul's precept, "Husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the Church"; still more potently it was derived from the Song of Songs. But ​beyond these almost adventitious influences, did not the holy priest, the monk, the nun, feel and know that marriage was the great human relationship? So they drew from it the most adequate allegory of the soul's communion with its Maker: differently according to their sex, with much emotion, and even with unseemly imaginings, they thought and felt the love of God along the ways of wedded union or even bridal passion.
* ↑ A bibliography of what has been written on Bernard would make a volume. His own writings and the Vitae and Acta (as edited by Mabillon) are printed in Migne, tomes 182–185. The Vie de Saint Bernard, by the abbé Vacandard, in two volumes, is to be recommended (2nd ed., Paris, 1897).
* ↑ Vita prima, iii. cap. I (Migne, Pat. Lat. 185). This Vita was written by contemporaries of the saint who knew him intimately. But one must be on one's guard as to these apparently close descriptions of the saints in their vitae; for they are commonly conventionalized. This description of Bernard, excepting perhaps the colour of his hair, would have fitted Francis of Assisi.
* ↑ Vita prima, iii. 3. Bernard himself said that his aim in preaching was not so much to expound the words (of Scripture) as to move his hearers' hearts (Sermo xvi. in Cantica canticorum). That his preaching was resistless is universally attested.
* ↑ See, e.g., Vacandard, o.c. chap. i.
* ↑ Post, Chapter XLIII.
* ↑ Vita prima, i. cap. II. This William became Abbot of St. Thierry and one of Bernard's biographers.
* ↑ E.g. Ep. 107.
* ↑ Ep. 2.
* ↑ Ep. 110 (this is the whole letter).
* ↑ Ep. 112 (the entire letter). The Latin of this letter is given post, Chapter XXXI.
* ↑ Ep. 111.
* ↑ Ep. 152, ad Innocentium papam, A.D. 1135.
* ↑ Ep. 170, ad Ludovicum. Written in 1138.
* ↑ Ep. 191.
* ↑ Cf. post, Chapter XXXVI. i., regarding this instance of Bernard's zeal. His position is critically set out in Wilhelm Meyer's "Die Anklagesätze des h. Bernard gegen Abælard," Göttingische gelehrte Nachrichten, philol. hist. Klasse, 1898, pp. 397–468.
* ↑ Ep. 196, ad Guidonen; cf. Ep. 195 (A.D. 1140). See for the Latin of this letter post, Chapter XXXI.
* ↑ Ep. 147, to Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny (A.D. 1138).
* ↑ Ep. 101, ad religiosos; cf. also Ep. 136.
* ↑ Ep. 300.
* ↑ Vita prima, lib. vii. cap. 15.
* ↑ It was Bernard's third absence in Italy.
* ↑ Ep. 144, ad suos Clarae-Vallenses.
* ↑ Vita prima, lib. iii. cap. 7.
* ↑ Sermo xxvi. in Cantica.
* ↑ "Finem verborum indicunt lacrymae; tu illis, Domine, finem modumque indixeris."
* ↑ Ante, Chapter XVI.
* ↑ As Augustine before him. Cf. Taylor, The Classical Heritage, etc., pp. 129–131.
* ↑ Ep. 11, ad Guigonem. Bernard adds that when Paul says that flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God, it is not to be understood that the substance of flesh will not be there, but that every carnal necessity will have ceased; the love of flesh will be absorbed in the love of the spirit, and our weak human affections transformed into divine energies.
* ↑ Migne, Pat. Lat. 182, col. 973–1000.
* ↑ Love, fear, joy, sorrow
* ↑ Migne 183, col. 785–1198.
* ↑ Sermo xx. in Cantica.
* ↑ Sermo Ixxix. in Cantica.
* ↑ Sermo Ixxxiii. in Cantica. This is nearly the whole of this sermon. Bernard's sermons were not long. See post, Chapter XXXVI. ii., as to Bernard's use of the symbolism of the kiss.
* ↑ Post, Chapter XIX.