Gendered Identities in Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermons on the Song of Songs: Performing the Bride (Europa Sacra) (Europa Sacra, 15) 9782503550039, 2503550037

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Gendered Identities in B ernard of C lairvaux’ s Sermons on the Song of Songs

EUROPA SACRA Editorial Board under the auspices of Monash University General Editor Peter Howard, Monash University Editorial Board Megan Cassidy-Welch, Monash University David Garrioch, Monash University Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Carolyn James, Monash University Constant J. Mews, Monash University M. Michèle Mulchahey, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto Adriano Prosperi, Scuola Normale di Pisa

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Volume 15

Gendered Identities in B ernard of C lairvaux’ s Sermons on the Song of Songs Performing the Bride by

Line Cecilie Engh

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Engh, Line Cecilie, author. Gendered identities in Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermons on the Song of Songs : performing the bride. -- (Europa sacra ; 15) 1. Bernard, of Clairvaux, Saint, 1090 or 1091-1153 Sermones super Cantica Canticorum. 2. Bible. Song of Solomon--Criticism, interpretation, etc.--History--Middle Ages, 600-1500. 3. Bible. Song of Solomon--Sermons--Early works to 1800. 4. Gender identity in the Bible--Sources. 5. Women in the Bible--Sources. I. Title II. Series 223.9'083054-dc23 ISBN-13: 9782503550039

© 2014, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2014/0095/129 ISBN: 978-2-503-55003-9 Printed on acid-free paper

For my two fathers, in loving memory, and for my mother, who taught me to love history.

Contents Acknowledgements ix A Note on Editions and Translation

xi

Abbreviations xiii Introduction: The Bride as Trope for the Male

1

Chapter 1. Gender Blending and Gender Crossing in Premodern Devotion

17

Chapter 2. Erotic Imagery and Maternal Imagery — Configuring the Bride

63

Chapter 3. The Mother, the Virgin, and the Bride — Idealized Femaleness

151

Chapter 4. The Feminized Male — Displacement, Service, and Humility

203

Chapter 5. Inverting Hierarchies, Staging Eschatology — Unmaking and Remaking Worlds

263

Chapter 6. Appropriation and Unification — Feminized Man, Divinized Man

325

Conclusions: A World Without Women — The Bride and the Church Reforms

399

Appendix: The Vulgate Version of Cantica canticorum 1.1 to 3.1 with English Translation

409

Bibliography 413 Index

433

viii

Tables Table 1, p. 77. Trichotomies of spiritual perfection in Scc Table 2, p. 101. (Scc 9.7a) Table 3, p. 105. (Scc 9.7b) Table 4, p. 111. (Scc 9.8 and 41.5–6) Table 5, p. 116. (Scc 9.9–10) Table 6, p. 132. (Scc 52.2) Table 7, p. 152. Hermeneutical schema for the bride Table 8, p. 155. Dual division of bridal types Table 9, p. 241. (Scc 38.4) Table 10, p. 298. (Scc 25.5–7)

Contents

Acknowledgements

T

his book is the result of a long process which had its timid beginnings in a flimsy but passionate essay I wrote on Bernard as Dante’s last guide in the Divine Comedy while still a student at the University of Oslo. Intrigued, I entered the strange and densely poetic world of Bernard of Clairvaux. This encounter brought me to medieval studies and to Rome and, ultimately, led to the dissertation project which provides the basis for the present book. Along the way, certain individuals and institutions have made invaluable contributions. My gratitude, first and foremost, goes to Turid Karlsen Seim for that rarest gift of all: the ability, as Bernard puts it, to inseminate others. This study bears her image and likeness in subtle yet manifold ways. I also wish to thank Jan-Erik Ebbestad Hansen for his indispensable support, supervision, and encouragement. As a newcomer to the long-standing field of Bernardine and Cistercian studies, I would like to express my deep-felt gratitude to Mette Birkedal Bruun and Martha G. Newman — for their generosity, their challenges and inspiration, and for their scholarly contributions, from which I have learned so much. I would also like to take the occasion to thank Trond Berg Eriksen, who taught me the pleasure and pain of reading Dante Alighieri, and who thus introduced me to the craft of close reading. A special thanks to the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Oslo and to the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas for funding and supporting the project. I am particularly grateful to the Norwegian Institute in Rome and its staff for providing excellent facilities and a remarkable workplace, as well as a postdoctoral research grant which allowed me to complete the present volume. Thanks also to the medievalists of the Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Mediévales (FIDEM) and to the group of premodern scholars of the Circolo Gianicolense in Rome. My thanks also go to Brepols Publishers and to the editors of the series Europa Sacra for accepting this book for publication.

x

Acknowledgements

I particularly wish to thank Guy Carney and Peter Howard, for their friendliness and advice; Shannon Cunningham, for copy-editing; and Laura Napran, for providing the volume with a most useful index. Finally, to Giuseppe, grazie di esistere. Line Cecilie Engh University of Oslo Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas

A Note on Editions and Translation

I

have used the standard critical edition of Bernard’s Sermons on the Song of Songs, edited by Jean Leclercq and others, Sancti Bernardi Opera vols i–ii, in the Italian edition Opere di San Bernardo, vol. v.1–2, which includes the text edited by Leclercq and an Italian translation. The edition by Jean Mabillon is collected in Patrologia Latina, vol.  clxxxiii, cols  785–1198. Variations between the two editions in cited passages, if relevant to the discussion, will be noted in the footnotes. All citations will be given referring to standard divisions of the text and using the abbreviation Scc to indicate the work; Arabic numerals to indicate sermon and paragraph, followed by abbreviated reference to edition; volume in Roman numerals; and page number in Arabic numerals (e.g., Scc 1.1, OSB, v.1, 3 refers to Sermones super Cantica canticorum, sermon 1, paragraph 1, in Opere di San Bernardo, volume v, part 1, page 3). References to ‘the Sermons’ indicate Bernard’s Sermons on the Song of Songs, unless otherwise noted. In citing texts other than the Sermons on the Song of Songs, the first numeral after the title refers to liber or sermo, the second to caput or (in the case of sermons) paragraph; in the case of a third numeral it refers to paragraph (e.g. Augustine, De doctrina christiana 1.3.3 refers to liber 1, caput 3, paragraph 3). In translating Bernard’s Sermones super Cantica canticorum, I have consulted the commonly used English translation by Killian Walsh and others, On the Song of Songs vols i–iv, based on Leclercq’s critical edition and published by Cistercian Publications in the Cistercian Fathers Series (CF) as volumes 4, 7, 31, and 40. My translations substantially modify the translations in this publication, and hence I shall only refer to this translation when discussing it directly or comparing it with my own. I also modify, sometimes significantly, James’s translations of Bernard’s letters. Seeing that the present study is concerned with imagery and with gender, I have endeavoured to maintain and preserve the sense and consistency of the Latin in this regard as far as possible. This means that I translate, following the

xii

A Note on Editions and Translation

Latin, using the pronoun ‘she’ (or, less often, ‘he’) instead of ‘it’ where I believe it is significant and where it strengthens my argument. This regards especially pronouns referring to anima (soul) but also terms like Scriptura (Scripture) or littera (letter). Furthermore, I shall also translate the term homo as ‘man’, where Bernard intends ‘humanity’ or ‘mankind’, a term I otherwise seek to avoid unless it explicitly refers to a male human being. Here, I follow the gender implications of medieval Latin which will have homo as a universal term for ‘humanity’, with its underlying notions of male universality. I deviate from the CF publications and also from Leclercq’s edition in some small but significant technicalities. In deference to medieval orthographical practice, I deliberately avoid using quotation marks, whether Bernard is citing a biblical verse or whether he is proffering and assuming the voice of one of the exegetical characters in the sermons on the Song of Songs. To my mind the use of quotation marks in Bernard’s text is an imposition which disrupts the fluctuation of identity and meaning in the text. I also avoid the common practice of capitalizing sponsus (bridegroom) and sponsa (bride), because I believe that it contributes to reifying the figures instead of interrogating them. Finally, translations from the Vulgate Bible follow the Douay-Rheims Bible, online version: , with modifications.

Abbreviations

Apo

Apologia ad Guillelmum abbatem (Bernard)

CF

Cistercian Father Series

Coll. cist.

Collectanea cisterciensia

Conf

Confessiones (Augustine)

Contra Faust. Contra Faustum manichaeum (Augustine) CS

Cistercian Studies Series

Csi

De consideratione (Bernard)

De laude

De laude novae militiae (Bernard)

De mor

De moribus et officio episcoporum tractatus (Bernard)

Dil

De diligendo deo (Bernard)

Div

Sermones de diversis (Bernard)

Ep

Epistola

Gra

De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae (Bernard)

In laudibus

In laudibus virginis matris (Bernard)

In nat. BVM

In nativitate beatae virginis mariae sermo (Bernard)

James

The Letters of Saint Bernard, ed. and trans. by Bruno Scott James (Chicago: Regnery, 1953)

Abbreviations

xiv

LXX Septuaginta Mor

Moralia in Job (Gregory the Great)

NPNF

A Select Library of the Nicene and the Post-Nicene Fathers, Series i and ii, ed. by Philip Schaff and others, 28 vols (orig. publ. by Christian Literature Publishing, 1886–1900; repr. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995; repr. in electronic edition by Grand Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library )

OSB

Opere di San Bernardo, ed. by Jean Leclecq and others, trans. by Claudio Stercal and others, 6 vols to date (Milano: Scriptorium Claravalense, Fondazione di studi cistercensi, 1984–)

PG

Patrologiae cursus completus: series graeca, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 161 vols (Paris: Migne, 1857–66)

PL

Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris: Migne, 1841–66)

QH

Sermo super psalmum Qui habitat (Bernard)

Reg. Past. Liber regulae pastoralis (Gregory the Great) SBOp

Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. by Jean Leclecq, C. H. Talbot, and H. M. Rochais. 8 vols (Roma: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–77)

SC

Sources Chrétiennes (Paris: Éditions du cerf )

Scc

Sermones super Cantica canticorum (Bernard)

Song

Bernard of Clairvaux On the Song of Songs, trans. by Killian Walsh and others, 4 vols (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1971–80)

Introduction: The Bride as Trope for the Male

T

he Sermons on the Song of Songs are generally considered Bernard of Clairvaux’s most important work from both a literary and theological perspective. Written in Bernard’s monastery of Clairvaux between 1135, when he was rapidly becoming one of the most noted figures of the twelfth-century Church, and 1153, the year of his death, this text has puzzled and thrilled generations of scholars. The focal point of Bernard’s exegesis was the identification of the bride of the Song of Songs with the individual soul. Basically, there is nothing particularly remarkable in this; he was following a venerable tradition of Christian commentary where this was a perfectly accepted reading, second only to that of reading the bride as the Church.1 What gives Bernard’s exposition of the Song its singular character is the fact that he presented his reading in a series of sermons preached in front of an immediate audience, namely, the monks of Clairvaux. Bernard even provided the sermons with a precise monastic setting: the chapter house. Besides the question of whether or not the sermons were actually ever delivered to the monks in chapter, there is no doubt that this is how Bernard framed the text.2 1  On the two different modes of interpretation in medieval exegesis of the Song of Songs, see Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, pp. 13, 86–150. On the different levels of meaning in medieval hermeneutics in general, see Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, trans. by Sebanc and Macierowski. 2  It was long assumed by scholars that Bernard’s text originally contained sermons which were delivered in chapter, without formal preparations, and later written down by monks that had been present. This is the view of Jean Mabillon, repeated by Vacandard, Vie de saint Bernard, i, 472. This is almost certainly not the case, however, and evidence suggests a carefully composed literary work, even though the question of whether the sermons were ever delivered in chapter remains disputed. Arguing against oral delivery, see Leclercq, ‘Les Sermons sur Le Cantiques

2 INTRODUCTION

The chapter house of a Cistercian monastery was usually a rectangular hall, furnished with seating in wood or stone, where the monks could sit while the abbot spoke. In the rigorously regulated space and time of a Cistercian monastery, the abbot addressed his monks gathered in chapter each morning after prime: reading from the rule, commenting on biblical verses, and going through the chores of the day. Neither lay brothers nor visitors were admitted into the chapter house; it was, along with a major part of the cloister and of the church itself, restricted to the monks alone. This narrative frame is significant in that it lends a certain realism to the text, but also in that it stages the forging of a specifically Cistercian identity, basing itself on bridal imagery. The monastic setting was not novel to the Song of Songs. Neither, certainly, was the context of celibacy and asceticism. What made Bernard’s commentary on the Song different was that he addressed monastic males, inviting them to assume the role of bride of Christ. Even if representing celibacy as erotic bliss was no exegetical innovation, passing monks off as brides was. In the fourth century, Ambrose of Milan’s citations of biblical nuptial imagery suggest that his use of the bridal metaphor was limited to the consecrated virgin.3 Yet even if compared to the treatment of a writer like Jerome, who, in including widows, is clearly more extensive than Ambrose in his application of the bridal metaphor, the abbot of Clairvaux’s bride is a different figure altogether. The difference lies in the gender of the bridal candidate. ‘The soul has no sex’, Ambrose writes.4 All the same, his bride of Christ is clearly gendered. So is Bernard’s. But his bride is male, not female. Bernard’s Sermons on the Song of Songs have been extensively examined from the point of view of theological themes regarding the relationship between the soul-bride and the Word-bridegroom, often denoted as bridal mysticism or Brautmystik.5 It has been noted that Bernard’s hermeneutical approach to the ont-ils été pronounces?’, in Recueil, i, 191–244, and Leclercq, ‘Were the Sermons on the Song of Songs Delivered in Chapter?’ For the opposite view, see Holdsworth, ‘Were the Sermons of St Bernard on the Song of Songs Ever Preached?’ For a critique of both Leclercq and Holdsworth, see Verbaal, ‘Réalites quotidiennes et fiction littéraire’. 3  On Ambrose, see Hunter, ‘The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church’, p. 288: ‘The function of the bride of Christ was simply not open to other Christians, not even to other celibate Christians.’ 4  Ambrose, De virginitate 15.93, col. 290A: ‘Anima enim sexum non habet.’ 5  The term ‘bridal mysticism’ seeks to describe mystical union metaphorically as the marriage between the soul and God. An authoritative study of Bernard’s bridal mysticism is McGinn’s The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 158–224. Other standard works are Leclercq, ‘Saint Bernard and the Metaphor of Love’, and his Monks and Love.

The Bride as Trope for the Male

3

Song of Songs instates the self, or rather his own self, as a reflexive measure of the scriptural message.6 Yet it has rarely been asked: what are the implications of purporting the bride as trope for the male? For if ‘he’ is the bride of the Song of Songs, what are the assumptions which allow for a positive valorization of gender crossing from male to female? In other words, just what kind of ‘femaleness’ is this? And what does the ‘borrowing’ involved in appropriation produce in terms of discursive meaning, apart from producing an inherently shifty and unstable structuring of gender? The conventional view of medieval monasticism holds that medieval monks were ascetic, desexualized, and celibate beings whose lives, ideologies, and devotional ideals were gender-free. In my view, it was precisely this commonplace that effectively hindered a fuller insight into the imagery of Bernard’s text. The distinguished Bernard scholar, the late Jean Leclercq, epitomized this view. For Leclercq, Bernard’s female self-representation was a simple result of an accidental grammatical impetus whereby the soul, like the Church, is grammatically gendered feminine in Latin. Gender, he held, was irrelevant to the symbol of the bride.7 My point of departure has been the opposite. My argument rests on the assumption that gender significations are central to Bernard’s bridal imagery. Indeed, I suggest that a male exegete performing the role of the bride enhances rather than empties gender categories of significance.8 When ascetic discourse intersected with gender discourse in patristic and medieval texts, a double identification took place. Femaleness was allocated on the side of matter, and associated with the body, fleshliness, and worldliness, while maleness was associated with spiritualness. Since the movement from female to male expressed spiritual progression from fleshliness and worldliness to spiritualness, it would seem that Bernard — a monk striving to become bride of Christ — is moving the ‘wrong way’ in the gender hierarchy: down instead 6 

On the ‘experiential reading’ of Bernard, see McGinn, Growth of Mysticism, pp. 185–86; cf. Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, trans. by Sebanc and Macierowski, ii, 127–78. 7  See Leclercq, Monks and Love, pp.  29–61; see also statements by d’Avray, Medieval Marriage, pp. 201–02; cf. Keller, My Secret Is Mine, esp. pp. 60–61, who considers what she calls a process of ‘sexualization’ of the bridal metaphor in the later Middle Ages, when it became increasingly applied to women and was thus found unsuitable for males. 8  Caroline Walker Bynum’s ground-breaking studies opened up for this kind of analysis, especially ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’; Holy Feast and Holy Fast; and her essays in the collection Fragmentation and Redemption. I would also like to emphasize two recent articles that have been especially important for this study, namely Krahmer, ‘The Virile Bride’, and Damrosch, ‘Non alia sed aliter’.

4 INTRODUCTION

of up. So how did the movement from male to female function in terms of expressing spiritual progression? In assuming gender as an interpretative key, I would like to clarify my position on two fundamental theoretical points. Firstly, and most importantly, I hold that gender is a fundamental symbolic and rhetorical category that provides access to the text’s proliferating and winding imagery — an imagery, moreover, which drives and directs Bernard’s entire exposition. Disregarding gender means to dismiss subtexts, intertexts, and inexplicit presuppositions which may have been self-evident to twelfth-century textual communities, but which are easily lost on the modern reader. Yet I will emphasize that while gender theory may provide new insights into old texts, it becomes irrelevant unless accompanied by scrupulous close readings and historical contextualizations of the text. Secondly, while I share the position of post-structuralist gender theory in seeing the body as a site for production of cultural meaning, I do not embrace the more radical forms of social constructionism with its eradication of the ‘prediscursive’ body along with any other stable base for gender differentiation. Therefore, while this book invokes a host of concepts relating to the malleable and fluid character of gender inscriptions in Bernard’s Sermons — gender slippage, gender indeterminacy, gender destabilization, gender crossing, gender blending, gender inversion — and while I do employ some terminology prevalent in queer theory, I advocate neither Thomas Laqueur’s ‘one-sex body’ nor current notions of a ‘third gender’.9 Rather, I find that the medieval gender system, while it did allow for considerable play and fluidity within the basic division of male and female, was nevertheless under a dominant discourse of twofold articulation.10 In this reading of medieval gender, I follow the perspec9  On the ‘one-sex body’, see Laqueur, Making Sex; on ‘third gender’, see Herdt, Third Sex, Third Gender. Although the proposition of one sex might seem distant from that of three, in effect, both positions challenge the dual ordering of gender into male and female. Both, moreover, are drawn to and seek the ‘category crises’ where binary logic allegedly collapses. The impact of Laqueur’s and Herdt’s perspectives on gender studies has been somewhat akin to that of Judith Butler and other representatives of the academy who have been questioning if there is a physical body prior to the discursively constructed body. For a response to Laqueur from the perspective medieval philosophical and medical material, underscoring systems of binary gender differences that are more complex than Laqueur’s one-sex theory, see Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, esp. p. 3. For a discussion of Laqueur and Herdt, relevant to medieval studies, see Murray, ‘One Flesh, Two Sexes, Three Genders?’, esp. p. 37. For critical responses to social constructionism on the part of medievalists, see, e.g., Partner, ‘No Sex, No Gender’, and Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, pp. 16–17. 10  See Karras, ‘Thomas Aquinas’s Chastity Belt’, p. 53; Bynum, ‘The Body of Christ’, p. 108,

The Bride as Trope for the Male

5

tives of Caroline Walker Bynum, Joan Cadden, and Ruth Mazo Karras, who are all concerned with medieval sources, rather than the positions of Thomas Laqueur, Gilbert Herdt, or Judith Butler — none of whom with much to say about the Middle Ages. In the Sermons on the Song of Songs, the dual ordering into male and female may be destabilized or even subverted, but representations of gender still retain a sense of difference between male and female. It is this difference, moreover, which provides a vital dynamic to the gendered imagery. Male and female belong to that register of dualities, oppositions, inversions, ambiguities, and even paradoxes by which Bernard’s language endeavours to remake a worldly society so that transformed individuals can breach the boundaries between the world and heaven. This book argues that Bernard appropriates and performs femaleness in order to both descend and ascend, thus giving expression to the totality of Christomimetic transformation. The male-female duality in this language is not one of equality but is rather formed into a gendered hermeneutical hierarchy in which, ultimately, a fully Christomimetic man both assumes and negates femaleness.

A ‘Performance on an Empty Stage’ A basic approach of the present study is the assumption that Bernard’s bride, while clearly a female role, is nevertheless a role which presupposes male appropriation. It is this appropriation of femaleness involved in Bernard’s self-representation that I link to ‘performance’. My use of the terms ‘performance’ and ‘performing’ draws on both their metaphorical and their theoretical connotations. In a metaphorical sense, performance retains a notion of a theatrical and dramaturgical element. In this sense, I use the term to highlight the element of drama, theatricality, and staging in the Sermons on the Song of Songs — and even to evoke a sense of the fictive, the unreal, and rhetorically deliberate in Bernard’s constructions of the bride and, concurrently, of himself and the monastery. Emphasizing the fictive and unreal, I am alluding to aspects which M. B. Pranger has named ‘artificiality’.11 We shall come back to this shortly. has formulated well the point I am making: ‘For all their application of male/female contrasts to organize life symbolically, medieval thinkers used gender imagery more fluidly and less literally than we do.’ 11  See Pranger’s reading of Bernard, in The Artificiality of Christianity, pp. 45–58, 62–63, 78–81, 84–88; on the term ‘artificiality’, see pp. 17–38, esp. p. 23.

6 INTRODUCTION

The second sense of my usage of the terms ‘performing’ or ‘performance’, the theoretical reference, draws on a notion in performance studies that medieval mystical and devotional texts are not only expressions of piety and spirituality but also examples of enactment and implementation. Inherent in this concept of performance is that it effects something, that it does something. In this sense, performances — for instance, devotional performances, including both text and practice — can be viewed as methods of establishing rather than expressing identity.12 I would like to make clear, however, that while the subtitle of this book undoubtedly evokes Butlerian perspectives, particularly by the conflation of the terms ‘gender’ and ‘performance’, Judith Butler’s work is not central to the present study. Instead, I follow Pranger and Wim Verbaal, who have neatly underscored aspects of theatricality in monastic literature.13 The aspect of using performance as a strategy, whereby Bernard instates himself in various ‘roles’ which simultaneously establish identities and negotiate his monastic, exegetical, and hermeneutical concerns, will be a leitmotif in the current reading of gendered representations in the Sermons. Bernard does not merely liken himself to female characters — he literally assumes female roles: lactating his little girl-monks; writhing in ecstasy in the bridegroom’s embrace or copiously weeping in despair at his departure; girlishly clinging onto his mother’s frocks and goofily stumbling after her; or humbly cooking, cleaning, spinning, and providing his household with water. In the Sermons on the Song of Songs, Bernard figures as starring performer, set designer, and stage director of his exegesis. His audience, too — the monks of Clairvaux (constructed as listeners in the text), and, concurrently, the reader (who is transported, with the listeners, into the chapter house of Clairvaux) — plays an important part in this exegetical performance. The audience becomes a part of the ongoing drama, drawn in by the preaching abbot and allocated 12 

See, e.g., Suydam and Zeigler, Performance and Transformation. What may loosely be coined as ‘performance theory’ or ‘performance studies’, and which since the 1980s has spread from the field of linguistics to influence the humanistic disciplines in general, may be seen as approaches representing an array of different perspectives, rather than expressing any clear-cut theory. On performance and ritual and for overview of performance studies scholarship, see Bell, Ritual: Perspective and Dimentions, pp. 72–83. Performance theory in gender studies has the past two decades been commonly associated with the works of Judith Butler, especially Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter. 13  Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity, pp. 45–58, on Ep 64 and Csi; Verbaal, ‘Timeless Time’, on collections of miracle stories written after Bernard’s death; and Verbaal, ‘Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons for the Liturgical Year’, on Sermones per annum.

The Bride as Trope for the Male

7

roles, often as ‘little girls’. As performing audience, they do not merely listen to the words but participate directly in a densely symbolic and artificial world of spiritual meaning. Bernard’s performance, I hold, is intended to transform both performer and audience. Turning for a moment to the stage of this theatre, the chapter house of Clairvaux, there is a particularity which must somehow condition the reception of Bernard’s Sermons in Cistercian textual communities.14 This is the complete lack of figurative decoration, the encompassing decorative void. Cistercian monasteries had banished images from their churches and cloisters: the walls are bare, the capitals uncarved, even the manuscripts are unilluminated.15 In Étienne Gilson’s happy phrase, the Cistercians had ‘renounced everything save the art of good writing’.16 But here — precisely by way of their writing — colourful and luscious images return with a vengeance into the Cistercian monastery. Biblical images underlying the visual life of the community are transformed into something else, into mimetic performances: a landscape of mental images where there is no distance between the biblical text and its reinterpretation. In a remarkable passage, Pranger writes: The monk who is praying and singing in that space does not relate his inner thoughts to outer images. There simply are none. As a consequence he has to produce single-handedly a language, both liturgical and devotional, that can stand up to the emptiness of the place. Even greater creativity is demanded from an author such as Bernard, who takes it upon himself to give a literary account of what is going on inside that empty monastery. Because he has lost the support of visual images, the literary images he uses to fill up that space are bound to look like a performance on an empty stage. Thus forced to stand on their own feet, these images become intensely theatrical.17

Bernard’s performance on an empty stage, however, is arguably what allows for his unmaking and remaking of worlds. The extramural world, the ‘real’ world (including ‘real’ women, ‘real’ mothers, ‘real’ kisses), already so distant from the 14 

On Cistercian ‘textual communities’, see Stock, The Implications of Literacy, pp. 90–92, 405–06, 410. 15  For a discussion of Bernard’s attitude to images and decoration, and the controversy between him and Suger of St Denis, see Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought, pp. 215–32. For a different point of view, underscoring the presence of visual images at Clairvaux as well as in the Cistercian orbit generally, see Reilly, ‘Bernard of Clairvaux and Christian Art’. 16  Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, p. 7. 17  Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity, p. 47.

8 INTRODUCTION

monks, has evaporated into thin air, and another reality takes its place on that scene, in that ‘suspension of time within an oasis’.18 Bernard’s rhetoric, his language and style, is profoundly performative, not just because the text is theatrical, in the sense of theatre-like, but also because it establishes and negotiates identities, because it unmakes and remakes worlds. In Verbaal’s words, Bernard’s literature does not represent ‘a rendering of reality, but rather [is] in itself a new, higher reality’.19 His text is performative in the sense that devotional transformation — conversion, reversal, conformity, and transformation — is realized through and by language. Language and images become instruments by which to suspend the hierarchy of the world and anticipate divine restoration. Thus the reality of the extramural world is overtaken and absorbed by the performance, which in effect implements another reality — more real because it is primeval and spiritual. Performing the bride, Bernard interprets the bride and, in a certain sense, also embodies or actualizes the bride. 20 The bride provides a hermeneutical model on which he patterns himself and his audience: the Cistercian choir monk. The term ‘performance’ emphasizes that Bernard may slip in and out of the role of bride (or some other female character). My reading assumes a level of rhetorical control on the part of Bernard, which permits him, as author, to establish and to play with strategies of identification in the text. Indeed, I suggest that grammatical associations and identification constitute Bernard’s most important strategy for assuming the part of bride. Slipping into the role by means of shifts and reallocations in personal pronouns, he both affirms and denies association with the idealized bride. By identifying himself or his monks with the bride but also with various other exegetical characters, he achieves a rhetorical effect of assimilating his hermeneutics, where the border-lines between the preacher, the audience, and the subject matter are blurred. This is what I intend by ‘self-representation’: an orchestrated literary expression in which the literary persona Bernard — abbot, preacher, and exegete — deliberately and self-consciously ‘enters the text he is preaching about or commenting

18 

Lubac’s description of the Cistercian monastery, in Medieval Exegesis, trans. by Sebanc and Macierowski, ii, 150. 19  Verbaal, ‘Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons for the Liturgical Year’, p. 51. 20  Dyan Elliott’s new book, The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell, came into my hands after this book had been written, but her perspectives on the embodiment and actualization of metaphor are close to the present study (esp. pp. 1–3).

The Bride as Trope for the Male

9

on in order to come out dressed in its garments carrying his listener and reader along in the act’.21 In the Sermons, the entrance of Bernard’s ego in a given passage often indicates a hermeneutical demarcation line: the rhetorical temperature rises, the exposition becomes more suggestive, and often the sermon moves towards a stylistic and spiritual peak. Sometimes the abrupt intrusion of the emphasized ‘I’ not only intensifies the treatment but even seems to have the effect of breaking a smooth rhetorical flow, as if to startle the listener or reader (perhaps a drowsy monk, uncomfortably seated in chapter on a cold and misty morning).22 Structurally, this shift in hermeneutical emphasis usually occurs after Bernard has already established an interpretative framework, in other words, when he is well into the exposition, so that the ‘roles’ to be ‘performed’ have been fashioned, and the exegete need only blend himself into the part. Bernard plays double, even multiple rhetorical roles, permitting an oscillation between the impersonal first-person voice of the preacher addressing his monks and the personal subject performing an exegetical role. By this approach, the first-person voice of Bernard is transformed into that of an exegetical character. In this way he instates himself as a mirror image of the scriptural message: a practice I shall also refer to as ‘autoexegesis’.23 Appropriating words and phrases from Scripture (often, though certainly not always, from the Song of Songs), Bernard re-enacts and even implements the sense of the biblical text in his monastic context. Jean Leclercq pointed out that the break with the oblate system changed the nature of the monastic audience.24 Cistercian monks had not grown up within the confine of the monastery, as had been common in previous Benedictine monasticism. Rather, they were adult recruits with a secular background. 21 

Borrowing Pranger’s evocative phrasing, ‘The Persona of the Preacher in Bernard of Clairvaux’, p. 33. 22  For examples and discussion, see, e.g., Scc 14.6 below, Section 4.2; and Scc 29.8 below, Section 5.4. The examples of the emphatic use of ego in the Sermons are many, often appearing with an intensifying adverb or pronoun — ego ipse … ego vero … ego autem … ego enim … ego profecto — even though the pronoun already in itself carries an element of emphasis in Latin where pronouns are not required along with verbs. A quick computer estimation gives 323 occurrences of ego in the Sermons (many are in biblical quotes). By comparison, ‘humility’ (humilitas in all its inflexions), a favourite Bernardine theme, occurs ninety-seven times throughout the Sermons. 23  I borrow the term ‘autoexegesis’, or autoesegesi, from Dante scholarship, see Ascoli, Dante and the Making of a Modern Author, p. 175; and Gilson, Dante and Renaissance Florence, p. 5. 24  Leclercq, Monks and Love, pp. 8–26.

10 INTRODUCTION

Bernard McGinn has drawn attention to how this consequently affected the manner the audience was addressed in Cistercian preaching and writing.25 Not only did it become more exclusive, that is, specifically directed towards a monastic audience, it also became more elitist. Also other commentators have taken note of the elitist character of Cistercian literature. Martha Newman discusses at length the Cistercians’ underlying sense of superiority, and Pranger likewise registers Bernard’s ‘supreme monastic arrogance’.26 Not only sociological factors, like adult recruitment, but also exegetical practices helped shape the Cistercian monastery into a hothouse of spiritual elitism and introvert self-reflection. For Henri de Lubac, twelfth-century monastic literary activity, especially Cistercian literary activity, represented the culmination of ‘mystical tropology’.27 There is basically nothing totally new in this approach to Scripture: the ‘moral’ meaning of Scripture (i.e., tropology) had been exposed regularly in the exegetical tradition since Origen. Gregory the Great, for example, had eloquently expressed this hermeneutical principle of appropriation and interiorization of the biblical text, claiming that ‘we ought to transform what we read within ourselves’.28 By establishing patterns of common identity and communal references based on shared mental inventories of biblical and monastic imagery, Bernard could redirect and refashion the monks’ individual, past experiences. The Cistercian monastery may have been a woman-free environment, but the men who became monks had had previous contact with mothers, sisters, wives, nursemaids, and other women. Drawing his monastic audience into the vividly feminized and eroticized imagery, Bernard invited the Cistercian choir monks to invest and transform their own extramural experience thus also remaking the monks’ secular experiences into monastic ones.

25 

McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 160. Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp.  123–40, and Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity, p. 48. 27  Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, trans. by Sebanc and Macierowski, ii, 127–78. On the relation of text and experience in the perspective of establishing a ‘textual community’, see Stock, The Implications of Literacy, pp. 405–07, 451–54. On the emphasis of ‘personal experience’ in Bernard, see McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 185–86. 28  Mor, 1.24.33, col.  542C: ‘In nobismetipsis namque debemus transformare quod legimus.’ 26 

The Bride as Trope for the Male

11

Coherence and Disorder The eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs cover a vast range of topics as the exegete proceeds — by meditative ruminations and digressions, by disorderly yet carefully constructed detours — to expose the biblical text. By creating notions of temporal continuity, Bernard provides a coherence which otherwise seems absent from the work. If nothing else, the organization of sermons read successively, in front of the same audience, and the abbot’s promises to pursue and explore given issues, lends the text a sense of a minimal narrative unity in the form of linear unity or progression. Bernard announces what they shall speak of ‘today’, or refers back to ‘yesterday’s sermon’, or combines the two by introducing ‘today’s theme’ as the fulfilment of a promise made ‘yesterday’.29 Sometimes he indicates external events that have caused him to interrupt or redirect his sermons — such as when he, upon his ‘third return from Rome’ in 1138, opens Sermon 24 with reference to the resolved papal schism,30 and when, in the same year, he composed Sermon 26 as a lamentation at the death of his brother Gerard. A few of the sermons are direct responses to current theological issues, such as Sermons 65–66, in which he refutes the so-called Rhineland heretics or ‘neo-cathars’, and Sermon 80, in which he refutes the teaching of Gilbert de la Porrée after the council at Rheims in 1148. Finally, the most definite interruption, the death of the exegete himself — when he had reached the first verse of the third chapter of the Song of Songs — occurs midway in Sermon 86, leaving the amputated sermon gaping between ominous oppositions of darkness and light, night and salvation.31 To what extent might we consider the corpus of sermons as one literary unit? The unsystematic and digressive character of the text as well as its assumed incompleteness has likely contributed to a certain tendency in scholarship to disregard questions of underlying structure, rhythm, and continuity. Jean Leclercq, who has reconstructed the making of the Sermons on the Song of 29 

‘Today’ (hodierna, hodiernum): e.g., Scc 3.1, OSB, v.1, 54; and Scc 36.1, OSB, v.2, 34. ‘Yesterday’ (hesternus, hesterni, hesterno): e.g., Scc 4.1, OSB, v.1, 62; Scc 50.1, OSB, v.2, 186; Scc 54.1, OSB, v.2, 230; Scc 77.1, OSB, v.2, 530; and Scc 81.1, OSB, v.2, 574. ‘Hodie vobis, sicut hesterna promissione tenetis’: Scc 8.1, OSB, v.1, 98. 30  Scc 24.1, OSB, v.1, 326: ‘Hoc demum tertio, fratres, reditum ab Urbe nostrum.’ 31  After Bernard’s death, Gilbert of Hoyland, abbot of Swineshead Abbey in Lincolnshire in England, continued where Bernard left off. When also Gilbert died without having completed the commentary, the work passed to John, abbot of Ford in Dorset, who finished in one hundred and twenty sermons.

12 INTRODUCTION

Songs, held that Bernard worked continuously on the text until his death, resulting in two principal and successive redactions of the sermons.32 In Leclercq’s reconstruction, there is certainly doctrinal unity but hardly literary unity. More recently, the text’s literary aspects have begun to draw the attention of scholars, most notably M. B. Pranger, who links the ruminative and slow progression in the Sermons to monastic concepts of memory, and Wim Verbaal, who has recently proposed a reading which argues for their completeness and literary unity.33 Whereas traditional Bernardine scholarship, represented by the works of Jean Leclercq and Étienne Gilson, have characteristically emphasized doctrinal coherence but downplayed the literary quality of the text, Pranger and other critics have been interested in disruptions, contingency, and disorderliness of the text, proposing a less systematic and more literary approach. This book’s argument does not presuppose literary unity (but nor does it dismiss it), although it does propose to establish devotional cohesion, exposing underlying structures of ideology, especially gender ideology. The book works its way through the corpus by going back and forth between sermons. Yet even if I do not assume that the eighty-six sermons follow an clear structuring principle — except a linear movement (starting with Song 1. 1, moving forward until Song 3. 1, where the exposition stops) — there are sets of sermons which appear to be more related than others, often bound together by a common theme: I shall refer to these as ‘sermon cycles’. These sermon cycles are not clearly delineated, but they do focalize and develop on some central ideas. For the present purpose, one may identify at least five such sermon cycles with more or less clear thematic profiles. The first runs from Sermons 3 to 9, dominated by the image of the kiss from Song 1. 1.34 The next group, running from Sermons 9 to 14, centre on the image of the breasts, still from the first verse of the Song.35 Here Bernard introduces imagery of fecundation and maternity, which becomes directly linked to the kiss (the holy kiss which impregnates). 32  The first redaction, according to Leclercq, was preserved in Cistercian filiations of Morimond east of Champagne, the second in Cistercian foundations in England. In addition to an intermediate redaction on the Continent, there was also a revision prepared at Clairvaux after the death of Bernard. See Leclercq, ‘The Making of a Masterpiece’, esp. pp. xii–xiii, and, in a fuller version, Recueil, i, 213–351. 33  See Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought and The Artificiality of Christianity, esp. pp. 86–88. For the argument that the Sermons on the Song of Songs are complete as they are, see Verbaal, ‘Les Sermons sur le Cantique de Saint Bernard’. 34  See below Section 2.3. 35  See below Sections 2.4 and 6.2.

The Bride as Trope for the Male

13

The third sermon cycle of significance for the present study is in Sermons 24 to 30, which draws on Song 1. 4, ‘I am black but beautiful’.36 In this group of sermons we find the most important inversions and reversals where Bernard overturns ugly-beautiful, black-white, life-death, and pleasure-pain. The fourth sermon cycle, from Sermons 46 to 58, is dominated by the imagery of the bridal bed and the embrace.37 With the key verse from Song 2. 4 — ‘he has ordered love in me’ — we find here the most explicit discussions on the active life versus the contemplative life. The fifth and final group of sermons runs from Sermon 80 to 85, where Bernard discusses likeness between the soul and God as a sign of their marriage contract.38 This is a study of metaphor and rhetoric, and thus of language. Fundamentally, I am arguing for the centrality of textual images and representations in transmitting and perceiving meaning, and hence their significance to discourse. As Mary Carruthers has shown, images inherent in meditation and ornamentation served essential functions of cogitation in medieval intellectual life. In medieval theories of representation, images — tangible and non — did not merely convey theological ideas or didactic ends. Rather, they were ‘thinking machines’, closely related to the mnemotechnics of ancient rhetoric. Like sites plotted on a map, schemes and tropes of Scripture functioned as stations on the way or direction markers. Carruthers notes: The emphasis upon the need for human beings to ‘see’ their thoughts in their minds as organized schemata of images, or ‘pictures’, and then to use these for further thinking, is a striking and continuous feature of medieval monastic rhetoric, with significant interest for our own contemporary understanding of the role of images in thinking.39

The bridal metaphor demonstrates the power of language in shaping and sustaining symbolic and therefore also real worlds. Chapter 1 deals with the language of gender in premodern devotional discourse. It sets the relation between the patristic and medieval devotional models of gender inversion — the virago (i.e., the virile or manly woman) and the male bride — positioning them in their historical and discursive contexts in relation to virginity, asceticism, celibacy, and androgyny. The virago and the 36 

See below Sections 5.3 and 5.4 See below Sections 2.5 and 2.6. 38  See below Sections 2.8 and 6.1. 39  Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, p. 3 and p. 116.. 37 

14 INTRODUCTION

male bride may appear antithetical, but are they really? By juxtaposing these two devotional models of gender crossing and gender blending, I examine the rhetorical and discursive functions of masculinizing females and feminizing males, an examination which persists throughout the whole book. In Chapter 2, the attention shifts to Bernard. The first subchapter examines the doctrinal foundations which provide subtexts for Bernard’s imagery: the contemplative life and the active life, ascent and descent, uti and frui, and the threefold hermeneutical formula. Tensions in Bernard’s dualities will be explored by drawing a delineation between maternal and erotic imagery as expressing the twofold Cistercian ideal of spiritual perfection: interplay between activity and contemplation, duty and fruition, descending love and ascending love. The two aspects, I argue, are related and united in the figure of the bride. This dual pattern is analysed by examining Bernard’s treatment of central metaphors, such as the banquet of bread, the kiss, the breasts, the bedchamber and the bed, the embrace, and birthing. Chapter 3 pursues this line of analysis by relating the interpretation of the bride, and the imagery associated with the bride, to idealized female roles from patristic discourse — namely, the mother, the virgin, and the widow. These roles, telescoped into the bride and appropriated by Bernard, establish — as in patristic writing — a hierarchy of femaleness: the virgin is more idealized, the widow less, and the mother least. We find, then, that late ancient discourse on idealized female roles reasserted itself in Bernard’s bridal imagery. The aspect of Bernard’s female performance as a way of rhetorically establishing notions of humility, service, and displacement is explored in Chapter 4. Here, the reading moves from notions of idealized femaleness in the previous chapter, to notions of feminization as representing degradation and displacement. Parting from the commonplace observation that a medieval male who feminizes himself degrades himself, the chapter evaluates Bernard’s identification with femaleness in terms of representing a rhetorical strategy of humility. Identifying female characters, unrelated with the bride, which have been largely ignored in scholarship, this chapter considers the ‘little girls’, who represent spiritual immaturity and hermeneutical displacement, and the female domestic roles of the spinner and the woman at the well, who represent humility and service. Here, unlike with the bride, the gendered marker of femaleness constitutes explicitly inferiority, weakness, and servitude: invoking above all notions of the primal monastic virtue, humility. Following this line of argument, the chapter discusses femaleness as representing unlikeness and exile, analysing a key passage in the Sermons that deals with the vital question of what will happen to femaleness in an eschatological perspective. Here, I draw the important

The Bride as Trope for the Male

15

conclusion that eschatological ‘perfect beauty’ and godlikeness seem to exclude femininity. In other words, gendered discourse related to the virago model emerges and imposes itself upon the gendered language of bridal imagery. In the final analysis of the chapter, this insight is extended to ascertain Bernard’s most famous and most explicit performance as bride in the Sermons, where he assumes identification with the bride as s/he is about to be abandoned by the bridegroom. This perspective leads on to the question of Bernard’s rhetorical technique of reversals and inversions. How and why the elitist countererotics of Bernard’s Sermons works to establish a notion of a parallel monastic world, which constitutes an inverted and subversive version of the secular world, will be argued in Chapter 5. Here, self-feminization is viewed in light of parallel inversions in the Sermons: transpositions of black and white, exaltation and lowliness, asceticism and eroticism. Bernard employs inversions as a hermeneutical tool, an instrument with which he might overturn worldly and fleshly hierarchies, thus asserting his programme of Cistercian devotional ideals. At the same time, inversions function as an instrument with which to implement — here, now, in his monastery, and in his exegesis — eschatological anticipation. Bernard’s performance of femaleness, then, captures the concerns of Christomimetic devotion and of eschatology. Chapter 6, finally, pursues this perspective of Christomimesis — imitating and mirroring the bridegroom — while shifting the attention towards gender instability as an element of imitatio Christi. Parting from a discussion of the impetus towards oneness inherent in the nuptial imagery of the Sermons, the chapter explores the gender destabilization both in the figure of Christ the bridegroom and in the male exegete performing the bride, thereby placing gender appropriation at the service of universalizing discourse. Gender slippage, but this time from female to male, becomes apparent in the hermeneutical movement from a literal understanding to a spiritual understanding. This final chapter brings together most of the major lines of the present study by intersecting configurations of gender and hermeneutics in Bernard’s Sermons. It shows that dualities in the text — duty and pleasure, nutrition and fruition, male and female — are seen to destabilize if not collapse entirely by the discursive impetus towards hierarchization, in an ordering where the lower is subsumed into the higher. Ultimately, by appropriating femaleness, the male exegete mimics transcendental and ideal Christlike maleness which also absorbs all femaleness, like the spiritual meaning subsumes the literal or fleshly meaning. The conclusion, finally, positions Bernard’s female performance in the context of reformulations in power and gender relations in the twelfth-century eccle-

16 INTRODUCTION

siastic and monastic reform movement. Bernard’s appropriation emphasizes the potential for female representation in organizing and contesting relations between men in a homosocial community: on a small scale, Clairvaux; on a larger scale, the Church. In this book I have sought an approach which could take into account Bernard’s imagery without explaining it away, without excusing it, and without ignoring it. In the process, I found indispensable guidance from Caroline Walker Bynum’s studies on medieval devotional symbolism, from M. B. Pranger’s evocative interpretations of poetics and performance in monastic literature, from Martha Newman’s carefully nuanced reconstructions of the ideologies and developments of the early Cistercian order, and from the younger generation of Bernard-scholars — Mette Birkedal Bruun and Wim Verbaal, among others — with their subtle and sensitive readings of the rhetorical and literary aspects of Bernard’s writings. My own study would not have been possible without these ground-breaking contributions. It is my hope that the present enquiry will further the recognition of the centrality of gender and gendered imagery in Bernard’s text. A comprehensive study of the female functions and roles in the Sermons on the Song of Songs, especially regarding other aspects than motherhood themes, has been lacking in scholarship. The book shows that the female hermeneutical roles of the Sermons on the Song of Songs span from idealization to denigration; from activity to contemplation; from fruition and bliss to self-abjection and sacrifice; from the elitism of the female virgin-martyr to the fecundity and nurturance of the mother; from the exile, grief, and chastity of the widow to the servitude and dutifulness of the spinning woman, the woman at the well, and the anointing woman; and from the inferiority, humility, weakness, and displacement of the little girls to the superior lowliness of the voluntarily feminized male. I believe that Barbara Newman is correct when she writes that ‘a meticulous and attentive reading of the texts, with respect for their primary religious concerns, can tell us more even about questions of gender and power than an interrogation exclusively along those lines’.40 In this sense, a careful study of textual representations of femaleness and maleness in this influential and important text may provide an insight into how symbolic structures of gender have organized perceptions of the world.41

40  41 

Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, p. 246. See Scott, ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’, esp. pp. 1067–69.

Chapter 1

Gender Blending and Gender Crossing in Premodern Devotion Talem te fieri cupio, splendida et clara virgo, immo de viro Christo virilis et incorrupta virago. Osbert of Clare, in a letter of spiritual guidance1

non est masculus neque femina Gal 3. 28

1.1 The Virago For Christian writers in the patristic age, gender categories would come to represent superior and inferior states of spiritual being, and vice versa: superior and inferior states of being would represent gender categories. The world of the late Roman Empire could draw upon a number of sources — from philosophy, medicine, and theology, of Platonic, Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, apocryphal, and biblical origin — which gave expression to ideas of gendered differentiation. Moreover, just as maleness and femaleness could represent, respectively, concepts of superiority and inferiority, gender categories could be reassigned according to the spiritual perfection of the subject in question. Early Christian and patristic literature, hagiography especially, abounds with stories of holy women who are called ‘men’ by their admirers or biographers, or both. Clearly, in this context of gendered devotional language, the transition from female to male was employed in order to express — symbolically — a progressive movement to a higher state of spiritual perfection. ‘Becoming male’ would be understood as a mark of spiritual promotion, a rung up the ladder of spiritual merit. 1 

The Letters of Osbert of Clare, letter 40, ed. by Williamson, p. 136.

18

Chapter 1

In being called a man, the holy female obtains a quasi-masculine state, something like an honorary male,2 which seems to follow logically from the presumption that, ontologically, women are somehow less disposed to spiritual life and world renunciation than men. Even allowing for significant variations between exegetes, early Christian and patristic exegesis was all the same quite consistent in associating male with the spirit and female with the body. Most agreed that the gendered human subject is composed of a male principle, which corresponds to the mind, and a female principle, which corresponds to the body, and that the two are not reciprocal but asymmetrical. This kind of gender construction, as has been noted in a number of studies, was ultimately drawn from Greek philosophical sources, particularly Plato and Aristotle.3 Hellenistic philosophy organized dichotomies, such as form/matter, active/passive, rational/irrational, and order/disorder, corresponding to the structural binary of male/female. Platonizing Christians and philosophically trained exegetes, in an effort to harmonize Scripture with concepts from Hellenistic philosophical speculation, used these structures as part of the ordering principles for their biblical exegesis — and, significantly, for Genesis. Exegetes explored the concept of imago Dei (Gen 1. 26–27) in relation to gender, asking whether the homo made in God’s image incorporated men and women equally, or if only men partook fully in divine likeness.4 Thus the Creation story came to be the primary reference for discussions on gender and gender differentiation in the Middle Ages. Neither the Western nor the Eastern exegetical traditions incorporated femaleness fully into the constitution of the primal being. In its most radical formulations, the feminine was twice displaced, for example, in Philo of Alexandria’s influential reading. The first human, for Philo, was a spiritual being, the Idea of Adam, created in God’s image (Gen 1. 27). The second was the material Adam, created from the mud, and from whom Eve was created (Gen 2. 7–25). Hence, there is, firstly, a primal, immaterial and spiritual ‘man’ of no sex; secondly, a primal male; and, thirdly, a secondary female.5 Even in its more moderate formulations — for example, those of Clement of Alexandria 2  See, e.g., Castelli, ‘“I Will Make Mary Male”’, cf. Boyarin, ‘On the History of the Early Phallus’, pp. 6–8. 3  There is a vast literature on this topic. For some general statements, see Lloyd, Man of Reason; Bugge, Virginitas; Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism. 4  See also below Section 1.4. 5  On Philo’s understanding of the maleness of reason, see Lloyd, Man of Reason, pp. 22–28.

Gender Blending and Gender Crossing in Premodern Devotion

19

(Stromata) and Augustine (De Genesi ad litteram, De trinitate) — the ‘male and female he created them’ (Gen 1. 27) was still eclipsed by a gender-neutral homo: the notion of an exemplary male which precedes the accidental division into gender.6 Inherent in these formulations is a concept of gender and femaleness as being secondary to human essence. In this way, gender — as ontological category — becomes written as female, because only with the creation of the female is human nature divided into gender. In the course of the fourth and fifth centuries, however, discussions on gender in biblical commentary gradually moved from an understanding where only men are creationally godlike, and where women must achieve salvation by ‘becoming Christlike’ (Eph 4. 13) — that is, male — to an understanding where the Genesis verses are glossed in order to establish an interpretation of godlikenss which also embraces females (emphasizing the rational, sexless soul), thus arriving at a gender-free (but, all the same, androcentric) definition of imago Dei.7 However, as we shall see, the pairing of maleness and femaleness in patristic and medieval Christian writing is infinitely more complex than spiritual men versus physical women. Rather, both sexes take part in both attributes. The hierarchy of gender linked all Christians both to the spirit and to the flesh.8 Thus, when a holy female was called a ‘man’, it expressed her superiority, not just over other women but also over all persons — unconditioned by gender — who are carnally, and not spiritually, inclined. Becoming male developed into a veritable topos in late ancient Christian literature. One of the oldest examples of imagery which proposes gender crossing as salvational paradigm in a Christian text is in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas of the first or second century. The passage recounts that Saint Peter wanted Mary (Magdalene) to leave the disciples on account of her sex. At this, Christ intervenes, telling the apostles that he will make her male: ‘I will make her male, that she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’9 Another early paradigm for devotional gender-crossing imagery from female to male is 6 

Børresen, ‘In Defence of Augustine’. Børresen, ‘In Defence of Augustine’, p. 17, and ‘Ancient and Medieval Church Mothers’, pp. 150–52. 8  The point is emphasized by, among others, Bynum, in The Resurrection of the Body and ‘The Body of Christ’; see also Boyarin, ‘On the History of the Early Phallus’. 9  Logion 114; The Gospel According to Thomas, establ. and trans. by Guillaumont and others, p. 57. 7 

Chapter 1

20

found in the third-century narrative of the martyrdom of Saint Perpetua, who, in a last vision before her death in the arena, sees her body change into a man’s: ‘I was stripped naked, and became a man [et facta sum masculus]. And my supporters began to rub me with oil, as they do for a wrestling match.’10 The locus classicus of the metaphor of becoming male is Jerome’s imagery of gender crossing to describe women dedicated to a spiritual life: As long as woman devotes herself to birth and children, she is different from man as body is from soul. But if she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be a woman and shall be called a man.11

Writing of Theodora, a Christian matron and wife of Lucinius, Jerome persists in gender-crossing imagery: ‘once wife, now a sister; once a woman, now a man; once an inferior, now an equal’.12 Also Palladius, in his Lausiac History, extols ‘manly women’ whose virtue matches that of men: ‘I must also commemorate in this book the manly women [gynaikon andreion] to whom God granted struggles equal to those of men, so that no one could plead as an excuse that women are too weak to practice virtue successfully.’13 In the same vein, Paulinus of Nola writes of Melania the Elder: ‘What a woman she is, if one can call so manly a Christian a woman.’14 Similarly, Palladius again, also writing of Melania, describes her as the ‘female man of God’ (Hē [feminine article] anthrōpos tou deou),15 while Porphyry advises his wife: ‘Do not consider yourself a woman: I

10 

Passio Ss. Perpetuae et Felicitatis 10.7, ed. and trans. by Musurillo, p. 118; cited in Børresen, ‘Ancient and Medieval Church Mothers’, p. 153: ‘Et expoliata sum et facta sum masculus; et coeperunt me fauisores mei oleo defricare, quomodo solent in agone.’ On the impact of The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas as devotional model, see Castelli, ‘“I Will Make Mary Male”’. For a medieval contextualization, see Newman, ‘“Crueel Corage”’. 11  Jerome, Commentarius in Epistolam ad ephesios 3.5.28, col. 533BC: ‘Quamdiu mulier partui servit et liberis, hanc habet ad virum differentiam, quam corpus ad animam. Sin autem Christo magis voluerit servire quam saeculo, mulier esse cessabit, et dicetur vir.’ 12  Jerome, Epistola 71.3, col.  670: ‘de conjuge germanam, de femina virum, de subjecta parem’. 13  Palladius, Historica Lausiaca 41.1, ed. by Butler, ii, 128; Palladius: The Lausiac History, trans. by Meyer, p. 117; cited in Børresen, ‘Ancient and Medieval Church Mothers’, p. 156. 14  Paulinus of Nola, Epistola 29.6, col. 61:315B: ‘(At quam tamdem feminam) si feminam dici licet, tam viriliter Christianam.’ 15  Palladius, Historica Lausiaca 9.1, ed. by Butler, p. 29, Palladius: The Lausiac History, trans. by Meyer, p. 43; cited in Cloke, ‘This Female Man of God’, p. 214, and Børresen, ‘Ancient and Medieval Church Mothers’, p. 156.

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am not attached to you as a woman. Flee from all that is effeminate in the soul as if you had taken a man’s body.’16 Alongside this kind of gender-crossing imagery in Late Antiquity, ran a popular current in hagiography and monastic legend: stories of cross-dressing female saints — young women who dressed up and pass themselves off as men. Unlike the examples of symbolic sex change listed above, and illustrated by the words of Jerome and Paulinus, among others, this kind of narrative remained a predominantly (if not exclusively) Greek tradition. In the Byzantine Empire during the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, a significant number of monastic legends telling of women disguised as men were distributed.17 These Vitae of transvestite female saints display a common theme, with slight variations: crossdressing functions as a disguise to enter monastic life, enabling the heroines to escape from parents or wedding plans (Apolinaria, Eugenia, Euphrosyne, Hilaria), abandon husbands (Matrona, Theodora), or in other ways overcome hindrances or social prejudices (like the prostitute Pelagia). Significantly, many of these hagiographical texts let their heroines cross gendered boundaries, not only of social character, such as hair, clothing, and so forth, but also of physiological character, such as absence of menstruation and shrunken breasts. The physical changes in the female saint, connected to her physical faculties as child-bearer and child-nurser, and which appear alongside changes in clothing and hair, point to a significant dimension in the economy of this gendercrossing imagery — that of asceticism. We are reminded that the loss of female 16  Porphyry, Letter to Marcella 33; quoted from Cloke, ‘This Female Man of God’, p. 212. There are numerous other examples of ‘virile women’ in Christian writing from the late Empire: Saint Syncletia is praised in terms of virile prowess (andreion phronema); Olympias is explicitly called a man (hoios anthropos); Saint Julitta’s martyrdom is described as a manly surpassing of her female nature (andreioteran tes physeos). See references in Cloke, ‘This Female Man of God’, pp. 214–15, and Børresen, ‘Ancient and Medieval Church Mothers’. But see also Marjanen, ‘Male Woman Martyrs’, who found fewer cases of the topos of becoming male in martyriological accounts of women than expected. 17  Davis, ‘Crossed Texts, Crossed Sex’, p. 4, reports of eleven Vitae of female transvestite saints dating from this period. Within this group of texts he includes the Vitae of Saints Anastasia/Anastasios, Apolinaria/Dorothos, Athanasia (wife of Andronikos), Eugenia/ Eugenios, Euphrosyne/Smaragdus, Hilaria/Hilarion, Mary/Marinos, Matrona/Babylas, Pelagia/Pelagius, Susannah/John, and Theodora/Theodorus. The paradigmatic story of the cross-dressing female saint is the second-century apocryphal Acta Pauli et Theclae, ed. by Lipsius and Bonnet, pp. 235–72. Thecla, a follower of Paul, having narrowly escaped persecution, cuts off her hair and puts on men’s clothing in order to travel as a man, both to avoid recapture and move more freely and securely. She ends up a contemplative in a mountain cave, teaching and healing visitors.

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signifiers is a result of ascetic practices such as fasting, and sexual and bodily renunciation, all related to the ideal of the spiritual life. This perspective brings us back to the gender-crossing imagery which was employed by Jerome and Paulinus — that of declaring a holy woman ‘male’ to describe her spiritual progression. Again the reference to absence of female signifiers functions as a textual affirmation of transcending and exceeding corporeal determinism. Indeed, in my opinion, there is no reason to make a fundamental distinction between ‘actual’ gender crossing (as in the narratives of the transvestite saints) and ‘metaphorical’ gender crossing (as in the homage to the manly or virile woman of God).18 I shall argue this point in a later discussion.19 Suffice it here to say that in both cases, becoming male indicates a literary and devotional topos whereby gendered bodily signifiers function as affirmations of a theology which called for personal and corporal transformation while, at the same time, gender itself is deconstructed.20 In this way, gendered signifiers connected to the trope of the female man of God (physically weak, spiritually strong; a shrivelled body, a superior mind) can be seen as textual (inter)references in the context of an asceticism that connected femaleness to fleshliness. In recent years, much has been made of the literary topos woman who becomes male in Christian discourse: femina virilis, also called virago (which puns both vir (male) and virgo (virgin)).21 The virago model fits neatly into a hierarchically and ontologically gendered structure in which the feminine is associated with the inferior, that is, the corruptible body, whereas the masculine is associated with the superior, that is, spirit and reason. Scholarship has emphasized that, for a woman, becoming male implies a social and ontological promotion, a step up in the great chain of being.22 18  See Clark, ‘The Lady Vanishes’, pp. 17–18, who questions the authenticity of the early Christian Vitae, holding the accounts as ‘self-consciously literary narratives of a strongly panegyric flavour’. 19  See below, Section 1.5. 20  Scholars have been particularly interested in how the female body in various ways was deconstructed, obscured, disjointed, and fragmented in ancient and medieval discourse, e.g., Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, pp. 11–26, 181–238, and Miles, Carnal Knowing. On how gender categories are perceived to interact with other categories of difference, see Farmer and Pasternack, Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages. 21  The term ‘virago’ has pagan roots. It was originally coined for the goddess Minerva and intended a manly female virgin. My usage refers to the Latin, and not to the current English term, which denotes a loud or strong woman. The Vulgate uses the term in Gen 2. 23: ‘haec vocabitur Virago, quoniam de viro sumpta est.’ 22  See, e.g., Castelli, ‘“I Will Make Mary Male”’; Cloke, ‘This Female Man of God’; Brown,

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One might ask just what sort of gendered metaphor — if any — could be applied to the male subject in light of this gendered language in premodern Christian devotion. The image of the virago expresses a spiritual progress which seems exclusively for females. A male subject has no possibility of progress in a model of spiritual growth by which he is a priori perfected. The model of the male superior and the female inferior, however, seems to implicitly suggest the possibility of a reverse movement — that of a man becoming female. This would naturally be terrifying from the point of view of the gender economy implied in the model. Becoming female in this context would express a moral and ontological lapse, a decline from spirituality into worldliness or fleshliness. Origen of Alexandria in the third century, for example, writes that whether persons are men or women is to be determined not by bodily appearance but by the moral and spiritual quality of his or her inner nature: ‘How many belong to the female sex who before God are strong men, and how many men must be counted weak and indolent women?’23 In a different text, Origen again uses gender categories primarily symbolically: ‘He is truly male who ignores sin, which is to say female fragility.’24 Here, Origen contrasts female and male — associating femaleness directly with fragility and sin, maleness with resistance to sin — without reference to a person’s bodily gender. Thus maleness functions as a signifier indicating spiritual strength — it is a spiritual gender, so to speak, and something to be conquered by all Christians, regardless of their bodily gender. Particularly evocative in this context is a quotation in the collection of sayings by the fathers, attributed to the anchoress amma Sarra, who tells her monks: ‘I am a man [ego eimi aner], and you, you are women.’25 Apparently, the concepts of male and female can work as a dichotomy which unambiguously expresses notions of strength-weakness, higher-lower, superior-inferior, and spirit-flesh symbolically, while at the same time rendering gender itself ontologically ambiguous. Hence even if becoming male explicitly referred to women, implicitly it regarded men as well — in the The Body and Society; McNamara, A New Song. 23  Homiliae in Librum Jesu Nave 9.9, col. 878C: ‘Quantae ex mulierum sexu apud Deum in viris fortibus numerantur? et quanti ex viris inter remissas et languidas mulieres reputantur?’ Quoted also in Vogt, ‘“Becoming Male”’, p. 176. 24  Homiliae in Leviticum 1.2, col. 408A: ‘Masculus vere est, qui peccatum quod est feminae fragilitatis ignorat.’ Quoted also in Cloke, ‘This Female Man of God’, p. 33, but the reference there is mistaken. 25  Sarra 9, Apopethgmata patrum; quoted from Børresen, ‘Ancient and Medieval Church Mothers’, p. 157.

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disturbing prospect of being ‘counted weak and indolent women’. Here, then, would be the ultimate expression of the transcendentalized male (or masculinized transcendence) as an abstract, universal ideal — equating the call to become spiritual with becoming male.

1.2 The Male Bride The virago image never disappeared altogether in medieval devotional discourse; it lingered on, even asserting itself in the writings of twelfth-century writers like Peter Abelard.26 In the course of the centuries, however, from the break-down of the western Roman Empire to the Gregorian reform period of the High Middle Ages, the figure of the virago would gradually fade from view, eclipsed by the figure of the bride of Christ. The bride as a devotional and spiritual ideal is grounded principally upon the Song of Songs, and intertextually combined with nuptial imagery from other biblical texts, like Psalm 44 (in the Vulgate numbering), Ephesians 5, and Revelation. With few exceptions, the Song of Songs was not read in a literal sense in the Christian tradition before the Reformation. For medieval commentators, the Song was always already allegorized.27 Its very eroticism was in itself understood as an impetus towards a figurative understanding. Fundamentally, it is a love lyric, or a collection of love lyrics, celebrating erotic love between a man and a woman.28 Early and medieval Christian exegesis, however, turned 26  On Peter Abelard’s writing on women (especially Heloise), see Newman From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, pp. 7–9, 19–20, 46–64. Newman notes that Abelard’s writing is permeated by the struggle between two ideals: the virile woman and the bride of Christ. 27  Phipps, ‘The Plight of the Song of Songs’, p. 95, points to Theodore of Mopsuestia in the late fourth century, who asserted that the Song of Songs was a love song in which Solomon celebrated his marriage with an Egyptian bride. Phipps much bewails the loss of the literal meaning of the Song, and does nothing to hide his distaste for medieval allegory and asceticism. He finds in Theodore the only commentator of the pre-Reformation Church ‘who appreciated the original meaning of the Song and had the courage to go against the strong currents of sexual asceticism’ (p. 98). Phipps is not entirely convincing, however, when he unreservedly states that ‘[Theodore’s] mode of interpretation was influenced by his belief that sexual desire was not inherently impure’ (p. 95). Reading the Song as a simple love song, Theodore also rejected its canonicity, a fact not mentioned by Phipps; on this, see Simonetti, Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church, p. 70. 28  This at least seems to be the most widely accepted view in modern biblical scholarship; see Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, pp. 49–52. Different theories are given as to its origins, some giving a cultic interpretation, in which the Song is seen in connection with rites of fertility

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the Song into a paradigm for exegetical investigation into hidden truths, sub umbra et figura. Thus the medieval commentary tradition of the Song represented ‘a triumph of the allegorical’,29 to the extent that it lent itself to speculation on asceticism, monasticism, mysticism, Christology, Mariology, eschatology, and ecclesiology, to name but some. The allegorizing of the Song began already in ancient Jewish readings. Even if there are scholars who underscore a pre-existing tradition of literal interpretation, most modern commentators recognize the inclusion of the Song of Songs in the Jewish canon as being based on allegorical reading of the love between God and his chosen people.30 In this reading, the male protagonist symbolizes Yahweh, the female symbolizes Israel. To this interpretative standard was added the understanding of the Song as a wedding song, thus establishing the interpretation of the two protagonists as bride and bridegroom.31 This allegorical heritage was transmitted to Christian exegetes along with the canon of the and death in the ancient world from the Ganges to the Mediterranean (Pope, Song of Songs: A New Translation and Commentary); while others argue for it belonging to an original context of purely secular poetry (Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs). Phipps, ‘The Plight of the Song of Songs’, p. 85, argues that originally the Song was a collection of traditional Semitic songs for nuptial feasts, which only later were given an allegorical interpretation in rabbinic interpretation. 29  Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, p. 4. The term ‘allegory’ indicates in this connection all non-literal biblical readings: the ‘spiritual interpretation’ of the Bible in Henri de Lubac’s phrasing. Allegory, however, may also indicate more specifically one of the three (or two) spiritual senses in medieval hermeneutics. In its narrower sense as well as in its wider sense, allegorical understanding is related to what Erich Auerbach coined ‘figura’, i.e., the notion that the events of the Old Testament were interpreted as prophetic prefigurations of the Christian dispensation in the New Testament, which in turn can be read as a figural and, he adds, carnal (hence incarnate, real, worldly) realization or interpretation of the Old Testament. The first event or figure is ‘real and historical announcing something else that is also real and historical’: Auerbach, ‘Figura’, p. 29; cf. Daniélou, Sacramentum futuri. Allegorization as interpretative tool, primarily in connection with the Homeric corpus, can be traced to Greek philosophers, such as Xenophanes, Pythagoras, and Plato. In the Hellenistic era the chief exponents of allegorism were the Stoics. In the twelfth century, not only the Bible but also classical poets, such as Vergil and Ovid, were read in this way, thus saving them by presenting into them lessons of morality. For this reason the method was also known as involucrum (envelope). See Chenu, ‘The Symbolist Mentality’, pp. 109–10. 30 

Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, p. 51. On the connection between prophetic literature and the Song of Songs in ancient Jewish readings, see Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus and Other Problems, pp. 110–62, 164–68, 183–86. 31  In the Vulgate Bible, the female protagonist is repeatedly referred to as sponsa, the male never as sponsus.

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Hebrew Bible. Exposed to the allegorism of Hellenistic philosophy, Christian exegetes developed allegorical interpretations of the Song (most outstandingly, Origen of Alexandria and Gregory of Nyssa in the East, Ambrose of Milan and Gregory the Great in the West), transposing it into, in Ann Matter’s words, a Christian ‘literary genre’ in which the ‘seemingly simple carnal passion of the Song of Songs was changed into a complex, but equally erotic spiritual drama’.32 Bridal imagery from the Song of Songs was used and shaped by Christian commentators, from Origen, Ambrose, and Jerome to Bernard of Clairvaux, primarily in an ascetic context. In fact, as has been pointed out, allegory of the Song involved an asceticism of both moral and intellectual nature, since it required an effacement of the text as something other than it appears.33 Indeed, it is with a certain irony that one can state that a damp and breathless love poem became a focal point for Christian asceticism. Perhaps more ironically still, this love poem, interpreted as a wedding song, was in its turn exegetically developed into a ‘countererotics’ which resisted the marital and procreative ethic of sexuality which was current in other strands of Christian tradition.34 The Song of Songs was configured as a celebration of celibacy. In Christian readings the bridegroom was consistently interpreted as the second person of the Trinity, the Son or the Word (Verbum) — a reading which would prevail in all medieval commentaries. Furthermore, this reading had particular significance in a Christian context, where the anthropomorphism of the Song — particularly, the physicality in the descriptions of the male protagonist: his mouth, his lips, his arms, his legs, his breast(s) — lends itself to a Christological reading and a Christocentric spirituality. The bride, although subject to more variable interpretations, was largely read as a figure of the Church until the twelfth century. Thus, the common reading in patristic and early medieval exegesis established the Song of Songs as the epithalamium

32 

Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, p. 40. Asiedu, ‘The Song of Songs and the Ascent of the Soul’, p. 312. 34  The term ‘countererotics’ is employed by Burrus, The Sex Lives of Saints, pp. 3, 163–64 n. 5. She, in turn, has shaped the term in reference to MacKendrick’s term ‘counterpleasures’, in Counterpleasures. As with Burrus’s usage of this term, my own retains the association to a philosophy and practice of Christianized Platonic eros. ‘Countererotics’ represents another sexuality, reminiscent of the figure of the virgin which, rather than being desexualized, represents an alternative sexuality; see below, Sections 3.3 and 5.5. Borrowing the term ‘countererotics’ from Burrus’s queer readings of ancient hagiography, I am concerned to employ a terminology that is able to highlight the theme of erotics without identifying it as object of repression. 33 

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between the heavenly Bridegroom, Christ the Word, and his chosen bride, the Church, or — in a secondary and synecdochic sense only — the soul. Bridal imagery was well established, even downright popular, in the patristic age.35 But only in the later medieval period did it become one of the most powerful and versatile metaphors in devotional and ecclesiastic writing. Figurative women in general and the bride in particular came to hold both erotic fascination and rhetorical utility for clerical and monastic writers in the later medieval period.36 In the twelfth century, two distinct features were emphasized which contributed to the requalification of the bride as a spiritual and gendered ideal. Firstly, the bride of Christ was increasingly read as figure representing single individuals rather than just the Church as a whole; and, secondly, it became applied to males, rather than predominantly to females.37 It is widely recognized that Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs represents a turning-point for the devotional model of bride in the Latin West. His significant contribution to the commentary tradition of the Song lies in shaping a new genre of exegesis (or rather, reshaping, as Origen’s reading had already anticipated the abbot’s exegetical strategy, if not his emotional intensity). Bernard retains the traditional understanding of the bridegroom as Christus-Verbum while he construes the bride primarily as anima rather than Ecclesia. In his first sermon, the prelude to the work, Bernard proposes the dual interpretative perspective almost as a paraphrase of Origen’s own prologue: In divine inspiration he [Solomon] sang to celebrate the praises of Christ and his Church, the gift of holy love, and the sacrament of eternal wedlock. At the same time he expressed the desire of the holy soul, in a wedding song that exalts the spirit, spilling forth delightful figurative eulogy.38 35 

On bridal imagery in patristic texts, see, e.g., Clark, ‘The Celibate Bridegroom’; Hunter, ‘The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church’; and Asiedu, ‘The Song of Songs and the Ascent of the Soul’. 36  On the rhetorical utility of the bride in the high medieval period, see McLaughlin, Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority; on the rhetorical utility of female imagery in the Middle Ages from the point of view of metaphor theory, see Engh, ‘“Djevelens inngangsport” og “Kristi brud”’. 37  On the tropological reading of the Song of Songs, see Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, pp. 123–50, esp. p. 123. On identification of individuals, usually concecrated virgins, as brides in Late Antiquity, see Bugge, Virginitas, pp. 59–75; Clark, ‘The Uses of the Song of Songs’; Hunter, ‘The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church’. On examples of males as brides in patristic and early Christian writing, see Clark, ‘The Celibate Bridegroom’, pp. 17–18. 38  Scc 1.8, OSB, v.1, p. 36: ‘Itaque divinitus inspiratus, Christi et ecclesiae laudes, et sacri

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Although Origen was considered the founder of the allegorical understanding of the Song in the Middle Ages, most scholars have been reluctant to credit him with a direct influence on medieval commentaries, with the exception of commentaries from the twelfth century, and even then only wearily.39 Origen’s heterodoxy (formally declared in 553) made him an awkward source for later commentators, and even writers like Bernard — obviously deeply in debt to the Origenist vision of the Song — were reluctant to openly acknowledge his influence.40 Instead, it was to be the commentary by Gregory the Great (Expositio in Canticum canticorum) which established the exegetical standard in the Latin West until the twelfth century: a commentary which moves mainly, but not exclusively, on an ecclesiological level of interpretation.41 amoris gratiam, et aeterni connubii cecinit sacramenta; simulque expressit sanctae desiderium animae, et epithelamii carmen, exultans in spiritu, iocundo composuit elogio, figurato tamen.’ Italics in translation are mine. Compare Origen, Commentarium in Cantica canticorum; PG, xiii, cols 61–62A: ‘Epithalamium libellus hic, id est nuptiale carmen, dramatis in modum mihi videtur a Solomone consciptus, quem cecinit instar nubentis sponsae et erga sponsum suum, qui est sermo Dei, caelesti amore flagrantis. Adamavit enim eum, sive anima, quae ad imaginem eius facta est, sive Ecclesia’ (This little book is an epithalamium, that is, a wedding song, which it seems to me that Solomon wrote in dramatic form and which he sang, burning with heavenly love, like a bride to her bridegroom, who is the Word of God. For whether she is the soul, made in his image, or the Church, she loved him greatly). The extant Origenist work on the Song consists of two homilies and a commentary which is a fragment of a much larger work. The Latin translation by Rufinus was the one that circulated in the Latin West and would have been familiar to Bernard. 39  On Origen’s importance for the medieval Song commentaries, see Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, pp. 20–41. One earlier commentary was known by medieval exegetes, an exposition by Hippolytus of Rome a generation before Origen, but this text was attributed to Ambrose and known to the Latin Middle Ages in fragments only (p. 26). The Glossa ordinaria of the twelfth century names and quotes Origen in the gloss to the Song of Songs. Matter points out that Origen’s commentarium is extant in about thirty medieval manuscripts (forty for the homilies) and, considering the diffusion of these Origenist works, states: ‘Even allowing for the possibility that a book could exist without actually having been read, this evidence suggests that Origen’s Song of Songs Commentary was anything but scarse in medieval Europe, and that his Homilies were downright popular’ (p. 38). 40  Bernard names Origen openly only once in the Sermons, in Scc 54.3, where he rebukes the Alexandrinian’s Christology (in a phrasing borrowed from Jerome). Origen’s allusiveness in the commentary tradition is, as Matter observes, not only a consequence of his status as a heretic but must also be seen in light of the tendency in medieval exegesis to draw on as many sources as possible while naming as few as possible; see Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, pp. 34–41. 41  Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, p. 94; see also McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 60–62.

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On the other hand, although Origen’s hermeneutical strategy, where the bride was associated with the single individual as well as the ecclesiastic community as a whole, exercised merely a limited influence on exegesis prior to the twelfth century, the Song commentaries nevertheless procured a certain exegetical flexibility and interpretative plurality by means of medieval hermeneutical practice. Indeed, fluctuating levels of interpretation was the very essence of medieval exegesis. Multilayered meanings inherent in the model of biblical hermeneutics provided different levels, or modes, of interpretation which, ideally, were to be employed simultaneously for a plurivocal understanding of Scripture. Dividing the interpretation of Scripture into two basic parts, the literal or historical sense and the spiritual sense, Christian exegetes expounded on the latter by dividing it ulteriorly into two or three levels — thus providing models for threefold or fourfold interpretation. The quadruple understanding, known as the quadriga, had been maintained by John Cassian and Augustine and was later taken up by Bede and Rabanus Maurus.42 It consisted of: firstly, the literal or historical level of meaning (secundum historiam); secondly, the allegorical level (secundum allegoriam); thirdly, the tropological or moral level (secundum tropologiam); and, finally, the anagogic or eschatological level (secundum anagogen).43 Applying this hermeneutical scheme to the bride of the Song, she would be interpreted more or less as follows: the bride is no historical figure;44 the bride represents the Church in an allegorical sense; the bride represents the individual righteous soul in a tropological sense; and the bride’s union with Christ the bridegroom repre42 

Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, trans. by Sebanc and Macierowski, i, 90. Recorded and popularized by John Cassian in the fifth century in his celebrated example of the fourfold meaning of Jerusalem, Collationes 14.8, col. 964A: ‘Jerusalem quadrifariam possit intelligi: secundum historiam civitas Judaeorum, secundum allegoriam Ecclesia Christi, secundum anagogen civitas Dei illa coelestis quae est mater omnium nostrum; secundum tropologiam anima hominis’ ( Jerusalem can be understood in four different ways: historically as the city of the Jews, allegorically as the Church of Christ, anagogically as that heavenly city of God which is the mother of us all, and tropologically as the soul of man). Nicholas of Lyra, in his prologue to the Glossa ordinaria from around 1300, has provided an oft-sited mnemonic verse; In Glossam ordinariam prolegomena, col. 28D: ‘Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, Moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia’ (The letter teaches facts, the allegorical [sense] what you are to believe, the moral [sense] what you are to do, the anagogic [sense] what you are to hope for). 44  Medieval exegetes generally denied a literal interpretation of the Song and hence negate the historicity of the bride; but see Fulton, ‘Mimetic Devotion’, who referes to high and late medieval sources claiming that the Marian interpretation is a ‘historical reading’. 43 

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sents eschatological fulfilment or eschatological anticipation in the anagogic sense, that is, the permanent condition of beatitude of which excessus or raptus is a momentary foretaste.45 The trichotomy, following Origen and Jerome, consisted of history, tropology, and anagogy; and, in a different order, it was sometimes expounded as history, allegory, and tropology. Exegetes of the twelfth century employed both threefold and fourfold formulas. Effectively, the distinction between the threefold and fourfold enumerations was perhaps less crucial than it might seem, since, in the former formulas, the allegorical sense incorporated anagogy (or vice versa).46 Thus, to a certain degree, the hermeneutical process of Latin exegesis preserved (or at least preserved an exegetical potential for) Origen’s twofold perspective of the bride as both soul and Church. It was secured by the multivocality of biblical hermeneutics. The crucial shift which occurred in hermeneutics of the Song of Songs in the twelfth century lies in the emphasis on what Lubac coined ‘mystical tropology’.47 The Song of Songs, when read tropologically and anagogically, provides the language and imagery for representing the encounter between soul and godhead, understood as bride and bridegroom. In this sense, the shift from allegorical level (Church) to tropological level (soul) in high medieval commentaries marks a more general exegetical shift: from engaging the Song with ecclesiology to engaging the Song with mysticism or, to employ a more medieval term, contemplation.48

45  In medieval exegesis the bride of the Song was increasingly read together with the bride of the Apocalypse, see Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, esp. pp. 106–11. On the hermeneutical levels in Bernard’s interpretation of the bride, see also Section 3.1 below. 46  Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, trans. by Sebanc and Macierowski, i, 137, sustains that the fun­d­amental difference in medieval hermeneutical formulas lies not in enumeration but rather in order: whether tropology follows directly upon the literal level or whether it follows after allegory. 47  On mystical tropology, see Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, trans. by Sebanc and Macierowski, ii, 127–78. 48  On the problematic term ‘mysticism’, see McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, pp. xiii– xx, McGinn provides a new definition, p. xvii: ‘The mystical element in Christianity is that part of its belief and practices that concerns the preparation for, the consciousness of, and the reaction to […] the immediate or direct presence of God.’ Avoiding the unsound distinction in earlier scholaship between experience (the ‘real’ thing) and description (the representation in a text), McGinn rescues the term by reintegrating it in its institutional and, above all, in its hermeneutical context. Bernard, like most medieval Latin writers, commonly used contemplatio

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Nuptial mysticism (or bridal mysticism, as it is sometimes referred to as) came to exercise a special appeal for monastic writers in the later medieval period — both monks and nuns would imagine themselves in the role of bride, identifying with feminized metaphorics relating to mother, mistress, virgin, child-nursing, breast-feeding, and female sexual ecstasy.49 But at a certain point, celibate men dominate the scene; the bride of Christ switched gender and became male. One critic has characterized twelfth- and thirteenth-century Song commentaries as a ‘monastic and male genre’.50 However, already in the late twelfth century, the emphasis was shifting once more, and females, primarily cloistered nuns, were yet again to dominate the position of bride of Christ.51 Towards the closing of the Middle Ages, the heyday of the male bride — lusciously performed by Bernard of Clairvaux in the Sermons on the Song of Songs — belonged to the past, except for some scattered exceptions, like Denys the Carthusian and, in the early modern period, John of the Cross.52

to convey experience of or participation in the divine, a term which also indicates the monastic life, the life of monks. In the few cases in the Sermons where Bernard employs the adjective mysticus, it is in a strictly hermeneutical sense. See, e.g., Scc 16.3, OSB, v.1, p. 210: ‘in hoc teipsum noveris vita vivere spirituali, ac mysticum hunc implere numerum’; Scc 28.9, OSB, v.1, p. 416: ‘comprehendit suo illo mystico ac profundo sinu’; Scc 74.2, OSB, v.2, p. 490: ‘in expositione sacri mysticique eloquii caute et simpliciter ambulantes’ (my italics). Both ‘contemplation’ and ‘mysticism’ in my usage refers to anagogy or anagogic meaning. 49  There is an abundant bibliography on bridal mysticism in the later Middle Ages. Some of the most important contributions of recent scholarship which also consider Bernard are: Bynum, Jesus as Mother; Matter, The Voice of My Beloved; McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism; Turner, Eros and Allegory; and Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist. See also McGinn’s overview, ‘With “the Kisses of the Mouth”’. 50  Turner, Eros and Allegory, pp. 32–33. See also his anthology after the long essay of introduction, including Gregory the Great of the sixth century; Alcuin of York of the eighth century; the twelfth-century writers Hugh of St Victor, William of St Thierry, Bernard of Clairvaux, Alan of Lille, and Thomas of Perseigne; thirteenth- and fourteenth-century writers Thomas Gallus, Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, and Nicolas of Lyra; and, finally, Denys the Carthusian of the fifteenth century and John of the Cross of the sixteenth. 51  Keller, My Secret Is Mine, p. 35. 52  On Denys the Carthusian’s Enarratio in Canticum canticorum, see Turner, Eros and Allegory, pp. 159–74 and 413–21 (translation); on John of the Cross’s El cantico espiritual, pp. 175–200 and 207–14 (translation).

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1.3 Feminization of Devotion? When Bernard instates himself (and the Cistercian choir monk) in the role of the bride, he seemingly turns the virago image on its head. Instead of the movement from female to male, he assumes a movement from male (monk) to female (bride). Despite its subtle challenge to the gender hierarchy, the male bride has received much less scholarly attention than the virago image.53 This may partly be due to the influence of the ‘one-sex’ theory, prevalent in recent historical studies of gender, where any movement in the gender system other than from female to male is inconceivable.54 The virago can be seen, in accordance with Thomas Laqueur’s model, as moving seamlessly from the imperfect (female) to the perfect side of the axis (male). But while the one-sex body supports the virago model, it clearly cannot accommodate nor account for the image of male bride. With a few important exceptions, the perspective of feminization of males has been considered by modern commentators mainly in a political or social context emphasizing rhetorical degradation, for example, in polemics against sodomy or in polemics against courtiers.55 So how is this reformulation in the gendered language of devotion, from virago to bride of Christ, to be ascertained? Was femaleness re-evaluated in the twelfth century? What exactly is being negotiated?

53 

For examples of scholarly disregard, see, e.g., Castelli, ‘“I Will Make Mary Male”’, p. 33: ‘In the Christian tradition, there is virtually no evidence for the movement across conventional gender boundaries by the “male” towards the “female,” except when it is negatively construed, as in polemics against homosexuality.’ Likewise, but more disconcerting, because he treats twelfth-century literature, Kuefler, ‘Male Friendship and the Suspicion of Sodomy’, pp. 165–66, considers feminization of males solely in terms of ‘condemnation’. 54  In the teleology of gender perfection as proposed by Thomas Laqueur and Stephen Greenblatt, it is always women who move up the hierarchy to become male, never men who become female. The proposed sex-change model implicitly sustains the failed maleness of femaleness and cannot account for the possibility that men will move down the hierarchy. Laqueur, Making Sex, p.  127: ‘Movement is always up the great chain of being’, citing an anatomical text from 1605: ‘“We therefore never find in any true story that any man ever became a woman, because Nature tends always towards what is most perfect and not, on the contrary, to perform in such a way that what is perfect should become imperfect”’. Likewise, Greenblatt, ‘Fiction and Friction’, p. 40: ‘Sex change is almost always from female to male, that is, from defective to perfect.’ 55  On sodomy, see Kuefler, ‘Male Friendship and the Suspicion of Sodomy’; on accusations of depravity of courtiers in terms of effeminacy, see Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness, pp. 176–85; cf. Bynum, ‘“And Woman His Humanity”’, pp. 268–69, 273.

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Regarding developments in devotional expression in the period, there is a general recognition in medieval scholarship that profound reshapings took place towards the end of the eleventh century regarding the emphasis on the humanity and body of Christ with respect to prior engagements with the Incarnation.56 This devotional reorientation, commonly coined ‘the devotion to the humanity of Christ’, is closely associated with the growing devotional ideal ‘imitation of Christ’ (imitatio Christi) which later would give rise to the late medieval piety where Christ’s ‘humiliated, tortured, whipped, naileddown, pierced, dying but life-giving body […], the very body literally present in the eucharist’, became the ‘dominant icon of the late medieval church and the devotion it cultivated and authorized’.57 Richard Kieckhefer has provided a characteristic description, emphasizing also Bernard’s role: Throughout the high and late Middle Ages there was increasing attention and devotion to the humanity of Jesus, particularly to those moments in his life that aroused sentiments of love and compassion: his infancy and his passion. With major stimulus from the writing of Bernard of Clairvaux, and with strong support from Francis of Assisi, the humanity of Jesus became central in medieval spirituality.58

This devotional shift is closely connected with developments in Christological interpretations. The salvational premise inherent in the imagery of ‘becoming male’ arises from the stress of patristic Christology on Christ’s role as the new Adam. Glossing Ephesians 4. 13, redemption was perceived by exegetes as attaining Christlike ‘perfect manhood’.59 This notion of the ‘perfect man’ was informed by a reading of Genesis which understands Christ to revert perfect (male) humanity to its original, pristine state through his godlikeness. In early Christian teaching, then, women did not fully partake in the ideal of vir perfectus, unless through a ‘becoming male’ in becoming one with Christ (here exegetes also glossed on Galatians 3. 28: ‘There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’). Hence, Christomimetic ‘becoming male’ can 56 

Assertive formulations of a new devotional paradigm may be found in contributions by Bynum, Jesus as Mother, pp. 16–17, who speaks of ‘fundamental changes in piety’ and a ‘shift in theological emphasis’. The classic formulation is in R. W. Southern’s The Making of the Middle Ages, pp. 209–44, esp. p. 225. For newer contributions following Southern’s lead, see McGinn, ‘The Role of Christ’; and Cousins, ‘The Humanity and the Passion of Christ’. On monastic expression of the new devotional practice, see Leclercq, ‘Prayer and Contemplation’. 57  Aers and Staley, Powers of the Holy, p. 17. 58  Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls, p. 90. 59  Børresen, ‘Ancient and Medieval Church Mothers’, pp. 149–52.

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be said to be a necessary consequence of the traditional, Christological stress on Christ’s birth and Resurrection into perfect male humanity. Towards the High Middle Ages, however, the emphasis on the Resurrection was supplanted by a new emphasis on the Passion. Concurrently, Christ’s tortured humanity could be understood as feminized by medieval authors, particularly in terms of metaphors of motherhood which underscore the interrelation between sufferance, affection, and nurturance in imagery of birth pains, lactation, maternal affection.60 Indeed, femaleness (weakness, humility, inferiority, affectivity) could symbolically represent concepts linked to the Incarnation and the Passion — hence assuming femaleness or a female role imitates Christ’s lowering himself to the level of fallen, sinful humanity. In this way, the transformation in devotional perspective and Christological interpretation parallels the shift in devotional gendered topoi from virile woman to male bride. The creational and eschatological ideal of vir perfectus becomes overshadowed by the Christomimetic self-abjection of the voluntarily feminized male. Yet while shifts in Christological interpretations provide explanations for the development in gendered imagery and its use in patristic and medieval devotional discourse, it also raises many new questions. In particular, what were the specific cultural and discursive processes which allowed for this apparent feminization of devotion? There can surely be no simple answers to such questions but rather a complex interplay between social factors and theological and intellectual impulses, which seem to signalize significant changes in medieval society and outlook. Following R. W. Southern, medievalists have reported of an appearance of a more positive and optimistic outlook in Latin Europe from the end of the eleventh century — associated with terms such as ‘renaissance’, ‘renewal’, ‘naturalism’, ‘individualism’, and ‘humanism’61 — which has been directly linked to the reorientation in medieval spirituality and, concurrently, the rise to prominence of feminized and eroticized rhetoric.62 60 

Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’. The contribution by Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, launched the term ‘twelfth-century renaissance’ in Anglo-American scholarship; cf. the substantial anthology by Benson and Constable, Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century. For a recent critique of the term ‘renaissance’ and its connotations, see Jaeger, ‘Pessimism in the Twelfth-Century “Renaissance”’. On ‘humanism’ in the twelfth century, see Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies, p. 37. On ‘naturalism’ and individualism’ in the twelfth century, see Morris, The Discovery of the Individual. 62  Ferrante, Woman as Image; see also Gold, The Lady and the Virgin; Hansen, Den høviske kærlighed; and Leclercq, Monks and Love. 61 

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One of the most striking features of twelfth-century texts — both Latin and vernacular, both theological and secular — is their common celebration of love, particularly erotic love.63 That material and social factors contribute to changes in religious and intellectual outlook seems a reasonable supposition.64 In the case of the Latin twelfth century, a general pacification of society following political and military consolidation, technological progress, economic growth, and demographic increase led to a reorganization of society (decline of the lower aristocracy and nascence of the bourgeoisie) which might have favoured a socio-cultural climate which was more adapted to religious individualism and perhaps also more favourable to a ‘feminized’ ethics (less aggressive and martial, more affective and humble), in opposition to the savage masculinity of the war-lords of the past centuries.65 However, such sweeping characterizations have lately become unfashionable and therefore rare in medieval studies.66 Nevertheless, bridal imagery, whether applied to men or to women, has generally been judged by scholars as being more favourable to women than expressions in patristic and early medieval devotional writing. Joan Ferrante declared the image of the bride an ‘antidote to the anti-feminism of the theologians’.67 Barbara Newman follows suit, furnishing the perhaps most assertive evaluation of bridal imagery to be found in recent scholarship. Discerning two different strategies deployed by female devotional writers in the medieval period — which she names ‘virile woman’ and ‘womanChrist’ — Newman states: As long as antifeminist topoi remained current, they could be countered with the claim that at least in religious life a woman is able to rise above her sex. Depending on the writer’s ideology, she could be said to accomplish this feat either by becoming virile and therefore equal to men, or by virtue of an inverted hierarchy that leaves men behind. The two strategies are in fact antithetical. […] Bernard [of 63 

On this, see Kristeva, Tales of Love, trans. by Roudiez; Moore, Love in Twelfth-Century France; see also the classic study by Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, esp. p. 112, and the outdated but interesting and immensely eloquent study by Vedel, Ridderromantikken i Tysk og Fransk Middelalder, esp. chap. 2. 64  As argued, for instance, by Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium. 65  Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages, pp. 209–44, has described the general cultural development of the later Middle Ages as a transition from an ‘epic’ to a ‘romantic’ world-view. 66  Insights from gender studies have discouraged generalizing statements of historical periods, see, e.g., Kelley’s ground-breaking article ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance?’ See also Bynum’s warning, in ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, p. 162, against ascribing prediscursive symbolic value to femaleness. 67  Ferrante, Woman as Image, p. 26.

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Clairvaux]’s view of divine strength perfected in female weakness is more characteristic of the high middle ages. It depends on a distinctly Christian transvaluation of values by which social liabilities (such as humility, poverty, weakness, foolishness, and femaleness) become spiritual assets.68

I find it difficult, however, to agree entirely with the assertion of Bernard as one who viewed, simply, ‘divine strength perfected in female weakness’. His constructions of gender, as his use of female imagery, is — I will argue — altogether much more complex and ambiguous. The ambiguities inherent in his unstable and fluid gendering point to a multilayered and complicated gender representation which should caution against an easy adoption of gender stereotypes, as in the unqualified notion of the existence of ‘an inverted hierarchy that leaves men behind’ or an exegetical strategy which depends on a ‘transvaluation of values’.69 However, it is in order to note an important reservation in this critique of Newman’s otherwise excellent considerations of bridal imagery: Newman considers primarily female writers. While discussing the bride from a gender perspective, her evaluations regard its application to women. Hence the former group, virile woman, corresponds to what I term ‘virago’, but her latter term, ‘womanChrist’, is connected to bridal imagery but not as gender crossing or gender blending, that is, applied to males. Rather, ‘womanChrist’ expresses the notion that women qua women could practice some form of imitatio Christi.70 Caroline Walker Bynum, on the other hand, does consider male gender reversals, although her main focus is on women’s spirituality.71 Until the appearance of her landmark studies on gender and symbolism in medieval spir68 

Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, p. 26. But see also Barbara Newman’s nuanced discussion in a later work, God and the Goddesses, pp. 304–17, arguing that medieval theology, despite its prevailing climate of misogyny, never was a monolithic discourse, and mapping out various strands of ‘imaginative theologies’ that constructed ‘goddesses’ in its midst (like Sapientia, Mater Ecclesia, Dame Nature, Frau Minne). 70  Newman’s two models express what she names ‘gender strategies’: the opposing ideals of gender equality (‘virile woman’) and female superiority (‘womanChrist’). See From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, pp. 1–18. 71  On the differences in the ways that female and male devotional writers establish and negotiate their own roles as bride of Christ in high and late medieval monasticism, see Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, and Fragmentation and Redemption. Female writers, Bynum claims, were less inclined to use gender as category of oppositions and more concerned with connotations of femaleness to physicality and humanity. For a critical response to Bynum regarding her argument that women, by identification with a bleeding, suffering, life-giving, and feminized body of Christ, might empower themselves, see Aers, ‘Figuring Forth the Body of Christ’. 69 

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ituality, bridal imagery with its connoted devotional expressions was unreservedly coined ‘feminization of Christianity’ or some such term. John Bugge, for instance, speaks of a ‘feminization of religious psychology’ in twelfth-century theological writing.72 Without qualification, he labels Cistercian and epithalamian spirituality as ‘twelfth-century feminism’, by which he presumably means an increased interest in female monasticism (on the part of male authors) as well as an increased devotional intensity and activity within female religious communities themselves. Bynum qualifies and modifies this reading, significantly teaching us to refer to it as a feminization of religious language, which is quite another matter. She points out that this religious language was not conceived in order to adapt to female devotional requirements or tastes, nor even to a female audience. It was written by men, for men. Hence, Bynum draws attention to the upsurge of feminine imagery in its primary frame of reference, namely, its symbolic functions in a monastic framework. The ‘transvaluation’ inherent in these gender reversals, according to Bynum, is not a transvaluation per se, substituting one set of values for another.73 Rather than expressing simply weakness or dependence (vis-à-vis God) in their appropriation of female imagery, argues Bynum, medieval male writers expressed something more complicated: conversion or renunciation. Hence the male who becomes female in Bynum’s lucid reading could lay claim to ‘superior lowliness’. This ‘transvaluation’, if one will call it that, expressed a femaleness far superior to the femaleness of women, precisely because it is performed by a male in a wilful, voluntary act of humility and self-negation. In a passage which deserves to be quoted in full, Bynum states: The male writer who saw his soul as a bride of God or his religious role as womanly submission and humility was conscious of using an image of reversal. He sought reversal because reversal and renunciation were at the heart of a religion whose dominant symbol is the cross — life achieved through death. […] Because women were women, they could not embrace the female as a symbol of renunciation. Because society was male-dominated, they could not embrace the male as a symbol of renunciation. To become male was elevation, not renunciation, and elevation was a less significant reversal given the values at the core of medieval Christianity.74

In this perspective, it seems that femaleness as a spiritual asset was available only for males, and only for the exceptionally devout. Its symbolic function 72 

Bugge, Virginitas, p. 109. For this and the following, see Bynum, ‘“And Woman His Humanity”’, pp. 268–69. 74  Bynum, ‘“And Woman His Humanity”’, p. 273. 73 

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reflects an aspect of the elitism inherent in Cistercian monastic ideology: ‘superior lowliness’, in Bynum’s phrasing. As Elizabeth Clark soberly advises, as historians ‘we deal, always, with representations’.75 We cannot assume that literary exaltation of feminine traits or characters corresponds to an empowerment of ‘real women’ or with a reevaluation of females and femaleness.76 It is significant in this context to note that Bernard and the Cistercians show no signs of endorsing femaleness per se. Indeed, like the secular clergy of the twelfth century, they often accused male opponents of effeminacy. Cistercian self-representation was deeply informed by what was time and again described as their rough and hard life — pointing to the monks’ asceticism and, implicitly, to their ordeals as being austere and manly, certainly not effeminate. Indeed, Bernard was quick to criticize any sign of a mollified lifestyle in the clergy or in other monks. In his letter to Robert, a young relative who had abandoned Clairvaux for Cluny, Bernard accuses Cluny of confusing monks with laymen by indulging in soft clothing, warm bedding, and elaborate foods:77 If warm and comfortable furs, if fine and precious cloth, if long sleeves and ample hoods, if dainty coverlets and soft woollen shirts make a saint, why do I delay and not follow you at once? But these things are comforts for the weak, not the arms of fighting men.78

In another text, Bernard accuses worldly knights of being ‘womanish’, as opposed to the manly and monkish Knights Templar. Contrasting the ‘trap75 

Clark, ‘The Lady Vanishes’, p. 30. The presumption that women obtained improvements in social and economic status in this period was an established truism in earlier medieval scholarship. Hence, the occurrence of feminine imagery in literature (secular as well as religious) was interpreted as expressing an aspect of social promotion for ‘real women’. Penny Schine Gold dismissed this notion as an ‘unexamined cliché’ in The Lady and the Virgin, p. xv. She argues that establishing causal relations between literary imagery and social reality on the basis of reading one as the reflection of the other is perilous business at best. Assuming that texts or images and, even more so, symbolic imagery might recover or give access to histories of ‘real women’, is, after the advent of the linguistic turn, generally thought of as methodologically unsound. 77  On this and on the present letter, see Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, p. 133. On elaborate meals, see the continuation of the cited letter. 78  Ep 1.11, col. 77A (The Letters, ed. and trans. by James, p. 8): ‘Si pelliciae lenes et calidae, si panni subtiles et pretiosi, si longae manicae et amplum caputium, si opertorium silvestre et molle stamineum, sanctum faciunt; quid moror et ego quod te non sequor? Sed haec infirmantium sunt fomenta, non arma pugnantium.’ 76 

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pings of a warrior’ with the ‘trinkets of a woman’, he describes worldly knights, with malicious humour, as ‘blinding themselves with effeminate tresses, tripping themselves up in long and voluminous tunics, and burying their delicate and tender hands in flowing sleeves’.79 In opposition to the alleged effeminacy of Cluniacs and courtier knights, Cistercians often referred to themselves using military images, as pointed out by Martha Newman.80 She argues that the Cistercians, who were largely recruited from the knightly orders, adopted and modified upon the image of the monk as soldier, which had it source in Paul’s epistles and in the warlike language of the Psalms which formed the nucleus of the monastic liturgy. But in contrast to earlier Cluniac use of military imagery, depicting a corpus of monks engaged in liturgical warfare for the salvation of their community, the Cistercian usage, reflecting a general tendency towards emphasis on the individual, tended to describe the individual monk’s battle for his own salvation. Ruth Mazo Karras notes, moreover, that imagery of milites Christi was especially adapted to be used by monks, leading a life as regimented as any soldier’s and constantly involved in battling for faith.81 Clearly, the discursive functions of feminization — or masculinization — operate in different ways according to context and intended audience. In a recent essay, Shawn Madison Krahmer suggests that Bernard’s characterization of the bride renounces all the negative traits traditionally associated with femaleness (fleshliness, weakness, irrationality, dependence), maintaining the superiority of maleness even while appropriating feminine typology for the male subject. Instead of inducing a feminine spiritual ideal, Krahmer argues, Bernard’s trope represents a continuance of the early Christian and patristic masculine ideal (virago or virile woman) — even if disguised as a feminine ideal. In her reading, then, Bernard’s bride represents a complicated version, indeed a tongue-in-cheek twist, of the virago imagery: ‘a man striving to be a woman striving to be a man’.82

79 

De laude 2.3, col. 923C (In Praise of the New Knighthood, trans. by Greenia, p. 37): ‘Militaria sunt haec insignia, an muliebria potius ornamenta? […] in oculorum gravamen femineo ritu comam nutritis, longis ac profusis camisiis propria vobis vestigia obvolvitis, delicatas ac teneras manus amplis et circumfluentibus manicis sepelitis.’ 80  Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 21–37, esp. p. 29. 81  Karras, ‘Thomas Aquinas’s Chastity Belt’, p. 54. 82  Krahmer, ‘The Virile Bride’, p. 305 n. 3.

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The benefit of this reading is that it in a subtle way challenges the established scholarly position which sees Bernard’s bridal imagery related to a feminization (or even ‘transvaluation’) of devotional ideals. Reorientations in medieval piety, highlighting Christ’s passio and the virtue of humilitas, concern the valorization of femaleness only indirectly. To put it another way: that humility was presented as a clearly positive attribute (in a twelfth-century monastic context) does not mean that femaleness was re-evaluated in se. On the contrary, the symbolic function of acquiring femaleness could be positive — that is, it could symbolize the acquiring of humility — precisely because it was a negative value. Hence, the two (humility and femaleness) operate on two different levels, and thus there can be no real ‘transvaluation’, and hardly even a ‘feminization’ (in any other sense than that which has been pointed out by Bynum, i.e., linguistic and symbolic), because femaleness is still dispraised, even as humility is appraised. Humility was an absolute good; femaleness, in this circumstance, a relative good. Thus, in the presence of the perplexing transferral in devotional language from andromorphic imagery (‘becoming male’) to gynecomorphic imagery (‘performing bride’), one should be careful to note that the two models, the virago image and the bridal image, are by no means structurally symmetrical — even allowing that they may be considered ‘antithetical’. Indeed, there are important intersections between the two images. Firstly, both virago and male bride are Christomimetic, but while the latter image offers as devotional model the sacrifice of love and the self-abasement typical of the late medieval imitatio Christi, the virago offers a more conceptual and speculative notion of ‘becoming male’, by aspiring to Christlike ‘perfect manhood’ (Eph 4. 13). Secondly, both convey ascetic ideals: the virago transcends the flesh, the bride renounces the world. But whereas the virago is a hierarchical and hieratic image (e.g. Thecla, Sarra), the bride is, as I will show, fundamentally a more versatile and ambiguous image, especially when applied to a male. The main point argued here is that the male bride does not represent simply an inversion of the topos of the manly woman. Recalling the elder model’s tendency to a universalizing and transcendentalizing interpretation, as in the Origenist signification of becoming spiritual (to be conquered by men and women alike), we find no corresponding gender-neutral notion of a call to ‘become female’ in the image of the bride. As Bynum has pointed out, the primal symbolism of renunciation and humility can function only in the movement from male to female. Whereas both men and women can strive to become male or virile, only the male might renounce his manhood. In this sense, the promotion envisioned in the imagery of ‘becoming male’ is not analogous to the gender economy inherent in the image of the monk ‘per-

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forming bride’. Indeed, there is no clear correspondence between the concepts male (as in ‘becoming male’) and bride (as in ‘performing bride’) just as there is no symmetry between the verbs I am applying, becoming and performing. The virago is envisioned as a woman of exceptional spirituality who ‘becomes’ male as an expression of ontological promotion. She does not ‘perform’ maleness so much as annihilate her own gender, while the male bride, on the other hand, does not so much ‘become’ female as appropriate stances of femaleness. Assuming maleness implies an ontological transformation into spiritualness, whereas assuming the role of bride indicates entering into a relational role, involving a conglomerate of subsumed and related roles, such as motherhood, virginity, and widowhood, while retaining the element of masking or appropriating rather than becoming or being. The two images function on different levels as devotional models, yet I suggest — expanding on Krahmer’s argument — that the inherent assumptions of gender are more similar than they might seem. I argue that the image of male bride subsumes the virago image. As we shall have occasion to consider, feminized representation in Bernard’s Sermons is accompanied by a slippage towards defeminization. Defeminization particularly affects the anagogic readings, that is, readings with contemplative and/ or eschatological references. In this sense, the bridal image is, as Krahmer suggests, more directly related to the ideal of virago, or idealized maleness, than what may immediately appear. When ascetic discourse interacts with gender discourse in Bernard’s text, the contours of the virgin appears — an ambiguous and un-sexed or dual-sexed figure which spans and bridges the fleshly and spiritual, the worldly and the heavenly, the female and male. While the monk, in performing the bride, appropriates the exaltation of the female virgin-martyr (along with the fecundity and nurturance of the mother, but this has another rhetorical and discursive function) — he also engages in the devotional model of virago, the virile woman who becomes male. In the ascetic ideal of virginitas, the figures of the virago, the virgin, and the bride meet and merge. In a letter of spiritual guidance by Osbert of Clare, prior of Westminster abbey in the twelfth century, there is a telling conflation of the devotional models. Osbert writes to a nun called Ida: ‘I desire you become a splendid and radiant virgin, indeed, by [your] husband Christ, a virile and incorrupt virago.’83 No less than three different images blend and conjoin in Osbert’s single phrase, 83 

The Letters of Osbert of Clare, letter 40, ed. by Williamson, p. 136; quoted from Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, pp. 26 and 255 n. 36: ‘Talem te fieri cupio, splendida et clara virgo, immo de viro Christo virilis et incorrupta virago.’ Italics are mine.

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all indicating spiritual perfection. Firstly, there is the virago, that is, the manly woman of exceptional spirituality who has exceeded her (female) flesh and become male; secondly, there is the spouse of Christ who, when read as a symbol for the saintly soul, expresses the betrothal of the believer with Christ and concurrently his/her renunciation of the world; finally, there is the virgin, that idealized, defeminized, and desexed creature embodying creational and eschatological androgyny. It is revealing that the three figures merge, because they are related. In the present book, I hope to show just how closely related they are. But Bernard’s text is, unlike Osbert’s little letter, directed exclusively at an all-male audience. When a female, like Ida, is addressed in this manner, it evokes simultaneous and even paradoxical notions: on the one hand, notions of projecting or transferring a female role from a worldly level onto a spiritual and heavenly level, thereby substituting that which she had renounced with a spiritualized version of the same role (sponsa or bride); and, on the other hand, notions of defeminization, that is, notions of exceeding, even annihilating, femaleness (virago, virgin). If the audience were a male, different gendered expectations would arise. Firstly, this is because a male in a feminized role hardly evokes a notion of transfer from lower to superior level of reality, but rather that of a more profound transformation. Secondly, defeminization as an ideal to be pursued by men might immediately seem out of place, especially when the imagery simultaneously requires that same man to assume a female role. But these, as we shall have occasion to assess, are the workings at the intersection of ascetic discourse and gender discourse: mechanisms which will have fleshliness/worldliness identified with femaleness and spiritualness with maleness. Notions of escaping femaleness, avoiding the womanly (i.e., fleshly), seem to ‘hover over’ the symbolism of ‘becoming male’, where the whole point is to progress from fleshliness to spiritualness.84 However, I propose in the present study that, more surprisingly, the same notions of defeminization also ‘hover over’ the image of the male bride. Contrarily to what might immediately seem a gendered model more favourable towards femaleness, and despite their obvious differences, the bride is a close relation of the virago.

84 

The concept of implications ‘hovering over’ metaphor is from Canguilhem, La Connaissance de la vie, pp. 48–49. On this see Clark, ‘The Celibate Bridegroom’, and below, Section 3.1.

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1.4 Dual Sexualities: Virginity, Celibacy, and Androgyny The imagery of the virago and the male bride intersect because they are informed by the same discursive patters, namely, the discourse on virginity and androgyny from patristic and medieval writing. I refer to both virago and male bride as figures of ‘dual sexuality’, that is, as figures envisioned as participating in both maleness and femaleness, either simultaneously or successively. In order to distinguish between successive and simultaneous dual sexualities, I use the terms ‘gender crossing’ (successive) and ‘gender blending’ (simultaneous). The former indicates a temporal transformation, like the mythological figure Tiresias who went from male to female, whereas the latter is oxymoronic or paradoxical, like the androgyne or the hermaphrodite. At a doctrinal level, the virgin and the androgyne are worlds apart: one sanctified and the other pushed to the margins of orthodoxy. Yet medieval devotional discourse spoke with many voices, and above all it spoke at metaphorical depths well beyond the ken of dogma.85 And here, at the metaphorical depths of gendered devotional discourse, the virgin and the androgyne overlap, creating clusters of gendered notions which functioned to sustain the gender economy of both virago and male bride. Both virgin and androgyne supersede gender; they express degendering. Both were discursively linked to the creation story in Genesis. Most importantly, both were markers of restoration — the virgin reflecting angelic asexuality, that is, asceticism and celibacy, and the androgyne reflecting Christological (re)unification. In this way, both figures express the tensions between prelapsarian potential and postlapsarian reality. Virginity was understood, already by the Church fathers, not only as a prerequisite for spiritual life but as restoration of man’s fallen nature, even an anticipation of the eschatological ideal of perfection and beatitude.86 For Christian writers in the patristic period, virginity carried a reference to Adam and Eve before the fall. Jerome speaks of the ‘paradise of virginity’ (paradiso virginitatis),87 referring to a prelapsarian, asexual state of perfect apatheia. Ambrose, too, refers to Adam and Eve’s state of innocence as a ‘life similar to angels’ (illa vita similis angelorum sit)88 and describes virgins as ‘angels on earth’ 85 

Cf. Newman, God and the Goddesses, p. 326. Gregory of Nyssa, De virginitate 2, cols 322C–324D, holds that the practice of virginity not only anticipates but even actively hastens the eschatological reconstitution of the lost state of human nature. See further references and discussion in Bugge, Virginitas, p. 31. 87  Jerome, Ep. 22.18; Select Letters of St Jerome, ed. and trans. by Wright, p. 90. 88  Ambrose, De paradiso 9, col. 294C. 86 

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(sicut angeli in terris sunt) and ‘angels among men’ (ut inter homines angeli sitis).89 The notion of the virginity of Adam and Eve wedded with notions of the gendered constitution of the primal man. If primal man was a non-sexed, non-gendered (though theoretically male) virginal being, then obviously neither gender nor sex was part of man’s original condition — hence did not constitute his primary, ontological status.90 Consequently, the virgin, in overcoming sexuality, also overcame gender, passing onto a pristine, perfect condition. Reclaiming paradise lost, virginity came to be known as ‘the angelic life’ (vita angelica), providing virgins with a kind of supernatural and extra-human nature akin to that of man’s prelapsarian status — even turning the virgin into, in Gregory of Nyssa’s words, ‘an actual representation of the blessedness of the world to come’.91 In being so highly charged with symbolic meaning — carrying creational, salvational, and eschatological resonance — virginity tended to become a spiritualized quality and less simply represented by mere sexual abstinence. Many patristic writers were aware of the danger of slipping into heretical ideas of dualism if they were to pursue the ascetic disparagement of the flesh too far. The Church fathers, particularly those of the West, tended thus to emphasize the will and play down the merely external or physical state. In other words, virginity was exalted insofar as it was a spiritual, not only a physical condition. Ambrose warns that ‘merit is gained not only by the virginity of the flesh but by the integrity of the mind’.92 Jerome, meanwhile, pushing the idea to its extreme (as usual), states plainly that the virgin is defiled merely by an impure thought: ‘Virginity can be lost even by a thought.’93 Likewise Gregory of Nyssa in the East, echoing his contemporaries Jerome and Ambrose, and their argument for ‘virginity of mind’, writes: ‘Let no one suppose […] one little obser89 

Ambrose, Exhortatio virginitatis 4, col. 342B; cf. Lk 20. 35–36, Mt 22. 30. There were other, less ascetic positions: for example, Augustine’s. On Augustine’s views on virginity, sexuality, and marriage, see Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church, pp. 241–79, esp. pp. 248–51, 260–61. On the Jovinianist controversy, the heated debate on marriage and celibacy involving Augustine, Jerome, and Jovinian, see Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity. 91  Gregory of Nyssa, De virginitate 13, col.  379D: ‘virginalisque vita illius futuri aevi beatitudinis imago’. Cited also in Cloke, ‘This Female Man of God’, p. 59. 92  Ambrose, De virginitate 4.15, col. 270B: ‘Videte quod meritum non sola carnis virginitas facit, sed etiam mentis integritas.’ 93  Jerome, Ep 22.5; Select Letters of St Jerome, ed. and trans. by Wright, p. 62: ‘Perit ergo et mente virginitas.’ 90 

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vance of the flesh could settle so vital a matter.’94 The ideal of virginity, then, came to embody the ideal of living in the world ‘as if not’ (cf. i Cor 7. 31) — an ascetic, indeed, an eschatological pursuit. By implication, the concept of virginity became strongly elitist and, in a sense, also highly contingent.95 This tendency towards a spiritual understanding of virginity, enforced by underlying notions of paradisiacal — that is, creational and eschatological — pristineness, increased rather than diminished during the medieval centuries.96 Apparently, this ideal was not gendered. It applied to men and women equally. The female, however, in being closely associated with all that is weak, carnal, and sensual, was nevertheless seen to be more profoundly handicapped in achieving the ideal than the male — and thus more heroic, more holy still, if she did succeed.97 In renouncing the flesh, she needed not only to exceed her 94 

Gregory of Nyssa, De virginitate 18, col. 394A: ‘ne quis ita exiguum et vile putet [...] tanquam parvo carnis solum reprimandae praecepto se perfecte agere arbitretur.’ Quoted also in Cloke, ‘This Female Man of God’, p. 125. 95  The spiritual elitism of virginity is underscored both by the patristic writers themselves and in modern studies; see, e.g., Brown, The Body and Society, pp.  341–86, 428–47. Its contingency is finely argued by Cloke, ‘This Female Man of God’, pp. 57–77, esp. pp. 60–61, who argues that virginity was trapped in a delicate position between ‘hell-fire’ and ‘apotheosis’, which has to do with the theological finesses of grace and merit: whether the virgin is seen to possess the gift of chastity for and from herself (as in Pelagian teaching) or whether it comes from God alone (as in Augustinian teaching). According to the orthodox position held by Augustine, the virgin not only has no claim of her own, she also has no guarantee that her chaste actions and behaviour corresponds to a chaste inner state and motivation. Hence she is subject to suspicion, either of taking pride in her state of chastity and/or ‘covering up’ sinful disposition with apparent godliness. Moreover, a virgin must be beyond every suspicion or reproach, as the cause for temptation was easily taken to be sinfulness in the object of temptation. In fact, there is a fine line between feeling desire and being desired in the writings of the Church fathers. On this, see discussion in Bloch, Medieval Misogyny, pp. 100–01. 96  See Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, pp. 19–45, and Atkinson, ‘“Precious Balsam in a Fragile Glass”’. 97  On gender as fundamental to the construction of virginity, see Kelly, Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity, pp. 91–101; Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 22; cf. Brown, The Body and Society, pp. xv, 60–61, 66–72. Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, p. 28, notes that ‘[m] ale chastity, while seen as an important virtue, never evoked either the same rapturous praise for its preservation or the same dire warnings about its loss’. See also Karras, ‘Thomas Aquinas’s Chastity Belt’, esp. pp. 57–58, on male chastity. Cloke, ‘This Female Man of God’, p. 60, points out that patristic writers addressing the subject of virginity — including Jerome’s letters, Ambrose’s De virginitate, John Chrysostom’s De sacerdotio, and Methodius of Olympus’s Symposium — all exclusively consider women’s virginity. On the ‘feminization’ of virginity in the Latin West as literary topos in later lay literature, see Bloch, Medieval Misogyny, esp. pp. 97–109. Cf. Foucault,

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body but also her gender, the very symbol of corporeality. She becomes a kind of angelic creature: un-sexed, un-gendered, and semi-disembodied. In patristic and medieval discourse, female virgins seem to have been sanctified androgynes, rather than women. The identification of the virgin with the bride of Christ was established already in patristic writing.98 This rhetoric, which declared that marriage to Christ far surpassed any earthly marriage, continued to be employed in medieval texts. Not only will the virgin enjoy a richer and more beautiful husband, twelfth-century advocates of virginity argue, they will also be spared mundane troubles, such as childbearing and the burdens of earthly husbands.99 The impact of the bride from the Song of Songs on the discourse of virginity is detectable not only in representations of virginity, which became regular tropes in medieval discourse — such as ‘enclosed garden’ (Song 4. 12) and ‘spotlessness’ (Song 4. 7) — it also allowed, as argued by Elizabeth Clark, for the prospective encounter with the ‘celibate bridegroom’ to emerge as erotically desirable, while at the same time giving access to related tropes which hover over the metaphor of marriage and brideship.100 ‘Recruited as virgins, defined as virgins, guarded as virgins, and ideally canonized as virgins, consecrated women,’ Barbara Newman observes, ‘were nevertheless seen as fulfilling to perfection The History of Sexuality, ii: The Use of Pleasure, trans. by Hurley, p. 82, who states that the coming of Christianity marked a break with the classical ideal of manhood in its Roman as well as Greek variations: ‘the day would come when the paradigm most often used for illustrating sexual virtue would be that of the woman, or girl’. See also The History of Sexuality, iii: The Care of the Self, trans. by Hurley, p. 288, where he describes themes of Hellenistic romances in terms reminiscent of Christian asceticism: it ‘is modelled much more on virginal integrity than on the political and virile domination of desires’. Foucault’s claim — that the Christian monks manifest a ‘feminine’ desire for intactness, supplanting the Greek-Roman ‘male’ ideal of domination of self — has been contested by, among others, Clark, ‘Foucault, the Fathers, and Sex’, pp. 632–34. 98  McNamara points to Tertullian’s influence in identifying the virgin as the bride, a rhetoric which had the effect of bringing the virgin firmly under patriarchal and institutional control, see A New Song, esp. p. 121; see also the more recent article by Elliott, ‘Tertullian, the Angelic Life, and the Bride of Christ’. 99  On the superior beauty and riches of Christ the bridegroom, see Alan of Lille, Summa de arte praedicatoria 47, col. 195C; on childbearing, see Osbert of Clare, The Letters, ed. by Williamson, letter 40, p. 136; on repression in marriage, see Hali Meidhad (Holy Maidenhood), ed. by Millett, pp.  2–3, 19; references in Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, pp. 32–33. 100  Clark, ‘The Celibate Bridegroom’, p. 11. On the aspect of paradox as essential in early Christian and patristic discourse on virginity, see Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, pp. 171–80; themes of inverted erotics will be treated below in Section 5.5.

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their feminine roles of wife and mother.’101 And so, it may be added, did also male brides of the twelfth century represent themselves. In a sense, then, the spiritualization of virginity and its fecund clinch with the Song of Songs had already prepared the ground for the appropriation of the role of bride on the part of Bernard and other male commentators in the later medieval period. Under the impact of the Gregorian reforms in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, discourse on virginity and, more generally, discourse on gender entered a critical phase. With the enforcement of the institution of clerical celibacy and the subsequent monopolization of leading positions in the Church on the part of male celibates, the rhetoric of female pollution escalated while the reformers championed the celibate man as the new ideal of masculinity.102 While women and married men disappeared from the upper stratum of the ecclesiastical and spiritual hierarchy, clerical and monastic males were appropriating patristic discourse of female spiritual perfection, thus laying claim to the traditional marker of spiritual superiority: the role of idealized female virgin. As Jo Ann McNamara writes in her survey on the gender ideology of the reform movement: ‘Celibacy freed men from women. It enabled the clergy to use elements from both genders to construct a new model of humanity in which men could play all the roles.’103 In effect, twelfth-century interpretations of celibacy not only further incentivized gender slippage in devotional discourse but also shifted — or attempted to shift — the balance in the allocation and the gendering of idealized ascetic roles in the Church. 101 

Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, p. 32. On the rhetoric of feminine pollution on the part of the Gregorian reformers, see McLaughlin, ‘The Bishop as Bridegroom’ and Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority, pp. 68–80. See also Elliott, Fallen Bodies, pp. 100–06, who observes that according to the reformers, women emasculated men through their devouring lust. On misogynist rhetoric as constestation of masculinity between the clergy and lay males, see Miller, ‘Masculinity, Reform, and Clerical Culture’, esp. pp. 49–50. On the church reforms and the gender system, see McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage’, p. 8, who notes that the eleventh and twelfth centuries mark a high point for clerical misogynist rhetoric. She connects this to the restructuring of the gender system that saw celibate men monopolizing ecclesiastical authority, expropriating the positions of women and of married men. 103  McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage’, p. 22. Wiethaus, in ‘Christian Piety and the Legacy of Medieval Masculinity’, p. 49, follows McNamara: ‘A male monastery is an exclusively homosocial institution that defines itself through the exclusion of female presence and the rejection of all physical, emotional, and social relations with women. It embodied an ideology that claimed, sometimes more sometimes less belligerently, that contact with women was the negation of monastic values.’ See also the Conclusions in this book. 102 

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Closely connected with the figure of the virgin, as mentioned, was the figure of the androgyne: a half-muted theme in Latin Christianity, but one which nevertheless appeared at the fringes when questions of gender and gender difference were being negotiated in medieval devotional discourse. However divergent and unstable its references were, discussions on gender, at least discussions of a theological-philosophical nature, time and again returned to the question of the creation myth in the Book of Genesis and therefore to exegesis of the biblical verses in question. A basic feature of gendered devotional language as it was used and developed in the Christian tradition was the pairing of gender categories asymmetrically and hierarchically rather than reciprocally. This notion, however, did not lead exegetes (or, at least, not the orthodox majority) to the conclusion that the female did not partake in God’s image.104 Interpreting Genesis 1. 27 (‘God created man in his own image […] male and female he created them’), exegesis settled on an interpretation of imago Dei which perceived ‘man’ (homo) as including both sexes (masculus et femina). This point — that women shared equally in the imago Dei — was decreed orthodox at the Council of Mâcon in 586. Later, glossators in the twelfth century would reargue the issue, repeating that homo was a common denominator for man and woman alike.105 However, this issue was more tangled than it may appear, since Genesis 1. 27–28 was pared with Genesis 2. 21–22. In the latter verse, God creates Adam from the mud, and Eve from Adam’s side, or rib. This put the commentators in the slightly difficult position of having to explain how the two sexes, male and female (the masculus and femina of Gen 1. 27), appear to have been created before actual men and women (the vir and mulier of Gen 2. 21). As Constance Bouchard points out, modern Bible commentators, with the aid of source criticism, can easily step around this problem by pointing to the fact that the Book of Genesis incorporates two quite different, even contradictory, creation accounts.106 In the Middle Ages, this was not an option. Rather, medieval commentators strove to reconcile the two biblical passages. The most common solution in early exegesis had been to draw a distinction between the homo of Genesis 1 and the man and woman (vir and mulier) of 104 

See Bouchard, ‘Every Valley Shall Be Exalted’, p. 123, and Børresen, ‘In Defence of Augustine’. 105  For example Peter Abelard, Expositio in Hexameron, col. 760C: ‘homo commune nomen sit tam viri quam feminae’. 106  Bouchard, ‘Every Valley Shall Be Exalted’, p. 123. See her full discussion, pp. 119–29, to which I am indebted for this condensed account.

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Genesis 2, not separated out from this homo until the creation of Adam and Eve. This, however, if pursued, could lead to some rather disputable results, as it touched closely on a strand of pre-Augustinian teaching with more than just a smack of Manichaean dualism. The division of humans into male and female was taken by Eastern exegetes as evidence of a decline from a state of original purity, homogeneity, or simplicity.107 Gender, in other words, represented an ontological fall into a condition wherein man’s being is fragmented, multiple, and complex. Argued in this way, an obvious conclusion presents itself: the original perfect human created on the sixth day was an androgyne. In the Eastern Church the image of the androgyne as an expression of unification (henōseis) could flourish as a prime symbol of salvation, nourished by the rich Greek tradition of early Christianity and later Byzantine speculation. Eastern Christian writers of the second century saw final redemption exactly in these terms. Clement of Alexandria cites his contemporary and fellow Alexandrian Julius Cassianus: ‘When the two become one and the male with the female is neither male nor female.’108 Likewise, Maximus the Confessor, of the seventh century, writes of Christ’s salvific act, again drawing on the image of androgyny: ‘For he [Christ] unified man, mystically abolishing by the Spirit the difference between male and female and, in place of the two with their peculiar passions, constituting one free with respect to nature.’109 Apart from the primal man of Byzantine exegesis and the redeemed man of Alexandrian speculation — both of which were modelled on Christ — the figure of the androgyne had affiliations to Greek and Roman literature, including narratives, myth, and philosophical writing. Its immediate classical sources were the writings of Ovid, the mythology of Orpheus, and, above all, Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium.110 Androgynous imagery was particularly favoured in Middle Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophical discourse because of the privi107 

Bugge, Virginitas, pp. 5–29. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 3.13, col. 1194A: ‘“quando duo facta fuerint unum, et masculum cum femina, nec masculum nec femineum”’. Quoted from Bugge, Virginitas, p. 12. It should be noted that Clement uses the categories of male and female symbolically, as representing respectively ‘anger’ and ‘desire’ — unlike Julius Cassianus, who uses them more literally. 109  Maximus the Confessor, Quaestiones ad Thalassium 48, col.  435A: ‘Univit enim hominem, distinctionem masculi et feminae spiritu mystice auferens, inque utrisque a proprietatibus affectuum labe inolitis, naturam liberam constituens.’ Quoted from Meeks, ‘The Image of the Androgyne’, p. 165. 110  On the androgyne as image in Greek-Roman texts, see, e.g., Delcourt, Hermaphrodite, and Brisson, Sexual Ambivalence, trans. by Lloyd. 108 

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leged status given to oneness as opposed to multiplicity. Hence, through the Platonizing tendencies in Christian exegesis, some of these attitudes and priorities were picked up and reformulated in a Christian context. These notions were contested in the Latin West already from the time of Irenaeus in the second century and then again, more decisively, by Augustine in the early fifth.111 As usual, Augustine established a solution for Latin orthodoxy, combining the two creation accounts by means of an intricate exegesis which knits the biblical verses to connect the godlike human prototype (the homo of Gen 1. 26) with the sexual differentiation in the following verse (the femina/ masculus of Gen 1. 27), thus linking the formation of Adam and his woman (the mulier of Gen 2. 21–23) directly to the theomorphic homo.112 But in spite of Augustine’s efforts to incorporate the female human being (femina/mulier) in asexual theomorphic excellence, he nonetheless seems to endorse a genderless definition of andromorphic godlikeness (imago Dei), leaving the problem essentially unresolved. Without any reasonable way to explain away prelapserian androgyny, Latin commentators simply met this possibility with mute opposition, or, at most, offhand dismissal.113 Apart from the potential ‘category 111 

The identification of original sin with the disintegration of human nature into male and female, lead to the notion that the pristine state of human nature will come about with the restoration of the original virginal androgyne. Irenaeus condemns these arguments in Adversus haereses 1.28, cols 690A–691B. Latin theologians had more ambiguous ideas on the original nature of man, most notable among them Augustine. His notion was that ‘technical virgins’ reproduce in Eden without desire or pleasure (De civitate dei 14). Augustine confronted the issue of dual creation in De Genesi ad litteram, after which it was treated by Bede in the eighth century and later picked up by Peter Comestor and the glossators of the Glossa ordinaria in the twelfth century; cf. Bugge, Virginitas, p. 6, who points out that ‘[this] vein of speculation over the status of sexuality in Eden is ultimately the source of the ideal of virginity in later western monasticism’. One may also bear in mind that, as far as regards the twelfth century, a very concrete challenge to orthodoxy had presented itself in the form of a Manichaean revival in the teachings of the Albigensians, or the Cathars, in southern France. This would reasonably make twelfth-century commentators wearier still of heretical or potentially heretical ideas associated with this teaching, accounting for the concern in twelfth-century glosses. 112  Børresen, ‘In Defence of Augustine’, p. 19; with reference to De Genesi ad litteram. In her view, the incoherence in Augustine’s anthropology is brought on by Neoplatonic spiritualism, causing him to follow Gregory of Nyssa’s ‘genderless definition of the image quality, in spite of rejecting its presupposed dual creation’. 113  Peter Comestor, Historia scholastica 9, col.  1063D, avoided the issue by observing that the Genesis text says that God created them, in the plural: ‘Eos autem dicit pluraliter, ne androgeos, id est hermaphroditos factos putaremus.’ See also Bouchard, ‘Every Valley Shall Be Exalted’, p. 124.

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crisis’ in gender organization represented by an explicitly dual-sexed creature, there were several reasons why the Latin Church fathers were uncomfortable with androgynous imagery. Most importantly, it invoked the prospective primal androgyne of Eastern and Gnostic speculation. Hence, it raised concerns about encratite and dualistic implications, representing therefore a potential challenge to orthodoxy.114 There was, however, a central biblical reference which raised the issue of gender ambiguity in a clearly Christian context. Galatians 3. 27–28 both deconstructs gender division (along with social division) and seems to invoke the androgynous prototype of Genesis 1. 27. The passage is, in fact, subtext in both Clement of Alexandria’s and Maximus the Confessor’s configurations of the eschatological androgyne, which were cited above. Wayne Meeks, calling attention to Galatians 3, argues that it envisions a ‘unification of opposites’.115 Yet there is considerable difference between the assertive ‘male and female he created them’ (Gen 1. 27) and the subversive ‘there is no longer male and female’. The Pauline text actively destabilizes binary gender categories by undermining even the fundamental opposition of division/non-division itself.116 Grounded in the biblical text’s use of (de)gendering as salvational symbolism, androgynous imagery — understood as the deliberate deconstruction of gender categories to express theological-philosophical concepts of unity, transformation, or even salvation — found modes of expression in the context of Latin devotion. Precisely the same gender-absorbing, gender-uniting (de)construction was expressed in the holy female who ‘becomes male’ — a topos which was as common in orthodox Christianity as in more heterodox strands, and as common in the Latin West as in the Greek East. In transcending her body and her gender, the female was subjected to a metamorphosis into the masculine-neutral, which may be seen as equivalent to the spiritual status of the first, prelapsarian being : an expression of a salvational state which implies a return to an original unity where all femaleness is absorbed in a transcendental masculinity (or masculinized transcendence). Another instance of deliberate blending of gender categories in devotional language are notions of the feminized Christ, which also found expression both in the Latin West and the Greek East. Late ancient and medieval texts and images sometimes pictured Christ androgynously as female Sapientia, like he also figured as Mother in devotional 114 

Bugge, Virginitas, esp. pp. 21–29. Meeks, ‘The Image of the Androgyne’, pp. 165–67, 180–83. 116  The point is made by Davis, ‘Crossed Texts, Crossed Sex’, pp. 35–36. 115 

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writings.117 In the high and late medieval period, representations allowing for dual sexuality flourished in devotional and ascetic discourse. With inherent notions of gender hierarchy, such imagery effectively focalized on the essential paradoxes and oppositions in the figure of Christ — God/man, spirit/flesh, heavenly/worldly, ascended/descended. For instance, Hildegard of Bingen — Bernard of Clairvaux’s contemporary and acquaintance — emphatically envisioned incarnate Christ as dual-sexed: ‘Male signifies the divinity of the Son of God, and femaleness his humanity.’118 Hildegard’s gendered construction, apart from siding humanity with the feminine, divinity with the masculine — a commonplace Christian continuity of the Hellenistic duality of female/flesh and male/spirit — explicitly assigns a dual gender, indeed an androgynous nature, to Christ.119 The implication is a destabilization of Christ’s gender: the breaking down of the binary construct of malefemale as their differentiation (like that of humanity-divinity) is united and dissolves into his being. Christ, like the first androgyne, represented neither the physical embodiment of two equally good genders, nor the effemination typically attached to hermaphroditism, but rather ‘an idealized masculine form that perfectly assimilated inferior, feminine elements’, even a renewal of ‘perfect oneness beyond the creation of “female” and its effemination of humanity’.120 Unresolved, the question of the disputed androgyne in Genesis was avoided rather than directly refuted in the medieval Latin tradition. But imagery connected with annihilation-assimilation of gender differences and obliterationunification of male and female functioned nevertheless as rhetorical device and devotional symbol, thereby absorbing androgynous imagery, however awkwardly, into theological discourse in the Latin West. We must note, however, that medieval texts generally harbour a deep mistrust towards the notion of an ‘actual’ androgyne, or hermaphrodite, where genders are simultaneously mixed. Insofar as gender-crossing and gender-blending imagery is embraced in 117  On the impact of Sapientia, or Lady Wisdom, on medieval tradition and as figura for Christ, see Newman, God and the Goddesses, pp. 190–244. On Christ’s motherhood, see Bynum, esp. Jesus as Mother. The image of Jesus as mother goes back to the second century, but its fullest development was in the twelfth. On the theme of Christ’s androgyny, see below, Section 6.2; on Sapientia in Bernard’s Sermons, see below Sections 6.2, 6.4, and 6.5. 118  Hildegard of Bingen, Liber divinorum operum 1.4.100, col. 885C: ‘Et vir divinitatem, femina vero humanitatem Filii Dei significat.’ 119  On Hildegard, see Newman, Sister of Wisdom. 120  Swancutt, ‘Sexing the Pauline Body of Christ’, pp. 86–87. See also Meeks, ‘The Image of the Androgyne’.

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Christian texts, it conveys, as in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, a preference for oneness, where gender identity is erased or overcome, and not a physiological or medical case of hermaphroditism. Concerning Greek-Roman concepts of gender in Antiquity, Jorunn Økland observes that ‘the hermaphrodite is far from a bodily coagulation of the androgyne, which is more understood as an ideal, bodiless omnipotent male. Hermaphrodites were often depicted as hypersexual, frivolous, less-than-ideal’.121 Elizabeth Castelli notes a similar differentiation regarding Gnostic texts, where a clear distinction was made between a notion of oneness and a notion of indistinct gender identity, like in the hermaphrodite. She states that the latter was conceived as monstrous and problematic, not to be embraced.122 Here we encounter a significant difference in perception regarding the literal and the symbolic. On the literal level, displaced gender attributes created a profound discomfort for medieval authors — particularly in terms of the moral disposition of the subject in question: time and again medieval texts underscore the lustfulness of masculine women and the maliciousness of female men.123 On a metaphorical level, the clearly positive affirmations of Mother-Jesus in the twelfth century and the alchemical hermaphrodite in the thirteenth point to a dimension where dual sexuality could be charged with a univocally positive significance in the Latin West.124

121 

Økland, Women in their Place, pp. 48–49. I follow Økland in drawing a distinction between androgyne (an idealized, degendered male who absorbs femaleness) and hermaphrodite (bodily coagulation of two genders), although it should be emphasized that the two terms found their way into medieval Latin as synonyms; e.g., Augustine, De civitate dei 6.8 (col. 486). Both androgyne and hermaphrodite are Greek terms: androgynos is a compound formed from the terms anēr/andros, meaning ‘man’, and gunē/gunaikos, meaning ‘woman’; whereas ‘Hermaphroditus’ is the name of the figure who fused with the nymph Salmacis. There was a third term, arrenothēlus, an adjective composed from arren/arrēnos or arsēn/arsenos, meaning ‘male’, and thēlus, meaning ‘female’, but this did not pass into Latin; see Brisson, Sexual Ambivalence, trans. by Lloyd, p. 152. 122  Castelli, ‘“I Will Make Mary Male”’, p. 32. 123  See Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, pp. 212–13. Cadden notes that such persons were open to the charge of fraud: ‘Their bodies are misleading and so are their mores — they are deceitful, they are liars.’ She points out that in Dante’s Inferno, Tiresias, the prophet who changed from male to female and back again, is in the circle where fraud is punished (Inferno, xx. 40–45). 124  On the alchemical hermaphrodite, see Newman, God and the Goddesses, pp. 236, 242.

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1.5 Gender Difference. Body and Metaphor In the Middle Ages there was no single privileged discourse that could claim to establish a definitive method by which one distinguished male from female, fixing the essence of gender in a modern sense. Nor were there stable frontiers between what later will be construed as different scientific fields. In the twelfth century, just before the reorganization and systematization of, among much else, fuller versions of Galenic medicine and Aristotelian science, there prevailed what Joan Cadden labels ‘a tolerance for simultaneously entertaining seemingly incompatible facts and perspectives’ in discussions regarding gender.125 A wide variety of sources and genres, displaying various assumptions about gender, converged, diverged, and overlapped — ranging from the allauthoritative Scripture and patristic writings, Platonic notions of spiritual reproduction (known directly from the partial Latin translation of Timaeus), and the Hippocratic corpus, as well as various compilations, encyclopaedias, handbooks, and pedagogical dialogues which were the result of the Latin West’s appropriation of Greek science: translated, reorganized, and condensed over the centuries.126 The variation of sources and genres permitted, indeed favoured, eclecticism and diversity. What emerges is not stability and coherence but rather varieties and ambiguities within the discussions themselves. As Cadden points out, there was no ‘grand synthetic scheme which captures the medieval concept of gender but rather a cluster of gender-related notions, sometimes competing, sometimes mutually reinforcing; sometimes permissive, sometimes constraining; sometimes consistent, sometimes ad hoc.’127 Apart from the recognition of genitals being positioned exteriorly or interiorly, almost everything else regarding gender difference was subject to various and sometimes conflicting interpretations: whether female and male genitals were primarily different or primarily similar, whether only the male seed was needed in procreation (oneseed theory) or if women also produced seed (two-seed theory), and whether

125 

Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, p. 52. Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, pp. 41–53, but she warns (p. 39) not to understand medieval thinking on gender difference and reproduction as limited or constrained by the classical heritage: ‘What the Middle Ages constructed was […] its own, in the same way that medieval architecture, though it borrowed motifs and even stone from ancient buildings, was far more than a mere extension of or variation on the Roman’. 127  Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, pp. 9–10. 126 

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gender was determined by the seed or by the foetus’s position in the uterus or by some combination of the two.128

128  On genital likeness between males and females in premodern esp. Galenic theory, see Laqueur, Making Sex, pp. 4, 126–27, and Greenblatt, ‘Fiction and Friction’, p. 39. Both Greenblatt and Laqueur furnish evidence from ancient and early modern texts of girls sprouting a penis. These examples range from medical and judicial documents, chronicles, tales, observations, as well as literary texts. If a female suddenly acquired a penis, the clinical explanation would be that an increase in heat had caused the uterus to thrust outwards and turn into the morphologically identical male penis. This increase of heat could in its turn be due to manly behaviour, physical activity, or even puberty. On one-seed versus two-seed theory, see Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, esp. p. 201. In contrast to Aristotelian theory of epigenesis, which, at least in its strongest formulations, saw the male as the sole efficient cause of generation (and hence a one-seed system), writers favouring the two-seed system emphasized the interaction of seeds, both male and female, e.g., Galen’s De semine. For two-seed theorists, the uterus and the testis, together with the male and female semen, were the active participants in the process of regeneration. Drawing on the principle of heat, Hippocratic-Galenic theory held that a male offspring results from the dominance of the father’s sperm, a female from the dominance of the mother’s, and a hermaphrodite in case of a draw. On the position of the foetus in the uterus, see Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, pp. 198–99. She draws attention to the anatomists of twelfth-century Salerno, a leading medical school at its time, who presented in their tracts a theory that would become known as ‘the doctrine of the seven-celled uterus’. It proposes that the uterus is divided into seven separate cells, or cubicles — three on the left side, three on the right side, and one in the middle. A conception that takes place in one of the three cells on the right side — the hot side — would produce a male child; on the left side — the cool side — a female. Moreover, the further to the side and away from the centre the foetus was positioned, the more it would acquire of the characteristics of the given gender, both in terms of its physiology, complexion, temperament, and character. If the foetus developed in the centrecell, however, it would become a hermaphrodite, or androgyne. Several versions of the doctrine circulated, most, however, including the elaboration of left and right and constantly providing an odd-numbered division of the uterus. For example, a century after the Salernian anatomists, it was argued that the number of cells was five, as a woman could not bear more than quintuplets. A didactic text from around 1200 (cited in Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, p. 201) reveals influences of both the theory of the divided uterus and the theory of the two-seed system: ‘Si vero plus de mulebri spermate in dextra parte collocetur, femina virago generatur. Si plus in sinistram quam in dextram, et si plus sit de virili semine quam mulebri, vir effeminatus nascitur. Sit in media cellula ita ut utrisque partis suscipiat impressionem, hermaphroditus erit, quoniam et unius et alterius corporis habebit et geret supplementa’ (If more of the womanly sperm is set in the right part [of the womb], a manly woman [femina virago] will be generated. If more in the left than the right, and there is more of the manly seed than the womanly, an effeminate man [vir effeminatus] will be born. If [the sperm is] in the middle chamber, so that it is subject to the impression of both parts, there will be a hermaphrodite, since it will have and produce the equipment of the body of both one [sex] and the other).

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In this amalgam of various ideas, one basic notion nevertheless appears to be a general recognition. This was the idea that sexual difference is refined by balance of humours and the relative qualities of wet and dry and heat and cold: the female is cool, wet, and porous, while the male is hot, dry, and hard. Drawing on sources from Antiquity, medieval constructions of gender differentiation display what might, arguably, be seen as a consistent scientific theory, understanding heat as a defining principle.129 Heat, so the theory goes, is the constitutive element in maleness, both in terms of being an instrument in the creation of a male offspring and in terms of gender characteristic — the male is hotter, the female cooler. As a consequence of their cooler disposition, the female was moist, the male dry. Furthermore, this association of male-warmdry and female-cool-wet embraced yet another duality: that of left and right, corresponding to femaleness and maleness respectively. Significantly, divisions of gender and gender difference based on this broad and widely diffused interpretative pattern align gender with a hierarchy of values, as the association of male-warm-right and female-cool-left makes clear; in medieval thinking, warmer implied stronger, the right side implied better. Whichever answers were given to the questions of relative participation in reproduction — even in theories where women were allowed as active and constituent participant — the difference between male and female was given a qualitative rather than just a diomorphic interpretation. Medical and biological categories for establishing gender and gender differentiation did exist in the Middle Ages but were themselves composite, contradictory, and unstable, as Cadden pointed out. Instances of gender crossing — ranging from medical reports of maids becoming men to topoi of spiritual transformation (as in the holy woman who is called male; or the transvestite female saint who disguises herself as a man to enter a monastery or to preach; or, finally, the monk who imagines himself bride, virgin, mother) — testify that both medieval physiological theories and exegesis admitted degrees and flexibility in constructing gender differences. But most importantly, gendered imagery demonstrates the extent to which gender was abstracted in late ancient and medieval writing. Gender inscriptions go far beyond bodily or sexual literalism. Rather, gender division served to describe both the spiritual and the physical world, and both literal and metaphorical attributions, creating a conceptual tool with which to divide and speak of the world in terms of gender. 129 

See Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference, pp. 13–53, 170–72, 188–201; see also Murray, ‘One Flesh, Two Sexes, Three Genders?’, pp. 38–40.

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This means that the distinction between the corporeal and the metaphorical was never quite as obvious as one might imagine. Laqueur has stated that in premodern interpretations, ‘sex, or the body, must be understood as the epiphenomenon, while gender, what we would take to be a cultural category, was primary or “real”’.130 He suggests that the metaphorical and the corporeal, the ‘symbolic’ and the ‘real’ in premodern gender discourse, are so infiltrated, one with the other, that the difference between the two is really one of emphasis rather than of kind.131 When gender discourse intersected with devotional discourse, gender indeterminacy quite inevitably arose. This is because in medieval devotional discourse — habituated with gender crossing and gender blending in Scripture (Gal 3. 28), in patristic exegesis, and in hagiography — gender could be ‘contingent on virtue rather than on genitals’.132 This does not mean, however, that gender division or the body itself is eradicated as a consequence. Rather, ascribing femaleness to a male subject, or, conversely, maleness to a female subject, might be seen as an efficient symbol of devotion or devotional transformation precisely because it operates against the logics of an otherwise fairly stable gender system. Yet perhaps the greater stumbling block when reading medieval devotional imagery is not gender, but sexuality. Modern perceptions of bridal mysticism move within a (post-Freudian) frame of understanding, where the crucial question is sublimation of desire — consciously or unconsciously transforming fleshly cravings. There are, generally speaking, two various and opposing scholarly positions on erotic imagery in medieval devotion: either it is interpreted as expression of sublimated sexual desire, despite of or because of repression, or else as devoid of literal references. The former position was held, for instance, by William Phipps, who has commented that ‘[a]s with other allegorists, Bernard’s alleged exposition [of the Song of Songs] tells us nothing about the scriptural text, but rather exposes the turmoil of the mystic composer’. 133 Referring to a famous but historically uncertain episode of Vita prima, where the young Bernard allegedly plunged his penis into an icy pond to quench an erection,134 130 

Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 8. Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 109. 132  Økland, Women in their Place, p. 54. 133  Phipps, ‘The Plight of the Song of Songs’, p. 90. More recently, Podles, The Church Impotent, p. 119, follows suit, referring to bridal imagery, with its ‘combination of eroticism and the pain of the cross’ as carrying ‘overtones of perverted sexuality’. 134  William of St Thierry, Vita prima 1.3.6, col. 230. The story is often repeated in scholarship, e.g., Wiethaus, ‘Christian Piety and the Legacy of Medieval Masculinity’, p. 54. Also Moore, 131 

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Phipps smugly proclaims: ‘“If you drive nature out with a pitchfork,” Horace sagiously observed, “she will find a way back”’.135 The latter position, on the other hand, underscoring the non-literal meaning of erotic imagery, sees desire as a metaphorical expression of a love where the process of spiritualization is already a fait accompli. This is the most common position in Bernardine research, most vigorously vindicated by Jean Leclercq and more recently Michael Casey. Claiming that the interpretation was ‘symbolical and not erotic’, Leclercq emphasized that Bernard used erotic and feminine metaphors simply because he is writing within the confines of a biblical text where these occur.136 In other words, the analogy between erotic love and spiritual love is nothing more than semblance.137 Bynum’s studies have also de-emphasized the erotic, pointing to the modern tendency to eroticize images, especially images of the body, and cautioning against assuming that medievals did likewise.138 While Bynum’s warning is no doubt prudent, I shall ‘The Song of Songs in the History of Sexuality’, p. 339, relates the story, significantly linking it directly to Bernard’s Sermons on the Song of Songs: ‘In boyhood, Bernard’s eyes, then roaming free, would alight from time to time upon a female body, William informs us. Bernard’s penis, rudely aroused from slumber, would crane its neck forward curiously for a glimpse, causing its owner to flee in confusion and dunk the offending member [Bernard himself appended to it] in an icy pond until it consented to withdraw its head. Thus it was that Bernard resolved to become a monk. And it was from this same frigid pond, proof against the wiles of the temptress and the treacherous head of the serpent, that Bernard would deliver all eighty-six of his exquisite sermons on the Song, its pages dripping with icy water.’ 135  Phipps, ‘The Plight of the Song of Songs’, p. 91: Phipps continues by reference to Bernard’s role in the accusations against Abelard and in the second crusade: ‘Bernard’s repressed erotic urges resulted in a destructive flood of dark passion in later life. By means of an inverted sublimation, he channelled his ardent desire for the opposite sex into a hatred of alleged heretics and infidels.’ 136  Leclercq, Monks and Love, p. 31. A difficulty in the readings presented by Leclercq is that he does not distinguish clearly between when he is referring to female imagery and when he is referring to erotic imagery, or whether he is referring to both. 137  See Leclercq, A Second Look at Saint Bernard, trans. by Saïd, pp. 108, 110, and Leclercq, Monks and Love, p. 36. This approach results, ultimately, in a tendency to disregard or downplay the imagery, as illustrated by one Bernard scholar at the jubilee conference in Rome in 1990, Denis Farakasfalvy, who warned in ‘The First Step of Spiritual Life: Conversion’ that Bernard’s ‘imagery of bride and bridegroom, nuptial union and the like’ might be ‘misleading’ for the comprehension of his teaching on contemplation (p. 81). Casey, Athirst for God, similarly deemphasizes the erotic import of desire. 138  Bynum, ‘The Body of Christ’, p. 85, and ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, p. 162; see also Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, pp. 31–34, 138–42.

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not de-emphasize the erotic in this book. Over against the total eradication of erotic implications and over against perduring notions of repression, I hold, first of all, that this use of erotic imagery is deliberate, designed, and controlled — certainly no result of wayward, (un)repressed urges. Additionally, I suggest that its rhetorical function presupposes a profound link between the image and its signification. In a Christianized Platonic understanding, physical things always pointed towards ideas or universals, which meant that literal and corporeal meaning referred to a privileged symbolic meaning. In medieval writing, figura, allegoria, symbolum, signum, translatio, or analogia were brought into play in medieval hermeneutics to give expression to a higher reality, the realm of the sacred, which reason could not attain nor conceptualize.139 The aim of medieval exegesis was to disclose (i.e., make visible and explicit for human understanding) eternal truth which lies hidden behind a veil of text and words. And it did so by insisting that the symbol or signum was somehow prior to any literal or bodily level of meaning. An essential hermeneutical principle of medieval exegesis is expressed in Augustine’s formula that truth is found in shadows and in symbols: veritas sub umbra et figura.140 All divine reality is concealed by the imperfection and distortion which characterizes the world and human nature after man’s fall. The fall, then, implied not only an ontological and moral fall but, equally importantly, an epistemological fall. The symbol, pointing towards a hidden and spiritual meaning, offered fallen humanity the means of crossing over from the natural to the divine, giving postlapsarian understanding access to divine mystery. Twelfthcentury hermeneutics and poetics, under the impact of various Platonisms, were

139  Different medieval authors used different terms to denote what in modern denominations would be called ‘image’ or ‘metaphor’, and there were no standardized categories that correspond to modern ones. One term could often have confusingly many uses (e.g., ‘allegory’, which could imply one specific way of reading Scripture; or else all non-literal ways of reading Scripture; or, yet again, a literary form used by the poets and by the philosophers). Augustine, e.g., in De doctrina christiana, used signum, which became common medieval usage,. In addition to allegoria and signum, also translatio and figura were current, less so symbolum. For a discussion of terms and distinctions between them, especially between the Augustianian ‘sign’ and the Pseudo-Dionysian ‘symbol’, see Chenu, ‘The Symbolist Mentality’, pp. 124–28; cf. Ladner’s discussion (owing much to structuralism and semiotics) in ‘Medieval and Modern Understanding of Symbolism’. 140  This is a major theme in De civitate dei and also found in Confessiones 10 and 13; see Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, p. 7.

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saturated with allegory, signs, and symbolism.141 In this century of ‘symbolist mentality’, in Chenu’s influential description, all ‘natural or historical reality possessed a signification which transcended its crude reality and which a certain symbolic dimension of that reality would reveal to man’s mind’.142 Gerhart Ladner has also drawn attention to the great conceptual divide which separates the modern from the medieval understanding of symbolism. He argues that medieval usage of symbols was based on two crucial aspects which supplemented each other: that of analogy (similarity-dissimilarity) and of ontological participation. The meaningfulness of symbols and the meaning of symbolizing have become problematic because post-nominalist understanding stresses the arbitrariness and subjectivity of signs and symbols rather than their correspondence with an objective reality.143 In a modern understanding, the relation between the bride of the Song and the Church (or the soul) is ‘just metaphor’, in the sense that the former represents an illustration of the latter but that there is no ontological correspondence between the two. For medieval exegetes, however, the correlation between them represents a technique for revealing hidden truth, an instrument capable of penetrating deep mystery over and beyond any incidental use in mere illustration. Nothing in this enchanted world haunted with symbols and meaning is just metaphor. Nothing is mere words, either. Colours, numbers, and particularly names all conferred a metaphysical or quasi-metaphysical importance upon the grammatical operation of denomination.144 Thus, there is a profound interrelation, a transparency, between things (res) and words (nomen). Even more eminently, these hermeneutical principles were applied to the sacraments, which — in and through their symbolism which brought about the purification, illumination, and perfection of humans — constituted a ‘mystical realism’ 141 

See Chenu, ‘The Platonisms of the Twelfth Century’. See also Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. 142  Chenu, ‘The Symbolist Mentality’, p. 102. The ‘symbolist mentality’ in Chenu’s account denotes a general attitude or method of inquiry and formulation permeating all of culture and society: ‘a body of assumptions rarely expressed yet accepted everywhere and by all’. This mentality goes well beyond biblical hermeneutics. Apart from secular and religious literature, it also regarded the visual arts and the study of history and nature as well, manifesting itself in all centres of learning, from Cîteaux to Chartres, from Champagne to Saint-Victor. 143  Ladner, ‘Medieval and Modern Understanding of Symbolism’, p. 228. 144  For discussions of how this ‘metaphysic of similarity or sympathy’ constitutes a historic paradigm of knowledge and interpretation, see Foucault, The Order of Things; and Eco, ‘Interpretation and History’.

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with an almost physical efficaciousness, reinforcing the notion of the correlation between symbol and mystery.145 Liturgy, the omnipresent backdrop of the medieval Church, which exercised a pervasive influence on medieval thinking, not only effected what it signified but even, in the case of the central liturgical sacrament — the Eucharist — was what it signified.146 Also monastic meditation — based on mental images or ‘rhetorical mnemotechnic’ — engages in the same movement of transference upwards.147 In the same way that an image would be understood to participate — in a Platonic sense — in what it represents, it allowed invisible ideas or principles to be, concretely, present and visible. Jacques Blanpain, in a comprehensive study of Bernard’s nuptial imagery, noted that Bernard’s symbolic language does not merely describe something but renders it veritably present for experience.148 This fundamental insight has been emphasized also by David d’Avray and Tomás Rincón, who stress the crucial point of the continuity of the signifying reality and the signified reality.149 A symbol, as perceived in medieval theory, reveals a metaphysical correspondence, and it does so by implementing the presence of what it symbolizes, albeit in a reflexive, secondary sense. In other words, the symbol functions as a ‘pawn’ of a hidden and higher reality, rendering it accessible to human experience by effectuating its presence. The point here is not only to argue the profound interrelation between symbol and reality, between the perceptible and the imperceptible, and between 145 

See Chenu, ‘The Symbolist Mentality’, pp. 119–28. Verbaal, ‘Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons for the Liturgical Year’, p. 49: ‘No expression of the medieval mind is free from liturgical elements.’ Ladner, ‘Medieval and Modern Understanding of Symbolism’, p. 240, observes that sacramental symbolism is not merely a question of similarity but rather one of contact and participation. 147  Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, pp. 84–87; cf. Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought, p. 149. 148  Blanpain, ‘Langage mystique’, p. 165: ‘Le langage symbolique ne décrit pas seulement, le rend véritablement présent quelque chose de l’expérience.’ 149  See d’Avray, Medieval Marriage, pp. 9–10; Rincón, El matrimonio, misterio y signo, p. 270 n. 48 (Quoted from d’Avray, Medieval Marriage, p. 10 n. 34): ‘Creemos fundamental distinguir entre simbolismo o paralelismo simbólico y significación come tal. Lo primiero, en terminus gramaticales, equivale a una simple yuxtaposición del sentido místico y el sentido literal. Mientras que en la significación existe un subordinación o dependencia profunda del signo en relación con la cosa significada.’ While I do not adopt Rincón’s rigid distinction between ‘signification’ and ‘symbolism’, but rather opt for the looser terms ‘image’ or ‘imagery’ to cover both types of meaning, I am drawing valuable insight from his observation of the ‘profound dependence’ and ‘subordination’ of signification in medieval and monastic hermeneutics. 146 

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the literal and spiritual meaning, but also to emphasize the hierarchization between the two levels in Platonizing Christian epistemology. The realism implied in this symbolism prevented any notion of reductionism — the symbol did not merely indicate a transferral from an invisible (divine) level to a visible (earthly) level for didactic purposes. Thus, when Bernard uses nuptial and erotic imagery to explore the relationship between Christ and the soul or the Church, he does not do so in order to give expression to a mystical and divine union by creating an analogy simply in order to render it more accessible to human understanding. Rather, Christ’s union with the soul or the Church is eternal and spiritual, and therefore primary; whereas the carnal, earthly union is merely transitory, and therefore secondary. The latter must be considered in light of the former, not the other way around. When, in reading the erotic symbolism of the Song, Bernard complacently refers his readers (or listeners) — that is, the monks — to the spiritual union invoking a language of sexual imagery, he does so precisely because there is a relation between fruitio Dei and fornicatio, but the object of desire differs — and this makes all the difference.150 The same transferral of meaning ‘upwards’ (i.e., anagogy) applies also to the physical human body: its primary source of meaning would inhere in its creational and eschatological references — resonating with the prospect of resurrection, and, ultimately, with the salvational body of Christ. Therefore, when applying the term ‘metaphor’ to medieval religious writing, especially monastic writing, one should not assume a too restricted sense of the term. Not just the nuptial or bridal metaphor but imagery in general functions in ways which are more complex and fundamental than any notion of arbitrary similitude or rhetorical ornamentation. As we turn to the world of Bernard’s bridal imagery, we should keep this in mind. What seems more ‘real’ to us in the twenty-first century — like sociological phenomenons — was not necessarily perceived as such in the Middle Ages.151 On the contrary, for medieval writers and mystics, devotional imagery attempted to capture and convey something which had even greater reality. When Bernard constructs sophisticated meditative images for his Cistercian audience — that ascetic elite among monks — they are just as ‘real’ as they are seductive.

150 

See discussion below Section 5.5; see also Engh, ‘Munkenes erotiske lek i bakvendtland’. See remarks by Hollywood, ‘Sexual Desire, Divine Desire’, p. 121; cf. the discussion in McLaughlin, Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority, pp. 8–12. 151 

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Erotic Imagery and Maternal Imagery — Configuring the Bride Docemur ex hoc sane intermittenda plerumque dulcia oscula propter lacantia ubera. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica canticorum 41.6

2.1 The Bride’s Dual Imagery and its Subtexts Scholarly accounts often awkwardly reproduce the contrast between the author of the sublimely (or even perversely) eroticized and feminized Sermons on the Song of Songs and the powerful abbot notoriously involved in political manoeuvres and power play. These reconstructions invariably cast Bernard of Clairvaux in the presumably irreconcilable roles of cloistered contemplative and scheming politician.1 Certainly, the vast span of his activities may itself account for the disjunction in the apprehension of Bernard. In a celebrated and oft-cited phrase in a letter to Prior Bernard of the Carthusian monastery of Portas, he once defined himself as ‘the Chimaera of his age’.2 But rather than simply reduplicating a split initially opened by Bernard himself, one might see this tension of duality as an effect of a consistent schema reproduced throughout his literary works, particularly the Sermons on the Song of Songs, and as reflecting a larger context of rhetorical and hermeneutical concern for oppositions and inversions which permeated twelfth-century thought in general and Cistercian thought in particular.3 1 

McGuire, The Difficult Saint, p. 23. Ep 250.4, col. 451A: ‘Ego enim quaedam chimaera mei secoli, nec clericum gero nec laicum.’ 3  On the diffusion of rhetoric of opposites in the twelfth century, see Bouchard, ‘Every 2 

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As will be discussed fully in the final chapters of this book, Bernard’s eschatology, which requires everything to become its opposite, stands as ordering structure for the dynamic dualities in the text. Like Augustine of Hippo and Gregory the Great, Bernard tends to order his exegesis and express himself in antithetical terms. We will see that he uses the full repertoire of available antithetical and oppositional concepts at his disposition — monastic and devotional concepts, like contemplation and activity, descent and ascent, frui and uti; biblical references, particularly the New Testament reversals; literary techniques, especially oxymorons and alliteration; and Mariological and Christological concepts. Also constructions of gender in Bernard’s Sermons partake in this rhetoric of complementary opposites, as I shall presently argue. Yet there is one oppositional term which more than any highlights the main elements of Bernard’s theology and Christology, bringing together in a dynamic relationship that which is most lowly and humble and that which is most filled with the brightness, the claritas, of glory: his own monastery Clairvaux, Claravallis. When, in 1115, Bernard and his brethren arrived at that desolate region previously known by locals as ‘the valley of wormwood’, they renamed the site, as was common with Cistercian settlements (seeing that these should always be founded ex novo in theory, at least, if not always in practice). In naming their monastery Clara-vallis (‘bright valley’ or ‘valley of splendour’), they transmitted themes of humility, lowliness, and poverty: the valley (cf. Is 40. 4) is lowly, dark, and uncultivated, an image of the soil of humility and of wilderness. 4 But, concurrently, they signalized themes of renewal and reform; themes of waiting, expectance and desire; themes of transformation, transfiguration, and participation; and themes of splendour — of claritas.5 Valley Shall Be Exalted’. In underscoring the integration of the two aspects, I follow Martha Newman’s reading of early Cistercian ideology in The Boundaries of Charity. Until the appearance of this acclaimed study, Bernard existed in historiography as two separate figures: one political and the other theological, as Newman herself notes: ‘No one has shown how he integrated these two areas of his life’ (p. 3). She, however, did show this, arguing convincingly that a spirit of public service and involvement was inherent in, rather than anathema to, the order’s spirituality. 4  On spiritual topography in Bernardine writing, see Bruun, Parables. Santiso, ‘El significado teologico y antropologico del amor’, observes that architectural and aesthetical concepts in the distributions of space of Cistercian monasteries and its surrounding vallies make a topographic analogy to the descent of humility and the ascent of desire. See also Carruthers, The Craft of Thought, pp. 221–76 (esp. p. 224), who argues that the monastery buildings of church and cloister were also expressions and tools of monastic rhetoric. 5  See Waddell, ‘The Glorified Christ’, who draws attention to these textual themes

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Both these themes, and the inherent opposition between them, are present in William of St Thierry’s ideologically charged account of the founding of Clairvaux: The site of Clairvaux was in the Langres district, not far from the river Aube, and long used as a robbers’ lair. Of old it was called the valley of Absinth [‘wormwood’], either because wormwood grew there in great abundance or because of the bitterness and pain suffered there at the hands of the robbers. So it was that this place of horror and vast solitude [loco horroris et vastae solitudinis] was settled by these men of virtue, turning the robbers’ den into a temple of God and a house of prayer. Here they began to serve God in poverty of spirit, in hunger and thirst, in coldness and nakedness, and in long vigils. Often their food was nothing but a stew of beech leaves. Their bread, following the prophet, was of barley, millet, and vetch, so that once a visiting monk who complained pitifully, brought it away with him secretly to show everyone as if it were a miracle that any man could live on this food, and particularly these men [who lived such a hard life].6

William creates oppositions which refer ultimately to a principal duality, namely, the valley’s former and current inhabitants, or rather, the robbers and the monks. Both chose the wilderness and the strenuous life of the recluse in a place of ‘horror and vast solitude’ (Dt 32. 10), with only some leaves and rough bread for their food. In fact, the image of the den, or cave, evokes associations inherent in the naming of Clairvaux and their relevance to Bernard’s theology and Christology, associating the concept of claritas with the introduction of Phil 3. 20b–21a in Cistercian Advent liturgy: ‘Salvatorem expectamus Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, qui reformabit corpus humilitatis nostrae configuratum corpori claritatis suae’ (We look for the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, who will reform the body of our humility, making it into the body of his splendour); and a related Pauline text, ii Cor 3. 18: ‘Nos vero omnes revelata facie gloriam Domini speculantes, in eamdem imaginem transformamur, a claritate in claritatem tamquam a Domini Spiritu’ (We all gaze with revealed face at the glory of the Lord, transformed into his image from splendour to splendour, in the Spirit of the Lord). 6  William of St Thierry, Vita prima 1.5.25, cols 241–42: ‘Erat autem Clara-Vallis locus in territorio Lingonensi, non longe a fluvio Alba, antiqua spelunca latronum, quae antiquitus dicebatur Vallis absinthialis, seu propter abundantis ibi absinthii copiam, seu propter amaritudinem doloris incidentium ibi in manus latronum. Ibi ergo in loco horroris et vastae solitudinis consederunt viri illi virtutis, facturi de spelunca latronum templum Dei, et domum orationis. Ubi simpliciter aliquanto tempore Deo servierunt in paupertate spiritus, in fame et siti, in frigore et nuditate, in vigiliis multis. Pulmentaria saepius ex foliis fagi conficiebant. Panis, instar prophetici illius, ex hordeo et milio et vicia erat, ita ut aliquando religiosus vir quidam appositum sibi in hospitio, ubertim plorans, clam asportaverit, quasi pro miraculo omnibus ostendendum, quod inde viverent homines, et tales homines’ (Modifying a translation by Webb and Walker, quoted in Bredero, Bernard of Clairvaux, p. 265).

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to the cave of Subiaco, where Saint Benedict had lived as a hermit. But here, of course, the likeness ends. The ‘robbers’ den’ (spelunca latronum), bringing bitterness and pain (amaritudinem doloris) and carrying undertones of beasts and wild animals, is contrasted by the monks’ ‘temple of God and house of prayer’ (templum Dei, et domum orationis), where, ultimately, even the monks’ asceticism is associated with grace (the ‘miracle’ witnessed by the visiting monk). Invoking the biblical theme of the Temple having become a den of thieves, the founding of Clairvaux becomes associated with Christ’s cleansing of the Temple (Lk 19. 46, Mk 11. 17, Mt 21. 13), and, thus, implicitly, with notions of Christomimetic institutional reform. The leading imagery and themes in the passage are contained in the opposition of past and present names for the valley: on the one hand ‘wormwood’ (absinthii), which is bitter, poisonous, and deadly; on the other, the reforming, transforming claritas of future glory. Bernard himself used two different images for Clairvaux, both of which are significant in this context. In his letters, he refers several times to Clairvaux as the home of the ‘poor in Christ’ (pauperes Christi: Epp. 46, 55, 411, and 459). This imagery, which touches on the core of his concern with humility, distinguishes itself from another favourite image: Clairvaux as Jerusalem.7 These two images appear to evoke opposite values: one desirable and positive ( Jerusalem), the other undesirable and negative (poverty). But they are exactly that kind of complementary opposition which Bernard and the Cistercians favoured — the former transmitting themes of lowliness and humility; the latter, of exaltation and glory. Portraying Cistercian monasteries, and Clairvaux in particular, as the gateway to the heavenly city brought forth a metaphorical identification between the monastery and beatific anticipation, a common enough theme in monasticism. Yet Bernard’s treatment on the theme also exceeds any mere metaphorical sense, to the point where the metaphor is the real thing, of which even the earthly city of Jerusalem (which had recently been ‘delivered’ to Christianity) is but a bleak shadow. This is most striking in a letter written around 1129 to Bishop Alexander of Lincoln on the occasion of a visit by a monk named Philip, who had been on his way to Jerusalem but decided to remain at Clairvaux instead of continuing his pilgrimage.8 The abbot of Clairvaux announced to the Bishop that Philip had found the shorter path to Jerusalem — indeed, that he 7  On Clairvaux as the home of the poor in Christ, see Bredero, Bernard of Clairvaux, pp. 263–67; on Clairvaux as Jerusalem, see pp. 267–75. 8  On Ep 64 and Clairvaux as Jerusalem, see Verbaal, ‘Timeless Time’, pp. 233–36; and Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity, pp. 46–50.

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‘was already there’ (ingressus est sanctam civitatem). Philip, Bernard states, had become not a ‘curious observer’ but a ‘devoted inhabitant and a registered citizen of Jerusalem’.9 Sardonically, he announces to the Bishop: ‘And this, if you want to know, is Clairvaux.’ On this note, he continues: She is Jerusalem, united to the one in heaven by whole-hearted devotion, by imitation through conformity, and by spiritual affinity. Here is his rest, as he himself promises, for ever and ever. He has chosen to live here where he has found if not yet the fullness of vision, then at least the expectation of that true peace, which is called the peace of God which surpasses our every sense [Phil 4. 7].10

Applying the metaphor of Jerusalem to Clairvaux, Bernard envisions Clairvaux as an earthly representation of the heavenly city which by imitation, conformity, and spiritual affinity is united to her heavenly counterpart, thus evoking in no small manner leading themes in his treatment of the nuptial imagery of the Song. The passage provides an insight into the figure of the bride, who, traditionally in Bernardine studies, is seen as a representation for the Church and for the soul, sometimes one or the other, sometimes both. Although never explicitly stated, I suggest the image of the bride might even have a triple reference: she is Bernard’s idealized monastic self, both contemplative monk and active prelate; she is the Church, both mother and virgin; and she is also Bernard’s own Clairvaux, both lowly and sublime. The present chapter argues that Bernard establishes a double set of imagery connected to the figure of the bride which unifies and harmonizes the monastic and theological dualities central to his concerns, particularly the tension between desire for God and dutiful, fraternal love. Imagery of maternal feeding and nurturance, pregnancy, and fecundity sees the bride — and thus, by tropological implication, Bernard himself — in the role of teacher, preacher, abbot, and spiritual leader.11 By means of this imagery, Bernard discusses notions of 9 

Ep 64, col. 169BC: ‘Stantes sunt jam pedes ejus in atriis Jerusalem […] Ingressus est sanctam civitatem […] Factus est ergo non curiosus tantum spectator, sed et devotus habitator, et civis conscriptus Jerusalem.’ (For this and the following exerpt, I am modifying the translation in The Letters, ed. and trans. by James, letter 67, p. 91.) 10  Ep 64, cols 169C–170A: ‘Et, si vultis scire, Clara-Vallis est. Ipsa est Jerusalem, ei quae in coelis est, tota mentis devotione, et conversationis imitatione, et cognatione quadam spiritus sociata. Haec requies ejus, sicut ipse promittit, in saeculum saeculi: elegit eam in habitationem sibi; quod apud eam sit, etsi nondum visio, certe exspectatio verae pacis, illius utique de qua dicitur: Pax Dei, quae exsuperat omnem sensum [Philipp. IV, 7].’ 11  On maternal imagery, see Bynum’s influential essay, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’. I follow and expand on her arguments.

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authority, charity, and compassion. In short, maternal imagery defines his relation to the world (or, usually, the monastery) and his fellows (or his monks). By contrast, imagery of erotic desire and sexual union invokes the bride’s and, thus, also Bernard’s longing for the ecstasy of divine union, for transformation and salvation, for the contemplative fruition of the bridegroom.12 Erotic imagery, then, delineates his relation to God. In this way, Bernard endows the bride with a dual nature which he then appropriates as his own — shedding a rather different light on his self-representation as the chimaera of his age. I suggest that these two sets of imagery — the maternal and the erotic — are related to monastic concerns about the ordering of love. This regards the sacrificial love of agape versus the ecstatic love of eros; the active life versus the contemplative life, that is, the duty to care for one’s fellow versus the desire for the bliss of mystical union with the divine; Christomimetic descent and ascent; and, in Augustinian terms, uti versus frui, or use versus pleasure.13 These dualities — framed within the ‘two great streams’ in medieval interpretations of love, that is, disinterested, descending love versus desirous, ascending love — are undercurrents in my reading of the bride’s dual imagery. 12  On erotic imagery in the Sermons, scholarship has mainly framed it in a general theology of desire, without discussing the eroticism explicitly. An important exception is Turner, Eros and Allegory, which provides a very interesting reading of the motif of eros and erotic imagery in medieval exegesis of the Song and Bernard’s text, among others, but which does not discuss the relation of erotic imagery to motherhood imagery nor to gender. 13  On agape versus eros in Bernard, see Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. by Downes, pp. 25–28, where he launched the thesis that Bernard’s thinking is based on a synthesis between Neoplatonic, Pseudo-Dionysian speculation on amor/eros and the New Testament, principally Johannine motif of caritas. Without re-raising the particulars of the debate around Gilson’s thesis, especially regarding his assumption of a direct transmission from Greek sources, I am inclined to follow the recent and more moderate arguments of Turner, Eros and Allegory, pp. 71–80, who writes: ‘It does not very much matter […] from whose hands precisely Bernard received the neo-platonic doctrines of amor and excessus. For in the more general term of Gilson’s skeleton, it is beyond question one of the more striking things about Bernard’s theology of the love of God that he has most successfully synthesised the two great streams of tradition about that love’ (p. 77). For a discussion of eros versus agape and medieval concepts of interested versus disinterested love, I refer to Section 6.1 below. On the active and contemplative lives as a central theme in the Sermons, see Stiegman, ‘Action and Contemplation’, and McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 221–23. On descent and ascent, see Cousins, ‘The Humanity and the Passion of Christ’, pp. 377–78, and McGinn, ‘The Role of Christ’, pp. 255–57. They emphasize ascent and descent in relation to Bernard’s theology, but not in relation to his imagery. On uti and frui in relation to the imagery of the Sermons, there is, to the best of my knowledge, no discussion nor recognition in scholarship, despite the fact that Bernard employs the terminology several times (e.g., Scc 50.8 and 83.4).

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Unlike the unreformed Benedictines, who privileged the contemplative over the active life, the Cistercian interpretation of the Rule of Benedict required an equal mix and a just equilibrium between activity and contemplation. The Cistercian movement was in large part a reaction to, and refutation of, the Cluniac interpretation of the Benedictine life.14 Cluniac institutions privileged prayer, mass, and liturgy, ignoring, according to the Cistercians, the more practical and laborious elements of the rule which they then proposed to restore.15 In Bernard’s interpretation of the bride, I argue, the said dualities are related and their tensions integrated. The Cistercian monk — embodying the perfect balance between maternity (i.e., activity) and erotics (i.e., contemplation) — represents the embodiment of the bride. In this sense, Bernard’s female performance shapes not only his identity but the identity of Cistercian monasticism. Although Bernard rarely explicitly refers to the terminology of vita activa and vita contemplativa but, rather, uses various different terms — for example, caritas affectualis versus caritas actualis, or, more often, ‘work’ (studio, labor) versus contemplation and ‘rest’ (quies) — the concepts are of central importance to the imagery of the bride. Reworking the distinction of the active and the contemplative life, Bernard returns to the classifications of Augustine and Gregory the Great, while also modifying their formulations to accommodate his own concerns. The two lives were ordinarily interpreted in antithetical terms — touching on basic Christian dichotomies such as temporality-eternity, unrest-rest, and misery-beatitude — where the active was placed before the contemplative as a temporal and logical necessity.16 In De civitate dei, however, Augustine proposed a division which was tripartite and less antithetical: ‘The first is a rest14 

Older scholarship, e.g., Lekai, ‘Ideals and Reality in Early Cistercian Life and Legislation’, has emphasized this aspect, and also recent studies underscore the creation of a Cistercian identity based on difference, see, e.g., Bruun, The Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order. 15  See Martha Newman’s discussion in The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 123–40. Newman argues that service and activity was an integral part of the order’s spirituality, constituting not only ‘the bond that linked the monks within their communities but also the bond joining all of Christian society’ (p. 18). Thus she rejects the commonplace understanding of a contradiction in the Cistercian ideal of ‘withdrawal’ and their organizational and political activities, as reconstructed in, e.g., Leclercq, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercian Spirit, trans. by Lavoie, and Elder and Sommerfeldt, The Chimaera of his Age. 16  See, e.g., Julianus Pomerius, De vita contemplativa, and Augustine, Tractatus in Joannem 124.5, col. 1974. Julianus saw the contemplative life as properly belonging to the next world but that holy bishops and priests may make some beginning even in this world; see discussions in Butler, Western Mysticism, pp. 206–07, and McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 31–32,

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ful, but not lazy, life in contemplation and the pursuit of truth, the second is a life of conducting and managing human matters, and the third is a mix of the other two.’17 Here, the contemplative life is less definitely allocated with the otherworldly. Instead, the leading opposition is that of labour and rest, thus implicitly associating the contemplative life with the monastic concept of quies (and, by implication, paradisiacal quies). Significantly, Bernard’s bride might be considered as more closely related to Augustine’s latter group, the ‘mixed’ life, than to the two former. Bernard’s construction of the bride as devotional ideal, however, resembles an idea of opposites which, rather than a tepid mix, appears more like a form of hybrid or paradox, where the two opposing elements, the active and the contemplative, at least ideally, equilibrate and indeed complement each other. In this perspective, she proffers an interesting parallel to Bernard’s perhaps more famous ‘chimaerical’ creature: the model soldiermonk of the Knight Templar.18 With Pope Gregory I’s treatment, the active and the contemplative life signalized no longer merely a social distinction (between contemplative monks and active seculars) but became rather a more personal concern, indeed an interior conflict, especially for prelates.19 In Moralia in Job, Gregory creates a striking image of the locust as a model of ideal leadership and spiritual authority:

75. For references and discussion regarding the temporal opposition between fulfilment and anticipation in Augustine, see McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, pp. 239–40, 254–55. 17  Augustine, De civitate dei 19.2, col. 624: ‘In tribus quoque illis vitae generibus, uno scilicet non segniter, sed in contemplatione vel inquisitione veritatis otioso, altero in gerendis rebus humanis negotioso, tertio ex utroque genere temperato.’ In a different passage (De civitate dei 19.9, col. 647) he also uses the term compositus to refer to the ‘mixed life’: ‘Ex tribus vero illis vitae generibus, otioso, actuoso, et ex utroque composito.’ See discussion in McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, pp. 256–57. 18  On the Knight Templar as a composite figure of opposites, referred to as ‘hybrid’, see Barber, ‘Introduction’, p. 25. 19  See Reg. Past. 2.7, col. 38C: ‘Sit rector internorum curam in exteriorum occupatione non minuens, exteriorum providentiam in internorum sollicitudine non relinquens; ne aut exterioribus deditus ab intimis corruat, aut solis interioribus occupatus, quae foris debet proximis non impendat’ (‘The [religious] ruler should not relax his care for the things that are within in his occupation among the things that are without, nor neglect to provide for the things that are without in his solicitude for the things that are within; lest either, given up to the things that are without, he fall away from his inmost concerns, or, occupied only with the things that are within bestow not on his neighbours outside himself what he owes them’; trans. by Barmby, p. 609).

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While dwelling in this life [saintly men] cannot remain long in divine contemplation, but, like locusts, fall back on their feet after their leap, when, after the sublimities of contemplation, they return to the necessary work of the active life. […] Thus they pass their lives like locusts, ascending and descending.20

The central idea expressed by Gregory, namely, an alternation between the opposing ideals of activity and contemplation, imaged as an incessant ascent and descent, is highly relevant for Bernard’s bride and for the metaphorical themes on which she is modelled. It is easy to imagine why the Roman bishop, whose life was possibly even more fraught by the tension between worldly politics and monastic withdrawal than Bernard’s own, was especially dedicated to harmonizing the potential or assumed incommensurability between the two lives. Gregory’s view, like Bernard’s later, was that spiritual authority requires an equilibrium between the active and the contemplative, living contemporaneously in mundo and extra mundum, like Gregory himself had done. By way of their biographical similarities — monks who for various reasons had been drawn into the secular world of politics — Bernard and Gregory had parallel interests in interpreting their double roles as active contemplatives. In Bernard’s conception of well-ordered monastic life, one must attend both to the active and the contemplative so that, ideally, the two will reinforce one another. Yet I will also stress the high degree of tension in Bernard’s text — a tension which is sometimes de-emphasized in scholarship in favour of underlining the alleged consistency in his interpretation of love.21 Gregory’s concern with the reciprocal nature of the two lives and his advice to adhere to both dimensions in just measure has in Bernard’s text turned into a full-blown interior drama, a source of spiritual distress, as in Sermon 57: Most often the mind wavers back and forth between these two vicissitudes [i.e., contemplation and activity], fearful and agitated lest it cling more than is just to either of these attractions, thereby distracting itself and so deviating, even only briefly, from divine will. Perhaps holy Job suffered like this, when he said: When I sleep, I ask, when shall I rise? and thereafter I wait for evening. [ Jb 7. 4] That is to say, when I am in repose I accuse myself of neglecting my labour; when I am busy, 20 

Mor 31.49, col. 600BC: ‘Qui in hac vita positi, diu in divina contemplatione manere non possunt, sed, quasi locustarum more, a saltu quem dederant in pedibus suis se excipiunt, dum post contemplationum sublimia ad necessaria activae vitae opera revertuntur […] vitamque suam quasi locustae ascendentes descendentesque peragunt’ (modifying a translation in Butler, Western Mysticism, pp. 177–78). 21  For example Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. by Downes, pp. 22– 32, and Turner, Eros and Allegory, p. 78.

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of disturbing my repose. You see here a holy man who is violently tossed between the fruit of activity [fructum operis], and the sleep of contemplation [somnum contemplationis].22

In this passage, repose and toil are represented not just as two vicissitudes but as two different ‘attractions’ (affectionibus): like in a ménage-à-trois, the mind is drawn between its two contesting rivals while it endeavours not to neglect any one of them.23 As the passage develops, the tension is heightened. Bernard describes the mind, ‘fearful and agitated’, precariously attempting to maintain equilibrium while being ‘violently tossed’ to and fro. All the same, Bernard’s gradual shift from third person (the ‘mind’, Job) to first person — where he reduplicates the struggle from the point of view of the ‘I’ — allows him to inconspicuously assume the role of the bride (with whom the section opened), and, finally, to stand as model for ‘the holy man’ (virum sanctum). Related to the two lives is the theme of ascent and descent, already encountered in Gregory’s image of the locust as a spiritual model. Notions of ascent and descent were particularly influential in monastic devotion, due to the Rule of Benedict, where it was associated with the primary monastic virtue, humility: ‘This descent and ascent we understand without doubt to be descending in exaltation and ascending in humility.’24 I suggest that this Benedictine oxymoron, ‘descending in exaltation and ascending in humility’ (exaltatione descendere, et humilitate ascendere), provides important structure to Bernard’s bridal imagery. Indeed, as will become clear from the subsequent chapters, the bride is nothing if not oxymoronic. The concepts of ascent and descent pointed not only to dichotomies of worldly and otherworldly, merit and reward, misery and beatitude. By mirroring Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, ascent and descent mirrored redemption. For Bernard, the crucial point was the exemplum of Christ and the individual’s response to it: ‘By the mystery of his incarnation the Lord descends and ascends, 22 

Scc 57.9, OSB, v.2, p. 272: ‘Ceterum inter has vicissitudines plerumque mens fluctuat, metuens et vehementer exaestuans, ne forte alteri horum, dum suis affectionibus hinc inde distrahitur, plus iusto inhaereat, et sic in utrolibet vel ad modicum a divina deviet voluntate. Et fortasse tale aliquid sanctus Iob patiebatur, cum diceret: Si dormiero, dico, quando consurgam? et rursum exspectabo vesperam [Iob VII, 4]; hoc est: Et quietus, neglecti operis, et occupatus, perturbatae nihilominus quietis me arguo. Vides virum sanctum inter fructum operis et somnum contemplationis graviter aestuare.’ 23  Compare below, Section 2.4, on the amorous triad of Jacob, Rachel, and Lia. 24  Benedict of Nursia, Regula Benedicti, cap. 7, col. 371B: ‘Non aliud sine dubio descensus ille et ascensus a nobis intelligitur, nisi exaltatione descendere, et humilitate ascendere.’

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thus leaving us an example so we may follow in his footsteps.’25 Configuring salvation in terms of oppositions and inversions, Bernard understood Christ’s double movement to offer a devotional pattern: ‘ascending to glory by descending in humility’ (per humilitatem ad sublimitatem ascendatis).26 Thus, the desire to imitate Christ transforms the monastic virtue of humility into a Christomimetic ideal which expresses the saintly soul’s godlike conformity, in terms of its longing to suffer with Christ in his Passion. In the figure and imagery of the bride, maternity is analogous to descent, expressing compassionate love, whereas erotic imagery is related to ascent, expressing notions of ecstatic flight. Yet we find that the bride is not just oxymoronic but taxonomic. Erotic love stands hierarchically above maternal love. The bride loves the ontologically superior (i.e., God) with erotic love, the ontologically inferior (i.e., the world and its creatures) with maternal love. Reminiscent of the Augustinian division of uti and frui (‘to use’ and ‘to enjoy’) Bernard’s imagery of motherhood and erotic delight centres on the analogous notion of compatibility between love directed towards the world and love directed towards God.27 In emphasizing uti and frui as subtext in Bernard’s bridal imagery, I propose that the relation of eroticism to motherhood in Bernard’s Sermons may be seen as analogous to that of the absolute to the relative, the unconditional to the instrumental, purpose to means. In Bernard’s construction, erotic love is absolute: the bride desires the bridegroom for his own sake. Maternal love, on the other hand, is relative: the ‘offspring’ (i.e., those in her spiritual and pastoral care) have been entrusted to her by the bridegroom, and she loves and cares for them for his sake, but they are not objects of desire for the bride. Erotic love expresses loving God for God’s sake (frui), and maternal love expresses loving the world and worldly beings for God’s sake (uti), and these tensions between selfsacrificial duty and desire for blissful fulfilment configure maternal and erotic imagery in the Sermons. While it may be said that Bernard emphasizes oscillation in relation to the dual bridal imagery more than Augustine does in his treatment of uti and frui, the same can be said for Bernard’s treatment of activity 25 

Div 60.2, col.  684A: ‘Sic per incarnationis suae mysterium descendit et ascendit Dominus, relinquens nobis exemplum ut sequamur vestigia eius.’ 26  In ascensione domini 2.6; PL 183:304A; see also Gra. 27  See Augustine, De doctrina christiana, esp. 1.3.3–1.4.4, cols 20–21. For further dis­cussion on uti/frui in Augustine, see De civitate dei 11.25, col. 339, and 15.7, col. 444. More examples of discussions using the distinction of uti and frui may be found in De trinitate 8.5.8, col. 952.

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and contemplation. It emphasizes oscillation more than the Augustinian treatment, thus reflecting the abbot’s particular concerns with tensions and vacillations — concerns which, as noted, he shared primarily with Gregory. Commenting on Song 2. 4, ‘he set love in order in me’ (ordinavit in me caritatem), Bernard exposes his taxonomy of love, in one his most explicit discussions on the matter. Here, in Sermon 50, he presents a concept of caritas ordinata based on the correct, or ordered, relation between ‘active love’ (caritas actualis) and ‘affective love’ (caritas affectualis). As he proceeds, it becomes clear that the subtext of this discussion are the two lives, but also uti and frui, which thus become directly linked to the first dyad. In the final section of the sermon, Bernard explicitly uses Augustine’s terminology to distinguish the person who, with the bride, may pride himself in ‘discerning between the things used [utenda] and the things enjoyed [fruenda] with an inner savouring in his mind’.28 Bernard organizes love into three different forms of affections: ‘There is an affection which the flesh begets, and one which reason controls, and one which wisdom seasons.’29 Amplifying on this threefold concept of love, he continues: The first is that which the apostle says is not subject to the law of God, nor can it be [Rom 8. 7]. The second is that which he maintains is in agreement with the law of God, because it is good [Rom 7. 16], nor can anyone doubt that there is discrepancy between contending and consenting. The third, however, is far from either of them. It is when one tastes and knows that the Lord is sweet [Ps 33. 9]; it eliminates the first and rewards the second. The first is pleasurable, of course, but foul; the second is passionless but strong; the third is abundant and sweet. Thus by the second good deeds are done, and love [caritas] reigns — not that of the affections [affectualis], which, seasoned by the salt of wisdom, fills the mind with a mighty abundance of the sweetness of the Lord, but rather in action [actualis], which, although not yet refreshed by that sweet love, is nevertheless vehemently aflame with the love of that love.30 28 

Scc 50.8, OSB, v.2, p.  194: ‘inter utenda et fruenda intimo quodam mentis sapore discernens’. 29  Scc 50.4, OSB, v.2, p. 188: ‘Sed est affectio quam caro gignit; et est quam ratio regit, et est quam condit sapientia.’ 30  Scc 50.4, OSB, v.2, pp. 188–90: ‘Prima est, quam Apostolus legi Dei dicit non esse subiectam, nec esse posse [Rom. VIII, 7]; secunda, quam perhibet e regione consentientem legi Dei, quoniam bona est [Rom. VII, 16]; nec dubium distare a se contentiosam et consentaneam. Longe vero tertia ab utraque distat, quae et gustat, et sapit quoniam suavis est Dominus [Psal. XXXIII, 9], primam eliminans, secundam remunerans. Nam prima quidem dulcis, sed turpis; secunda sicca, sed fortis; ultima pinguis, et suavis est. Igitur per secundam opera fiunt, et in ipsa caritas sedet, non illa affectualis, quae sale sapientiae condita pinguescens magnam menti

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The tripartite scheme of love is clearly a hierarchical order: love ‘begotten’ (gignit) by the flesh, love ‘controlled’ (regit) by reason, and finally love ‘seasoned’ (condit) by wisdom. It is also a ladder of spiritual ascent, as the third ‘eliminates the first and rewards the second’. Next, however, Bernard subverts this order of love: He set love in order in me [Song 2. 4]. Which of them do you think? Both of them, but in reversed order [ordine opposito]. The active prefers the inferior, the affective the superior. For there is no doubt that, in a mind which loves rightly, the love of God is stronger than the love of men, and likewise that among men themselves the more perfect [are valued] more than the weaker, heaven more than earth, the eternal more than the temporal, the soul more than the flesh. In well-ordered love, however, the opposite order frequently, or rather always, prevails. For the concern for our neighbour is both more pressing and more consuming. We attend to our weaker brothers with more exacting care; by human law and necessity we devote ourselves more to peace on earth than to the glory of heaven; the constant worry for temporal things hardly permits us to think of eternal things; the almost continual care for our sickly bodies detains us from caring for our souls; and, finally, in keeping with the apostle, we honour more our weaker members [i Cor 12. 23], thereby following the word of God: the last shall be the first, and the first last [Mt 20. 16]. Who will doubt that a man who prays is speaking with God? Yet how often will not the law of love seize us and tear us away for the sake of those who need our words or our actions? How often must not pious repose yield piously to the turbulence of business? How often is not the book laid aside, with good conscience, so we may sweat at manual labour? How many times, and rightly so, must we omit the celebration of mass for the sake of handling worldly affairs? A preposterous order [ordo praeposterus], but necessity knows no law.31 importat multitudinem dulcedinis Domini; sed quaedam potius actualis, quae etsi nondum dulci illo amore suaviter reficit, amore tamen amoris ipsius vehementer accendit.’ On Scc 50.4, see below, Section 6.5. 31  Scc 50.5, OSB, v.2, p. 190: ‘Ordinavit in me caritatem. Quam putas harum? Utramque, sed ordine opposito. Nam actualis inferiora praefert, affectualis superiora. Etenim in bene affecta mente non dubium, verbi causa, quin dilectioni hominis Dei dilectio praeponatur, et in hominibus ipsis perfectiores infirmioribus, coelum terrae, aeternitas tempori, anima carni. Attamen in bene ordinata actione saepe, aut etiam semper, ordo oppositus invenitur. Nam et circa proximi curam et plus urgemur, et pluries occupamur; et infirmioribus fratribus diligentiori sedulitate assistimus; et paci terrae magis quam coeli gloriae iure humanitatis et ipsa necessitate intendimus; et temporalium inquietudine curarum vix aliquid sentire de aeternis permittimur; et languoribus nostri corporis, postposita animae cura, pene continue inservimus; et ipsis denique infirmioribus membris nostris abundantiorem honorem, iuxta sententiam Apostoli, circumdamus [i Cor XII, 23]: per hoc quodam modo facientes verbum Domini, de quo habes: Erunt novissimi primi, et primi novissimi [Matth. XX, 16]. Orantem denique hominem cum Deo loqui quis dubitet? Quoties tamen inde caritate iubente abducimur et avellimur, propter eos qui

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Dutiful and active love (caritas actualis) implies exchanging the higher for the lower. For Bernard, this is no natural order — it is a ‘reversed order’ (ordine opposito), indeed a ‘preposterous order’ (ordo praeposterus). Specifically, it implies a reversal of Neoplatonic love, where desire urges the loving subject towards an object of desire which stands ontologically higher. The ‘right’ (bene) order of love — to desire God more than neighbour, the perfect more than the weaker, and heaven more than earth — is subverted by active love. Active love inverts love’s upward gravitation. It is love governed by law and duty — controlled, commanded, obliged. It is, in this sense, sacrificial love — its paradigm is the New Testament agape, reaching down to the lowly and the weak and represented by Christ’s descent and humility. In Bernard’s reading, active love not only implies ‘using’ the world, as in Augustine’s understanding of uti, but equally — even primarily — being ‘of use’ to the world.32 The other type of love (caritas affectualis) re-establishes and rectifies love’s order: ‘It is the wisdom by which all things are known for what they are, so that, for example, what is of higher nature evokes more love, the lower less, and the lowest none.’33 This love corresponds to vita contemplativa and to frui. It reaches towards the superior and the eternal; it is, ultimately, the desire for God himself — for divine presence, for union. This experience of love, however, is not fully attainable in the present life, not even in the monastery.34 The Cistercian monastic code, emphasizing manual labour and dutiful charity, asserts itself in the current presentation of active love. Bernard describes prayer, pious repose, devotional reading, the celebration of mass — all quintessential expressions of the monastic and particularly Cluniac ideal of quies and the contemplative life — ruthlessly interrupted as ‘we are seized and snatched away’ (abducimur et avellimur). But he insists that this seizure, this inverted rapture which pulls down instead of up, is necessary and just. The book is laid nostra indigent opera vel loquela! Quoties pie cedit negotiorum tumultibus pia quies! Quoties bona conscientia ponitur codex, ut operi manuum insudetur! Quoties pro administrandis terrenis, iustissime ipsis supersedemus celebrandis missarum solemniis! Ordo praeposterus; sed necessitas non habet legem.’ 32  See Scc 57.2, where Bernard equates using and being of use. 33  Scc 50.6, OSB, v.2, p. 192: ‘Est enim sapientia, per quam utique quaeque res sapiunt prout sunt, ut, verbi gratia, quae pluris natura habet, pluris quoque ipsa affectio sentiat, minora minus, minima minime.’ 34  See McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 168–72, for his well-argued assessments of the connection between Bernard’s notion of the imperfection of contemplative enjoyment in this life and his theological anthropology.

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Table 1. Trichotomies of spiritual perfection in Scc 1. corporeal or literal level (‘body’)

2.

3.

rational or moral level (‘soul’)

contemplative level (‘spirit’)

Hermeneutical level: history

tropology

anagogy

Salvational economy: sin / conversion

law / discipline

grace / reward

Temporal reference: past

present

future

Proverbs

Song of Songs

expels self-love

contemplation

kiss of the hands

kiss of the mouth

fear of God, service, charity

union

Scc 20: carnal love

rational love

spiritual love

Scc 23: the garden

the cellars

the bed chamber

Scc 1: Ecclesiastes expels worldly love Scc 3: kiss of the feet conversion, repentance

salvation history Scc 31: creation

individual, moral history presence of God external vision

revealed by the world, nature revealed in Scripture

internal vision revealed individually

Scc 45: carnal Christ (humility)

the majestic king (fear)

the beloved (love)

Scc 50: carnal affections (caro)

active love (ratio)

affective love (sapientia)

Scc 57: Lazarus (prayer)

Martha (preaching)

Mary (contemplation)

honor

amor

son-father

bride-bridegroom

Scc 83: timor slave-master

aside with ‘good conscience’ (bona conscientia), repose yields ‘piously’ (pie), and the omission of celebration of mass is ‘most just’ (justissime) — even if it implies promoting activities which were traditionally held in low esteem in monasticism, such as sweating in fields and the handling of worldly affairs. In the ever underlying monastic context of Bernard’s work, the emphasis on the social dimension, and also on manual labour, illustrates the novelty of the Cistercian monastic attitude and specifically the Cistercian reinterpretation of charity and the active life.35 In the current sermon 50, Bernard presents a taxonomy of love consisting of three stages or degrees in spiritual ascent: carnal affections, active love, and affective love. Similar triple patterns occur throughout the entire work, as 35 

Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 2–6, 17, 43, 64–66, 109, 112–13, 117–21, 156.

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well as in his other writings.36 In the Sermons on the Song of Songs I have found related schemes in eight other sermons (listed in Table 1). In one of Bernard’s most noted trichotomies, from Sermon 20, he takes a more positive stance to carnal love than in Sermon 50: ‘But that carnal love [amor carnalis] which excludes carnal life is good, so that the world is condemned and overcome. It progresses when it becomes rational love [rationalis], and it is perfected when it becomes spiritual love [spiritualis].’37 Indeed, Sermon 50 appears conspicuously at odds with Sermon 20. In the former, Bernard seems to assume a dualism of flesh and spirit, positioning carnal affections in opposition to active and affective love. In the latter sermon, like in the other seven trilogies, no such dualism is assumed; the fleshly level is the one which is most distant from God but rather than an opposition, it is a starting point.38 This progressive perfection of love in Sermon 20 may be outlined in three stages, as follows: 1. Carnal love (amor carnalis) 2. R ational love (amor rationalis) 3. Spiritual love (amor spiritualis) Ascent begins in carnal love for carnal Christ (devotio carnem Christi), which marks the first stage of spiritual progress. It develops into the second stage with the knowledge of Christ, not just as flesh (caro) but as model for life. In the third and last stage, love is perfected as it becomes spiritual understanding. The dynamic and progressive depiction of the soul’s stages on the road to perfection is conditioned by what has been described as ‘a single grand continuum of love stretching from the earthly and carnal love of fallen humanity to the heights of the heavenly spousal love’.39 Inevitably, here arises the theme of Bernard’s Christology and teaching on redemption, and, most significantly, the radicalness of his teaching on carnal love as starting point for salvation — an aspect 36 

For references to triadic formulas in Bernard, see Casey, Athirst for God, pp. 245–51; McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 183–85; and Pennington, ‘The Three Stages of Spiritual Growth’. 37  Scc 20.9, OSB, v.1, p.  268: ‘Bonus tamen amor iste carnalis, per quem vita carnalis excluditur, contemnitur et vincitur mundus. Proficitur autem in eo, cum sit et rationalis; perficitur, cum efficitur etiam spiritualis.’ 38  The likely explanation for this inconsistency is Rom 8. 7, which functions as a subtext to Bernard’s discussion in Scc 50, causing him to follow the Pauline dichotomy of flesh-spirit. 39  McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 182.

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which has caused one critic to state that it marks him as ‘one of the major doctrinal thinkers of the Latin Middle Ages’.40 What is this process by which love is perfected? And how does it relate to our previous discussion of the subtexts inherent in Bernard’s imagery? Threefold divisions of progressive, spiritual growth reach back to biblical and ancient Christian sources, and were commonly employed by the early Cistercians.41 Recalling the Trinity as well as the Pauline ascent to the third heaven (ii Cor 12), there were multiple variations on this triple theme, yet they were mostly recognizable as a consistent pattern. Trilogies occur frequently in Bernard’s writing, although he occasionally employs also other enumerations.42 The basic structure of the triple stages of spiritual growth, ultimately derived from Origen, was commonly known in the monastic tradition as the ordo salutis, that is, the three stages, or ‘roads’, to salvation:43 1. Purification (via purgativa) 2. Illumination (via illuminativa) 3. Unification (via unitiva) After an initial phase of purification, associated with compunction and repentance, one passes to a second phase, consisting of the practice and development 40  McGinn, ‘Freedom, Formation, and Reformation’, p. 102. McGinn has similar statements in The Growth of Mysticism, p. 175. Blanpain, ‘Langage mystique’, p. 232, has also commented on this aspect of Bernard’s theology. See below, Section 5.5, for further discussion. 41  William of St Thierry uses animal, rational, spiritual in In Cantica canticorum brevis commentatio, col. 407C: ‘Tres sunt status amoris Dei in anima christiana. Primus, sensualis vel animalis; secundus, rationalis; tertius, spiritualis vel intellectualis’ (There are three stages of love for God in the Christian soul. The first is sensual or sensory, the second rational, the third spiritual or intellective). In his ‘Golden epistle’ to the Carthusians (Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei), William uses the tripartite division of beginners, progressors, and perfect. Amedeus of Lausanne in the sixth Homily on the Virgin Mary uses three meanings of Scripture: historical, moral, and mystical as an analogue for the three stages of spiritual growth. Isaac of Stella in the Letter on the Mass (Epistola de officio missae, col. 1892) has compunction, devotion, and contemplation. Aelred of Riveaulx uses triple schemes in Speculum caritatis. See references in Pennington, ‘The Three Stages of Spiritual Growth’, who points to the Pauline epistles which often have a twofold model (spiritual versus carnal), but in the case of i Thess 5. 23 has a threefold: pneuma, psyche, soma — or, in Latin, spiritus, anima, corpus. 42  E.g., seven (Scc 18.6), twelve (Gra), and four (Dil 8.23–10.29). 43  I use the terminology of McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 183, in naming the three stages as via purgativa, via illuminitiva, and via unitiva. Bernard himself does not use them, nor furnish any other stable denomination.

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of virtues; and finally to a third phase, implying contemplation and divine union. Bernard’s interpretation gives a distinguishing emphasis on love, conjoining the three stages with the dichotomies discussed above (active-contemplative, uti-frui, descent-ascent). In this way, the lowest, carnal level becomes linked to monastic conversion, that is, compunction, repentance, and fear. The second, rational level becomes linked to uti-love and vita activa and becomes associated with maternal imagery. Finally, the highest, contemplative level, corresponding to vita contemplativa, consists of the ecstatic, blissful enjoyment (frui) of divine presence, and is associated with erotic imagery. Characteristic of Bernard’s understanding, however, is that this is not simply a question of temporal and linear progression, passing from one level to another but, rather, a contemporaneous integration of the different steps in increasing and cumulative measure (although the aspect of surpassing succeeding stages is never altogether abandoned). The Bernardine ideal tends to juxtapose the three elements required of the bridal monastic self. Hence the transposition of ascent and descent, where going down is going up (and vice versa) is reflected in the reversal of the hierarchy of love, the ordo praeposterus (Scc 50.5), and re-enacted in a network of theological and monastic subtexts. This superstructure — the three levels of love — rests on a foundational subtext which, in effect, integrates and orders the various parts of Bernard’s entire programme: the threefold hermeneutical model of literal interpretation, tropological interpretation, and allegorical/anagogic interpretation.44 Bernard’s synthesis of hermeneutics, imagery, and monastic degrees of perfection may be illustrated as follows: 1. Literal level: carnal, secular understanding → monastic conversion → com­punction, repentance, fear 2. Tropological level: rational understanding → discipline, duty, humility → vita activa → ordered uti love → maternal imagery 3. Anagogic level: spiritual understanding → fruition, reward, divine presence/vision/union → vita contemplativa → ordered frui love → erotic imagery 44 

See also Waddell, ‘The Glorified Christ’, who identified some factors that might have contributed to sustain the ultimately eschatological dynamism in Bernard’s writing. Among these, Waddell maintains, are, firstly, the structure and rhythm of the Cistercian liturgical year; secondly, sacramental economy with its threefold perspective of historical reality, present grace, and eschatological fulfilment; and, thirdly, biblical exegesis with its interpretational modes of past/historical, present/individual, and future/eschatological.

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Recognizable throughout Bernard’s schemes of threefold progression is the general structure of Origen’s threefold division into the body, the soul, and the spirit, corresponding to the three levels of reading Scripture. This division, moreover, is not merely anthropological — corresponding to the three parts of the human subject, body, soul, and spirit. Its assumptions are also sociological: the highest level of understanding is attainable only for the few, while most remain at the inferior level(s). Presently, we shall see that Bernard transforms hierarchized notions of hermeneutical perfection into a monastic and specifically Cistercian model, underscoring the elitism of the Cistercian monks’ way of living and reading. In this elitist interpretation, it seems that only the Cistercian monk might aspire to the highest level, while also perfectly expressing the lower two (activity and purification/compunction). By implication, the secular clergy aspires to the second level (activity) but not the third, while the laity is excluded from all but the lowest, carnal level. In this way, suppositions connected with the hermeneutical stages of perfection were absorbed into the Bernardine vision of the Song of Songs, along with the overall Origenist approach to the Song, particularly his stress on tropology. It is in this framework of Christian-Platonic hermeneutical teleology, then, that Bernard reconstructs the Song’s metaphors, transforming them into imagery of eroticism and fecundity.

2.2 The Banquet The work opens to the quiet shuffling of monks as a very peculiar monastic banquet is about to begin. Bernard’s voice, echoing in the unadorned room, breaks the silence, and thus begins his eighteen-year-long speech on eros and spiritual fecundity.45 Certainly, twelfth-century Clairvaux — rural, silent, and austere — bears little resemblance to Athens. Bernard is no Socrates, and his heroine, the bride, is no Diotima.46 His companions are mute listeners, not eloquent participants. But he does bring forth the bread, and breaks it — it is, after all, a banquet. 45 

While I do not assume an extratextual context here in the first sermon, I do wish to stress a textually and narratively constructed opening scene which immediately evokes themes reminiscent of Platonic eros motifs, particularly the banquet scene of Plato’s Symposium, and of its patristic take-offs, especially Origen’s Commentarium in Cantica canticorum, Gregory of Nyssa’s dialogue Dialogus de anima et resurrectione, and Methodius of Olympus’s commentary to the Song of Songs, notably also named Symposium. 46  But see discussion below Section 6.6.

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‘To you, my brothers,’ commences Bernard, ‘I shall speak of other things [alia] than I should to those others [aliis] of the world, at least my manner of speaking will be another [aliter].’47 Another, indeed: alia – aliis – aliter. Bernard’s first phrase, in its economic Latin, effectively hammers in the concept of difference, otherness, perhaps also otherworldliness. The monks, of course, are different. But who is really the Other here? In underscoring the ‘otherness’ of the message that he is about to make, Bernard’s concurrent reference to aliis de saeculo, ‘those others of the world’, conveys a notion that, after all, it is the world itself which is ‘the other’, that which is truly different.48 Thus two themes are announced and linked in the opening of Bernard’s Sermons, the otherness of the world and the exclusivity of his message. ‘Be ready to feed on bread rather than milk’, the abbot announces to his brothers, and sets the scene for the spiritual banquet he is about to host.49 The bread in question, ‘splendid and delicious’ (splendidus sapidusque), is ‘the bread of that book called the Song of Songs’.50 Glossing Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (i Cor 3. 1–3), he imagines ‘those others of the world’ (aliis de saeculo) as infants, still too weak to be given anything other than milk. 51 Following the Pauline distinction between people of the spirit and people of the flesh, Bernard repeats the notion of spirituality as maturity and carnality as immaturity, and transports this Pauline duality into a monastic context. Hence the monks, being ‘mature’, should be served ‘solid food’ (spiritualibus solidiora apponenda esse): the bread of Solomon. As he likens his own exegesis to the notion of feeding his monks, he establishes a parallel between himself and Paul as distributors of nourishment (milk or bread as the case may be). This parallel will be repeated and elaborated in later sermons and, significantly, associated with the concept of mothering.52 The image of nurturing, or feeding, is 47 

sunt.’ 48 

Scc 1.1, OSB, v.1, p. 30: ‘Vobis, fratres, alia quam aliis de saeculo, aut certe aliter dicenda

Cf. Damrosch, ‘Non alia sed aliter’, who stresses the theme of otherness in Sermon 1, linking it to Bernard’s identification with the feminine; see below, Chapter 4. The reference to otherness nicely underscores Bernard’s point of the monks’ otherness as really being only apparent. True otherness, i.e., godunlikeness, is represented by the world (see below, Chapter 5), hence the ambiguity of the phrase. 49  Scc 1.1, OSB, v.1, p. 30: ‘Itaque parate fauces, non lacti, sed pani.’ 50  Scc 1.1, OSB, v.1, p.  30: ‘Est panis apud Salomonem, isque admodum splendidus sapidusque, librum dico, qui Cantica canticorum inscribitur.’ 51  Scc 1.1, OSB, v.1, p. 30: ‘Illis siquidem lac potum dat, et non escam.’ 52  Cf. Scc 12.2, below, Section 5.2; and Scc 85.1, below, Section 2.8.

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thus emphatically introduced in the first sermon as an image of instruction, teaching, and preaching — an image of Bernard’s own exegetical undertaking.53 Fixing our attention on the parallel and interrelated sublimations of exegetical and nutritional practices, the abbot declares: ‘Let us bring forth [the bread of the Song of Songs], if you please, and break it.’54 Let the banquet begin. But Bernard is not simply restaging a Platonic banquet, nor breaking any ordinary bread. If this bread represents exegesis of the Song of Songs, it surely also echoes the Eucharist. Bernard’s opening scene subtly confirms his Christocentric notion of desire at the very outset. The almost tangible presence of the physical Christ, a ‘splendid and delicious’ bread indeed, instates itself as his exegesis merges together images of spiritual hunger, Eucharistic bread, and the text at hand — joyfully and hermeneutically confusing desired words (the Song of Songs) and the desired Word (the bridegroom).55 As Bernard launches his exegesis of the Song, he portrays himself and his brethren as ‘little children begging for bread’ (parvuli petierunt panem) and ‘a hungering flock’ (esurientibus) (Scc 1.4). In a setting thus reminiscent of a Eucharistic feast, notions of desire and nutrition converge and overlap, much like that of sexual appetite and dietary processes in medieval physiological theories.56 As I shall discuss in a 53  For a similar opening, with the image of exegesis as breaking and distributing bread, see Augustine, De doctrina christiana 1.1, col. 19. 54  Scc 1.1, OSB, v.1, p. 30: ‘Proferatur, si placet, et frangatur.’ 55  Gastaldelli, ‘Teologia monastica, teologia scolastica e lectio divina’, points out that in Scc 1 and Scc 71, Bernard seems to imply that the incarnate Word is physically ‘present’ in the biblical text, ‘feeding’ the soul with Himself. Hence the text and the Eucharist converge as ‘nutrimento dell’anima’. For a theoretically sensitive discussion of this theme with reference to Origen’s commentary, see Miller, ‘“Pleasure of the Text, Text of Pleasure”’, p. 243: ‘This association of food, words, and bliss is characteristic of Origen’s understanding of language in his Commentary on the Song of Songs; indeed, it is one of that work’s major themes.’ Her reflections on the specifically linguistic and hermeneutical character of desire in Origen are relevant also for Bernard’s text; see discussion below, Section 5.5. 56  A characteristic in premodern theories of reproduction regarded the physiological affinity between procreation and nutrition. Soranus, the only direct Greek source for medieval gynaecology, states boldly that seed received by a woman when she has no sexual desire is not retained — i.e., she will not conceive — as food eaten without appetite is not properly digested. See Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, p. 31. This assertion was reformulated and confirmed in the later Christian association of gluttony and lust, e.g., in Dante’s Inferno, cantos v–vi. Lust and gluttony were generally viewed as related based on readings of Gen 3. 6 where Eve eats the forbidden fruit and next tempts Adam.

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later chapter, the identification of desire and appetite deeply informs Bernard’s depiction of hermeneutics in the Sermons, allowing for what I would like to call ‘hermeneutical desire’ and ‘hermeneutical appetite’ to be focalized onto the body of Christ.57 From Bernard’s mellifluous tongue, the bread of the Song begins to yield its spiritual sustenance, as the abbot sets forth to unravel veiled meanings. Having established a distinction between milk, appropriate for immature infants (people of the world), and solid food, or bread, appropriate for the mature (the cloistered monks), Bernard persists with the use of feeding imagery, expanding upon the metaphor of bread as an image for spiritual progression. He depicts spiritual growth as three different loaves of bread to be broken and eaten, corresponding to three biblical books. The first loaf, he says, is the book of Ecclesiastes, the second is the book of Proverbs, and the third the Song of Songs (Scc 1.2–3). Following Origen’s exposition of the Song, Bernard depicts each of the three books (all, moreover, ascribed to Solomon in the Middle Ages) as corresponding to a stage of spiritual growth, a three-stage mystical ascent.58 The first stage, represented by the book of Ecclesiastes, teaches renunciation of the world and of worldly pleasures, or, as Bernard also will refer to it, conversio — implying the conversion to monastic life. It is the antidote to ‘misguided love of the world’ (vanus amor mundi). The second, represented by the book of Proverbs, teaches fear of God and a life of good actions and service to others. It is the antidote to ‘excessive love of self ’ (amor superfluus sui). The third and final step, represented by the Song of Songs, is contemplation — the ‘fruit of the other two’ (amborum fructus), that is, the reward after renunciation and the labour of the active life. This tripartite scheme may be recognized as corresponding to the pattern previously discussed (see Table 1): 1. Book of Ecclesiastes — world renunciation (purification/corporeal level) 2. Book of Proverbs — good actions (illumination/tropological level) 3. Song of Songs — contemplation (unification/anagogic level) 57 

See below Section 6.5. Origen, in the Commentarium in Cantica canticorum, employs a trilogy of praktike, physike, and theorike, relating them to the three books of Scripture, as does Bernard. Elsewhere Origen uses related triologies, e.g., faith (fides), intelligence (scientia), and wisdom (sapientia) (Contra celsium 6.13, col. 1310C), see references in Pennington, ‘Three Stages of Spiritual Growth’. See also above, Section 2.1. 58 

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Here the theme of exclusivity, announced in the opening passage, is enhanced. For only ‘temperate ears and minds’ (sobriis mentibus et auribus), Bernard insists, may be exposed to the Song of Songs. The Song should not be accessed by those who have not yet warded off the ‘two aforementioned evils by the reading of the two other books’ (duobus malis duorum lectione librorum), for they will not grasp its sense: Otherwise, the impure [impuris] might presume to approach this sacred reading before having tamed the flesh by the rigor of discipline and surrendered it to the spirit, before having rejected and disdained the world’s glamour and its burdens. Just as light is lost on closed and sightless eyes, so a worldly man [animalis homo] cannot perceive anything of the spirit of God [i Cor 2. 14]. […] How can there be accordance between the wisdom that comes from above and the wisdom of the world, which is foolishness to God [i Cor 3. 19], or the wisdom of the flesh, which is hateful to God [Rom 8. 7]?59

The elitism inherent in Bernard’s message should now be clear. Seeing that there is no accordance between the wisdom of the world or of the flesh and the wisdom of God, the reading of the Song is reserved for those who have given up the world and the flesh (i.e., monks). Clearly, only they can aspire to the highest level, wedlock with the Word; the Song does not concern the fleshly and the worldly minded. But this is not the point Bernard is making. Rather, he is warning against the inherent eroticism of the Song (and of his own exegesis): that it might be rashly, impurely understood.60 A few passages later he again underscores this point, stating that his ‘invitation’ is not for all: ‘Only peaceful minds which manage to withdraw from the turmoil of vices and the distracting burden of responsibilities are invited to understand this book.’61 Vices and responsibilities (‘glamour’ and ‘burdens’), then, impede the understanding of the Song of Songs. In other words, the 59 

Scc 1.3, OSB, v.1, p. 32: ‘Alioquin ante carnem disciplinae studiis edomitam et spiritui mancipatam, ante spretam et abiectam saeculi pompam et sarcinam, indigne ab impuris lectio sancta praesumitur. Quomodo nempe lux incassum circumfundit oculos caecos vel clausos, ita animalis homo non percipit ea quae sunt Spiritus Dei [I Cor II, 14]. […] Quae enim societas ei quae desursum est sapientiae, et sapientiae mundi, quae stultitia est apud Deum [I Cor III, 19], aut sapientiae carnis, quae et ipsa inimica est Deo? [Rom. VIII, 7]’ 60  Cf. Scc 14.5, 23.16, 31.6, 61.2, and 75.2. The warning is a commonplace among commentators on the Song, but McGinn observes, in The Growth of Mysticism, p. 497 n. 160, that Bernard’s new reading has a deeper ground for this insistence. 61  Scc 1.6, OSB, v.1, p. 34: ‘Solas ad hanc intelligendam scripturam mentes invitari pacificas, quae sese iam a vitiorum vindicare perturbationibus et curarum tumultibus praevalent.’

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two previous stages represented by the two biblical books of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, denoting worldly temptations and worldly responsibilities, are to be affronted before exposing oneself to the Song of Songs. This, then, is why he opened the Sermons by announcing that his manner of speaking would be ‘different’ (aliter dicenda sunt) from how he would address ‘those others’, the people of the world (aliis de saeculo). Saintly eros is beyond their comprehension. The steps of spiritual progress, which may eventually lead to the understanding of the Song of Songs, is the principal hermeneutical movement in Bernard’s work. Its pattern constitutes what, in Neoplatonic terms, might be termed a ‘heavenly ladder’ — the soul’s ascent towards the ultimate telos of desire, which in Bernardine interpretation is perceived as noetic and affective union with the godhead.62 The driving force in this movement is eros. To point out an unabashed, Platonic eros as subtext for the opening of Bernard’s work is not to claim direct influence from Plato’s Symposium, which of course at this point was long lost to the Latin West. The Platonic reverberation in the opening banquet-scene in the Sermons, however, does echo Platonizing imagery which would have been readily available to Bernard through the works of earlier commentators of the Song, particularly Origen of Alexandria (whose commentary to the Song Bernard certainly knew), Ambrose of Milan, and perhaps Gregory of Nyssa or even Methodius of Olympus.63 Indeed, as has been pointed out by several scholars, the first sermon in the Sermons on the Song of Songs owes a great deal, stylistically as well as thematically, to Origen’s commentary on the Song, which also opens to the staging of a banquet, in an explicit paraphrase of Plato’s Symposium.64 The guests at Bernard’s banquet, his fellow monks, are, like the abbot himself, in pursuit of eros: an eros who is virginal, celibate, ascetic, and spiritual — but not, however, any less erotic.

62 

On Bernard’s notion of union, see McGinn, ‘Love, Knowledge, and Mystical Union’, pp. 8–9. 63  Older studies, e.g., Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. by Downes, pp. 25–28, claimed Greek influences on Bernard’s work more promptly than recent studies have done. See McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 492 n. 86. The eros motif was more likely transmitted by Latin sources, e.g., Augustine, Ambrose, and Gregory the Great. 64  On the influence of Origen’s Commentarium in Cantica canticorum on Bernard, see Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, p. 39. On the influence of Plato’s Symposium on Origen’s Commentarium, see Miller, ‘“Pleasure of the Text, Text of Pleasure”’.

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2.3 The Kiss As they sink their teeth into that third and most exquisite loaf, which is the Song of Songs, Bernard presents his listeners with his next theme, the ‘kiss’ (osculum), from the first verse of the Song: ‘Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.’ Thus already in the very first sermon, Bernard has indicated two of his most central metaphorical themes throughout the whole work — feeding or nurturing imagery and erotic imagery. The image of the kiss springs unexpectedly upon the unprepared listener, ‘as from a speech in mid-discourse’,65 remarks Bernard, commenting on the abrupt beginning of the Song of Songs, ‘a beginning without a beginning’ (principium sine principio). Feigning the surprised reader, he exclaims: How delightful a mode of speech brought on by the kiss! With this enticing expression of Scripture [blanda … Scripturae facies], affecting and alluring the reader so that he may find pleasure even in the laborious search for what it [ea] hides, employing sweet words to appease the fatigue of the difficult pursuit.66

Bernard does absolutely nothing to suppress the erotic allusions in his imagery.67 Rather, here as elsewhere, he enhances it. Like light-hearted lovers, Bernard (now instated as ‘the reader’) and the scriptural text perform the well-rehearsed game of seduction — enticement, evasion, and pursuit. Bernard’s depiction of hermeneutics appears almost to parody the rites of courtship in secular lyric — staging himself as pursuing knight in an erotic game of hide-and-seek with his elusive lady-love. Initially, then, Bernard adopts a masculinized stance visà-vis the feminized text, much in the same way that ‘the letter’ and ‘the spirit’ of Scripture — that is, the relation of text to interpretation — could be con65 

Scc 1.5, OSB, v.1, p. 34: ‘Aut quale est istud ita subitaneum, et factum repente de medio sermonis exordium?’ 66  Scc 1.5, OSB, v.1, p. 34: ‘Et quidem iucundum eloquium, quod ab osculo principium sumit, et blanda ipsa quaedam Scripturae facies facile afficit et allicit ad legendum, ita ut quod in ea latet, delectet etiam cum labore investigare, nec fatiget inquirendi forte difficultas, ubi eloquii suavitas mulcet.’ 67  This imagery resonant of erotic seduction which Bernard is conjuring up would be enhanced by reading the text aloud, as was commonplace in medieval cloisters. In the Vulgate version of the scriptural text (Osculetur me osculo oris sui), the three ‘o’s in the first letters of osculetur, osculo, and oris induces the reader to perform a mimetic act of kissing by obliging him to shape his mouth as if preparing for a kiss. See Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, p. 126, who suggests that Bernard finds his tripartite scheme in the triple repetition of the related words for kiss and mouth. She also suggests translating the verse: ‘Let him kiss me with the kiss of his kisser’.

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trasted in terms of gender opposition in medieval hermeneutics: the passive, female letter of the physical text awaiting to be delivered of its spiritual sense by the active and superior male principle of spiritual meaning.68 This first, careful gendering of the act of hermeneutical investigation is obscured in the English translation, whereas in the Latin original the text (Scriptura) is referred to using the feminine pronoun ea. The image of the kiss thus commences with an allusion to hermeneutical desire, employed deliberately, maintains Bernard, by divine Scripture to ‘sweeten’ the words, thereby attracting the reader and producing in him a desire for the text itself: the ‘delightful mode of speech’ (iucundum eloquium) and ‘enticing face’ (blanda […] facies) which is ‘affecting and alluring him’ (afficit et allicit). Having established the concept of the (feminine) text as an object for erotic desire, Bernard suddenly shifts his concerns. Apparently leaving the perspective of hermeneutical desire — which, however, is never completely left, as desire for Christ the bridegroom is always an erotic desire for the incarnated Word (and, therefore, always already hermeneutical)69 — Bernard’s perspective carefully prepares for the symbolic representation of the kiss as a mystical union. At the beginning of the second sermon, desire is directed directly at Christ himself, as Bernard speaks of the desire of the patriarchs while awaiting the coming of Messiah. He compares his own desire, unfavourably, to their ‘passionate longing’ (desiderium flagrans) — and feels shameful at his lukewarmness (Scc 2.1). Enforcing the parallel between himself and the patriarchs, Bernard places himself and his listeners (or the reader) squarely in the liturgical context of Advent with an explicit reference to the imminent feast of Nativity: ‘Very soon now there will be great rejoicing as we celebrate the feast of Christ’s birth!’70 The patriarchs’ words of desire are the same as those of the bride, ‘let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth’, because, says Bernard, God’s ‘living, active word is to me a kiss’.71 The labial kiss, by metonymy, is perceived as a ver68  See below Sections 5.3 and 6.6. On the masculinized exegete and the feminized text, see below, Section 6.4. See Shanzer, ‘Latent Narrative Patterns’, p. 53, who suggests that ‘Scripture’s many faces, when she is seen as a woman, prefigure her many interpretations, when she is seen as a text’. 69  See below, Sections 5.4–5.5 and 6.4–6.5. 70  Scc 2.1, OSB, v.1, p. 42: ‘Ecce enim quam multi in hac eius, quae proxime celebranda est, nativitate gaudebunt!’ 71  Scc 2.2, OSB, v.1, p. 44: ‘sermo vivus et efficax osculum mihi est’. Bernard uses sermo Dei (word of God) in the sense of divinely transmitted teaching, cf. Heb 4. 12. In order to differentiate from Verbum Dei (the Word of God, i.e., Christ) the latter is indicated in the translation by a capitalized W.

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bal utterance, a kind of divine speech act. Indeed, in the next passage, the kiss has become the Incarnation itself: The mouth that kisses is the Word who assumes [flesh], the kiss is received by the flesh assumed. The kiss, then, which consists equally of the kisser and kissed, is thus the very person who is formed by both — the mediator of God and man among men, Christ Jesus.72

In the subjunctive mode of the biblical text — ‘let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth’ — the kiss is closely associated with desire. Here, however, in the context of Christ’s Incarnation, Bernard indicates rather that the kiss represents a unification of lovers. Moving slowly and deliberately from the concept of desire to the concept of union, Bernard’s exegesis focalizes on the uniting of lips as image for the conjoining of humanity and divinity: A happy kiss, indeed a stupendous and marvellous generosity which is not a mere pressing of mouth upon mouth; it is the uniting of God with man. The touch of lip upon lip is a sign of souls embracing. This, however, is a conjoining of divine and human nature, reconciling that which is on earth with that which is in heaven.73

Thus Bernard has prepared for his next exegetical step. If the Incarnation, the joining together of divine and human nature, of heaven and earth — that is, the union of two irreconcilable substances in Christ — may be represented as a kiss, it follows that the kiss is the very symbolic stuff of which the mystical union, the joining together of the human and the divine on an individual level, shall be woven.74 72 

Scc 2.3, OSB, v.1, p.  44: ‘Sit os osculans, Verbum assumens; osculatum, caro quae assumitur: osculum vero, quod pariter ab osculante et osculato conficitur, persona ipsa scilicet ex utroque compacta, mediator Dei et hominum homo Christus Iesus.’ Compare Scc 8.2, where Bernard gives a Trinitarian interpretation of oscuetur me osculo oris sui: the Father is the kisser, osculans, the Son is the kissed, osculatus, the Holy Ghost is the kiss, osculum. Hence Bernard distinguishes between the kiss that the bride receives, which is osculo ab osculo, not osculo ab ore, which is the prerogative of the Father. Damrosch, ‘Non alia sed aliter’, observes that Bernard here introduces a subtle distinction between plenitudo, reserved for the Trinity alone, and participatio, where the bride (the human soul) enjoys the plenitude only indirectly. 73  Scc 2.3, OSB, v.1, p. 44: ‘Felix osculum, ac stupenda dignatione mirabile, in quo non os ori imprimitur, sed Deus homini unitur. Et ibi quidem contactus labiorum complexum significat animorum, hic autem confoederatio naturarum divinis humana componit, quae in terra sunt, et quae in caelis pacificans.’ 74  McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p.  175, places Bernard in an ancient Christian tradition first made explicit by Irenaeus: God became human so that humans might become

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Indeed, in Sermon 3, for the first time, the concept of union is brought definitely within the realm of mystical theology. As Bernard moves his reading from Christology to mysticism, the style and temperature of his rhetoric changes, quickened now with a lyrical and highly personal quality, close to the passionate love lyrics of the courts. While the patriarchs’ desire for the kiss, as portrayed in the second sermon (Scc 2.4–9), signifies their expectation of God’s promised reconciliation, the desire for the kiss expressed in the third sermon is of an unmistakable erotic quality, all but absent in the second. Sermon 3 sees a profound shift in perspective. It is no longer the distant patriarchs but the monk himself who is crying out, in naked desire, for the unifying kiss. Sermon 3 opens with Bernard invoking the monks’ personal experience: Today we will read in the book of experience [libro experientiae]. Now turn to yourselves, each one of you must search your own awareness for what will be discussed. I wish to discover if any one of you has had the privilege of saying [ex sententia]: Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth. [Song 1. 1] For there are not many to whom it is given to utter these words in true affection [ex affectu]. But anyone who has ever received the mystical kiss from the mouth of Christ, even just once, will be aroused by the experience and eager to repeat it.75

As Bernard’s reading transports the quest for the mystical kiss to an immediate monastic and personal level, he immediately stresses its elitist character: there are ‘not many to whom it is given’. The kiss of the mouth manifests itself both in words and in feeling (ex sententia, ex affectu), he says, thereby relating the search for union with the divine to text as well as to experience. In fact, it is through this dialectic between Scripture and the ‘book of experience’ (libro experientiae) that the hermeneutical path to nuptials with Christ, the monk’s transformation into bride, must traverse. These two ‘books’, the biblical and the experiential, complement and reinforce each other, as Bernard blends the two together.76 God. This concept has bearing for Bernard’s conceptualization of the contemplative excessus or raptus, as this state anticipates — albeit imperfectly — eschatological perfection, or divinization. See also below, Section 6.1. 75  Scc 3.1, OSB, v.1, p. 54: ‘Hodie legimus in libro experientiae. Convertimini ad vos ipsos, et attendat unusquisque conscientiam suam super his quae dicenda sunt. Explorare velim, si cui unquam vestrum ex sententia dicere datum sit: Osculetur me osculo oris sui [Cantic. I, 1]. Non est enim cuiusvis hominum ex affectu hoc dicere; sed si quis ex ore Christi spirituale osculum vel semel accepit, hunc proprium experimentum profecto sollicitat, et repetit libens.’ 76  On the epistemological metaphor of the book in medieval usage, see Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, pp. 311–26. On the theme of ‘the book of experience’,

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Elaborating and expanding on the image of the kiss from the opening verse of the Song of Songs, Bernard next allegorizes the metaphor of the kiss, turning it into an image of the soul’s spiritual rectification through three kisses which represent three progressive degrees of perfection: the kiss of the feet, the kiss of the hands, and the kiss of the mouth. Parting from the kiss of the feet, where Bernard describes the soul lying prostrate at the feet of the Lord, the soul rises to kiss the hands of the godhead to finally attain the kiss from his mouth. These are the ascending steps from degradation to glory, from humility to exaltation. Bernard opens the sequence with a rhetorical formula of humility. 77 Denouncing his own soul, he says that he is ‘burdened with sins, still subject to carnal passions, devoid of any knowledge of spiritual delights’.78 A soul such as his may not aspire to the bridegroom’s lips, but should instead throw itself at the feet of God, crouching humbly, pitifully in the mud. Next Bernard redirects his attention, entering into an interlocution with an abstract yet intensely intimate ‘you’.79 ‘Prostrate yourself on the ground,’ writes Bernard, invoking the biblical image of the sensuously sinful female (cf. Lk 7. 38–39), ‘embrace his feet, soothe them with kisses, sprinkle them with tears and so wash not them but yourself.’80 As he fleetingly abandons himself and his monks to a queerly femian image which McGinn holds to have been created by Bernard, see The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 185–86, see also Leclercq, ‘Aspects spirituels de la symbologique du livre’. 77  In scholarship, particularly older scholarship, this passage is one of several (along with, e.g., Scc 22.3 and Gra 9.24) that have been taken as disclaimers in the discussion on whether or not Bernard was a ‘real’ comtemplative. See, e.g., Brauneck, Bernard von Clairvaux als Mystiker, pp. 29–31, see also Leclercq, Saint Bernard mystique, p. 137. More recently Sommerfeldt, in ‘Bernard as Contemplative’ and The Spiritual Teachings, pp. 221–22, re-raises the issue. He sees Bernard in the present passage as ‘identifying with those in his audience who are taking the first steps in the path to perfection and who need his support and encouragement’ (The Spiritual Teachings, p. 221). I find these ‘disclaimers’, instead, to be examples of Bernard’s literary and rhetorical formulas of humility that counterpoints the potential self-glorification of idealized brideship. 78  Scc 3.1, OSB, v.1, p. 54: ‘onerata peccatis, suaeque adhuc carnis obnoxia passionibus, quae suavitatem spiritus necdum senserit’. 79  The ‘you’ in question is in the singular, its reference being anima (Scc 3.1 and 3.2, OSB, v.1, p. 54: ‘mei similis anima’, ‘quaecunque es talis anima’), thus also allowing the strong feminine reverberation of the passage. 80  Scc 3.2, OSB, v.1, p. 56: ‘Prosternere et tu in terram; amplectere pedes, placa osculis, riga lacrymis, quibus tamen non illum laves, sed te.’ Bernard, like the Latin medieval tradition in general, identifies the woman who anointed and wept at the feet of Jesus in the house of the

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nized identification with the prostrate Magdalene, he echoes also the champion of desert asceticism, Jerome: ‘Helpless, I cast myself at the feet of Jesus, I watered them with my tears, I wiped them with my hair, and then I subdued my rebellious body with weeks of abstinence.’81 As we will see, the related images of tears and washing will dominate the passage, more so than the relatively played down image of foot-kissing. The intertextual references to Jerome’s account of his brief career as a hermit (monachus) in the Syrian desert highlights Bernard’s message of repentance and conversion, as well as the identification between the monks and the desert fathers (other than the obvious etymological identity). This is an ‘appropriate place on the way to salvation’, he writes — far, however, from the ‘lips of that most fair bridegroom’.82 It is not a pleasant place — rigid, gloomy, and dusty (and so not quite unlike Jerome’s desert).83 But do not despise this place, Bernard cautions, ‘for it is the place where the saintly sinner laid down her sins, exchanging them with sanctity.’84 Conspicuously rewriting the gender of the Ethiopian in Jeremiah — replacing the Vulgate’s Aethiops with Aethiopissa — Bernard envisions a specifically feminine version of ascetic transformation: It is where the Ethiopian woman changed her skin [cf. Jer 13. 23], and, restored to a new brightness, she could confidently and justly respond to those who insulted her by taking for herself the words: I am black but beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem. [Song 1. 4] You wonder by what means or by what merit she obtained this? You will understand soon enough. She wept bitterly, she sighed deeply from her heart,

Pharisee (Lk 7. 36–39) as Mary of Màgdala, who visited the tomb on Easter morning ( Jn 20. 1). Compare Scc 7.8, 12.6, and 23.9; see also discussion on Mary Magdalene below Section 5.2. 81  Jerome, Ep 22.7; trans. by Wright, p. 68: ‘Ita omni auxilio destitutus ad Iesu iacebam pedes, rigabam lacrimis, crine tergebam et repugnantem carnem ebdomadarum inedia subiugabam.’ 82  Scc 3.2, OSB, v.1, p. 54: ‘locum in salutari sibi congruentem. Non temere assurgat ad os serenissimi sponsi’. 83  Bernard’s use of adjectives in this passage (Scc 3.2), while only indirectly referring an actual or a symbolic ‘site’ of repentance, nevertheless transmit an idea of desert topography: severissimi, tenebris, caecitate, pulvere. Significantly, the Exordium cistercii, as well as William of Saint-Thierry’s Vita prima 1.5.25, col. 241D, describes Cîteaux and Clairvaux, respectively, as a site of ‘horror and vast solitude’ (loco horroris et vastae solitudinis) in wording identical to Dt 32. 10, establishing it as a place of struggle comparable to the desert that tested the faith of the Israelites. 84  Scc 3.2, OSB, v.1, p. 54: ‘non tibi ille locus vilis aut despicabilis videatur, ubi sancta peccatrix peccata deposuit, induit sanctitatem’.

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and her sobs were such violent remedies that she vomited forth all her venomous fluids.85

Reverberating with the ascetic master Jerome’s (self ) imagery of sun-scorched skin in the desert — ‘my skin from long neglect had become rough and dark like the flesh of an Ethiopian’86 — Bernard transports the desert into the cool and misty valleys of eastern France. Following Jerome’s desert aesthetics, the blackened, feminized skin of the Ethiopian, who clearly is also the bride (by the reference to Song 1. 4), seems to not only reinstate the desert into the monastery but even to reinscribe the desert onto the idealized bodies of the monks — their blackened, roughened skin bearing the mark of the elect.87 ‘You,’ says Bernard, all the while keeping to the singular verb form (and thus keeping close to the identification with the soiled and prostrate female figure with which the sequence opened), ‘will become one of the flock of shorn ewes as they come up from the washing [Song 4. 2].’88 In this fluidity of gender and identity — intensified in the Latin original with its all-feminine adjectives — Bernard’s monks appear virtually indistinguishable from the flock of wailing women: the Magdalene, the Ethiopian, the bride, even the bleating ewes. The verb inflexions, in fact, slip to and fro between third- and second-person singular throughout the passage, as Bernard one moment refers to a repentant female and the next directly addresses the ‘you’ — a ‘you’ which, seen in relation to the opening passage, still represents the monks. Significantly, he has also entirely abandoned the plural forms, using nei85 

Scc 3.2, OSB, v.1, pp. 54–56: ‘Ibi Aethiopissa mutavit pellem, et in novum restituta candorem, iam tunc fiducialiter veraciterque respondebat exprobrantibus sibi verbum: Nigra sum, sed formosa, filiae Ierusalem [Cant. I, 4]. Miraris quanam id arte potuerit, vel quibus obtinuerit meritis? Paucis accipe. Flevit amare, et de intimis visceribus longa suspiria trahens, salutaribus intra se succussa singultibus, felleos humores evomuit.’ 86  Jerome, Ep 22.7; trans. by Wright, p.  66: ‘squalida cutis situm Aethiopicae carnis adduxerat’. 87  On blackness as a spiritual trope, see below, Section 5.3; cf. Burrus’s analysis of Jerome’s letter in The Sex Lives of Saints, pp. 19–20, and her comment, p. 170 n. 4: ‘The “Ethiopian” whose skin Jerome has stolen was by this time a conventional figure of ascetic paradox, representing the tension and contrast between the “inner” and the “outer man”, where the “blackness” of carnality was understood to be “white-washed” by the practice of spiritual virtue. As sinners, “we are naturally black,” Jerome writes at the beginning of this letter, citing song of Songs 1. 5: “I am black but comely…,” a passage that he seams with Numbers 12. 1, “He [Christ the Bridegroom] has married an Ethiopian woman,” concluding with the assurance that Christ will “miraculously change your complexion” [Ep 22.1]’. 88  Scc 3.2, OSB, v.1, p. 56: ‘ei fias una de grege tonsarum quae ascendunt de lavacro [Cant. IV, 2].’

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ther the second-person plural nor the first-person plural with which he opened the sermon,89 thus obtaining a firmer rhetorical identification, or perhaps misidentification, between the monks and the figure of the repentant female: ‘So by the example of that happy penitent (beatae paenitentis), prostrate yourself, o wretched sinner (o misera), so you may be rid of your wretchedness.’ 90 The displaced femininity of the erotically charged desert penitence is hence metaphorically appropriated as the monk — the misera who is to become beata — is called to rectification in the final evocation of the passage: ‘Arise, arise, captive daughter of Sion, arise and shake off the dust [Is 52.1–2].’91 There is yet another step to be surmounted, however. The second kiss — that of the hands — images the repentant soul clinging to the supporting hand of Christ in order to persevere in discipline and avoid sin (Scc 3.3). The topo­ graphy has changed now: Bernard has the audience wallowing in a humid and smelly marshland. There are allusions to vomit (ad vomitum) and, in the next passage, excrements (de stercore). The most dominant image, however, is mud: If I soil my feet again after cleaning them, of what benefit was the cleaning? Long did I lie drenched in slimy mud, filthy with all kinds of vices. If I sink back again I shall be worse than when I first wallowed in it.92

Therefore, Bernard states, he cannot be satisfied by the first kiss only. He needs the second as well: ‘He, who gave me the will to repent, must also give me the power to persevere, lest by repeating my sins I should end up being worse than I was before.’93 Then, finally, he arrives at the third kiss — the culminating mystical encounter between the soul and the godhead. This is also the first kiss which sees the divine as partaking in the act of kissing — rather than just allowing himself to be kissed, in the manner of a distant feudal lord. Bernard resumes the eroticism 89 

The opening phrase of Sermon 3 is in plural: legimus (we shall read) and convertimini (turn yourselves). 90  Scc 3.2, OSB, v.1, p. 56: ‘Huius igitur beatae paenitentis exemplo prosternere et tu, o misera, ut desinas esse misera.’ 91  Scc 3.2, OSB, v.1, p. 56: ‘Consurge, consurge, captiva filia Sion; consurge, excutere de pulvere [Isai. LII, 1, 2].’ 92  Scc 3.3, OSB, v.1, p. 56: ‘Si rursus pedes meos, quos laveram, inquinavero, numquid aliquid lavisse valebit? Sordens omni genere vitiorum iacui diu in luto faecis; sed erit sine dubio recidenti, quam iacenti deterius.’ 93  Scc 3.3, OSB, v.1, p. 56: ‘Qui autem dedit voluntatem paenitendi, opus est ut addat et continendi virtutem, ne iterem paenitenda, faciamque novissima mea peiora prioribus.’

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with which he began the spiritual journey of the kisses (Scc 3.2), expounding on the progressive degrees of intimacy: This is the way, this is the order. First we cast ourselves at his feet, we weep before the Lord that made us. Then we reach out for the hand that will lift us up, that will steady our trembling knees [Is 35. 3]. And then, finally, after many prayers and tears, we might — perhaps — dare to raise our eyes to his glorious mouth, not merely to look upon him, but even — I say it with fear and trembling — to kiss him.94

The traditional mystical image of seeing God ‘face to face’ (facie ad faciem) is here metaphorically transformed and brought one step further — kissing God, mouth to mouth (non solum speculandum, sed etiam osculandum). Shifting his reading from the plural (audemus, ‘we might dare’) to the singular, Bernard exclaims: ‘And now what remains, o good Lord? Suffused in the fullness of your light, in the fervour of my spirit, let me approach your mouth, your kiss; fill me with the joy of your presence!’95 Bernard describes, in ecstatic and intimate terms, (the desire for) the encounter with God — the culmination of the soul’s ascent towards the ecstatic joy of the divine presence. Quite abruptly, however, he interrupts himself: My brothers, it is good for us to be here but the burden of the day [diei malitia] calls us. These guests, whose arrival has just been announced, compel me to break off rather than to conclude a talk which gave so much pleasure. I shall go out to meet the guests, so not to neglect our duty of love [caritatis], of which we have been speaking, and hear it said of us: They speak, but they do not practice [what they say] [Mt 23. 3].96

A dramatic shift has just occurred in Bernard’s rhetoric. Suddenly, from the poetic heights of spiritual arousal the audience falls flat on the ground by an 94  Scc 3.5, OSB, v.1, p. 58: ‘Haec via, hic ordo. Primo ad pedes procidimus, et ploramus coram Domino qui fecit nos, ea quae fecimus nos. Secundo manum quaerimus sublevantis, et roborantis genua dissoluta. Postremo cum ista multis precibus et lacrimis obtinemus, tunc demum audemus forsitan ad ipsum os gloriae caput attollere, pavens et tremens dico, non solum speculandum, sed etiam osculandum.’ 95  Scc 3.6, OSB, v.1, p. 60: ‘Et nunc quid restat, o bone Domine, nisi ut iam in plenitudine lucis, in fervore spiritus ad oris quoque osculum dignanter admittens, adimpleas me laetitia cum vultu tuo?’ 96  Scc 3.6, OSB, v.1, p. 60: ‘Fratres, bonum est nos hic esse, sed ecce avocat nos diei malitia. Hi siquidem, qui modo supervenisse nuntiantur, gratum cogunt magis rumpere quam finire sermonem. Ego exibo ad hospites, ne quid desit officiis eius, de qua loquimur, caritatis, ne forte et de nobis audire contingat: Dicunt enim, et non faciunt [Matth. XXIII, 3].’

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unlikely prosaic episode, with Bernard fussing at the arrival of some unexpected guests. Of course, one might imagine the abbot interrupted by occasional visitors to Clairvaux as he was preaching for his monks. But, more likely, this is an intentional rhetorical device — a constructed experience intended to transmit Bernard’s monastic and hermeneutical programme. The duty towards one’s neighbour (in this case hospites, ‘the guests’) forces Bernard to interrupt his own enjoyment of the sermon. The aspiration to divine union, the mystical kiss that he has made his own, is brutally disrupted, as he must fulfill his duties as abbot. The guests are in this case the focal point of a literary anticlimax which asserts itself after the spiritual highlight of the text.97 Bringing the rhetorical temperature down, the scene effects a ‘reversed’ rhetoric which complements the stylistic and spiritual heights. Thus, fruition (frui) is contrasted and balanced by usefulness (uti); pleasure is replaced by duty. In this way Bernard expresses the notion that the contemplative cannot dedicate himself to his own pleasure alone. Rather, he must accept the sacrifice of descent (descensio) after his ecstatic ascent (ascensio). The ‘natural’ order, which is the upward movement of desire, is interrupted and replaced by the reversed and ‘preposterous’ order (ordo praeposterus), as Bernard and his audience again descend among the lowlier and the lesser. Reapplying himself to the theme of the three kisses, Bernard opens Sermon 4: ‘The first kiss is the sign of our conversion of life, the second is accorded to those making progress, and the third is perfection, a rare experience and only for the few.’98 The triple pattern of the kiss clearly recalls that of the three loaves of bread from the first sermon, and indeed the structure is of the same Origenist-Dionysian stock: 1. The kiss of the feet: conversion, repentance (purification/corporeal level) 2. The kiss of the hand: endurance, good actions (illumination/tropological level) 3. The kiss of the mouth: union, contemplation (unification/anagogic level) One might ask just how strong the erotic connotations of the kiss would have been in the context of twelfth-century exegesis and monasticism. In fact, the 97 

On Bernard’s literary technique of climax and anticlimax, see Mohrmann, ‘Observations sur la langue et le style de Saint Bernard’. 98  Scc 4.1, OSB, v.1, p. 62: ‘In primo sane primordia dedicantur nostrae conversionis, secundum autem proficientibus indulgetur, porro tertium sola experitur, et rara perfectio.’ In Scc 4.4 he supplies identical stages.

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image of the kiss had many non-erotic references, for example, familial, social, liturgical, scriptural, pneumatological, Eucharistic, and so forth.99 In effect, neither the passage of the patriarchs awaiting the kiss (Scc 2.1–2), nor the passage describing the kiss of the hands (Scc 3.3) had any particular sensuous flavour. Instead, concepts of reconciliation and forgiveness were in the fore.100 Indeed, distinctive erotic allusions seem to surface in the text most often in connection with feminine imagery, particularly when Bernard is identifying himself and the monks directly with a female figure. In Sermon 7, referred to as the first explicitly mystical sermon in the work,101 the kiss appears in close connection to marital imagery, and it is decidedly erotic: Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth, [Song 1. 1] she said. Who speaks? The bride. But who is she? She is the soul thirsting for God. But let me demonstrate some various affections [affectiones], so as to better illustrate the particular characteristics of the bride. A slave will fear his master. A soldier will hope for gain. A student will obey his teacher. A son will honour his father. But she who asks for a kiss, loves. Love is the greatest of all natural gifts, especially when it is directed towards its source, which is God. No sweeter names can be found to express the sweet interflow of affections [affectus] between the Word and the soul, than bridegroom and bride. For these have all things in common, they keep nothing to themselves, and there is nothing that causes division between them. They share the same heritage, the same table, the same home, the same bridal chamber, for they are one flesh. For this reason he leaves his father and mother, and joins [adhaerebit] himself to his wife, so the two become one flesh [Gen 2. 24]. Also for this reason she is told to forget her people and her father’s home, so that he will desire [concupiscat] her beauty [Ps 44. 11–12]. Therefore, if love is the principal attribute of the bride and bridegroom, it is not unfitting to call the soul that loves, a bride.102

99 

On the social and ritualistic aspects of the kiss in the late ancient Church, see Penn, Kissing Christians. Interestingly, for this book’s concens, Penn (p. 135, n. 45) points to sources linking the kiss directly to the wedding ritual. He refers to Roman judicial codes alluding to the practice of a betrothal kiss, of which there is evidence also in Tertullian, De virginibus velandis 11.6, and Ambrose, Ep 1.14–18. 100  Bernard writes (Scc 4.2, OSB, v.1, p. 64) of the first kiss that it is a ‘kiss of peace’ (osculum pacis), reminiscent of Tertullian, De oratione 18 (cols 1177–78), see Penn, Kissing Christians, pp. 37–49, 44, where he refers to Tertullian’s alternation between two meanings of pax: as the abstact noun ‘peace’, and as ritualized kissing. 101  McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 494 n. 124, lists the key sermons dealing with mysticism or contemplation thus: Scc 7, 20, 23, 31, 42, 45, 52, 57, 67, 69, 71, 74, 79, and 83. 102  Scc 7.2, OSB, v.1, pp. 88–90: ‘Osculetur, inquit, me osculo oris sui [Cant. I, 1]. Quis dicit? Sponsa. Quaenam ipsa? Anima sitiens Deum. Sed pono diversas affectiones, ut ea quae proprie

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The various ‘affections’ (affectiones, affectus) described by Bernard — the fear of the slave, the hope of gain of the mercenary, the obedience of the student, the respect of the son — are contrasted by bridal love.103 Love, in fact, reverberates throughout the passage — not, however, in words disassociated with sexual reference, such as caritas or diligere, but amor with its derivations: amat, amoris, amare, amat.104 Nor is the passage devoid of physicality. The fleshly body (una caro, in carne una), asserts itself in the text with its resonance of Adam and Eve’s fleshly union in Genesis. Significantly, even saintly desire resembles lust here, with the Vulgate reference to ‘concupiscence’ (concupiscat), which Bernard applies to the bridegroom’s desire for the bride — an allusion to Psalm 44 which in medieval exegesis was frequently coupled with the Song and read in terms of nuptial imagery.105 The sterile safety of a desexualized desire, as exposed in Bernard’s earlier depictions of the kiss (for instance, Scc 2.2–3), is here abandoned for an eroticism of a more physical sponsae congruit, distinctius elucescat. Si servus est, timet a facie Domini; si mercenarius, sperat de manu Domini; si discipulus, aurem parat magistro; si filius, honorat patrem; quae vero osculum postulat, amat. Excellit in naturae donis affectio haec amoris, praesertim cum ad suum recurrit principium, quod est Deus. Nec sunt inventa aeque dulcia nomina, quibus Verbi animaeque dulces ad invicem exprimerentur affectus, quemadmodum sponsus et sponsa: quippe quibus omnia sunt communia, nil proprium, nil a se divisum habentibus. Una utriusque hereditas, una mensa, una domus, unus thorus, una etiam caro. Denique propter hanc relinquet ille patrem et matrem, et adhaerebit uxori suae, et erunt duo in carne una [Gen II, 24]. Haec quoque iubetur nihilominus oblivisci populum suum et domum patris sui, ut concupiscat ille decorem eius [Psal. XLIV, 11, 12]. Si ergo amare sponsis specialiter principaliterque convenit, non immerito sponsae nomine censetur anima quae amat.’ 103  The cognate terms affectio and affectus are technical terms, among the most complex in Bernard’s vocabulary, according to McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 500–01 n. 212: ‘Affectus, derived from afficere (i.e., facere ad, ‘to do something to someone’) is primarily passive in connotation, indicating the effect in a recipient of some action proceeding from an agent, i.e., from an affectio. […] But because the affectus given us by God’s prior love is the source of our own various affectiones, Bernard, William of St Thierry, and other Cistercians often used the terms interchangeably.’ Blanpain, ‘Langage mystique’, p. 59, underscores affectus as a movement of the soul and of the will, not to be confused with the affectus of the scholastic authors who understood it exclusively in terms of sensibility and sentiment. See also discussion in Casey, Athirst for God, pp. 94–110. In translation, I use the terms ‘affection’, sometimes ‘love’, ‘desire’, or ‘feeling’, unfortunately losing subtle nuances. I shall, however, indicate which of the Latin terms is employed in the original. 104  On Bernard’s terminology of love, see Casey, Athirst for God, pp. 65–94, esp. pp. 88–94. 105  On Psalm 44 (Psalm 45 in modern enumerations) in patristic exegesis, see Hunter, ‘The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church’.

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nature.106 The patriarchs, we may recall, were certainly portrayed in a context of desire, even passionate desire, as they were waiting for God’s word, but hardly that of lust. The fact that it is a labial kiss does not necessarily lend the image sexual overtones. But by the direct association to the bride and bridegroom, the eroticism is amplified, both by Bernard’s choice of vocabulary and by the implications of a physical union.

2.4 The Breasts Breasts are Bernard’s leading maternal metaphor.107 They are introduced in Sermon 9 as the exegesis slips subtly from erotic imagery to maternal imagery, combining the ‘kiss’ (osculum) with the ‘breasts’ (ubera) from the first verse of the Song (‘let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth, for your breasts are better than wine’).108 Bernard narrates that while the bride is still brooding and longing for the kiss of the bridegroom, shameful that she has given herself to other lovers who have mistreated her, she desperately begs, indeed implores, for his kiss (Scc 9.2). Yielding to her desire, the bridegroom suddenly appears, and kisses her: The proof of this is that her breasts fill up. For so efficacious is the holy kiss, that as soon as the bride receives it, she conceives. Her breasts grow large, swelling with milk as they testify to the conception.109

Explaining that the bride is impregnated by the holy kiss (tantae efficaciae, indeed), Bernard brusquely and queerly transforms himself and his monks into fecund, ample-bosomed brides: 106 

Compare Burrus, The Sex Lives of Saints, p. 14, who speaks of ‘the sterile safety of a desexualized agape’ in referring to ancient hagiography. 107  The current Section 2.4 treats the breast metaphor in Scc 9, Scc 10, and Scc 41, but the metaphor appears throughout the whole work, e.g., in connection with the bedchamber (Scc 23), to be be treated below in Section 2.5. The passage ascribing maternal breasts to Christ in Scc 9.5–6, however, will be dealt with below in Section 6.2. 108  Song 1. 1 in the Vulgate followed LXX, translating the Greek mastoi sou as ubera tua which means ‘maternal breasts’ or ‘udders’, rather than the Mastoretic text, which has the Hebrew dodeka (love); see Turner, Eros and Allegory, p. 204, n. 2, and Moore, ‘The Song of Songs in the History of Sexuality’, p. 335 n. 23. As both Turner and Moore point out, the Hebrew vowelless dodeka or dodim (loves) would be written identically as dadeka or dadayim (breasts). 109  Scc 9.7, OSB, v.1, p. 118: ‘Quod et probat ex eius uberum repletione. Tantae nempe efficaciae osculum sanctum est, ut ex ipso mox, cum acceperit illud, sponsa concipiat, tume­scen­ tibus nimirum uberibus, et lacte quasi pinguescentibus in testimonium.’

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Men [Quibus] who pray frequently will have experience of what I say. Often when we approach the altar to pray our insides are lukewarm and dry. But if we persevere suddenly there comes an infusion of grace [gratia] — our breast swells up; our interiors are flooded with piety [pietatis]. If someone were to press upon it [the breast] then milk of sweet conception would gush forth in abundance.110

Bernard’s association between the monks and the bride, already announced in the grammatical transition to masculine plural, the ‘men’ (quibus, m.pl.) who pray and the ‘we’ (accedimus) who approach the altar, is affirmed as the bride’s lactating breasts are literally transferred onto the monks: ‘our breasts swell up’, declares Bernard.111 The swelling of breasts — changed now from ubera, indicating maternal breasts and also ‘udders’, to the more gender neutral pectus — is caused by an infusion of ‘grace’ (gratia) which fills the interior with ‘piety’ (pietatis). In medieval usage, the implications of the term pietas are rich, indicating also devotion, dutifulness, mercy, and even compassion. In the present context, it is particularly the association to dutifulness and compassion which best transmits Bernard’s meaning — a meaning which will become clearer in the analyses of the following passages.112 In this perspective, gratia, grace received from God, can be associated with the kiss, and pietas with maternal milk and lactation. Thus the latter term functions as complementary counterpart to the former, insofar as it implies the 110 

Scc 9.7, OSB, v.1, p. 118: ‘Quibus studium est orare frequenter, experti sunt quod dico. Saepe corde tepido et arido accedimus ad altare, orationi incumbimus. Persistentibus autem repente infunditur gratia, pinguescit pectus, replet viscera pietatis inundatio; et si sit qui premat, lac conceptae dulcedinis ubertim fundere non tardabunt.’ 111  It is probably due to these explicit references that older scholarship found this passage unseemly; see, e.g., Butler, Western Mysticism, pp. 195–96, who finds the current passage ‘unduly realistic’. 112  Compare Scc 12.1, OSB, v.1, p. 148, where Bernard uses the term pietas in a sense which recalls the definitions given by Augustine and Gregory for the active life, stressing charitable and merciful actions towards one’s fellows. Discussing the three ‘ointments’ (Song 1.2), he writes: ‘Sed est unguentum, quod ambobus longe antecellit, et hoc appellaverim pietatis, eo quod fiat de necessitatibus pauperum, de anxietatibus oppressorum, de perturbationibus tristium, de culpis delinquentium, et postremo de omnibus quorumlibet miserorum aerumnis, etiamsi fuerint inimici’ (But there is an ointment which far excells these two, and I call it piety [pietatis] because it concerns of the needs of the poor, the anxieties of the oppressed, the worries of the sad, the guilt of the delinquents, and finally the all the misery of everyone, even our enemies). Throughout Sermon 12 pietas is closely associated with misericordia and, significantly, the concept of mothering. The English CF-editions of Bernard’s Sermons give various translations of pietas: Scc 12.1, Song, i, 77, gives ‘loving-kindness’, which I find particularly unaesthetic, although it renders some precision; and Scc 9.7, Song, i, 58, gives, more vaguely, ‘love’.

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capacity of lactating others — which is suggested in the text by the hypothetical breast-squeezer (si sit qui premat). Used this way, the two terms hint at a preliminary duality which will be increasingly stressed as Bernard proceeds to elaborate on the image of the breasts (illustrated in Table 2). Table 2. (Scc 9.7a) kiss breasts eroticism maternity gratia pietas

Gliding inconspicuously from eroticism to maternity, that is, from the erotic kiss to the maternal breasts, Bernard simultaneously moves his exegesis from a contemplative context, dealing with the beatitude of divine presence (or its eschatological foretaste), to a moral context, dealing with correct behaviour, or, following the hermeneutical formula, from an anagogic to a tropological level. This hermeneutical transition is indicated as imagery suggesting saintly pleasure is abandoned for imagery associated with selfless duty. Giving voice to the bridegroom, Bernard connects the breast with nurturance: You have received, o bride, what you asked for [i.e., the kiss]. Here is the sign, for your breasts are better than wine [Song 1. 1]. You shall know that you have obtained the kiss because you can feel that you have conceived. This is why your breasts swell up. They are full of milk that is better than the wine of worldly knowledge. For this [wine] will indeed intoxicate, but with curiosity [curiositate], not love [caritate]. It fills but does not nourish, it puffs up but does not build up, it fattens but does not strengthen.113

Here the oppositional imagery of eroticism and fecundity meet, indeed conflate, in a fundamental manner: the one explains the other. Eroticism becomes directly related to fruitfulness and vice versa. Impregnated by the kiss, the full breasts of the bride (the praying monk) makes her (him) capable of nurturing others. By metonymy, breasts can be represented as interchangeable with lactation, which in its turn became associated with caritas.114 Caritas in medieval 113 

Scc 9.7, OSB, v.1, p. 118: ‘Habes, sponsa, quod petisti, et hoc tibi signum, quia meliora facta sunt ubera tua vino: hinc te scilicet noveris osculum accepisse, quod te concepisse sentis. Unde et ubera tibi intumuerunt, facta in ubertate lactis meliora vino scientiae saecularis, quae quidem inebriat, sed curiositate, non caritate: implens, non nutriens; inflans, non aedificans; ingurgitans, non confortans.’ 114  On the growing popularity of virgo lactans and the iconography of caritas, both images involving exposed lactating breasts, see Freyhan, ‘The Evolution of the Caritas Figure’,

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usage was multifaceted and polyvalent, if not altogether vague and imprecise.115 Yet for the Cistercians it concerned in a very specific way the execution of, and training for, spiritual leadership — a theme which shall emerge explicitly in the following sermon.116 Then there is that other liquid, wine, which Bernard treats as a symbol for curiositas and ‘worldly knowledge’ (scientiae saecularis). Although wine stands in opposition to milk by the terms curiositate and caritate, Bernard deliberately destabilizes this opposition by inducing in the reader or listener a symmetrical but deceptive counter image, in which engorged, milky breasts are paralleled by wine-bloated breasts (implens, inflans, ingurgitans). Alluding to the biblical ‘knowledge that puffs up’ (scientia inflatur, i Cor 8. 1), Bernard plays with the double meaning of intumescere, meaning ‘swollen’ in a literal sense (i.e., filled with something) but also in a figurative sense (e.g., swollen with pride), and thereby opens up a disturbing prospect of being fooled by appearances. Whereas the bride’s full breasts are filled with milk, whoever stuffs himself with the wine of worldly wisdom will indeed swell up but remain empty inside despite the promising size of his breasts. Sets of oppositions — full of assonant, almost musical harmonies — are structured by the analogies between wine and milk, respectively, ‘filling up’ and ‘nourishing’ (implens/nutriens), ‘puffing up’ and ‘building up’ (inflans/aedificans), ‘fattening’ and ‘strengthening’ (ingurgitans/confortans). Having received the kiss (i.e., gratia), the bride is ready to feed others (i.e., pietas) and represents in this way ideal spiritual authority. By contrast, there are those who, even while never having received any divine kiss, prance about with swollen but empty breasts in perverse imitation of the fruitfulness of the bride. These, then, are figures of false spiritual guidance, for they have nothing to give to others. Beware of these false brides, the abbot seems to warn. In fact, the subtext of this passage can be read in the wider context of polemics against the urban schools. Their critics, particularly the Cistercians, would habitually accuse urban intellectuals of curiositas and vanitas, insofar as the schools presumably furthered empty and superficial worldly wisdom.117 Hence, the paspp. 83–85; and Miles, ‘The Virgin’s One Bare Breast’. On pre- and early modern imagery of the breast more generally, see Schiebinger, ‘Mammals, Primatology and Sexology’. 115  Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, e.g., pp. 8, 16–17; Casey, Athirst for God, pp. 90–91, see also Petré, Caritas: étude sur le vocabulaire latin de la charité chrétienne. 116  On caritas as training for leadership, see Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, p. 119. 117  See, e.g., Geoffrey of Auxerre, Bernard’s secretary and biographer, who had been a

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sage is rhetorically related to Bernard’s polemics and letters against the urban schools and particularly Peter Abelard, his principal antagonist, especially in the early 1140s.118 In a letter to the Roman Curia, for instance, Bernard attacks Abelard, portraying his opponent as an interior and concealed enemy — apparently a monk and a man of the Church but in reality a corruptor of faith: ‘inwardly Herod, outwardly John the Baptist.’119 It is significant that Bernard’s attack on Abelard is rhetorical rather than doctrinal, characteristically emphasizing terms of contradiction and discrepancy between outer and inner, appearance and authenticity. The notorious conflict between these two intellectual rivals reflects an overriding clash of interests between monastic schools and urban schools.120 Martha Newman draws attention to the increasing tensions between these two centres of learning in the first half of the twelfth century, stressing the competitiveness of the new urban schools.121 What was more, the monasteries and the schools recruited from the same social group — younger sons of the lower nobility without any prospect of income or inheritance and thus hard-pressed to find a means of support. Both monastery and urban schools offered an education and therefore the possibility of an ecclesiastical position, but their underlying similarities and their mutual rivalry caused the two groups to emphasize their differences. An extension of the rhetoric in this battle for intellectual authority may be found in Sermon 18, where Bernard distinguishes between ‘pouring out’ student of Abelard’s before hearing Bernard speak to Parisian clerics in 1140. Geoffrey of Auxerre, Vita prima 4.2.10, col. 327B, described his conversion and transition to Clairvaux as moving from empty studies to the cultivation of true wisdom: ‘conversi ab inanibus studiis ad verae sapientiae cultum’. See Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, p. 38. 118  The current passage probably dates from 1135–36, see the dating in Leclercq, ‘The Making of a Masterpiece’, and Recueil, i, 213–351. This would indicate that Sermon 9 predates Bernard’s controversy with Abelard, but, on the other hand, the individual sermons defy any definite dating, as Bernard probably worked on their redaction continuously until his death. See Leclercq, ‘The Making of a Masterpiece’, p. xvii: ‘During the author’s lifetime and after his death, his text did not cease to “live”, that is to say, to be modified, contrary to what came to be the case from the moment when the printing shop fixed the composed text typographically.’ 119  Ep 193, col.  359B: ‘Homo sibi dissimilis est, intus Herodes, foris Joannes; totus ambiguus, nihil habens de monacho, praeter nomen et habitum.’ 120  On Bernard and twelfth-century school debates, see Verbaal, ‘Bernard de Clairvaux: le maître et le prêcheur’. On the political background for the conflict between Bernard and Abelard, see Mews, ‘The Council of Sens (1141)’. 121  Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 37–38.

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(effusio) and ‘pouring in’ (infusio).122 He contrasts the reservoir and the canal: ‘If you are wise, you will show yourself like a reservoir [concham] not a canal [canalem].’123 The canal, he explains, simultaneously pours out what it receives, while the reservoir retains the water until it is filled, and then pours itself out without loss to itself.124 Continuing, he laments the situation of the Church: We have many canals in the Church today but very few reservoirs. The heavenly streams flow down to us with an abundance of love, so that [there are those] who would pour out before filling up; they are more prepared to speak than to listen, impatient to teach what they have not grasped, yearning to govern others while they do not know how to govern themselves.125

Bernard’s invective summons Church leaders who seek positions and power for its own sake, thus evoking the Cistercians’ concern that the clergy not be corrupted by worldly power and temporal attractions.126 But most importantly in terms of the current discussion, the image of canal — pouring out without filling up, teaching without understanding, exercising power without virtue — resonates with Bernard’s attacks on the urban schools. For Bernard, knowledge equalled experience and wisdom equalled love.127 He had no affinity with the rising scholasticism mainly for this reason: it based knowledge on rational thinking and dialectics instead of ‘living’ it or ‘feeling’ it, as was the Cistercian 122 

In Scc 18.1, OSB, v.1, 234, Bernard speaks of a ‘dual operation’ (geminate operationis) effected by the holy spirit: ‘unius quidem, qua nos primo intus virtutibus solidat ad salutem, alterius vero, qua foris quoque muneribus ornat ad lucrum. […] ex re nomina accipiant, infusionem, si placet, atque effusionem nominemus’ (one strengthens in our interior the virtues that lead to salvation, the other endows us externally with the gift of being useful [to others]. […] [F]rom the way they function we call them pouring in and pouring out). 123  Scc 18.3, OSB, v.1, 236: ‘Quamobrem, si sapis, concham te exhibebis, et non canalem.’ 124  See Olivera, ‘Aspectos del amor al prójimo en la doctrina espiritual de san Bernardo’, notes that this sermon, with its themes of pouring in and pouring out and its imagery of the canal and the reservoir, alludes to the sacrament of baptism; cf. discussion of Scc 9.9–10, below in the present section. 125  Scc 18.3, OSB, v.1, 236: ‘Verum canales hodie in Ecclesia multos habemus, conchas vero perpaucas. Tantae caritatis sunt per quos nobis fluenta coelestia manant, ut ante effundere quam infundi velint, loqui quam audire paratiores, et prompti docere quod non didicerunt, et aliis praeesse gestientes, qui seipsos regere nesciunt.’ 126  Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 141–70, 193–201. 127  Most Bernard scholars insist on this point, see, e.g., Stiegman, ‘Action and Contemplation’, p. x; Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. by Misrahi, p. 212; McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 200–03; and Bredero, Bernard of Clairvaux, p. 15.

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ideal. For Bernard, intellectuals of the urban schools, like ‘canals’, would be ‘simultaneously pouring out what they receive’, thus ‘teaching what they do no not grasp’. The present discussion can be outlined in the following set of oppositions, this time more contrary than complementary. Table 3. (Scc 9.7b) wine curiositas fills, puffs up, fattens false bride the schools (Abelard)

milk caritas nourishes, builds up, strengthens true bride the monastery (Bernard)

Bernard’s denouncement of prelates, teachers, and spiritual leaders who seek worldly gain and power is even more pungent in Sermon 10. Here Church leaders who were previously alluded to as false brides and depicted as ‘canals’ are instead exposed as false mothers devoid of maternal instinct, treacherous and greedy. He opens the sermon declaring that a ‘spiritual mother’ (spiritualis mater) must ‘suffer with those who suffer’ (compassionem) and ‘rejoice with those who rejoice’ (congratulationem), represented by her two breasts (Scc 10.1). ‘Otherwise,’ he declares, ‘she would be a mere girl, too immature to marry — her breasts would not yet be developed.’128 Setting the tone for the impending outburst, Bernard warns forebodingly: ‘Should such a man [without maternal breasts] be put in charge of souls or given the duty of preaching, he will do no good to others and great harm to himself.’129 As Bernard launches his attack on corrupt ecclesiastics, the disturbing image of the unripe girl-man is turned into a much more disagreeable creature, a fat, fraudulent mother: How many among those who have undertaken the care of souls today display a lack of these necessary affections [affectos]? With groans of misery I speak of this! The insults endured by Christ, the spittle, the scourging, the nails, the lances, the cross, and his death: all these things they melt down in the furnace of their avarice, debasing them in pursuit of disgraceful gain. The price laid down for all of creation they hasten to stuff in their purses. Only in this sense do they differ from Judas Iscariot, who reckoned that value to a few coins, while they, in their voracious gluttony, demand riches beyond counting. […] Neither the downfall nor the salvation 128 

Scc 10.1, OSB, v.1, p. 124: ‘Alioquin parvula est, et nondum nubilis, si nondum ubera misit.’ Scc 10.1, OSB, v.1, p. 124: ‘Talis si fortasse ad regimen animarum, seu ad officium praedi­ cationis assumitur, aliis quidem non prodest, sibi vero obest plurimum.’ 129 

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of souls is of any concern to them. They are certainly not mothers, those who have grown fat, swollen, and bloated on the heritage of the Crucified.130

As in Sermon 9, the mother-bride is transformed into a perverted parody, a negation of the true bride. This anti-mother simulates the true mother, appearing outwardly as fruitful and abundant with milk. In reality she is only obese and gluttonous, ‘fat, swollen, and bloated’ (incrassati, impinguati, dilatati), like she was previously imaged as bloated by ‘wine of worldly knowledge’. In the present passage, the leading theme of gluttony in enhanced, but it is no longer the intellectual curiosity and vanity of the intellectuals at the urban schools which is denounced, but rather the avarice of Church leaders who literally devour the whole heritage of Christ. The riches of the Church, Christ’s sufferings with which he paid the ransom of world, are ‘melted down’ like sequestered treasures. Whereas the passage in Sermon 9 was concerned with intellectual greed, this deals with a more literal kind, monetary greed, as we see in the reference to ‘purses’ (marsupiis), ‘coins’ (denariorum), and ‘money’ (pecunias). Greed and gluttony were related sins in medieval writing, and Bernard links them in the image of these atrocious anti-mothers.131 The negative image of motherhood represents, as before, bad spiritual leadership: a negation of Church authority.132 It seems reasonable to consider the subtext of this passage an attack on simony, the sin of prelates who enriched themselves by means of their holy office. Simony was a primary target in the Gregorian Church reforms, and a main concern for the Bernardine monastic identity of pauperes Christi. Bernard’s righteous rage was repeatedly directed at 130 

Scc 10.3, OSB, v.1, p. 126: ‘Quanti hodie secus affectos se ostendunt, de his dico, qui animas regere susceperunt! Quod enim sine miserabili gemitu dicendum non est, Christi opprobria, sputa, flagella, clavos, lanceam, crucem et mortem, haec omnia in fornace avaritiae conflant et profligant in acquisitionem turpis quaestus, et pretium universitatis suis marsupiis includere festinant, hoc solo sane a Iuda Iscariotis differentes, quod ille horum omne emolumentum denariorum numero compensavit, isti voraciori ingluvie lucrorum infinitas exigunt pecunias. […] Animarum nec casus reputatur, nec salus. Non sunt profecto matres, qui cum sint de Crucifixi patrimonio nimium incrassati, impinguati, dilatati.’ 131  Greed, gluttony, and lust were sins of incontinence: cf. Dante’s Comedy, where the avaricious, the gluttonous, and the lustful are placed together in the third division of Purgatory. 132  An interesting parallel to the theme of the perverted mother is found in the disturbing, and falsified, legend of Pope Joan, with its stress on the birth-scene, where the female pontiff is unmasked as she delivers a baby during a Lateran procession. Some scholars have dated the legend as early as to the eleventh century. For considerations of the legend in light of medieval interpretations of motherhood, see Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, pp. 1–4; for historical analysis and dating, see Onofrio, La Papessa Giovanna.

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what he saw as squandering prelates: abbots and bishops alike. His sometime friend and occasional opponent, the abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable, was the target of Bernard’s indignation in the Apologia, written around the mid1120s — a treaty which caused lasting discord between the two orders.133 Here Bernard denounced the extravagance and the decorative riches present in the abbey church of Cluny, linking it to the mollified lifestyle of the Cluniacs.134 It is in order to note, however, that the current negative image of motherhood is not associated with Simon Magus but rather with Judas Iscariot, the figure of treachery. Returning to Sermon 9, we find that Bernard provides still another interpretation of the bride’s breasts, disjointing and reassembling the breast’s metaphorical references. He stages the bride, now pregnant, as she eagerly awaits the return of her bridegroom. At her impatience, she is reprimanded by the bridegroom’s ‘companions’ (sodalibus), that is, the angels: Unjustly, they say, you murmur against the bridegroom, because what he has already given you is more valuable than what you ask for. What you seek is for your own pleasure only. The breasts, however, with which you shall feed the little ones that you shall give birth to, are better, that is, they are more necessary than the wine of contemplation. One thing is that which gives delight to one man’s heart, another is that which benefits many. Even if Rachel is more beautiful, Lia is more fecund. Do not linger on in the kisses of contemplation [osculis contemplationis], for the breasts of preaching [ubera praedicationis] are better.135

Having established the metonymical connection of breast to milk and the metaphorical connection of lactation to spiritual nourishment and authority, the breast is here directly and explicitly associated with preaching (ubera praedicationis). In Bernard’s hermeneutical polyphony the oppositional pair, milk and wine, is transformed from caritas versus curiositas into preaching versus contemplation. Although preaching and caritas may be seen as directly related 133 

There is a vast literature on the relationship between the abbots of Cluny and Clairvaux, for a critical summary, see Bredero, Bernard of Clairvaux, pp. 227–39. 134  See Apo 12.28, cols 913D–915D. 135  Scc 9.8, OSB, v.1, p. 118: ‘Iniuste, inquiunt, murmuras adversus sponsum; quia id plus valet quod ille iam dedit, quam quod tu petis. Quod enim postulas, te quidem delectat; sed ubera, quibus parvulos alis, quos et paris, meliora, hoc est necessariora, sunt vino contemplationis. Aliud siquidem est quod unius laetificat cor hominis, et aliud quod aedificat multos. Nam etsi Rachel formosior, sed Lia fecundior est. Noli ergo nimis insistere osculis contemplationis, quia meliora sunt ubera praedicationis.’

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(sharing one’s spiritual insights), the oppositional image, the wine, has completely altered its significance. While the image of lactation has remained relatively stable throughout Bernard’s treatment in Sermon 9, its counter image has metamorphosed from ‘wine of worldly wisdom’ (vino scientiae saecularis) into ‘wine of contemplation’ (vino contemplationis), and, finally, into ‘kiss of contemplation’ (osculis contemplationis). Wine no longer represents impious curiositas but rather holy contemplatio, but Bernard still persists with the same perspective: it nevertheless represents a selfish or self-interested desire. In fact, the bride is being reproached for thoughtlessly pursuing her own pleasure rather than rejoicing in her abundant breasts with which she may provide nourishment for her little ones. The basic opposition is between ‘pleasure for one only’ (quod unius laetificat) and ‘usefulness for many’ (quod aedificat multos).136 Throughout Bernard’s exegetical acrobatics are the unmistakable echoes of the general opposition of the contemplative and the active lives. These are made explicit by the introduction of the exegetical couple Rachel and Lia — representing, respectively, contemplation and activity. In the biblical story (Gen 29. 16–28), Jacob desires Rachel and labours seven years to have her as his wife. At the end of the term, he is given her sister Lia instead. Only after marrying Lia and obliging himself to another seven years of labour does he finally also have Rachel. Augustine, in Contra Faustum Manichaeum, interprets them as ‘labour’ (Laborans) and ‘vision’ (Visum).137 The first, like Lia, is tolerated; the second, like Rachel, is desired.138 Rachel is beautiful (bona facie, et pulchra specie) though barren, whereas Lia, less attractive and of ‘feeble eyes’ (infirmis oculis), is fruitful. While earthly life (Lia) is laborious, full of trials and tribulations, beatific life (Rachel) signifies the full enjoyment and eternal vision of God. As the former represents reality and the latter suspended desire, so it is required that one weds Lia before Rachel (prius nubit Lia, et postea Rachel). Bernard expands on the symbolic implications of Augustine’s exegesis, construing the two sisters in the oppositional terms of duty and pleasure. As in the Augustinian interpretation, Lia relates to worldly, secular, and temporal matters, while Rachel relates to the divine, eternal, and otherworldly dimension. But Bernard’s text is more erotically charged than Augustine’s. Whereas Augustine 136 

Thus touching upon the opposition between interested and disinterested love, see also below Section 6.1. 137  Contra Faust. 22.52, col. 432: ‘Dicunt enim quod Lia interpretatur Laborans, Rachel autem Visum principium.’ 138  Contra Faust. 22.54, col. 434: ‘Verumtamen una amatur, et altera toleratur.’

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emphasized Lia in terms of benefits and hardships of labour, Bernard stresses her fecundity (though, of course, both themes are present in each of the interpretations), relating her directly to lactation and so to his category of maternal imagery. Likewise, the figure of Rachel, whose attraction Augustine portrays primarily in terms of vision and rest, is envisioned by Bernard primarily in terms of erotic delight, associated with kisses and later also embraces. The eroticized quality in Bernard’s treatment of Rachel and Lia, then, is not least due to his exegetical procedure of integrating and blending the sisters into the imagery of the Song. With the metaphor of the mystical kiss (the ‘third’ kiss), with which Bernard began Sermon 9, indeed, with which he began the whole sermon cycle starting from Sermon 3, we have come full circle. But concurrently the implications of the kiss seem to have shifted slightly: contemplation is figured as the act of kissing the beautiful, desirous Rachel (osculis contemplationis, ‘the kisses of contemplation’). The kissing lovers are thus no longer the bride and bridegroom but rather the contemplative and Rachel. By transforming the characters, Bernard simultaneously appropriates the kiss for his immediate monastic context. The two female figures function as potential and competing objects of desire, insofar as the monk (like Jacob) is to evaluate the two sisters (with whom shall he spend the night?) — one beautiful, one fecund. Bernard presents his monks (and himself ) with a dilemma of choosing between that which is more attractive and hence pleasurable — Rachel, or contemplative love — and that which is less enjoyable but more useful — Lia, or active love. Thus the two sisters are presented in their traditional allegorical roles, yet Bernard reworks the exposition to underscore their function as rival attractions, analogous to his exposition of the contemplative and the active as the two ‘attractions’ (suis affectionibus) which troubled and destabilized the monastic mind.139 Contrasting the two females (theoretically in terms of vita activa/vita contemplativa, usefulness/pleasure, and preaching/contemplation, metaphorically in terms of maternity and eroticism), Bernard establishes an exegetical paradigm to which he will return in the course of the Sermons. In a closely related passage in Sermon 41, we find a brief reappearance of the breast metaphor, accompanied once again by the wives of Jacob. Again the bride is miserable, and again she is addressed by the companions of the bridegroom: ‘O bride, they say, you desire to gaze at your beloved in splendour but this is for another time.’140 139 

See Scc 57.9, above, Section 2.1. Scc, 41.2, OSB, v.2, p. 86: ‘Tu, inquiunt, o sponsa, intuendae dilecti inhias claritati; sed hoc alterius temporis est.’ 140 

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Thus referring fruition to an eschatological and anagogic dimension, Bernard affirms that the bride, in the meantime, must console herself with her duties as mother: See that she desires one thing yet receives another. She strives for the repose of contemplation but is burdened with the toil of preaching. She thirsts for the presence of the bridegroom, and instead she is given the task of begetting and rearing his children. Nor is this the first time that this befalls her. As I remember, when she yearned for the embraces and the kisses of the bridegroom she was told: For your breasts are better than wine, [Song 1. 1] so that she would realize that she is a mother, and that she must suckle her little ones and provide nourishment for her children. […] Was this not prefigured by the holy patriarch Jacob when he was deprived of the long-desired and long-awaited embraces of Rachel? Rather than she who was barren but beautiful, he was, unwillingly and unknown to him, given one [Lia] who was fecund but blear-eyed? [Gen 29. 17, 25]141

Bernard reapplies oppositions which reflect the incongruence of desire and injunction: between what the bride ‘desires’ (cupit) and what she ‘receives’ (accipit), and between what she ‘strives’ for and ‘thirsts’ for (nitenti, sitienti) and what she is ‘burdened’ with and ‘commanded’ to do (imponitur, iniungitur). Again we find the opposition of contemplation and activity in terms of repose (contemplationis quietem) and preaching (labor praedicationis). Again these oppositions are transmitted by imagery of erotic desire versus maternal imagery: between the bride’s yearning for the bridegroom’s embraces and kisses and her realization that she is a mother, that she must suckle and nourish her little ones. And again, finally, the themes of eroticism and fecundity are extended to the opposition between Jacob’s wives and contrasted by the relative advantages and limitations of the two female figures: the ‘barren and beautiful’ (sterili et decora) as opposed to the ‘fecund and blear-eyed’ (fecundam et lippam), Rachel’s long-desired and long-awaited embraces as opposed to Lia, who was given him contrary to his plans and to his will.

141 

Scc, 41.5, OSB, v.2, p. 90: ‘Vide autem quomodo illa aliud cupit, et aliud accipit: et nitenti ad contemplationis quietem labor praedicationis imponitur; et sitienti sponsi praesentiam, filiorum sponsi pariendorum, alendorumque sollicitudo iniungitur. Neque tantum accidit illi hoc nunc; sed et alia vice, ut memini, cum sponsi amplexus et oscula suspirasset, responsum est ei: Qua meliora sunt ubera tua vino [Cant. I, 1], ut ex hoc se intelligeret matrem, atque ad hoc dandum lac parvulis nutriendumque filios revocari. […] Annon res ista quondam in sancto patriarcha Iacob praefigurabatur, cum frustratus optatis diuque exspectatis Rachelis amplexibus, pro sterili et decora fecundam et lippam invitus atque ignarus accepit? [Gen XXIX, 17, 25.]’

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The oppositions are condensed and summarized in Bernard’s next passage: ‘We learn from this that only too often we must interrupt the sweet kisses for the breasts of lactation.’142 Not only the rich symbolism but also the highly charged rhetoric — note Bernard’s untranslatable effect of assonances and consonances, such as cupit and accipit, nitenti and sitienti, imponitur and iniungitur, dulcia oscula and lactantia ubera — make this passage, along with the related sequence in Sermon 9, one of the most striking examples of how Bernard carried the traditional exegetical imagery of marriage on to the idea of spiritual fecundity, carefully intersecting desire and duty. Hence we are back to the oppositions of Table 2, which may now be extended by the preceding analysis. Table 4. (Scc 9.8 and 41.5–6) kiss eroticism repose contemplation benefits one pleasure Rachel beautiful

breasts maternity labour preaching benefits many usefulness Lia fecund

Yet Bernard has still not exhausted the breast metaphor. Returning once more to Sermon 9, we find that in the last section he proposes yet another meaning and yet another opposition. This time he ascribes the words of Song 1. 1 (‘your breasts are better than wine’) to ‘those who are under the guidance of a mother or a wet-nurse, like little children’.143 Here the theme of spiritual authority and, particularly, the role of prelates, reasserts itself, but now from the point of view of the ‘little ones’ in their care: For these immature and feeble souls cannot bear the withdrawn repose of her from whom they crave instruction in doctrine and guidance by example. […] When they understand that the bride longs for kisses, that that she seeks to be alone, that she shuns public places, that she turns away from crowds and prefers her own peace to

142  Scc 41.6, OSB, v.2, p. 90: ‘Docemur ex hoc sane, intermittenda plerumque dulcia oscula propter lactantia ubera.’ 143  Scc 9.9, OSB, v.1, pp. 118–20: ‘quibus praeest in sollicitudine, tamquam parvulis, mater aut nutrix’.

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taking care of them, they protest: No! they say, don’t! For far greater gain [fructus] is had by breasts than by embraces. From the former you liberate us from carnal desires which battle against the soul; you free us from the world and you win for us God. What they are saying is this: Your breasts are better than wine. The pleasures of the flesh, they say, which — like wine — enslaved us as drunkards, are conquered in us by the spiritual delights dripping from your breasts.144

Envisioning the little ones as clinging possessively onto their mother’s breasts, protesting at her desire for the bridegroom’s kisses and embraces, Bernard repeats the opposition of activity and contemplation. The maternal role is yet again associated with doctrinal instruction and spiritual guidance, and symbolized by breasts. Breasts, bringing benefit to others, bear greater ‘fruits’ (fructus) than the embrace. This opposition, however, soon gives way to another — namely, ‘spiritual delights’ (deliciae spirituales) versus ‘carnal pleasures’ (carnis voluptatem), symbolized respectively by breasts and wine. This new opposition is of particular interest in that there emerges a notion of symmetry between carnal or worldly delights and spiritual delights, so that the former might be replaced by the latter. This notion of transferral, indeed, transposition of desire, will be further discussed below (Chapter 5) and represents a striking feature in the abbot’s rhetorical and hermeneutical strategy. In her role as mother — and, by implication, spiritual leader and caretaker of souls (i.e., prelate or abbot) — the bride appears as a mighty warrior who ‘liberates’ (vindicas), ‘frees’ (eripis), ‘wins’ (acquiris), and ‘conquers’ (vincunt). The enemy, however, those ‘carnal desires which battle against the soul’ (carnalibus desideriis, quae militant adversus animam), is conquered by no mightier weapon than ‘spiritual delights which drip from her breasts’ (ubera stillant, deliciae spirituales). Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, Bernard employs imagery resonant of warfare.145 In Sermon 1 he alluded to the opposition of the world and the soul in terms of the former waging war on the latter, 144 

Scc 9.9, OSB, v.1, p. 120: ‘Nec enim aequanimiter ferunt iuvenculae et tenerae adhuc animae, illam vacare quieti, cuius plenius erudiri doctrina, et exemplis informari desiderant. […] Hae itaque sentientes osculis inhiare sponsam, secretum quaerere sibi, fugitare publicum, declinare turbas, et curae quoadusque ipsarum propriam praeferre quietem: Noli, inquiunt, noli; quia maior in uberibus quam in amplexibus fructus existit. Per ea siquidem nos vindicas a carnalibus desideriis, quae militant adversus animam; eripis mundo, et acquiris Deo. Hoc ergo est quod aiunt: Quia meliora sunt ubera tua vino. Carnis, inquiunt, voluptatem, qua paulo ante, tamquam vino ebriae, tenebamur, vincunt hae, quas tua nobis ubera stillant, deliciae spirituales.’ 145  On the Cistercians’ use of imagery of warfare, see Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 21–37.

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in an identical phrasing: ‘that which battles against the soul’. Indeed, the phrasing (from i Pet 2. 11) is repeated four times in the Sermons, each time related to worldly and carnal desire.146 Next, Bernard expounds further on oppositions between wine and breasts: And well they compare wine with carnal affections [affectum]. For once pressed the grape cannot give forth its fluid again, and it is damned to eternal dryness. So too the flesh in the winepress of death is utterly drained of all pleasure, never again to revive its sensual passions [libidines]. Therefore the prophet cried: All flesh is like grass, and its glory is like the wild flower. The grass dries up and the flower withers [Is 40. 6–7]. Also the apostle: Whoever sows by the flesh will reap the corruption which is from the flesh [Gal 6. 8]. Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food, but God will destroy the former as well as the latter [i Cor 6. 13]. You see that this applies not only to the flesh but likewise to the world. For the world and the passions of the world will pass. Like all things of the world it will come to its end, and its end shall be endless. Not so, however, the breasts. For when they have been drained, the fount of the maternal breast will yet again be replenished and provide for the sucklings to drink. Rightly the bride’s breasts are said to be better than carnal or worldly love [carnis saeculive amore]. The numbers who drink of them, however great, cannot dry them out, for they ceaselessly draw from inward love [de visceribus caritatis] and thus keep flowing. Out of her womb [ventre] flow rivers, in her there is a spring where living water rises up to eternal life [ Jn 7. 38, 4. 14].147

This passage is exceptionally complex in its imagery, and, consequently, also in its theological implications. The flesh (‘the grape’), being subject to death (‘the winepress’), Bernard states, shall be squeezed dry, annihilating its ‘pleasures’ (delectatione) and its ‘sensual passions’ (libidines). Three biblical intertexts, 146 

See Scc 1.2, Scc 9.9, Scc 29.8, and Scc 39.5. Scc 9.10, OSB, v.1, pp. 120–22: ‘Et pulchre vino comparant carnalem affectum. Ut enim uva expressa semel non habet iam quid denuo fundat, sed perpetua ariditate damnatur, sic caro in pressura mortis ab omni prorsus sua delectatione siccatur, nec ultra revirescit ad libidines. Unde propheta: Omnis caro fenum, et omnis gloria eius tamquam flos feni. Exsiccatum est fenum, et cecidit flos [Isai. XL, 6, 7]; et Apostolus; Qui seminat in carne, de carne et metet corruptionem [Galat. VI, 8]; Esca ventri, et venter escis; Deus autem et hunc, et has destruet [I Cor VI, 13]. Vide autem ne non carni tantum, sed et mundo forte competat ista proportio. Siquidem et ipse transit, et concupiscentia eius: et cum omnia quae in mundo sunt, finem habeant, finis eorum non erit finis. Verum ubera non sic. Haec enim cum exhausta fuerint, rursum de fonte materni pectoris sumunt, quod propinent sugentibus. Merito proinde meliora carnis saeculive amore asseruntur ubera sponsae, quae nullo unquam lactentium numero arefiunt, sed semper abundant de visceribus caritatis, ut iterum fluant. Flumina siquidem fluunt de ventre eius, fitque in ea fons aquae vivae salientis in vitam aeternam [Ioan. VII, 38; IV, 14].’ 147 

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one from Isaiah and two from Paul, assert the opposition between flesh on the one hand and spirit or God on the other. The oppositions are implicitly stated, however, as Bernard does not complete his quotes.148 The references affirm the fundamental dichotomy between God and the fleshly and transient, but the effect of stopping the quotes midway renders the interpretative procedure less direct. The flesh-spirit opposition is suggested (rather than stated) by the biblical reverberations, the implications of which the listeners or readers (that is, the monks) must arrive at themselves by their knowledge of Scripture. Hence we find the abbot doing what he is simultaneously advocating: guiding gently — like a tender mother — his little ones to spiritual insights and doctrinal delights. For not only the flesh, Bernard warns his monks, but the world itself, and, consequently, ‘its passions’ (concupiscentia eius), shall come to an end, indeed an endless end. The breasts, however, shall not. They shall never dry up, no matter how many sucklings (sugentibus) they feed, because the ‘fount of the maternal breast’ (fonte materni pectoris) is ever replenished by an inward love (visceribus caritatis). The bride’s breasts, indeed all her insides (visceribus, ventre eius), have become an incessantly flowing fountain, flowing rivers, an inexhaustible spring.149 The liquid pouring out from the bride, which began as milk, is now transformed into ‘living water’ (aquae vivae) and explicitly identified as ‘love’ (caritas). This is evidently not the delirious and striving love of eros returning to its origin but rather the compassionate love of agape descending from above. Nevertheless, the subtext of a Neoplatonic notion of love (a liquid love) which brims over with itself, yet always flows back to its source, is evident in the image of the liquefied bride, ever pouring herself out and ever replenished.150 Resonating with the concept of bridal fruitfulness, this watery or milky imagery is contrasted by images of ‘wrung grapes’ (uva semel expressa), ‘shrivelled flowers’ (cecidit flos), ‘perpetual aridity’ (perpetua ariditate), and ‘dryness’ (siccatur, exsiccatum). This oppositional imagery invokes barrenness, infertility, and 148 

Isaiah continues 40. 8: ‘but the word of God is eternal’ (verbum autem Domini nostri manet in aeternum); and Galatians continues, 6. 8: ‘whoever sows by the spirit shall reap eternal life by the spirit’ (qui autem seminat in spiritu, de spirito metet vitam aeternam). 149  The terms venter and viscera are difficult to translate with precision, not least because they are rather vague physiological terms — the former might indicate womb, belly, or entrails, the latter internal organs, bowels, or heart. The first has maternal associations (hence I have translated ‘womb’). The second has associations to the affections; see McGuire, The Difficult Saint, p. 92 n. 49, who refers to the translator of Bernard’s Life of Malachy (p. 139 n. 113), stating that Hebrew symbolism made the bowels the seat of the affections. 150  See Scc 7.2 and 83.4; see also the discussion of Scc 18 above for concepts of ‘pouring in’ and ‘pouring out’.

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emptiness — somewhat like the wine imagery of the previous passage, where Bernard created an opposition between the true bride who had conceived and the false bride who was only apparently fruitful. Imagery of fertile and flowing water, contrasted by barrenness and dryness, undergird the opposition between divine desire and fleshly or worldly desire. The images transmit notions of the sterility of seeking worldly or carnal pleasures, and, conversely, notions of the fruitfulness of divine doctrine. Seeing that wine represents the former, as lactation represents the latter, the spiritual delights dripping from the bride’s breasts become associated with doctrine pouring from the mouth of the preacher. In this perspective, water imagery and fountain imagery is, like maternal milk, resonant of the role of the preacher or prelate — an association which is reinforced in the first passage of the next sermon where Bernard calls the mouth of Paul a ‘mighty and unfailing fountain’ (Scc 10.1). Yet there is another and perhaps more significant subtext to emerge in this passage. It seems that Bernard’s exegesis has moved (almost imperceptibly) towards an allegorical reading, where the maternal figure is no longer the prelate but Mother Church herself. With its allusions to water, the text evokes sacramental themes, particularly baptism — the ‘living water’ which brings eternal life. By extension, notions of liquid love and liquefied bride similarly contain allusions to baptism. Moreover, the Eucharistic symbols, ‘grape’ and ‘wine(press)’, underline textual and symbolic interconnections between the two principal sacramental liquids, baptismal water and Eucharistic wine. Onto the ominous, or at least dramatic, backdrop of eschatological expectation and ‘damnation’, ‘corruption’, and ‘destruction’ (damnatur, corruptionem, destruet), the Church, that eternal maternal fount, represents salvation, because she will neither be corrupted nor destroyed. With the introduction of this eschatological perspective, the preceding imagery of warfare, with its opposition of enslavement and liberation (Scc 9.9), is transported from a individual level (the war against ‘that which battles against the soul’) to a cosmic level, where the soteriological drama between spiritualness and fleshliness, Church and world, is played out in sharply cut binary terms between eternal life and endless death. Rather than centring on the tropological problem of desire and fruition over against duty and usefulness, these oppositions reflect allegorical and, particularly, anagogic concerns, while still resonant of the fundamental opposition of God versus the world. The call to ‘free oneself of the world and win God’ (eripis mundo, et acquiris Deo) entails more than having a mighty and motherly prelate or abbot for guidance and instruction — it requires participation in the Church and in her sacramental distribution. Thus I may draw up the final table of this complex, ninth sermon.

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Table 5. (Scc 9.9–10) wine children those who crave guidance, instruction the immature, subordinate carnal pleasures, carnal desire enslaves carnal and worldly love the world dryness, drained, pressed, withered death endless end

milk / breast mother, nurse doctrine, guidance the prelate, the preacher spiritual delights, divine desire frees caritas the Church fount, water, spring, rivers life eternal life

It should be emphasized that the dyads of Table 5 are unrelated to the activecontemplative opposition. Unlike in Tables 2 and 4, where the tensions between the worldly and the godly were organized along a twofold (but all the same hierarchical) division into maternal duty (towards the world) and erotic desire (towards God), the current oppositions appear relentlessly dualistic. Yet this dualism, I will argue later, is ultimately destabilized and subverted in the Sermons on the Song of Songs. By Bernard’s rhetorical strategy of inversions and transpositions, the seeming dualism between carnal desire and spiritual desire and between asceticism and eroticism is subtly undermined.

2.5 The Bedchamber and the Bridal Bed After the kiss, the next major metaphor for contemplative union to appear in the Sermons is the ‘bedchamber’ (cubiculum). The bedchamber is introduced in the lengthy Sermon 23, a commentary on Song 1. 3 (‘The king has brought me into his cellars’). In the sermon Bernard constructs a typographical journey, involving not only the ‘cellars’ (cellaria) of Song 1. 3 but also the ‘garden’ (hortus) of Song 5. 1 and finally the bedchamber of Song 3. 4. The leitmotif and exegetical driving force in Sermon 23 is contained in the apparent misquotation: ‘The king has brought me into his bedchamber’, repeated twice by the jubilant bride, once at the beginning of the sermon and once at the end.151 151 

The citation of Song 1. 3 using cubiculum for cellaria has been seen as a slip on Bernard’s part, e.g., in Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works, ed. by Evans, p. 203 n. 31. In that case, the

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Sermon 23 is one of the most systematic presentations of mystical ascent in the whole work.152 As Bernard explores the various rooms of the bridegroom’s palace, he composes a brief allegorical narrative. Opening the sermon, the bride is frantically pursuing her lover by following his trace of fragrant ointments (Song 1. 2). Hastened by his vicinity, the lovesick bride runs towards his quarters, followed by some ‘girls’ (adolescentulae) who, try as they might, are unable to keep up with her: ‘The bride runs, the girls run; but she who loves most ardently runs quicker, and arrives first.’153 The gates are opened to the bride immediately, ‘as for one of the household’ (tamquam domesticae). The girls, on the other hand, follow at a distance, for they are immature and weaker, having neither the bride’s energy nor her burning desire. Consequently, they arrive late and are left behind, outside the gates. Once inside, the bride arrives at the garden, which, explains Bernard, represents ‘the plain and simple historical sense’ of Scripture (plana et simplex historia).154 In this lush, paradisiacal garden all kinds of trees and flowers grow, and their growth cycle is an allegory of the three stages of salvational history. ‘Creation’ (creatio) is symbolized by the sowing of the garden, ‘reconciliation’ (reconsiliatio) by germination, and ‘restoration’ (reparatio) by the renewal of the whole garden, when ‘the good will be separated from the bad like garden fruit, and placed in the storehouse of God.’155 same phrasing in Gra 7.21 (col. 953C) and Div 8.9 (col. 564B) must also be ‘a slip’. Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought, p. 51, following Deroy, Bernardus en Origenes, pp. 13–96, points to an Origenist tradition giving the text as Introduxit me rex in cubiculum suum rather than the Vulgate version, Introduxit me rex in cellaria sua. Indeed, a search in the Patrologia latina database reveals that the non-Vulgate version of Song 3. 1 was alive and well in the Latin writers who most influenced Bernard: in Ambrose (e.g., In Psalmum David cxviii expositio 1.5, cols 1202A, 1206C–1207A; Commentarius in Cantica canticorum 1.17–20, cols 1859C–1860D), in Jerome (e.g., Ep 22, col. 395), in Augustine (e.g., Enarrationes in Psalmos. In Psalmum ix enarratio 6, col.  119), and in Gregory the Great (Expositio in Canticum canticorum 1.12, col. 484A). 152  See McGinn’s analysis of Scc 23 in The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 188–90. For an analysis from a more literary perspective, see Pranger’s extended treatment of Scc 23 in Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought, pp. 54–84. 153  Scc 23.1, OSB, v.1, p.  302: ‘Currit sponsa, currunt adolescentulae; sed quae amat ardentius currit velocius et citius pervenit.’ 154  In Sermon 23, as elsewhere, Bernard uses the threefold sense of Scripture, employing the hermeneutical formula of Origen, not the fourfold quadriga by Cassian. See Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, trans. by Sebanc and Macierowski, i, 112, 137, 142–44. See also above Section 2.1. 155  Scc 23.4, OSB, v.1, p. 308: ‘colligentur boni de medio malorum, tanquam fructus de horto,

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From the garden, the topographical journey continues into the cellars. They symbolize the ‘moral sense’ (moralis sensus) or the tropological level in hermeneutics. The cellars are further divided into three rooms that store ‘spices’ (aromata), ‘ointments’ (unguenta), and ‘wine’ (vinum), which represent three stages towards salvation on an individual level. In the room of spices one learns discipline and humility; in the room of ointments, cooperation and coexistence; and in the room of wine, authority: First you learn, according to moral order, to be an inferior, then an equal, and lastly a superior: that is, under someone, alike someone, and above someone [sub alio, cum alio, super alium]; or again: to subject yourself, to coexist, to preside [subesse, coesse, praeesse]. In the first you are a learner, the second a companion, the third master.156

Again Bernard’s stylistic playfulness is almost untranslatable. Yet the abbot rarely resorts to mere wordplay. His displays of literary fireworks usually appear when he is transmitting notions of particular concern to him. In this case, the three storerooms are, albeit inexplicitly, an image of the ideal monastic community: discipline, brotherhood, and leadership. Reflecting the hierarchy of the cloister, the three stages refer to the novice, the choir monk, and the abbot. While the first is characterized by hardship and fear, the second is much more agreeable; in the company of equals (‘brothers’), life is harmonious and sociable, as reflected by the Cistercian monastic code with its concern for mutual affection, friendship, and the social dimension.157 The third stage — spiritual authority and monastic leadership — is only for the few, obtained by ‘the man so drunk with the wine of charity that he has but contempt for his own glory, forgetting himself and his own interests.’158 Bernard’s idealized abbot visits the wine cellars and becomes completely ‘drunk’ (debriatur). Just like the bride, it appears. For in Sermon 7 an apparently stunned Bernard asks as the bride emerges from the wine cellars: ‘Can she possibly be drunk?’ Affirming, ‘absolutely drunk!’159 In the malleability of Bernard’s symbolism, wine and drunkin Dei promptuaria reponendi’. 156  Scc 23.6, OSB, v.1, p. 308: ‘In priori discis iuxta ethicae partis rationem, inferior esse, in sequenti par, in posteriore superior; hoc est, sub alio, cum alio, super alium; vel sic: subesse, coesse, praeesse. Primo igitur discis esse discipulus, secundo socius, tertio magister.’ 157  See McGuire, Friendship and Community, pp. 231–33, 251–58, and Casey, ‘In communi vita fratrum’. 158  Scc 23.8, OSB, v.1, p. 312: ‘vino nihilominus caritatis usque ad contemptum propriae gloriae, usque ad sui ipsius oblivionem, et non ad quaerenda quae sua sunt debriatur’. 159  Scc 7.3, OSB, v.1, p. 90: ‘Ebriane est? Ebria prorsus.’

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enness are ambivalent. Wine may evoke Eucharistic subtexts and wine may represent love — both contemplative love, that is, erotic love (e.g. Scc 9.8) and, like here, charitable love. Yet, in other passages, wine and drunkenness is instead wholly negative, associated with curiositas (Scc 9.7) or with carnal passions (Scc 9.10). From the cellars the bride finally arrives at the bedchamber, the highest level in this mapping of the topography of hermeneutics. It corresponds to the anagogic mode of interpretation, ‘the mystery of contemplation’ (Scc 23.9: in theoricae contemplationis arcano). Yet again Bernard presents a triple division, representing three progressive stages of contemplation. Firstly, the contemplative sees God as teacher; secondly, as judge. Clearly, the abbot laconically states, neither place is the bedroom: ‘You must not look for the bedchamber in any of these places, one of which resembles an auditorium, the other a bar of justice.’160 In the former place, God appears busy; in the latter, angry. In the third place, however, he is neither ‘awe-inspiring’ (admirabilis) nor ‘terrible’ (terribilis), for here he is a bridegroom: loveable, serene and peaceful, sweet and meek (Scc 23.16). This, then, is the purpose of the bride’s journey: the encounter with the divine lover in the inner, hidden bedchamber. Once again the tripartite pattern appears, recalling the schema noted in connection with the three loaves of bread in Sermon 1 and the three kisses in Sermon 3 (see Table 1): 1. The garden – conversion and repentance (literal / corporeal level) 2. The cellars – good actions (rational / tropological level) 3. The bedchamber – repose, contemplation (contemplative / anagogic level) But what of the girls, the adolescentulae who were left outside as the bride entered the king’s quarters? The bride has not forgotten them, for she is their ‘mother’ (matri). Echoing i Cor 4. 15, Bernard applies biblical imagery of procreation to the bride’s maternity: ‘However great her progress or how much she moves ahead, she is never removed from the care, the concern, and the love [affectu] of those whom she has begotten [genuit] through the Gospel; never does her heart [viscera] forget them.’161 Imagery of impregnation from Sermon 9 is here in Sermon 23 developed into imagery of mother and daughters. 160 

Scc 23.14, OSB, v.1, p. 320: ‘Non ergo cubiculum quaesieris in his locis, quorum alter auditorium quasi docentis, alter praetorium iudicis magis apparet.’ 161  Scc 23.1, OSB, v.1, p. 304: ‘Quantumvis proficiat, quantumlibet promoveatur, cura, providentia atque affectu ab his, quas in Evangelio genuit, numquam amovetur, numquam sua viscera obliviscitur.’

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The bride encourages the worried girls by letting them understand that her merits and her progress will be for their benefit: ‘Be happy, be confident: The king has brought me into his bedchamber. [Song 1. 3] Consider yourselves brought in, too. […] All progress I make shall also be for you.’162 Reciting the part of bride in the first-person singular, Bernard urges the girls (and his audience?) not to despair when s/he disappears to the bedchamber to be alone with the bridegroom, leaving them (‘you’) behind. The girls are exhorted to be patient, to tolerate calmly both their rejection from the king’s quarters and their mother’s absence. Relieved and hopeful, they respond: We will rejoice, they say, and be glad in you [Song 1. 3]. For we do not deserve [to rejoice] in us. And they add, Remembering your breasts [Song 1. 3], which means, we will patiently persevere until you come, knowing that you will return to us with overflowing breasts.163

Here Bernard touches upon a theme already anticipated: the ‘little ones’ who possessively cling onto their mother when she seeks the bridegroom’s kisses and embraces (Scc 9.9). Yet here, the little girls seem consoled, as they are told that after the bride’s contemplative pleasures she will return to them with ‘breasts full of milk’ (plenis uberibus). She will then let them share in her spiritual advancement and insights — by lactating them, which the abbot has firmly associated with doctrine and preaching (Scc 9.8 and 41.5). The bride, in her maternal role, is thus mediatrix: a mediator between the divine and the ‘weak girls’ (infirmae), just like the ideal spiritual leader. But even as Bernard seems to allude to his role as abbot, his interpretation heads towards an ecclesiological and Mariological subtext. Virgin Mary was the primary type for both mother and mediatrix — transmitted, for instance, by Bernard’s famous imagery of the aqueduct: she is the vehicle of grace (but not its originator) and medium between humans and divinity.164 Significantly, the role of mediatrix was associated with her allegorical function as a figure for ecclesia.165 162 

Scc 23.2, OSB, v.1, p. 304: ‘Gaudete, confidite: Introduxit me rex in cubiculum suum; putate et vos pariter introductas. […] Vester omnium est meus omnis profectus’. 163  Scc 23.2, OSB, v.1, p. 304: ‘In te, inquiunt, exsultabimus et laetabimur: nam in nobis necdum meremur. Et addunt, Memores uberum tuorum, hoc est, aequanimiter sustinemus dum venias, scientes te plenis ad nos reversuram uberibus.’ 164  In nat. BVM 13. 165  The identification between Virgin Mary and the Church was a commonplace, see, e.g., Warner, Alone of All her Sex, pp. xxi, 17–18, 103, 104, 105–06, 109, 111, 116, 194, 220, 258.

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In the next passage, however, Bernard slips back again to notions of idealized spiritual leadership, personified by the mother: Now see how the girls depend on their mother, how they regard her gain and enjoyment as their own, and how her admission [to the bedchamber] consoles them even as they are rejected. If they did not know her as their mother, they would not be this confident. Let them listen, those prelates who in their undertakings always seek to inspire fear and rarely to be useful. Learn, you who rule the world. Learn that you must be mothers to those who are your subordinates, not lords. Strive to be loved rather than feared, and should there be occasional need for severity, let it be paternal, not tyrannical. Show yourselves as mothers in your support, fathers in your reprobation. Be gentle, refrain from brutality, put away the whip, expose your breasts: Let your bosom expand with milk, not swell with pride.166

Like in Sermon 9, the abbot negotiates Church office by means of maternal imagery. The invocation to ‘be mothers’ (matres vos esse debere) not ‘lords’ (dominos), is an appeal to demonstrate benevolence and compassion towards ‘subordinates’ (subditorum). Bernard addresses ‘prelates’ (praelati) — that is, abbots, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals: ‘the rulers the world’ (with a biblical allusion to Ps 2. 10). The designation is rather ambiguous, evoking Gregorian concerns to separate the ecclesiastical and the secular power poles, while using maternal imagery to contrast concepts of ‘lordship’ (dominium).167 The ever-present monastic context asserts itself in Bernard’s rephrasing of the Benedictine Rule’s appeal to abbots to ‘strive to be loved rather than feared’.168 Applying maternal imagery to abbots conspicuously disrupts the ety166 

Scc 23.2, OSB, v.1, p. 304: ‘Nunc vero vides quomodo de matre praesumunt, quomodo eius lucra et gaudia sua reputant, propriae repulsae iniuriam illius introductione consolantes. Minime ita confiderent, nisi matrem agnoscerent. Audiant hoc praelati, qui sibi commissis semper volunt esse formidini, utilitati raro. Erudimini, qui iudicatis terram. Discite subditorum matres vos esse debere, non dominos; studete magis amari, quam metui: et si interdum severitate opus est, paterna sit, non tyrannica. Matres fovendo, patres vos corripiendo exhibeatis. Mansuescite, feritatem ponite; suspendite verbera, producite ubera: pectora lacte pinguescant, non typho turgeant.’ 167  See also De mor. 1.3, col. 812B: ‘ministerium, inquam, non dominium’. Bernard uses the term ministerium with the primal sense of ‘servitude’ or ‘service’ (cf. Scc 52.7). For a parallel opposition between ‘lord’ and ‘medical doctor’, see Scc 25.2, OSB, v.1, p. 348: ‘medicos se, et non dominos agnoscentes’. See also Csi, which discusses papal authority, and where Bernard contrasts monastic contemplatio and episcopal consideratio. Bishops, of course, are in a ‘middle position’ between the contemplative and withdrawn lives of monks and the secular and worldly lives of the lay nobility. 168  Bernard has: ‘studete magis amari, quam metui’, cf Benedict of Nursia, Regula Benedicti

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mological identification of abbot as ‘father’ (abba).169 Yet the gendered twist in Bernard’s text regards not only the abbot but also the monks, who become cast in the role of the bride’s daughters. Bernard’s monks, initially presented as hungry, little children (Scc 1.4) are now being reallocated a new, yet kindred role: ‘little girls’ (adolescentulae). In the sermons considered so far, imagery of maternal breasts has commonly prompted a negative opposition. In Sermons 9 and 10, breasts bursting with milk was contrasted by breasts bloated by worldly knowledge or fattened by gluttony. In Sermon 23, maternal breasts are contrasted by breasts ‘swollen with pride’ (typho turgeant). Bernard uses, furthermore, a father figure to contrast the mother figure. If the situation should require more than maternal support and tender caresses (fovendo), paternal reprobation and rebuke (corripiendo) is in order. But whereas maternal tenderness is complemented by fatherly severity, the paternal figure is opposed by the tyrant, a negative figure who resorts to excessive ‘brutality’ (feritatem) and ‘the whip’ (verbera). The present passage is the only instance in Bernard’s Sermons where a father image complements maternal imagery. Elsewhere the theme of rebuke evokes a maternal role, where even the abbot’s chastisement of his monks is linked to maternal imagery.170 In Sermon 23 we find an expansion in Bernard’s use of maternal imagery. Thus far, fundamental concepts have been, firstly, conception and fertility; and secondly, nourishment and lactation. Fecundation is associated with the bride receiving a divine infusio (‘pouring in’), testifying to her intimacy with the bridegroom. (It also overlaps with the category of erotic metaphors, which will not concern us here.) Lactation and nurturance, linked with maternal breasts, is associated with effusio (‘pouring out’) and caritas, procuring the spiritual advancement of others by distributing doctrine, instruction, and preaching — for which fecundation was a necessary precondition. In the current passage, a third group is introduced, namely, maternal affections, such as kindness, tenderness, and compassion. Inspire love, not fear, the abbot states with the Rule of Benedict, and invokes the breasts again: ‘expose your breasts’ (producite ubera). That affectivity and compassion could be associated with the breast metaphor may not seem immediately obvious. Yet compassionate affection and breasts were already closely connected in the mounting Mariology of the 64, col. 882A: ‘et studeat plus amari quam timeri’. 169  On abbot as mother in the twelfth century, see Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’. 170  See, e.g., Scc 29.6, below, Section 3.2.

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twelfth century. By exposing her maternal breasts — just like Bernard encourages the abbot-mother to do — the Virgin Mary, that great mediatrix of salvation, restrained her son from pronouncing judgement.171 The reappearing grammatical transition to first-person singular, which elicits the identification between the self (himself ) and the bride, presents itself also in Sermon 23; and, as is often the case, it coincides with the spiritual peak of the sermon: the bride’s entry into the divine bedchamber, the goal of her pursuit. We can almost hear Bernard softening his voice to a whisper as he covertly professes: There is a place where God can be seen resting and giving rest — a place altogether of the bridegroom, neither of the judge nor the teacher. To me — for I do not know for others — this would truly be the bedchamber, if anyone were ever given entry there. But alas, how rare the hour and how short the stay!172

Here, two of Bernard’s most common topoi for referring to the contemplative encounter with God are present. Firstly, he introduces an uncertainty regarding the experience (‘if anyone were ever given entry there’), expressing doubt as to its possibility while also suggesting the exceptional state of grace involved. Secondly, he confirms the brevity of the experience (‘how rare the hour and how short the stay’), which refers to the eschatological element of suspended fulfilment. The context makes it quite clear that Bernard is instating his own experience as a measure of the bride’s encounter with the bridegroom. Several passages earlier, he warned the audience that he actually has some knowledge of the sweet secrets of the bedchamber: Then we come to the bedchamber. What is this place? May I presume to know something about it? Far from it that I would claim for myself such an experience, nor glorify myself with such a privilege which is reserved solely for the happy bride [beatae sponsae]. I am concerned, as the Greeks said, to know myself so that I may know, with the prophet, what is wanting in me [Ps 38. 5]. Yet if I knew nothing, I would say nothing [nihil omnino scirem, nihil dicerem]. What I do know I do not begrudge you, nor will I hold it back from you.173 171 

Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, p. 122. Scc 23.15, OSB, v.1, p. 322: ‘Sed est locus ubi vere quiescens et quietus cernitur Deus: locus omnino, non iudicis, non magistri, sed sponsi, et qui mihi quidem — nam de aliis nescio —, plane cubiculum sit, si quando in illum contigerit introduci. Sed, heu! rara hora, et parva mora!’ 173  Scc 23.9, OSB, v.1, p.  314: ‘Iam ad cubiculum veniamus. Quid et istud? Et id me praesumo scire quid sit? Minime mihi tantae rei arrogo experientiam, nec glorior in praerogativa 172 

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With the final phrase, Bernard effectively identifies himself — as abbot — with the bride, who, in the current sermon, promises to come back to her little girls with ‘overflowing breasts’ after the session with the bridegroom in the bedchamber. The double identification between the bride and Bernard on the one hand and Bernard’s monks and the needy little girls on the other is further enhanced as he addresses his listeners in the plural — vobis — instead of, as elsewhere in the sermon, using a second-person singular (e.g., Scc 23.14: quaesieris). The fleeting reference to scito te ipsum — a commonplace in Cistercian writing — emphasizes Bernard’s rhetoric of humility.174 His Christianized version of the Greek motto is a call to humility. To know oneself is to know what is wanting in oneself, to know what one is not, as stated by the Psalm.175 Bernard cannot, he says, claim for himself the glory reserved for the ‘happy bride’ (beata sponsa). However, his (rhetorical) modesty is here overcome by what he has established as the function of the ‘reservoir’ (Scc 18.3). Spiritually perfected prelates, if gifted with eloquence and virtue, must be of use. He must not ‘hold it back’. Constructing an ambivalent identification with the bride — denying the association while at the same time affirming it — he cleverly exposes himself in the act. His humility stops him from self-glorification, but his knowledge obliges him to speak (‘if I knew nothing, I would say nothing’). For would it not be more disgraceful for Bernard to deny others the benefit of his eloquence and insight than to be disgraced (to be seen to ‘glorify himself ’)? Is he not under (self-imposed) obligation to share his own progress with others, to be useful, to expose his breasts? Bernard is, in fact, doing exactly that. As he preaches on the Song and on his own alleged experience, he is, like the bride, literally lactating his girlish monks. The abbot’s rhetoric of humility often escalates as he is about to launch upon some form of spiritual ascent, thus producing an ambiguity in regard to quae soli servatur beatae sponsae, cautus, iuxta illud Graecorum, scire meipsum, ut sciam etiam cum Propheta, quid desit mihi [Psal. XXXVIII, 5]. Tamen si nihil omnino scirem, nihil dicerem. Quod scio, non invideo vobis, nec subtraho.’ 174  On scito te ipsum in Bernard, see McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 172–73. For references to humility/self-knowledge in Bernard’s writing in general, see Sommerfeldt, The Spiritual Teachings, pp. 53–65, and Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. by Downes, pp. 69–73, who names this motif an ‘ascesis of the mind’ (p. 69). On this topic in twelfth-century literature in general, see Morris, The Discovery of the Individual, pp. 64–95, esp. pp. 65–70. 175  See Scc 36.5 on self-knowledge; see also Scc 38.5, discussed below, Section 4.4.

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humility and exaltation. Still, the discrepancy between the exalted bride and the humble soul (misera/beata) is vanquished by the basic exegetical feature of tropological interpretation, identifying the soul with the bride.176 Rhetoric and exegesis combine to create a tension between humble ascent and exalted descent, recalling the Benedictine oxymoron of ‘descending in exaltation and ascending in humility’. Having thus prepared the way, Bernard, apparently quite unassumingly, lets it be understood that he has indeed ventured into the bedchamber — into the very chamber to which he has referred as reserved for the bride alone. Now ready to share his progress (‘his overflowing breasts’) with the monks (‘his daughters’), the maternal abbot guides his audience into the bedchamber. The bedchamber, confides Bernard, is the king’s most private and intimate place of rest, where he withdraws at night with only those whom he loves (Scc 23.16). Oddly temperate, he describes it: In this secret and holy place of God one is not diverted nor disturbed by bodily needs, by the gnawing of duty, by the stabbing of guilt, nor, which is yet more difficult to avoid, by obsessive fleshly images of the fantasy. If it should happen to someone among you [vestrum] to be similarly rapt up [rapi] and hidden away [abscondi], then he, when he returns to us again, may well give praise and say: The king has brought me into his bedchamber.177

In the course of the sermon the asymmetrical interrelation between the bride (associated with Bernard himself ) and the little girls (associated with the monks or his monastic audience) has been established and enforced by notions of arrival and delay, admission and rejection, presence and absence. Paradoxically, here at the very moment of the bride’s glorious entry into the bedchamber, this discrepancy dissolves as Bernard disrupts the bride’s identity, offering — though less than confidently — the possibility of mystical participation to one of the audience rather than to the exegete’s ego: ‘if it should happen to someone among you [vestrum]’. Thus working contrary to the expectations of his own making — he has, after all, been building up to and preparing us for his own role as the bride’s double — he also introduces a definitively de176 

On the bride/soul as misera, see Scc 3.2, above, Section 2.3. Scc 23.16, OSB, v.1, p. 324: ‘In hoc arcanum et in hoc sanctuarium Dei, si quem forte vestrum aliqua hora sic rapi et sic abscondi contigerit, ut minime avocet aut perturbet vel sensus egens, vel cura pungens, vel culpa mordens, vel certe ea, quae difficilius amoventur, irruentia imaginum corporearum phantasmata, poterit quidem hic, cum ad nos redierit, gloriari et dicere: Introduxit me rex in cubiculum suum [Cant. I, 3].’ 177 

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intensifying hesitancy in the same phrase, again disappointing the expectancy of a spiritual and literary highlight.178 This decrease in intensity is accompanied by a series of negations — that is, what one does not experience in the bedchamber. This includes both corporeal and psychic disturbances. Portrayed as a dormant state, the highest level of contemplation suspends the hindrances or barriers which, normally, would obstruct and distract the enjoyment of God. Like in Sermon 1, the current passage catalogues elements which weigh down the soul — from which it is freed in the cubiculum.179 Firstly, there are the natural demands of the body (sensus egens).180 Secondly, there are duties, responsibilities, and burdens (cura), that is, the obligations of the active life. Thirdly, there is sinfulness — in the recognition of ‘guilt’ (culpa) and uncontrollable ‘imaginative visions of fleshly images’ (imaginum corporearum phantasmata). Here the theme of desert penitence faintly reappears, evoking Jerome and the desert ascetics’ obsessive fantasy images of sensuous delights which haunted them in the wilderness.181 These hindrances literally attack the soul: ‘stabbing’ (pungens) and ‘biting’ (mordens). Bernard will later refer to them as ‘thorns’ (spinas) in Sermon 48 and ‘snares’ (laqueos) in Sermon 52.182 In the bedchamber, one is neither ‘diverted’ (avocet) nor ‘disturbed’ (perturbet) by such obstacles, but free to enjoy God, ‘rapt away’ (rapi) and ‘hidden’ (abscondi) from the world and from its perils. Creating notions of protected and enclosed space, the abbot invokes notions of the recluse, the cloister, and, as we shall see in a later discussion, celibacy. The bedchamber is metaphorically connected to eroticism and to repose, both of which are associated with contemplation in Bernard’s imagery. As an image conveying both intimacy and inactivity, the bedchamber is closely connected to another metaphor belonging to the erotic-contemplative group, the ‘bed’ (lectulus) of Sermon 46. The two sermons in question, Sermons 23 and 178 

See Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought, p. 56, who askes in connection to the uncertain note in the phrasing: ‘Precicely who, then, is the bride, who at this glorious moment of arrival [in Scc 23.1] is seen to be solidly inside, but who at the end of the sermon, is almost identified with a stranger whose identity remains more or less in the dark?’ 179  Cf. Scc 1.3, above Section 2.2, which presented a twofold hindrance to spiritual advancement: worldly temptations and social responsibilities. 180  Elsewhere Bernard designates these as carnis necessitas, which does not coincide with cupiditas; on caro, see also Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. by Downes, pp. 99–100. 181  Jerome, Ep 22.7, see above, Section 2.3. 182  On spinas, see below, Section 3.3; on laqueos, see below, Section 2.6.

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46, are among the most palpably monastic in the work — quies, the ‘peacefulness of monks’ (Scc 46.4: monachorum quietem), is, after all, the prerogative of the cloister.183 Sermon 46 commences with the bride ‘singing her wedding song, describing in beautiful words their bridal chamber and bridal bed’.184 Drawing on Song 1. 15, ‘our bed is flowery’, Bernard imagines the bride inviting (‘in beautiful words’) the bridegroom into bed. Here, he states his monastic concerns explicitly: Indeed, in the Church, the bed in which one reposes is in my opinion the cloisters and monasteries, where one lives undisturbed by the cares of the world and the burdens of life. This bed is flowery when the monks’ conduct and life reflect the examples and the rules of the fathers, as if it were strewn with sweetly smelling flowers and oils.185

Addressing his fictive monastic listener (in the second-person singular), Bernard invites him to internalize the meaning being offered him: But you, do you think you can apply to yourself any of the bride’s happiness, which the Holy Spirit sings of in this love song, when you hear or read these words of the Spirit? Can you recognize any of this in yourself ? […] Perhaps you desire the quiet of contemplation [contemplationis quietem], and you do well. Only do not forget the flowers which you read that are strewn over the bed of the bride. Take care that you too surround yourself with the flowers of good deeds so you practice the virtues that must precede holy repose [sanctum otium] as the flower precedes the fruit. Otherwise, you would want a luxurious and easy slumber instead of seeking rest after labour. Neglecting the fecundity of Lia, you desire the pleasure of Rachel’s embraces only. But it is a preposterous order [praeposterus ordo] to demand the reward before it is merited.186 183 

There are twenty-one references to quies and its derivative requies in Sermon 23. In Sermon 46, I have found eleven. For terms identifying contemplation with ‘inactivity’ commonly found in the monastic tradition, see Leclercq, Otia monastica. 184  Scc 46.1, OSB, v.2, p. 140: ‘Epithalamium canit, cubile et thalamos pulchro sermone describens.’ 185  Scc 46.2, OSB, v.2, p. 140: ‘Et in Ecclesia quidem lectum in quo quiescitur, claustra existimo esse et monasteria, in quibus quiete a curis vivitur saeculi, et sollicitudinibus vitae. Atque is lectus floridus demonstratur, cum exemplis et institutis patrum, tamquam quibusdam bene olentibus respersa floribus, fratrum conversatio et vita refulget.’ 186  Scc 46.5, OSB, v.2, p. 144: ‘Ceterum tu qui has Spiritus sancti voces audis vel legis, putasne aliqua horum, quae dicuntur, valeas applicare tibi, ac de felicitate sponsae, quae hoc amoris carmine ab ipso Spiritu canitur, aliquid recognoscere in temetipso […]? En forte appetis et ipse contemplationis quietem, et bene facis, tantum ne obliviscaris flores, quibus lectulum

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The reappearance of Rachel and Lia sonorously reintroduces the opposition of vita activa and vita contemplativa. There is a shift, however, in relation to the previous passages involving the two sisters. Sermon 9 and Sermon 41 both underscored interruption and disruption: the necessity of interrupting one’s personal enjoyment (desire/Rachel) for the sake of caring for others (duty/ Lia) and hence the requirement of leaving Rachel for Lia (Scc 9.8: ‘do not linger on’; Scc 41.6: ‘we learn that we must interrupt’). Thus Bernard transmitted notions of descent — passing from the (erotic) heights of contemplation and exaltation to (maternal) duty and compassion towards those who are lowly and weak. In Sermon 46, on the other hand, the presentation emphasizes ascent — from labour to holy repose, from fecund duty to contemplative pleasures, from selfless agape to ecstatic eros: Rachel’s embrace is the reward after satisfying the obligation to Lia (‘as the flower precedes the fruit’). The fecundity of Lia (the active life), symbolized here by ‘flowers of good works’ (bonorum floribus operum), must precede the pleasures of Rachel’s embraces (the contemplative life), symbolized by ‘fruit’ (fructus, which is notably also the participle of the verb frui). While the bed’s twofold connotation to eroticism and to repose evokes themes of contemplation, activity, on the other hand, is alluded to by the bride — and the monk who is invited to imitate her — preparing the bridal bed, that is, covering it with flowers (‘good works’). Bernard warns his monks not to neglect usefulness, namely, active life, so as not to seek pleasure only, namely, contemplation. This would be a ‘preposterous order’, a bad ordo praeposterus this time, in the sense of ascending (claiming the reward) without initially having descended (earning the reward), and not the ‘good’ ordo praeposterus, descending after ascending.187 The former is like the pride of primal man, an ascensio which is really a descensio. The latter is the Christomimetic pattern of humility, a descensio which implies the subsequent ascensio. Characteristically transferring his exegetical model onto the daily concerns of his own Clairvaux, Bernard uses the occasion to complain about certain present monks whom he accuses of demanding reward without merit:

sponsae legis aspersum. Ergo cura et tu tuum similiter circumdare bonorum floribus operum, virtutum exercitio, tamquam flore, fructum sanctum otium praevenire. Alioquin delicato satis otio dormitare voles, sed non exercitatus quiescere appetas, et Liae fecunditate neglecta, solis cupias Rachelis amplexibus oblectari. Sed et praeposterus ordo est, ante meritum exigere praemium.’ 187  Cf. Scc 50.5, see above, Section 2.1.

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I am much astonished at the shamelessness of some who are among us now, who, after having upset us all with their particularities, irritated us with their impatience, and infected us with their disobedience, nevertheless dare, with insistent prayers, to invite the Lord of all purity into a bed which is so polluted by their filthy conscience.188

If you behave in this manner, he warns the monks, ‘the bridegroom will not sleep in the same with bed you, especially if, instead of the flowers of obedience, you have strewn it with the hemlock and nettles of disobedience’.189 Thus he stirs up notions of Clairvaux itself — the ‘bed of the Church’ founded in the former valley of poisonous weed — which here is reverted into its former, savage state. Bernard, then, admonishes disobedient and wilful monks; yet in the light of the previous discussion of ‘unmerited’ repose, his reprimand seems to be aimed specifically at slothful monks, those who give themselves to empty repose. Sloth was a traditional monastic sin, so the indictment was no novelty. In the current Cistercian setting, however, the negative example of slovenly monks carries an undertone of the criticism directed at the institution of Cluny, with their reputed excess of contemplation and deficiency in dutifulness. Again, the Cistercian monk, subjecting himself to obedience and good deeds, as well as aspiring to contemplation, makes the ideal bridal candidate.

2.6 The Embrace The ‘embrace’ (amplexus) is arguably Bernard’s leading erotic metaphor after the kiss.190 It is also one of the most overtly sensuous images in the Sermons. The preceding images, bedchamber and bed, though clearly associated with the erotic-contemplative group of imagery, were nevertheless predominately characterized by themes of monastic quies, rather than by explicit erotic themes. Commenting on Song 2. 6: ‘His left arm under my head and his right arm will embrace [amblexabitur] me’, a verse which conjures up the image of a sexual 188  Scc 46.6, OSB, v.2, p. 146: ‘Miror valde impudentiam aliquorum, qui inter nos sunt, qui cum omnes nos sua singularitate turbaverint, sua impatientia irritaverint, sua inoboedientia coinquinaverint, audent nihilominus ad tam foedum conscientiae suae lectulum omni orationum instantia totius puritatis Dominum invitare.’ 189  Scc 46.5, OSB, v.2, p. 144: ‘non dormiet tecum sponsus in lectulo uno, illo praesertim, quem tibi, pro oboedientiae floribus, cicutis atque urticis inoboedientiae aspersisti’. 190  This is also McGinn’s view, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 206.

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union, Bernard writes of the soul ‘reposing delightfully on the soft bed of love’.191 Without reducing the inherent eroticism in the image of the embrace, Bernard blends it with notions of repose: Finally, as [the bride] lies down [the bridegroom] cushions her head on one of his arms, embracing her with the other, to caress her at his bosom. Happy the soul who reclines on the breast of Christ, and rests between the arms of the Word!192

With the embrace we may note an intensification in Bernard’s spaces of intimacy.193 This was already evident in the passage from the garden to the bedroom, that is, from architectural exteriority to interiority (Scc 23) and in the image of the monasteries as the ‘beds of the Church’ (Scc 46). In Sermon 51 this progressive intimacy is taken a step further by the amplexus — an inner room enclosed by arms, a spatial intimacy if ever there was one. Seclusion and protected space are leading monastic images since they allude to a certain invulnerability in regard to the secular world. Concurrently, this image of enclosed space carries undertones of virginity, the ‘closed garden’ (hortus conclusus) — a fertile but virginal space.194 Here the figure of the inaccessible, impenetrable, and secluded virgin blends in with metaphors indicating contemplation and notions of the sexual consummation between the bride and the bridegroom. Erotic references — bed, bedchamber, and embrace — thus become paradoxically extended to notions of virginity. Themes of seclusion and protected, virginal spaces are amplified in Sermon 52. Evoking the elaborately sensual and intimate image of the amplexus, Bernard depicts the bridegroom embracing the bride in contemplative sleep: Actually our race is not without someone who happily deserved to enjoy this gift, who within himself [in semetipso] has had experience of this sweetest secret [suavissimi arcani]. Otherwise, we would entirely disbelieve the passage of Scripture at hand, where the heavenly bridegroom is clearly displayed as he vehemently guards the repose of his beloved. Eagerly he holds her between his arms while she sleeps so that nothing will trouble her or disturb her, causing her to be roused from this

191 

Scc 51.10, OSB, v.2, p. 206: ‘molli […] caritatis stratu, suavissime requiescit’. Scc 51.5, OSB, v.2, p. 202: ‘Denique uno brachiorum suorum sustentat caput iacentis, alterum ad amplexandum parans, ut sinu foveat. Felix anima quae in Christi recumbit pectore, et inter Verbi brachia requiescit!’ 193  On space and spiritual topography in Bernard, see Bruun, Parables, and Santiso, ‘El significado teologico y antropologico del amor’. 194  On virginal space, see below, Section 3.3. 192 

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sweetest slumber. I cannot restrain myself for joy that this majesty would not disdain to lower himself to our weakness and enter into a union [consortio] of such intimacy and sweetness, that the supreme godhead would enter into wedlock with the exiled soul, and that he did not scorn to show her the passionate love of the bridegroom whom she had conquered. That it will be like this in heaven, as I read on earth, I do not doubt, nor that the soul will feel what this page describes — except that she [here on earth] cannot fully express what she then [tunc] [there in heaven] will be able to understand, but now [iam] cannot understand. What do you think she will receive there [illic] when she here [hic] is favoured with so great an intimacy that she feels herself embraced by the arms of God, caressed at the bosom of God, and guarded with care and attention by God lest she be roused from her sleep before she wakes by herself ?195

As in Sermon 3, imagery depicting the lovers’ physical union (lips joining, bodies uniting) resonates with the Incarnation. The contemplative union (consortio) between the human soul and the godhead is realized as the bridegroom ‘lowers himself ’ and enters into partnership with ‘our weakness’ (nostrae se inclinare infirmitati), thus, like Christ, conjoining humanity and divinity. Bernard’s enthusiasm is rhetorically balanced by his perplexity at the disorder of the mismatch — a union between ‘this majesty’ (illa maiestas), ‘the supreme godhead’ (superna Deitas) and the outcast, ‘exiled soul’ (animae exulantis).196 The exceptional nature of the nuptials between the soul and God is underscored even as Bernard opens the passage, in the reluctantly affirmative phrasing: ‘Actually our race is not without someone.’ At least someone must have experienced the embrace, Bernard cautiously states, otherwise we should disbelieve Scripture.

195  Scc 52.2, OSB, v.2, pp. 208–10: ‘Denique nec deest in nostro genere qui hoc munere felix laetificari meruerit, et sic in semetipso suavissimi arcani huius habuerit experimentum, nisi tamen Scripturae loco, qui prae manibus est, omnino decredimus, ubi manifeste inducitur caelestis sponsus vehementissime zelans pro quiete cuiusdam dilectae suae, sollicitus servare inter brachia propria dormientem, ne qua forte molestia vel inquietudine a somno suavissimo deturbetur. Non me capio prae laetitia, quod illa maiestas tam familiari dulcique consortio nostrae se inclinare infirmitati minime dedignatur, et superna Deitas animae exsulantis inire connubia, eique sponsi ardentissimo amore capti exhibere affectum non despicit. Sic, sic in caelo esse non ambigo, ut lego in terra, sentietque pro certo anima quod continet pagina, nisi quod non sufficit ista omnino exprimere, quantum capere illa tunc poterit, sed nec quantum iam potest. Quid putas illic accipiet, quae hic tanta familiaritate donatur, ut Dei brachiis amplecti se sentiat, Dei sinu foveri, Dei cura et studio custodiri, ne dormiens forte a quopiam, donec ultro evigilet, excitetur?’ 196  On exile and unlikeness/likeness, see also below, Section 6.1.

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Interestingly, this ‘someone’ is a male (in semetipso), before ‘he’ becomes ‘she’ by appropriating the role of the bride. The incompatibility between the bride and bridegroom (god-soul, majestyoutcast, supremacy-infirmity) is emphasized by additional antitheses: ‘heaven’ and ‘earth’ (in caelo/in terra), ‘now’ and ‘then’ (iam/tunc), ‘here’ and ‘there’ (hic/illic). Alluding to eschatological effectuation, as implied by the anagogic reading, Bernard relocates the attention to a future celestial union (‘then’, ‘there’). The bridegroom’s embrace of the bride is thereby instated as an anticipation of heavenly fulfilment — when she will understand, and feel, what she now cannot even express. The complementary opposition of anticipation and fulfilment is related in hermeneutical terms of ‘feeling’ versus ‘reading’ and, concurrently, the limitations in ‘understanding’ as well as ‘expressing’. The future tense of sentiet (‘s/ he will feel’) temporally postpones the full overlapping between feeling and understanding (or, in related terms, between love and wisdom). In earthly life the bridal soul is hermeneutically displaced, excluded from understanding and from expression.197 Here, Bernard’s hermeneutical ideals (blending Scripture and the ‘book of experience’) assert themselves while attesting to the integration of his hermeneutics with his epistemology (the identification between knowing and feeling) and with his eschatology (the fulfilment of both knowing and feeling). This composite scheme of dualities, this time based on reciprocality not bipolarity, may be illustrated as follows. Table 6. (Scc 52.2) earth heaven here there now then anticipation fulfilment reading feeling cannot express, cannot understand knowing, understanding

In the subsequent sequence Bernard goes on to explain more fully the sleep of the bride. It is not, writes Bernard, any ordinary ‘sleep of the body’, which ‘for 197 

Bernard’s Sermons has numerous references to the Pauline ineffabilia (ii Cor 12. 4), e.g.: Scc 8.1, 14.8, 19.2, 23.6, 51.7, 57.11, 62.3, 67.5, 67.7, 71.8, 83.13, and 83.14. On the ineffability topos in mystical theology, see McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, pp. 31–33, 37–38; in Bernard, see McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 207.

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a time sweetly lulls the fleshly senses’, nor is it that ‘dreaded sleep which takes away life’, and still less is it that endless death by which one perseveres irrevocably in the ‘deadly sleep of sin’.198 Rather: It is a vital and watchful slumber which illuminates the inner senses, expels death, and confers eternal life. For it is a sleep which does not lull the senses, but rather abducts [abducat] them. And I say without hesitation: it is a death. For the apostle spoke thus when praising those still alive in the flesh: You are dead, and your lives are hid with Christ in God [Col 3. 3].199

As Bernard elaborates on the contemplative theme of quies and saintly sleep, death increasingly asserts itself.200 Already in the previous passage, the opposition of life and death was alluded to as the abbot contrasted heaven/earth, now/then, here/there. The life/death opposition is now to dominate Bernard’s reading. Yet, as suggested by the Pauline verse (Col 3. 3), this is a reversed opposition where death brings life, and worldly life dies. Bernard, then, has prepared his next exegetical step, the bride’s ecstatic death in the arms of the bridegroom: Hence it is not absurd for me to call the bride’s ecstasy [exstasim] a death, a death that snatches away [eripiat] not life but life’s snares, so she may say: Our soul has escaped, like a sparrow from the hunters’ snare [Ps 123. 7]. In this life one is surrounded by snares. But they cause no fear when the soul is torn away [abripitur] from itself by a holy and powerful thought [cogitatione], that it so departs [secedat] and flies [avolet] away from her mind, thus transcending [transcendat] the common and habitual manner of thinking. For it is useless to throw a net before the

198 

Scc 52.3, OSB, v.2, p. 210: ‘Non autem is sponsae somnus dormitio corporis, vel placida, quae sensus carnis suaviter sopit ad tempus, vel horrida, quae funditus vitam tollere consuevit. Multo magis vero et ab illa alienus existit qua obdormitur morte, cum videlicet in peccato quod est ad mortem, irrevocabiliter perseveratur.’ 199  Scc 52.3, OSB, v.2, p.  210: ‘Magis autem istiusmodi vitalis vigilque sopor sensum interiorem illuminat et, morte propulsata, vitam tribuit sempiternam. Revera enim dormitio est, quae tamen sensum non sopiat, sed abducat. Est et mors, quod non dubius dixerim, quoniam Apostolus quosdam adhuc in carne viventes commendando sic loquitur: Mortui estis, et vita vestra abscondita est cum Christo in Deo [Coloss. III, 3].’ 200  Pranger, ‘The Concept of Death’, p. 88: ‘From sermon 48 on, death is in the air, only to culminate in sermon 52 in the simplicity — and the contemplative void — of the angelic way of dying. This rhetorical organization of the discourse is a technique often applied by Bernard. Starting with a casual dropping of a word or an idea, like death, then developing that single word or idea into thematic sets of life, death, shadow, existence, memory, forgetting, he creates clusters which, apparently floating around without coherence, in the end turn out to have directed the train of thought all along.’

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eyes of winged creatures [Prov 1. 17]. Why fear sensuousness [luxuria] when life itself is not felt? As the soul exceeds [excedente] not life but life’s senses, she will not feel life’s temptations.201

The bride in ecstasy is in a state where she is liberated from the allurements of life (‘snares’), just like the bird escapes the fowler’s snares. Represented as a ‘death’, this exstasis is a triumph over the world, reminiscent of the preceding imagery of warfare with its opposition of enslavement and liberation.202 Freeing herself from the world and conquering heaven, she becomes a ‘winged creature’ (pennatorum), to be alluded to as a dove in the next passage. Bernard stresses the bride’s transcendental flight by a sequence of verbs indicating the soul’s rapture: ‘abduct’, ‘snatch away’, ‘torn away’, ‘take flight’, ‘transcend’, and ‘exceed’ (abducat, eripiat, abripitur, secedat, avolet, transcendat, excedente). Famously, he employs the highly uncharacteristic term ‘ecstasy’ (exstasim), more typical of Greek, especially Pseudo-Dionysian, speculation, than Cistercian and Bernardine writing.203 To designate spiritual seizure or exaltation, Bernard most frequently employs either the Pauline idiom raptus and its derivations — here alluded to by the verb forms eripiat (e-reptus) and abripitur (ab-reptus) — or the term excessus/excedere, here in participle form, excedente.204 201  Scc 52.4, OSB, v.2, pp. 210–12: ‘Proinde et ego non absurde sponsae exstasim dixerim mortem, quae tamen non vita, sed vitae eripiat laqueis, ut possit dicere: Anima nostra sicut passer erepta est de laqueo venantium [Psal. CXXIII, 7]. Inter medios namque laqueos in hac vita inceditur, qui utique toties non timentur, quoties sancta aliqua et vehementi cogitatione anima a semetipsa abripitur, si tamen eousque mente secedat et avolet, ut hunc communem transcendat usum et consuetudinem cogitandi; etenim frustra iacitur rete ante oculos pennatorum [Prov. I, 17]. Quid enim formidetur luxuria, ubi nec vita sentitur? Excedente quippe anima, etsi non vita, certe vitae sensu, necesse est etiam ut nec vitae tentatio sentiatur.’ 202  See Scc 9.9 above, Section 2.4. 203  According to Casey, Athirst for God, p. 291 n. 163, this is the only case where Bernard uses exstasis. 204  Excessus, resonant of ii Cor 5. 13, can be translated as ‘exceeding’, ‘transcending’, or ‘being transported’. There are many occurrances in the Sermons, the most significant are in Scc 52.5–6 and in Scc 62.3–5; see also Scc 4.4, 7.6, 31.6, 33.7, 38.3, 41.3, 49.4, 54.8, 67.5, and 85.13. Raptus (rapture) is closely related to the biblical paradigm of Christian mysticism, namely Paul’s relation of the man ‘caught up’ (raptum) to the third heaven (ii Cor 12. 2–4). The terms excessus and raptus are invoked by Bernard to indicate a condition where the soul ‘falls away’ or is ‘torn away’ from its physical senses, and thus from the corporeal and rational levels of perception. Both terms imply a passivity on the part of the soul, emphasizing divine grace: it is rapt up, but without an effort of its own. Exstasis, on the other hand, does not have biblical connotations. It

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The embraced bride’s sleep, or death, represents a momentary transcendence corporeally and cognitively. As in the bedchamber, she is set free from the spell of fleshly and worldly things, having suspended her senses and thus sensual temptations. The bride is described as departing from ‘the mind’ (mente), drawn away by a divine ‘thought’ (cogitatione), thus surpassing the ‘common and habitual manner of thinking’. We may note that while the metaphorical framework is the palpably erotic image of sexual embrace, Bernard here seems to prefer a more intellectual and less evocative and sensual terminology.205 Yet whereas terms such as mente, sensu, cogitatione, and cogitandi are strongly reminiscent of speculative metaphysics, particularly of Platonic and Neoplatonic influence, they are not, however, technical terms in the same sense in twelfth-century Cistercian usage. Naturally, they allude to the cognitive and intellectual aspect of contemplation with its time-honoured undertones of ecstatic flight — where the soul, purified of its mortal bindings, rises up towards a sublimated sphere of pure intellect. Yet in Cistercian writing there are none of the formal distinctions between, for example, the mind and the soul which characterized Hellenistic speculation, nor any schematic or hierarchized representation of levels of consciousness.206 It is worth noting, however, that the twofold transcendence implied in the passage recalls the general structure of Bernard’s tripartite schemes: in order to reach the contemplative level, one must surpass both the corporeal level and the cognitive or rational level.207 Immediately, as the bride spreads her wings and soars ahead to her celestial ascent, Bernard implores that also his desire for ecstatic death might be fulfilled: Who will give me wings like a dove, so I might fly away and find rest? [Ps 54. 7] Let me die this death again and again: let me evade the snares of death; let me not feel the deadly lure of the sensuous life; let me be numb to sensual lust and passionindicates the suspended state of the mystic superseding body and mind and implies the mystical metaphor of being ‘dead’ to the world, sometimes also denoted as the ‘death of the soul’, as the mystic is absorbed and dissolved into the divine being. For a classical relation, see Underhill, Mysticism, p. 466. For a background to Bernard’s terminology on exstasis, excessus, and related words, see Casey, Athirst for God, pp. 290–92, and Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. by Downes, pp. 104–08. 205  On this point, see McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 206; for his full analysis of Sermon 52, see pp. 205–07. 206  On the terms ‘nous’, ‘pneuma’, and ‘psuchē’ in the context of biblical interpretation, see Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, trans. by Sebanc and Macierowski, i, 140–41. 207  On the triparte schemes, see above, Section 2.1 and Table 1.

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ate avarice, anger, and impatience, the anguish of worry and the miseries of care! Let my soul die the death of the just, that no fraud will ensnare me or wickedness seduce me. It is a good death that does not take away life but converts it into something better; it is good, in that the body does not die but the soul is exalted. Men alone experience this. But, if I may say so, let me die the death of angels that, exceeding the memory of things present, I may liberate myself from desire for inferior and corporeal things so that I may purely converse with those who bear the likeness of purity. This kind of exceeding, whether wholly or in part, in my opinion, is called contemplation.208

The theme of transforming into a ‘new man’, freed from sinful, sensuous desires, is here sharpened. The death so coveted by the exegete’s ego is, like Christ’s death, the ‘good death’ (bona mors) which triumphs over death. Life is, conversely, represented as potentially ‘deadly’ (mortifera). Bernard, still following Paul (Col 3. 5–9), complies a list of elements from which he wishes to be liberated by the bona mors — naming lust and avarice, anger and impatience, fraud and wickedness. To this list he adds ‘worries’ (sollicitudinum) and ‘cares’ (curarum), which are terms he uses to indicate the burdens of the active life.209 Significantly, the ‘snares of life’ from the preceding passage have become the ‘snares of death’ (laqueos mortis) — though they still refer to the same, namely, sinful, sensuous life which brings death. By the replacement of ‘life’ for ‘death’, the reversals are complete. This triumph over death (or, reversed, this triumph of death) is further accentuated in Bernard’s plea to let him ‘die the death of the just’ (morte iustorum). His plea for death is carried on into the following sec208 

Scc 52.4–5, OSB, v.2, p. 212: ‘Quis dabit mihi pennas sicut columbae, et volabo, et requiescam? [Psal. LIV, 7]. Utinam hac morte ego frequenter cadam, ut evadam laqueos mortis, ut non sentiam vitae luxuriantis mortifera blandimenta, ut obstupescam ad sensum libidinis, ad aestum avaritiae, ad iracundiae et impatientiae stimulos, ad angores sollicitudinum et molestias curarum! Moriatur anima mea morte iustorum, ut nulla illam illaqueet iniustitia, nulla oblectet iniquitas. Bona mors, quae vitam non aufert, sed transfert in melius: bona, qua non corpus cadit, sed anima sublevatur. [5] Verum hoc hominum est. Sed moriatur anima mea morte etiam, si dici potest, angelorum, ut praesentium memoria excedens, rerum se inferiorum corporearumque non modo cupiditatibus, sed et similitudinibus exuat, sitque ei pura cum illis conversatio, cum quibus est puritatis similitudo. Talis, ut opinor, excessus, aut tantum, aut maxime contemplatio dicitur.’ 209  For examples of these terms indicating the active life see, Scc 1.6, 9.9 (both terms), 23.1, 23.14, 23.16, 40.3, 41.5, 46.2, 85.13; cf. Gregory the Great, Reg. Past. 2.7, cols 38C–42B. For other examples of Bernard presenting the active life a hindrance on a par with sinfulness, see Scc 1.3 and 23.16.

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tion, where it is turned into a plea not only for the death of the just (iustorum) but for that of the angels (angelorum) — attesting to the notion that this death, in reality, is identical to eternal life itself. The image of flight and of wings, beginning with verbs indicating rapture or seizure (abducat, eripiat, abripitur, secedat, excedente) which assigned a passive role to the bride, has evolved into the notion of the bride herself becoming ‘a winged creature’. As an image of salvation and of rectification (or even resurrection?), the resurgent, airborne bride (followed by Bernard’s frantically flapping ego) is indeed a pennatorum. Not just any ordinary bird or dove, however. Rather, her transformation into a winged celestial creature is complete as Bernard giddily moans: ‘Let me die the death of angels.’ Angelic death (when does an angel die?) indeed eliminates any doubt as to the unworldliness and unreality of this ‘death’ expounded by Bernard, attested to also in his plea to ‘die this death again and again’. His reversal of life and death may be based on traditional Christian models, especially New Testament inversions and Christology, but the complexity of his reversals are hardly commonplace. Resonant of the traditional monastic ideal of vita angelica, the mors angelica affirms and enhances his previous concern with quies and sleep. Angelic paradisiacal life as paradigm of monastic withdrawal and world renunciation is a common topos in monastic literature. Yet Bernard’s inversions of life and death move beyond a mere monastic context. For while monks, traditionally, were indeed ‘dead to the world’, the notion of ‘angelic death’ takes quies further than spiritual and monastic repose. Rather, monastic prefiguration is here transformed into full eschatological implementation. Meanwhile, the little girls are getting impatient and restless, and a confrontation between the worldly realm and the heavenly realm is underway. Searching for their mother, they thoughtlessly burst in on the embracing couple. Bernard bewails their presumptuousness: Let the little girls realize whom they are offending when they disturb their mother, freely presuming on her maternal love. Let them beware of intruding on that heavenly encounter without real necessity. For they must understand that this is just what they do when without justification they pester someone who is resting in contemplation.210

210 

Scc 52.6, OSB, v.2, p. 214: ‘Attendant adolescentulae quos offendant pariter, cum matrem inquietant, et minime ita materna de caritate confidant, ut non in illum caelestem conventum sine magna necessitate irruere vereantur. Id quippe se agere cogitent, cum in contemplatione quiescenti plus iusto molestae sunt.’

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Bernard’s indignant reprimand is not quite as disinterested as it may appear. Indeed, in the following passage he assumes the role of offended party — the role of the bride being pestered by the little girls, who, not surprisingly, once more turn out to be the monks. Thus relocating his reading to refer to his own, immediate context, Bernard again constructs an unmistakable parallel between himself and the bride, and between the monks and the girls: There are some sitting here who ought to pay closer attention to this present chapter. Then they would surely understand that they owe reverence to their superiors and take heed not to disturb, for they render themselves offensive even to the citizens of heaven. And so perhaps they might begin to spare us a little more than hitherto, and not intrude so irreverently and frivolously when we are in repose. As they well know, rare is the hour in which I can free myself from obligations to visitors, even when these bear over with me most patiently.211

Bernard has slipped into the role of the bride, as we have seen on so many occasions in the course of the present chapter. Transforming the ‘mother’ (matrem) of the previous passage into a plural, ‘superiors’ (praepositis), and then into a general but more personal ‘us’ (nobis), Bernard finally arrives at his own self (mihi). Thus, as he goes full circle, mother-prelates-us-me, he fuses into the intensely idealized mother-bride. Like the bride disturbed by her needy daughters, he finds that when he is finally free to enjoy his contemplative repose in the arms of the bridegroom, he is interrupted by nagging, irresponsible monks. Elaborating on the opposition between contemplation (vacamus, ‘we rest’; ad feriandum, ‘to be freed from obligation’) and the duty of the active life, that is, the obligation towards others (monks as well as visitors), he restages and reperforms the celestial family conflict at Clairvaux. But presently Bernard, the tender mother, stops himself — apparently regretting his harsh words. As if taking to heart his own recommendation for prelates to be patient, compassionate, and indulgent with those in their care — to be ‘mother’ and to ‘expose the breasts’ (Scc 23.2) — he withdraws his complaint:

211 

Scc 52.7, OSB, v.2, p. 216: ‘Sunt tamen de hic sedentibus, qui utinam praesens capitulum attentius observarent. Cogitarent certe, quanta praepositis reverentia debeatur, quos temere inquietando, caeli quoque civibus se reddunt infensos, et nobis forte plusculum solito parcere demum inciperent, nec tam irreverenter leviterque se iam ingererent cum vacamus. Rara mihi satis ad feriandum a supervenientibus, ut bene norunt, conceditur hora, etiam cum ipsi in omni patientia me sustinebunt.’

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I worry about making such a complaint, however, for a timid person might perhaps hide his needs and overstrain his powers of endurance for fear of disturbing me. So I refrain, lest I seem to give an example of impatience to the weak. They are little ones of the Lord and they trust in him; I shall not suffer them to be scandalized by me [Mt 18. 6]. I shall not use my authority, but rather let them use me as they please, so they might be saved. They will spare me by not sparing me. And in this I will find rest, knowing that they shall not be afraid of disturbing me with their needs. I will devote myself to them as far as I am able, thus in them serving my God for as long as I live, in love unfeigned. I will not seek what is mine, nor what is useful to me, but rather that which is useful to many — this is what I shall judge useful for myself.212

As noted by Caroline Walker Bynum, Cistercian men invoked maternal imagery most often in the context of authority.213 In effect, as we see in the current passage, Bernard applies his concept of motherhood to evoke a concept of authority balanced by disinterested love, the ‘love that seeks not its own’ (i Cor 13. 5), the Pauline dictum echoed softly in Bernard’s phrasing: ‘I will not seek what is mine.’ ‘I shall not use my authority,’ he declares in the cited passage, ‘but rather let them use me as they please.’ In this way his own (maternal) devotion to the ‘weak’ (infirmis) monks, who in reality are fragile little children (pusilli) — girls even — modifies the erotic upward urge towards his own enjoyment, his own pleasure. Again the ‘preposterous order’ asserts itself, privileging use over pleasure, infirm and inferior over supernal and superior. Indeed, the abbot performs quite a verbal somersault as he reverses the concept of ‘useful’ (utile): first asserting an opposition between ‘what is useful to me’ (quod mihi est utile) and ‘what is useful to many’ (quod multis), and next disrupting that same opposition by affirming that being useful to others is actually what is useful to him (id mihi utile).

212 

Scc 52.7, OSB, v.2, p. 216: ‘Verum ego scrupulosius moveo istiusmodi querelam, ne quis forte pusillanimum supra vires propriae patientiae dissimulet a necessitatibus suis, dum me inquietare veretur. Supersedeo igitur, et ne magis impatientiae exemplum videar dare infirmis. Pusilli Domini sunt, in eum credentes; non patior ut ex me scandalum patiantur [Matth. XVIII, 6]. Non utar hac potestate; magis autem ipsi me utantur ut libet: tantum ut salvi fiant. Parcent mihi si non pepercerint, et in eo potius requiescam, si non me inquietare timuerint pro necessitatibus suis. Geram eis morem quoad potuero, et in ipsis serviam Deo meo, quamdiu fuero, in caritate non ficta. Non quaeram quae mea sunt; nec quod mihi est utile, sed quod multis, id mihi utile iudicabo.’ 213  Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, pp. 154–66.

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2.7 Beauty Along with Rachel and Lia from Genesis, Bernard also employed Mary and Martha from Luke to express the active and contemplative lives, in line with the exegetical tradition since Origen.214 Following tradition, Bernard uses the first pair (Rachel and Lia) to discuss the respective limitations and advantages of the two lives and the second pair (Martha and Mary) to establish a notion of the contemplative as the higher life.215 His leading concept to establish this notion of relative value is beauty: Mary is more beautiful. In the Sermons the biblical sisters — Rachel and Lia, Mary and Martha — represent the dual aspects of the bride (contemplative-erotic and active-maternal), but they are never stand-ins for the monks: that is the bride’s function. Rather, the sisters are personifications of concepts — similar to the allegorical figures of the classical, rhetorical tradition.216 As such, they are, as noted previously, objects of desire for the monks, insofar as they represent tensions and potential resolutions of religious life. Bernard’s treatment of Martha and Mary is significantly less eroticized and feminized than that of Lia and Rachel. Mary and Martha represent ‘work’ and ‘repose’ (negotium/otium), but without the overtones of fecundity and erotic pleasure which characterizes their Old Testament counterparts.217 Yet there is one aspect which clearly links Bernard’s treatment of the contemplative types Rachel and Mary: namely, their beauty which, as we shall see, becomes directly associated with the bride’s beauty. Mary and Martha appear in Sermon 40, entering into the discussion of the bride’s beauty in relation to Song 1. 9: ‘Your cheeks are beautiful as the turtle dove’s.’ The bride’s two cheeks are beautiful, rejoices the abbot, because God is both the object of her pursuits and the purpose for her pursuits. The ‘two cheeks’ represent object and purpose, or, as Bernard explains, ‘what you seek

214  Bernard treats the sisters Rachel and Lia in Scc 9, 41, 46, and 51, while Martha and Mary, the New Testament counterparts, are treated in Scc 40, 51, 57, and 71. 215  McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, p.  257, points to expositions of Origen, Ambrose, and Augustine. 216  On female allegorical figures in medieval writing, see Ferrante, Woman as Image, pp. 2, 37–64. 217  Notably, the erotic potential is all but missing from Luke’s account of Mary and Martha, while it is evident in Genesis’s account of Lia and Rachel. The former (Lk 10.38–42) narrates that when Christ and the disciples were visiting their house, Martha was busy serving and waiting on the guests, whereas Mary was seated at Christ’s feet, listening.

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and why.’218 Seeking the world for the world’s sake (like loving the world in a frui manner), is the characteristic of a worldly soul completely lacking in beauty.219 Seeking God for the purpose of attaining self-glorification or worldly advantages (like loving God in a uti manner), is the attitude of the hypocrite, whose putridity deforms all beauty.220 In both of these cases the purpose is the world, not God: only a soul whose purpose is in God is beautiful. At this point, Martha and Mary enter the exposition: ‘To direct your attention to something other than God, although for God’s sake, means Martha’s toil [Marthae negotium] not Mary’s repose [otium Mariae].’221 The soul who is concerned with worldly matters for the sake of God is beautiful, like Martha, although not perfectly so: Far from it that I say that [Martha’s] is a deformed soul. Yet neither can I claim that it has arrived at perfect beauty, for it worries and frets so much, and hence it cannot but soil itself with the dust of the petty, transient world.222

Salvation will still be obtained, however, or so Bernard assures. This worldly grime (‘the dust of the petty, transient world’) befouling the beauty of the soul is immediately and easily cleaned off in the ‘hour of holy sleep [i.e., death]’.223 Martha’s sister Mary, on the other hand, who seeks God for God’s sake, is ‘adorned with the most beautiful face of all, the uniqueness and particularity

218  Scc 40.2, OSB, v.2, p. 76: ‘res et causa; id est, quid intendas, et propter quid’. The noun intentio, and the related verb intendere, is rich in connotation in pre-Scholastic use and, hence, is difficult to translate adequately. It is certainly broader than the restricted contemporary English usage of ‘intention’, implying also an element of looking, gazing, scrutinizing. Hence I have translated it as ‘to seek’. See Casey, Athirst for God, pp. 114–20. 219  See Scc 40.3, OSB, v.2, p. 78: ‘Intendere non in Deum, sed in saeculum, saecularis animae est, nec ullam prorsus genarum speciosam habentis.’ 220  See Scc 40.3, OSB, v.2, p. 78: ‘Intendere autem quasi in Deum, sed non propter Deum, hypocritae plane animae est […] ipsa tamen simulatio omne in ea decorum exterminat, magis per totum ingerit faeditatem.’ 221  See Scc 40.3, OSB, v.2, p. 78: ‘Intendere in aliud quam in Deum, tamen propter Deum, non otium Mariae, sed Marthae negotium est.’ 222  See Scc 40.3, OSB, v.2, pp. 78–80: ‘Absit autem ut quae huiusmodi est, quidquam illam dixerim habere deforme. Nec tamen ad perfectum affirmaverim pervenisse decoris: quippe quae adhuc sollicita est et turbatur erga plurima, et non potest terrenorum actuum vel tenui pulvere non respergi.’ 223  See Scc 40.3, OSB, v.2, p. 80: ‘Quem tamen cito facileque deterget, vel in hora sanctae dormitionis, casta intentio et bonae conscientiae interrogatio in Deum.’

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of the bride’.224 It is not Martha but Mary who is associated with the bride, and she alone. Here is no equilibrated conjoining of the female figures, as with Lia and Rachel, who dissolved into the dual bridal roles of mother and lover. Instead Bernard idealizes Mary, the ‘most beautiful’ (pulchrissima), as the one resembling the bride, without applying qualifying themes of fertility and motherhood. Theologically, Bernard’s argument runs close to Augustine’s in De doctrina christiana. Mary may be seen to personify ordered frui love (loving, or enjoying, God for God’s sake); and Martha, ordered uti love (loving, or using, the world for God’s sake). In terms of imagery, however, it is the celebration of beauty which guides the discussion. In this aesthetization of salvation, fusing beauty and salvation, Bernard places Martha in the topography of estrangement and soiling (the desert, the marshland), invoked by images of ‘dust’ (pulvere), ‘soil’ (respergi), and ‘cleaning’ (deterget). Still concerning himself with Song 1. 9, Bernard’s considerations develop into a meditation upon the ‘turtle dove’ (turturis), ‘that most chaste of birds’ (Scc 40.4: castissimae volucris — we are back to the ‘winged creatures’ again). With the turtle dove a subtext resonant of idealized celibacy emerges (to be discussed in the next chapter).225 At present, suffice it to note the association established between the bride, Mary, and turtle dove (with beauty as common denominator), followed by a second association, namely, between continence and turtle dove. Thus Bernard links, by means of imagery, contemplation (Mary) to continence (turtle dove). This entails that celibacy becomes related to the contemplative category of imagery, which, as argued, is associated also with erotic pleasure and repose. These series of associations have important implications for the present understanding of Bernard’s eroticism, or, more accurately, his countererotics, and thus for the general economy of his inversions, gender reversals included. Mary and Martha reappear in Sermon 57, where Bernard comments a phrase of his own making, a combination of Song 2. 13 and Song 2. 14: columba mea, 224  Scc 40.3, OSB, v.2, p. 80: ‘inquirere Deum propter ipsum solum, hoc plane est utramque bipartitae intentionis faciem habere pulcherrimam; atque id proprium ac speciale sponsae’. A schematic listing of Bernard’s argument would run as follows: firstly, object and purpose in the world: no beauty (the worldly soul); secondly, object in God, purpose in the world: deformed beauty (the hypocrite); thirdly, object in the world, purpose in God: soiled beauty (Martha/ the active); and finally, object and purpose in God: perfect beauty (Mary/the contemplative). Compare the fourfold structure in Bernard’s Dil, see below Section 6.1. 225  For Scc 40.4 and a related passage, Scc 59.7–8, see below, Section 3.4.

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amica mea, formosa mea (‘my dove, my friend, my beautiful one’). Interpreting columba as Lazarus groaning, amica as Martha serving, and formosa as beautiful Mary reposing, he allegorizes the three as prayer, preaching, and contemplation (Scc 57.9–10). Presently Bernard reapplies this exegetical model to his and brethren’s immediate monastic context, following his usual interiorized hermeneutics: ‘Speaking with a certain boldness, we may add that the soul of any one of us here, if it be similarly vigilant, will be similarly greeted as a friend, consoled as a dove, embraced as a beauty.’226 But the abbot seems reluctant to assume that such perfection is possible in a single person: ‘one who knows to mourn because of himself, to rejoice in God, and at the same time possesses the power to assist his neighbours.’227 ‘Who might be capable of all this?’ he queries (Scc 57.11). Yet the reader, by now accustomed to Bernard’s nearly ritualistic rhetorical formulas of auto-pessimism and humility, cannot but wonder if the abbot might be, nonetheless, intending himself. He is, after all, constructing a bridal role — a role performed and re-performed by himself — where the basic pattern is exactly these three: humility (rhetorical self-abasement), service (mother, prelate, active), and contemplation (‘if I knew nothing, I would say nothing’).228 Shifting his perspective, he applies the threefold perfection to the idealized monastic society — Clairvaux, again, one might guess:229 We have Martha, the Saviour’s friend, in those who loyally administer exterior things. We have Lazarus, the sad dove, in the novices who are newly dead to their sins, who toil with fresh wounds in mournful fear of judgement, and, like the slain who, sleeping in their sepulchres no one remembers, consider themselves nothing until Christ’s command lifts the burden of fear that crushes them like a block of stone, and they can breathe again with the hope of pardon. And finally we have 226 

Scc 57.11, OSB, v.2, p. 274: ‘Nos quoque ad haec, quamvis audacter, adiecimus, quod quaevis etiam de nobis anima, si similiter vigilet, similiter et salutabitur ut amica, consolabitur ut columba, amplexabitur ut formosa.’ 227  Scc 57.11, OSB, v.2, p. 274: ‘Perfectus omnis reputabitur, in cuius anima tria haec congruenter atque opportune concurrere videbuntur, ut et gemere pro se, et exsultare in Deo noverit, simul et proximorum utilitatibus potens sit subvenire.’ 228  On Bernard performing humility, cf. Scc 3.1, see above, Section 2.3; on performing service, cf. Scc 9, 23, and 52, see above, Sections 2.4, 2.5, and 2.6; on ‘if I knew nothing I would say nothing’ (Scc 23.9), see above, Section 2.5. Compare also the threefold hermeneutical pattern, Table 1. 229  See also Scc 23.6 above, Section 2.5, for another instance of shifting between the ideal monastic self and the ideal monastic community.

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the contemplative Mary in those who have cooperated for a long time with the grace of God by which they have obtained a better and happier state where they are confident of forgiveness and no longer worry themselves with the sad images of their sins, but day and night meditate on the ways of God with ineffable delight — even at times gazing with revealed face at the glory of the bridegroom, being transformed into his image from splendour to splendour, in the Spirit of the Lord [ii Cor 3. 18].230

As in Sermon 40, the sisters — now also with their brother Lazarus — are hierarchized. In fact, the siblings are moulded into the familiar tripartite formula encountered in Bernard’s exploration of the imagery of the bread, the kiss, and the bridegroom’s quarters.231 They represent the progressive stages of the approach to God: conversion (dead to the world, praying for grace), serving (the active life), and repose (the contemplative life) (cf. Table 1): 1. Lazarus, the ‘reborn’: repentance, conversion, prayer, the novice (corporeal level) 2. Martha, the active: serving, preaching, administering (tropological level) 3. Mary, the contemplative: repose, delight, gazing, transformation (anagogic level) The current passage also sees a return of the embrace metaphor. The soul is ‘embraced as a beauty’ (ampexabitur ut formosa), says Bernard, recalling the embraces of the beautiful Rachel, Mary’s counterpart. Mary’s ‘better and happier state’ (melius et laetius) is thereafter described with reference to Paul (ii Cor 3. 18). Here we encounter one of Bernard’s favoured biblical phrases indicating contemplative anticipation and eschatological fulfilment. ‘Splendour’ (claritas) 230  Scc 57.11, OSB, v.2, p.  274: ‘Habemus siquidem Martham, tamquam Salvatoris amicam, in his qui exteriora fideliter administrant. Habemus et Lazarum, tamquam columbam gementem: novitios utique, qui nuper peccatis mortui, pro recentibus adhuc plagis laborant in gemitu suo sub timore iudicii, et sicut vulnerati dormientes in sepulchris, quorum nemo est memor amplius, sic se non putant reputari, donec ad Christi iussionem sublato pondere timoris, tamquam prementis lapidis mole, respirare in spem veniae possint. Habemus quoque Mariam contemplantem in illis, qui processu longioris temporis, cooperante gratia Dei, in aliquid melius et laetius proficere potuerunt, quando iam de indulgentia praesumentes, non tam versare intra se solliciti sunt tristem imaginem peccatorum, quam certe in lege Dei meditari die ac nocte insatiabiliter delectantur, interdum etiam revelata facie gloriam sponsi cum ineffabili gaudio speculantes, in eamdem imaginem transformantur de claritate in claritatem, tamquam a Domini Spiritu [II Cor III, 18].’ 231  See above Sections 2.2 (bread), 2.3 (kiss), 2.5 (bridegroom’s quarters).

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and ‘transformation’ (transformatio) are fundamental concepts to the abbot’s interpretation of divine likeness and divine presence.232 To gaze at the bridegroom in glory is to be transformed into the likeness, the ‘splendour’, of the object of contemplation. Ultimately (and eschatologically), to see him as he is, is the same as to be as he is.233 This, then, allows us to recognize why Mary and Rachel are, like the bride, so beautiful and so desirable. It is because they resemble him, the bridegroom.234

2.8 Birth In the penultimate sermon of the Sermons on the Song of Songs, the two categories of imagery — maternal imagery and erotic imagery — converge and overlap in a dense representation of the complementarity of usefulness and pleasure: The soul is affected [afficitur] in one way when it is made fruitful by the Word [fruc­ ti­ficans Verbo], in another when it enjoys the Word [fruens Verbo]. In the former case it is concerned with the needs of his neighbour. In the latter it is allured by the sweet­ness of the Word.235

The division between ‘becoming fruitful’ (fructificans) and ‘enjoying’ (fruens) recalls the oppositions which have been considered in the current chapter: vita activa and vita contemplativa, uti and frui, caritas actualis and caritas affectualis, and images of ‘lactating breasts’ (lacantia ubera) and ‘sweet kisses’ (dulcia oscula). Bernard is in no doubt as to what brings more delight: For a mother takes delight in her child, but a bride takes even more delight in [the bridegroom’s] embrace. The children, their token of love, are dear to her, but his kisses give her greater bliss. It is good to save many, but there is much more enjoyment in exceeding to be with the Word. But when does this happen, and for how long? It is sweet intercourse, but a brief moment and rarely experienced. This is what I spoke of before when I said that the soul seeks the Word to enjoy him in bliss.236

232 

On the importance of ii Cor 3. 18, and particularly claritas for Bernard’s spirituality, see Waddell, ‘The Glorified Christ’. 233  See Scc 69.7 and Scc 31.2 below, Section 6.1; see also Scc 38.5 below, Section 4.4. 234  See below, Section 6.1. 235  Scc 85.13, OSB, v.2, p. 634: ‘Aliter sane afficitur mens fructificans Verbo, aliter fruens Verbo: illic sollicitat necessitas proximi, hic invitat suavitas Verbi.’ 236  Scc 85.13, OSB, v.2, pp. 634–36: ‘Et quidem laeta in prole mater, sed in amplexibus sponsa laetior. Cara pignora filiorum; sed oscula plus delectant. Bonum est salvare multos;

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In the same passage the two sets of imagery, the fecundation of the soul and the fruition of the soul, are fused into one single image: the nuptials of the soul and the Word causing two kinds of birth — one by preaching, another by contemplation: But notice that in spiritual marriage there are two types of birth, and therefore two different [diversas], but not contrary [adversas] offspring. Holy mothers give birth either to souls by preaching [praedicando], or to spiritual knowledge by meditating [meditando]. In the latter type she is drawn away [exceditur] and separated [seceditur] from her bodily senses, so she senses nothing of herself, only the Word. This happens when the mind, allured by the sweetness of the Word, withdraws from itself [furatur], and is rapt away [rapitur] escaping [elabitur] itself to enjoy [fruatur] the Word.237

Although Bernard uses the term ‘meditation’ (meditando) rather than ‘contemplation’ to designate the encounter with the Word, his terminology indicating mystical excess is remarkably rich. As the saintly soul is transported beyond itself (furatur, seceditur, elabitur), it senses solely the divine and no longer itself. Traditional representations of the saintly soul’s rapture (exceditur, rapitur) meet and blend with Bernard’s erotic terms. Terminology indicating ‘seduction’ (illecta dulcitudine) and ‘passionate desire’ (furatur has a double sense of ‘withdrawn’ and ‘seized by passionate love’) is united in the concept of fruatur: the soul enjoying the Word. Thus fruatur (from the verb frui) is explicitly related to the mystical terms exceditur and rapitur. The sequence of passive and deponent verb forms not only intensifies the rhetorical and literary style by means of alliteration — exceditur, seceditur, rapitur, furatur, elabitur, fruatur — it also undergirds a theological argument often avowed by Bernard. The soul is responsive and passive in that it is acted upon (affectus) by God, the effective and active principle of influence (affectio).238 The spiritual intensity of the pasexcedere autem et cum Verbo esse, multo iucundius. At quando hoc, aut quandiu hoc? Dulce commercium, sed breve momentum, et experimentum rarum! Hoc est quod supra, post alia, memini me dixisse, quaerere utique animam Verbum, quo fruatur ad iucunditatem.’ 237  Scc 85.13, OSB, v.2, p. 634: ‘Sed attende in spirituali matrimonio duo esse genera pariendi, et ex hoc etiam diversas soboles, sed non adversas, cum sanctae matres aut praedicando, animas, aut meditando, intelligentias pariunt spirituales. In hoc ultimo genere interdum exceditur et seceditur etiam a corporeis sensibus, ut sese non sentiat quae Verbum sentit. Hoc fit, cum mens ineffabili Verbi illecta dulcedine, quodammodo se sibi furatur, immo rapitur atque elabitur a seipsa, ut Verbo fruatur.’ 238  Cf. Scc 50.5 and Csi 5.17: PL 182:798B: ‘non est affectus Deus: affectio est.’ For discussion, see McGinn, Growth of Mysticism, pp. 500–01, n. 212; Casey, Athirst for God,

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sage is reflected by the constant repetition of Verbum (repeated eight times), which effects a related rhetorical intensity by inducing an exegetical purpose which is always focalized in the Word. Like before in the Sermons, the fecundity of ‘holy mothers’ (sanctae matres) is a leading metaphor for preaching. But unlike before, preaching is associated with ‘birthing’ (pariendi, pariunt), an image which evokes Gal 4. 19, cited by Bernard in the previous section: ‘Paul’s soul was indeed a compassionate mother and a faithful wife when he said: My children, to whom I give birth [parturio] again and again, until Christ is formed in you.’239 In Sermon 85, as in Sermon 9, erotic bliss and motherhood intertwine, but in the earlier sermon maternity and fecundation is emphasized in terms of lactation and nurturance, rather than, as here, in terms of producing ‘offspring’ (soboles) or giving birth. In fact, birth is not a dominant metaphor in Bernard’s imagery.240 Apart from Sermon 85, it appears in only two other sermons.241 The reference in all three cases is the same Pauline verse, Gal 4. 19. Underscoring Paul’s dual role of wife and mother, Bernard’s use of the birth metaphor is concerned primarily with relational responsibility implied by motherhood — and less so with overt imagery of sheltering in or exiting from the womb.242 Also largely ignored is the latent theme of generative origin, that is, questions of paternity versus maternity in the role of reproduction. Questions related to genealogy do emerge in the Sermons, but not in the context of maternal imagery or birthing. Rather, Bernard is concerned with the opposition between worldly and divine family ties, opposing the carnal father with the divine and true Father and inverting their relevance, but notably without using gendered oppositions.243 Nor does the abbot develop further the potential theme of a complementarity between fatherhood and motherhood, as noted in the discussion of Sermon 23. So for the first — and last — time in the Sermons Bernard develops on the image of birth. He distinguishes between two types. Firstly, there are souls born from ‘preaching’ (praedicando). This group is closely related to an already familiar category in the Sermons: offspring conceived in the erotic encounter pp. 94–95; and Blanpain, ‘Langage mystique’, Coll.cist., 36, pp. 58–68. 239  Scc 85.12: ‘Prorsus pia mater et fidelis viro suo anima Pauli, cum diceret: Filioli mei, quos iterum parturio, donec formetur Christus in vobis [Galat. IV, 19].’ 240  This was noted by Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, esp. pp. 115, 121. 241  Scc 12.2, see below, Section 5.2; and Scc 29.6, see below, Section 3.2. 242  But see Scc 29 above, Section 3.2, where the theme of birth pangs is developed. 243  See Scc 16.4 below, Section 4.1.

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with the bridegroom and nursed by the bride — previously identified as her daughters or the little girls, and associated with Bernard’s monks. Secondly, there is another kind of offspring: ‘spiritual insights’ (intelligentias spirituales) born from meditation or contemplation. The two types of offspring — insights begotten by meditation and souls begotten by preaching — loosely correspond to the dialectics of infusio and effusio, that is, the bride’s dual role of giving and receiving. Bernard is meticulous in stressing that while these two types of offspring may be ‘different’ (diversas), they are not ‘contradictory’ (adversas). In the current reading of the bride’s dual nature, in fact, her twofold role is perceived as complementary rather than contrary. The oppositions impart Bernard’s concern for ordering the twofold imperative of love — the obligation to love God as well as world and neighbour, ‘different, but not contrary’. Their compatibility is also relative to the temporal deferral implied in eschatology. For the bride — and, by extension, Bernard’s idealized monastic self — erotic desire is ever disrupted, interrupted, and displaced by obligations and duty towards others. Full realization of desire and, concurrently, full union with the divine is postponed until resurrection.244 Dedication to bliss and to pleasure is the prerogative of the next life. ‘When perfection is reached,’ he writes, ‘nothing remains to be done. The only requirement is to enjoy [frui], not to create; to experience, not to work; to live it, not to strive for it.’245 Only then, says Bernard, echoing Augustine, the bridegroom will demand neither obedience nor good deeds: ‘the only activity shall be [contemplative] rest’ (omne negotium otium).246 From Augustine and from Gregory the Great, Bernard inherited a terminology and a theoretical basis to investigate the equilibrium between living contemporaneously in mundo and extra mundum. The notion of the two lives entailed oppositions related to the Cistercian interpretation of the Rule of Benedict and consequently to Bernard’s negotiations of Cistercian identity. Augustine, with his schema of uti-frui and his synthetic ordering of caritas, established a dual ordering of love, directed towards the divine and spiritual as well as the worldly and temporal. Bernard’s solution, which blends the two lives into the figure of the bride by means of maternal and erotic imagery, integrates 244 

For discussion of this see The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 168–72. Scc 72.2, OSB, v.2, p. 464: ‘Et certe post perfectum, faciendum superest nihil: frui de cetero restat, non fieri; experiri, non operari; ea vivere, non exerceri in ea.’ 246  Scc 72.2, OSB, v.2, p. 464; cf. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos: In psalmum lxxxvi enarratio 9, col. 1107: ‘ibi totum negotium nostrum non erit, nisi laudare Deum, et frui Deo’. 245 

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both the Augustinian doctrinal foundations as well as his own Christocentric mysticism. As an analogy to Christomimetic ascent, contemplative excessus requires Christomimetic descent, analogous to the active life. The movement upwards, expressed by the contemplative-erotic group of imagery, ‘the kiss’ (osculum), ‘the embrace’ (amplexus), and amorous encounters in the bed and the bedchamber, is the soul’s reward. The movement downwards, expressed by the active-maternal group of imagery, especially ‘breasts’ (ubera) and ‘lactation’ (lactans), is its duty. Relating the chimaerical bride to the twofold devotional and monastic ideal — as interpreted by Bernard and the Cistercians — this reading of the bride and of Bernard’s self-representation links the imagery to themes of agape (‘the love that seeks not its own’) and themes of eros (excessus, exstasis), with underlying references to the temporal suspension between the sacrificial duty of love in this world and the eschatological fulfilment in the next. Concurrently, the bride’s dual imagery expresses a synthesis between the moral or tropological level in hermeneutics and the contemplative or anagogic level, between compassion and desire, present and future, law and grace — between the claritas of exaltation and the vallis of humility.

Chapter 3

The Mother, the Virgin, and the Bride — Idealized Femaleness immaculata coitu, fecunda partu, virgo est castitate, mater est prole Ambrose, De virginibus 1.6.31

3.1 Multifaceted Bride The referential functions of Bernard’s bride are manifold, representing the saintly soul, the Church, and, I argue, more specifically the Cistercian monk and monastery. Fundamental to the bride’s multiple functions and plural references is the medieval hermeneutical scheme of different levels of interpretation. As noted, the multivocality of biblical interpretation ensured plurality, even before the twelfth century’s rediscovery of the Origenist interpretation.1 In keeping with the hermeneutical levels of representation, Bernard reads the bride as representing Ecclesia in an allegorical sense and anima in a tropological sense. The anagogic sense refers frequently, but not always, to anima.2 Anagogy is upheld in all readings where a contemplative and/or eschatological meaning is set forth. The contemplative and the eschatological may be seen as two quite different manifestations. The latter can be termed ‘horizontal’ anagogy and is connected with the last things and conceived in an objective, historical manner; the former, ‘vertical’ anagogy, seeks to achieve a realization — albeit partial and momentary 1 

See above, Section 1.2. For instance, we find an anagogic reference exclusively to Ecclesia in Sermon 68 (Scc 68.4–5). 2 

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— of heaven on earth.3 Horizontal and vertical anagogy in Bernard’s text operate in a dynamic and interreferential way, mirroring each other and mutually explaining one another, as we have seen in the previous chapter.4 Tropology, allegory, and anagogy may be seen as ordering structure for representations of bridal imagery in the Sermons. This regards not only references to either anima or Ecclesia but also the dual subtexts discussed in Chapter 2: the active life versus the contemplative life; Christomimetic descent versus Christomimetic ascent; uti versus frui; maternal metaphors versus erotic metaphors; and, finally, as will be discussed in the present chapter, the mother versus the virgin. In the table below, this basic structure is reproduced in schematic fashion according to the hermeneutical levels. The table shows the bride schematized in terms of the fourfold scheme, allowing for distinctions between the allegorical sense and the anagogic sense, unlike in the Origenist threefold scheme (which otherwise prevails in Bernard’s text), where they are merged together.5 The table also omits the literal or historical sense of the bride, as this has no direct reference in Bernard’s text. Table 7. Hermeneutical schema for the bride Level of meaning:

allegorical

tropological

anagogic

Reference:

Ecclesia

anima

Ecclesia / anima

Biblical figure:

Virgin Mary

Lia / Martha

Rachel / Mary

Christomimetic type:

—

descensio

ascensio

Life type:

—

vita activa

vita contemplativa

Love type:

—

ordered uti

ordered frui

Image type:

—

maternal metaphors

erotic metaphors

Female type:

virgin-mother

mother

virgin

It is important to note, however, that the interpretative process often slips from one level of meaning to another, causing the different categories to intersect 3 

Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, trans. by Sebanc and Macierowski, ii, 179–87. On vertical and horizontal anagogy in Bernard, see McGinn, ‘Saint Bernard and Eschatology’. 4  Scc 52 above, Section 2.6; see also below, Sections 5.1 and 6.1. 5  On the relation between the threefold and the fourfold models in medieval exegesis, see Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, trans. by Sebanc and Macierowski, i, 90–105. Regarding the order, Lubac notes (i, 112, 352, nn. 49 and 50) that Bernard sometimes holds to the ‘classical’ hermeneutical order of history, allegory, and tropology (e.g., Scc 16.1 and Scc 17.8), and at other times (Scc 23) using the ‘second’ order, namely history, tropology, and allegory (and anagogy).

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and overlap. Thereby multiple references and levels of meaning are frequently present simultaneously, as was common in medieval exegesis. So although the dual pattern of virgin-mother has references which are more complex and multiple than this table might indicate, as we shall see in the course of the current discussion, these two basic feminine types relate to two distinct hermeneutical categories: the mother and maternal metaphors to tropology, the virgin and erotic metaphors to anagogy. A paradoxical virginal mother, the bride embodies fundamental aspects of idealized femaleness in the Middle Ages, both chastity and fecundity. This dual aspect of idealized femaleness was fused in one single figure, Mary — the Virgin Mother, in whose female body virginity and motherhood coincide.6 At first glance, Virgin Mary is all but absent in Bernard’s Sermons, a few brief glimpses in passing, hardly enough to meet the reader’s expectations in lieu of the author’s reputation as leading Mariologian.7 Nor may her absence be ascribed to the rules of the genre; other theologians of the twelfth century wrote entire commentaries which were Mariological interpretations of the Song of Songs.8 6 

On Virgin Mary in medieval devotion, see Warner, Alone of All her Sex, and Fulton, From Judgement to Passion. Schiebinger, ‘Mammals, Primatology and Sexology’, p. 193, points to the simultaneousness of chastity and fertility also in early modern representations of natura, who was portrayed as both virgin and mother. 7  Virgin Mary is compared to the bride, e.g., in Scc 57.2 and 78.8. Both passages are ecclesiological readings, identifying the bride (and thus Mary) with the Church, although the former makes a reference to applying the interpretation to ‘any one of us, who together are the Church’ (Scc 57.3, OSB, v.2, p. 264: ‘Non enim sic ista de Ecclesia referuntur, ut non singuli nos, qui simul Ecclesia sumus’). The dual motif of virgin-mother in regard to the Virgin Mother is absent from the Sermons as an explicit reference. But in his youthful work De laudibus, Bernard expounds on the Marian virgin-mother theme, even applying the interpretation as a devotional model on an individual level: an imitatio Mariae, so to speak. See also Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought, pp. 145–62, who suggests that there is a strong connection to Mary in Bernard’s interpretation of the Song: ‘the Song of Songs is indeed applied by Bernard to the Virgin Mary. Or, to put it in even stronger terms, it is in the Sermons on the Virgin Mary, in which the text of the Canticle is not the actual subject, but only a substratum, that the Song of Songs seems to have retained much more of its original flavour than in Bernard’s sermons specifically devoted to the Canticle’ (p. 146). On Bernard as Mariologian in view of his role in Dante’s Comedy, see Botterill, Dante and the Mystical Tradition. 8  For example, Alan of Lille, In Cantica canticorum ad laudem Deiparae Virginis Mariae elucidatio, col. 53B: ‘Unde cum canticum amoris, scilicet epithalamium Salomonis, specialiter et spiritualiter ad Ecclesiam referatur, tamen specialissime et spiritualissime ad gloriosam Virginem reducitur quod divino nutu (prout poterimus) explicabimus’ (While this song of love, namely the wedding song of Solomon, refers to the Church in a special and spiritual way, in a

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Already in Late Antiquity the bride had simply absorbed the Virgin Mary and her primary characteristics: maternity and virginity. Both withdrawn (from the world) and uncorrupted (by heresy), and simultaneously expanding and fruitful, the typology of the Church drew heavily on the Marian imagery of virgin and mother.9 Mary’s allegorical function as type for the Church undoubtedly left heavy exegetical traces in readings of the Song of Songs, even with exegetes primarily concerned with tropology such as Bernard. Rather than the Virgin Mary, Bernard employs Rachel and Lia, and, to a lesser extent, Mary and Martha, as the primary female biblical figures associated with the bride. This exegetically entrenched typology allowed him to address themes of vita activa and vita contemplativa, which, as argued, may be regarded as a dominant subtext in the imagery of the Sermons. But the leading typology for the two lives, and for the adhering notions of use and pleasure, duty and bliss, are the two female types of mother-bride and virgin-bride. Bernard McGinn makes a similar observation, stating that ‘it was the symbol of the soul as both Bride and Mother that stands closest to the heart of his mystical theory.’10 I hold, however, that McGinn’s division into ‘Bride’ and ‘Mother’ confuses different levels, since, according to my reading, two different types of bride — one associated with erotic metaphors, the other with maternal metaphors — are telescoped into one compound bridal figure. To analytically han-

yet more special and spiritual way it relates to the glorious Virgin, as we will explain (as far as we can) by divine command). Also Honorius Augustodunensis, Expositio in Cantica canticorum, col. 494C: ‘Hic liber ideo legitur de festo S. Mariae, qua ipsa gessit typum Ecclesiae, quae virgo est et mater. Virgo, quia ab omni haeresi incorrupta; mater, quia parit semper spirituales filios ex gratia. Et ideo omnia quae de Ecclesia dicta sunt, possunt etiam de ipsa Virgine, sponsa et matre sponsi intelligi’ (This book is read for the feast of St Mary, who is a figure of the Church as both virgin and mother. A virgin because she is untouched by heresy, a mother because she continuously gives birth to spiritual children by grace. And therefore everything that is said about the Church can also be said about the Virgin, understood as the bride and the mother of the bridegroom). On Song commentaries as a separate literary ‘genre’ in the Middle Ages, see Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, pp. 3–19. 9  On the influence of liturgy, where the Marian interpretation of the Song first gained currency, see Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, pp. 151–70. 10  McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 223; cf. Stiegman, ‘Action and Contemplation’, pp. x–xi, who, also having noted the bride’s dual role, refers to them as spouse and mother. Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages, pp. 15–16, uses the same terminology as I do: motherbride and virgin-bride. However, her categories are primarily Jungian, not hermeneutical, and thus fundamentally different from mine.

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dle not just one but several bridal roles, I propose instead a subdivision into mother-bride and virgin-bride, which may be illustrated as follows: Table 8. Dual division of bridal types bride

mother-bride activity, descent, uti tropology

virgin-bride contemplation, ascent, frui anagogy

A central perspective in the present study is that temporal suspensions between anticipation and consummation and dramaturgical tensions between presence and absence are related to a fundamental disjunction between bliss and its disruption, represented as a tension between eroticism and maternity. Within the framework of monastic eschatology — structured by the tensions of eros and its interplay between presence and absence, between now and not yet, between oneness and otherness — the relation of motherhood to eroticism lends itself to such rhetorical delineations.11 In this perspective, and assuming a profound integration between the imagery in the Sermons and Bernard’s ideological and theological concerns, the underlying tensions contained within the bridal imagery may be seen as a rhetorical strategy of analogy. In a compelling analysis drawing on classical rhetoric, Luke Anderson has argued that Bernard’s similes ‘speak of something beyond simple likeness, and move forward to express cautiously a kind of identity’. Bernard’s text, he states, ‘includes not simply analogies of attribution based on casual relations, but analogies of proper proportionality rooted in formal similitudes as discovered by ingenium’.12 Thus, following Anderson, one may see the relation of literal reference to spiritual reference as consisting of formal similitude by which the implications of the metaphors — for example, motherhood and virginity — represent the foundational mechanism in the metaphor’s revelatory character (i.e., ingenium). 11 

It is commonplace in scholarship to point to a fundamental structure where love is unfulfilled in this world, fulfilment awaits the next life, see, e.g., Casey’s reading of Bernard’s Sermons in Athirst for God, p. 90. More originally, Turner, Eros and Allegory, esp. 85, 87, has argued that the imagery of eros was fused with monastic eschatology, informing the dialectical structure in medieval reading of the Song. 12  Anderson, ‘The Rhetorical Epistemology in Saint Bernard’s Super Cantica’, p. 118. Italics are his.

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The bride is a remarkably ‘lively’ metaphor.13 As a figure of liminality — positioned between virginity and motherhood — the bride gives access to related figures within the same associative network: not just the mother and the virgin but also, within the same metaphorical habitat, the widow. Drawing attention to the importance of transferral in the functioning of metaphor, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have argued that the metaphor implies a ‘leap’ from one field of meaning to another which is never without entailments.14 Associations from its originary habitat hover over the metaphor, even when transported from one context into another.15 Metaphor has a capacity for mobilizing several different — even contradictory — aspects contemporaneously, thus producing surplusvalue or emergent meaning.16 The leap from ‘source domain’ (a woman about to marry) to ‘target domain’ (a celibate male) not only conjoins two quite different categories within the same metaphorical domain but also transfers correlated meaning from the former to the latter. These metaphorical entailments in bridal imagery are further reinforced by the compulsion of discourse itself. Bernard’s text, deeply rooted in patristic and ascetic discourse, evokes and mobilizes ‘virgin’ and ‘mother’ and ‘widow’ not just because these are roles within the sphere of matrimonial relations — and thus part of the bride’s metaphorical domain — but also because these were the primary female figures by which patristic and medieval writers negotiated questions of Church authority and sanctions appertaining to asceticism.17 By the working of hermeneutics, metaphor, and discourse, the bride subsumes temporal displacements (now and then) as well as displacements in significance (simultaneous virgin and mother and widow), pointing to entailments inherent in the figure of the bride itself. Yet in Bernard’s bridal imagery, the ordinary order is suspended: the bride is a mother and widow (here, now, in via) who aspires to become virgin (there, then, in patria). Bernard’s use of maternal imagery is extensive and explicit, and has been studied by Caroline Walker Bynum and others. The virginal subtext in the fig13  See Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language, pp. 50–53, 62, who speaks of ‘lively metaphors’ that expand the ‘associative networks’, suggesting ‘new categories of interpretations’. 14  See esp. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By. 15  On concepts of ‘habitat’ and ‘hovering over’, see Canguilhem, La Connaissance de la vie, pp. 48–49, and adaptions by Clark, ‘The Celibate Bridegroom’. 16  On metaphor producing ‘surplus-value’, see Derrida, ‘The Retrait of Metaphor’, p. 13, and ‘White Mythology’, p. 220. See also Clark, ‘The Celibate Bridegroom’, pp. 5–7. 17  See Hunter, ‘The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church’, and Kelly, Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity.

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ure of the bride, on the other hand, is more elusive and less accessible than the maternal imagery, requiring a stronger and closer reading, and, particularly, sensitivity to intertextual references. The present chapter establishes this connection between the figure of the bride and the figure of the virgin — with the subtext of the virgin martyr — and, relatedly, a connection between imagery of erotic pleasure (i.e., the category of erotic metaphors) and the rhetoric of virginity. Connections between the virgin-bride and contemplation was briefly alluded to in Chapter 2: firstly, in the thematic and metaphorical references to reclusion and enclosed space, a virginal space, which the abbot invoked when displaying the bridal soul as ‘rapt away’ and ‘hidden’ from the world, free from its perils, free to enjoy God; and, secondly, in the association between contemplation and continence.18 The present chapter also introduces a third bridal role, the widow-bride, thus to a certain extent destabilizing the oppositions and dualities of maternal imagery and erotic imagery discussed in the previous chapter.

3.2 Magnanimous Motherhood: Authority, Affection, and Nurturance Bernard refers to the bride as ‘mother’ in Sermons 9, 10, and 23. Likewise, in Sermons 41, 46, and 52 she is represented as lactating, fecund, and maternally caring (see Chapter 2). In these cited passages the image of the motherbride is predominately tropological. However, maternal imagery also occurs in connection with an allegorical, that is, ecclesiological, reading. One such example is Sermon 14, where Bernard discusses the Church of Christ and the Synagogue of the Jews. His discussion is reminiscent of other considerations in the Sermons regarding sharing and keeping: generously and compassionately giving to one’s fellow or enviously and selfishly holding back. But instead of referring to, respectively, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ prelates or spiritual leaders, he here applies the opposition to the Church and the Synagogue. The imagery, significantly, is much the same. The breast metaphor, established in Sermon 9, is again invoked as primary image for spiritual nurturance. Judea keeps her knowledge of God ‘bottled up’ (in vase clausum), ‘jealously guarding’ it (avara retinet): ‘For herself the worship of God, for herself the knowledge of God, for herself the custody of God’s great name: she has no zeal for herself and only envy for me.’19 Evoking a striking 18  On virginal space, see discussion of Scc 52 above, Section 2.6; on contemplation and continence, see Scc 40 above, Section 2.7. 19  Scc 14.2, OSB, v.1, p. 180: ‘Habet quippe Iudaea oleum multum divinae notitiae, idque

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oppositional image of the Church, Bernard exclaims: ‘Let it flow, let it flow, this heavenly liquid, down the breasts of the Church.’20 The exclusiveness and avarice of the Jews, portrayed as a ‘closed jar’, are contrasted by ‘heavenly liquid’, an allusion to maternal milk, freely running down the breasts of the Church — underscoring the inclusiveness and compassion of the new pact of Christ. The image of the liquid is from Song 1. 2 (‘your name is oil poured out’), representing, Bernard explains, the spreading of the name of Christ — in other words, preaching and instruction. In the image of a heavenly liquid which descends from above, baptismal and Eucharistic allusions also re-emerge. Thus associating the Church, as distributor of doctrine and sacraments, with the breast metaphor, Bernard evokes a fairly traditional image of Mother Church feeding him, her little one in Christ.21 Breasts are invariably connected to preaching and doctrine in Bernard’s text. They are maternal and not erotic symbols, representing distribution of spiritual nurturance rather than objects of erotic pleasure.22 Bernard also uses maternal imagery to construct a negative image, an antimother.23 In the same way that the true and good mother may represent both Ecclesia and anima, the negative maternal image functions at both an allegorical and a tropological level of meaning. Following the tropological sense, the false or simulating mother is a symbol of corrupt spiritual authority. Unworthy prelates and teachers have no maternal affections, their swollen bosoms and bellies signalizing greed and arrogance rather than fruitfulness. Tropologically, the false mother operates inside the Church or monastery, but for her own benefit and self-interest. In allegorical terms, on the other hand, the negative maternal image represents not an inner but an outer enemy.24 In Sermons 65 in se tamquam in vase clausum avara retinet. Peto, et non miseretur, nec commodat. Sola Dei cultum, sola notitiam, sola vult possidere magnum nomen eius, nec zelat sibi, sed invidet mihi.’ 20  Scc 14.3, OSB, v.1, p. 180: ‘Descendat, descendat et in ubera Ecclesiae supernus liquor.’ 21  Scc 14.3, OSB, v.1, p. 180: ‘et ego illud mihi de maternis uberibus, tamquam parvulus in Christo’ (cf. i Cor 3.1). 22  See Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, p. 117, and ‘The Body of Christ’, p. 87, who rejects sexualized readings of medieval imagery of breast and nurturance. Bynum’s reading is contrasted by, for instance, Lochrie, ‘Mystical Acts, Queer Tendencies’, and Hollywood, ‘Sexual Desire, Divine Desire’, who both open for the maternal not excluding the sexual. 23  See discussion of Scc 10 above, Section 2.4. 24  Elsewhere, the negative allegorical figure of the bride is associated with the Synagogue, but without maternal imagery. For example, in Sermon 14 the imagery is erotic, with the Synagogue as the unhappy and foolish bride rejected by the bridegroom and dismissed from his

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and 66 Bernard preaches against some heretics who were gaining a foothold in the Rhineland in the early 1140s.25 These heretics, who Bernard identified as the ‘little foxes’ of Song 2. 15, were groups of laypeople who lived a communal life and practiced lay celibacy. Challenging gender segregation on the one hand and the twin institutions of priestly celibacy and lay marriage on the on the other, the Rhineland heretics were in effect challenging a central feature of the Gregorian Church: the demarcation line between the lay and the clergy. Bernard attacks them on both fronts: in their practice of non-segregation and cohabitation between genders (Scc 65) and in their dismissal of lay marriage (Scc 66). Significantly, he does so invoking maternal imagery. These new heretics who attack the Church, writes Bernard, must be revealed and exposed, like all ‘little foxes which destroy the vines’, thus their error and falsehood will not bear ‘fruits’ (fructus): they must be caught and condemned, so that — here the abbot invokes Hos 9. 14 — ‘their breasts [be] dry as a desert and their wombs infertile’.26 The anti-mother, more than just purporting a concept of ‘bad’ motherhood, evokes its negation. During the twelfth century, the concept of motherhood began to acquire increasingly spiritualized significance in monastic writing and devotion. 27 Already in the eleventh century, Anselm had applied mother imagery to Paul, thereby indicating Paul’s function as caretaker for his people (loving mother) as well as teacher (bringing new souls to birth).28 Caroline Walker Bynum, working on vast material, links this use of maternal imagery to monastic males and arms, while the new bride, the Church, snatched the place of her rival to enjoy his embraces for herself: see Scc 14.4, discussed below, Sections 5.3 and 6.4. 25  Bernard wrote these two sermons as response to a specific request by Provost Eberwin of the Steinfeld Premonstratensians where he requires Bernard’s help in refuting the already condemned teaching of neo-Cathars in the Rhineland district (see Eberwin of Steinfeld, Epistola 472 ad Bernardum). On Scc 65–66, see also Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 220–21. She notes that Eberwin carefully discerns between two different groups of dissenters, which Bernard blends together: one that denied the authority of priests because of clerical worldliness, and the other whose members refused to eat meat, rejected marriage, and claimed to be the true Church. 26  Scc 65.1, OSB, v.2, p. 362: ‘illi ubera arentia, et venter sterilis’. 27  Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, pp. 67, 99, points to emphasis on spriritual motherhood already in ninth-century monastic literature. 28  Anselm, Orationes. Anselm names Paul both nutrix and mater. While he applies mater­nal imagery both to Paul and Christ, he also applies paternal imagery to them, stressing the father as one who rules and produces and the mother as one who loves. See Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, pp. 113–15.

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particularly the Cistercians, suggesting that the application of motherhood themes to prelates and abbots was remarkably extensive compared to other periods. Not only Bernard of Clairvaux but other Cistercian abbots like Guerric of Igny and Aelred of Riveaulx associated the role of abbot with motherhood.29 Maternity was not just spiritualized, then, but appropriated for male figures. While maternal imagery had been applied to Christ and/or to God both in the Old and the New Testaments, the image of Mother Church, Mater Ecclesia, established by the patristic writers, was likely the decisive factor in attributing maternal imagery to monastic and ecclesiastical leaders.30 Insofar as the Church was already identified as ‘mother’, this association could easily be extended to the Church’s prelates. Yet one must recognize that this exegetical shift — from a collective to an individual level — has wider implications. It requires a discursive and rhetorical adaption which will allow for a positive valorization of feminization of males, not just as a abstract collective (Ecclesia) but also as single individuals.31 Motherhood is the category of female imagery employed most extensively in the Sermons. It is also the category of female imagery which Bernard most frequently applied to himself. As we have seen, the first Sermon opens with allusions to Eucharistic nurturance, associations to the monks as starving children begging for food, and Bernard’s announcement that he shall feed his monks with ‘bread’ rather than ‘milk’.32 Giving a characteristically feminine emphasis to the common image of Scripture as food, Bernard instates himself as a nursing mother, lactating his little ones, preparing their food, and even, at times, fussing anxiously that the monks chew their food properly (Scc 7.5).33 Applying motherhood imagery to represent his own role of abbot and exegete, he effects a series of associations: first, identifying the bride with the figure of the mother; then associating the mother with spiritual nurturance and, thus, with himself as caretaker of monks. This transition — from bride to mother to self — is often enacted by grammatical transitions in the text, shifting from third- to first-per29 

Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, pp. 120–25. On biblical references applying motherhood to males, see Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, pp. 125–26. 31  On shifting from collective to individual feminization of males, see Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus and Other Problems, pp. 3–4, 163–70, who discusses entailments of representing Israel as bride. 32  See Scc 1.1 above, Section 2.2. 33  On this point and exegesis as maternal activity, see Damrosch, ‘Non alia sed aliter’. 30 

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son pronouns. But there are also more explicit and direct instances of maternal self-representation, the most extensive of which are found in Sermon 29 and Sermon 42. In Sermon 29, Bernard stages himself as abbot-mother rebuking his (her) monks.34 He identifies his sufferance in inflicting pain on them with a mother’s birth pangs. Just as Bernard inverts abbothood and motherhood, he inverts notions of wounding and healing, life and death, and, finally, castigation and convalescence: May a just man [iustus] punish me in compassion, and chastise me, wounding and healing [percutiens et sanans], killing and bringing to life [occidens at vivificans], that I myself may dare to say: I live, but now not I, for Christ lives in me [Gal 2. 20]. Come to terms with your adversary, [Christ] says, while you are still with him on the way [in via], so he does not give you over to the judge, and the judge to the torturer [Mt 5. 25]. It is a good adversary [bonus adversarius] who, if I come to terms with him, will not let me be accused neither by judge nor by torturer. Indeed, if I have ever caused you suffering in this way, I do not regret it, for the suffering was for [your own] salvation. Indeed, I do not know of ever having done this without suffering greatly [magna tristitia] myself, like [Christ] said: A woman in childbirth suffers [ Jn 16. 21]. But let me not remember the anguish [pressurae], now that I behold the fruit of my pain, as I see Christ formed in my offspring. And I do not know how but those who, after and by means of the castigation [post increpatoria et per increpatoria], have convalesced from their weakness are more tenderly bound to me than those who were strong from the beginning, and without need for this kind of medication [medicamento].35

Opening the passage by wishing for a ‘just man’ (iustus) who will compassionately castigate and chasten him, Bernard evokes notions of a salvational assault. He depicts the assault in terms of paradox and reversal: as he is ‘beaten’ (per34 

On Scc 29, see also below, Section 5.4. Scc 29.6, OSB, v.2, p. 432: ‘Utinam corripiat me iustus in misericordia et increpet me, percutiens et sanans, occidens et vivificans, quo audeam et ego dicere: Vivo ego, iam non ego, vivit vero in me Christus [Galat. II, 20]. Esto, inquit, consentiens adversario tuo, dum es cum eo in via, ne tradat te iudici, et iudex tortori [Matth. V, 25]. Bonus adversarius, cui si consentiens ero, non erit unde aut iudex me calumnietur, aut tortor. Ego profecto, si quos vestrum aliquando pro huiusmodi contristavi, non me piget; contristati enim sunt ad salutem. Et quidem nescio me id umquam fecisse absque mea quoque magna tristitia, secundum illud: Mulier cum parit, tristitiam habet [Ioan. XVI, 21]. Sed absit ut iam meminerim pressurae, tenens fructum doloris mei, dum perinde videam Christum formatum in sobole. Nescio autem quomodo etiam tenerius mihi astricti sunt, qui post increpatoria et per increpatoria tandem convaluerunt de infirmitate, quam qui fortes ab initio permanserunt, non indigentes istiusmodi medicamento.’ 35 

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cutiens), he is ‘healed’ (sanans); as he is ‘killed’ (occidens), he is ‘brought to life’ (vivificans). With the parable from Matthew, Bernard links the figure of the rightful punisher (the ‘just man’) to another figure, the ‘good adversary’ (bonus adversarius), contrasting this personage with a ‘judge’ (iudex), and, worse still, a ‘torturer’ (tortor). Evoking notions of judgement and of infernal torment, the latter figures allude to the prospective suffering of the damned. The good adversary, on the other hand, punishes the wrongdoer here and now (in via, a metaphor for earthly life ) so he may be saved before it is too late. At this point, signalized by the entry of the first-person pronoun, ‘indeed I’ (ego profecto), Bernard steps up and into the role of bonus adversarius for his monks. Thus he shifts from the part of ‘victim’ to the part of ‘punisher’. He assures his monks that if he has ever caused them to suffer, it was for their own salvation (ad salutem). Concurrently, the role of bonus adversarius changes character and gender. The chastiser of monks, now identified as Bernard himself, is transformed into a woman in labour. Castigating his monks fills the abbot with ‘suffering’ (magna tristitia) and ‘pain’ (doloris), like a woman in childbirth. But ‘now’ (iam), Bernard says, he will not remember his (labour) pains, but rather enjoy the result, ‘the fruit of my pain’ (fructum doloris mei), namely, seeing Christ ‘formed’ (formata) in his monks. The monks are explicitly identified as Bernard’s ‘offspring’ (sobole), with reference to Paul (Gal 4. 19), establishing Bernard’s motherhood in direct parallel to Paul’s. Finally, in this complex imagery, Bernard implies that the weaker monks’ (maternal) bonding to himself is a consequence of this ‘castigation’ (increpatoria), which cured them of their weakness, like little children growing stronger under the protection and guidance of their mother. Here motherhood is fleetingly associated with the physician, in the reference to ‘medication’ (medicamento). The theme of medicine, which in medieval medical practice was ‘cooked’ like food, reverberates with the maternal theme of nurturance. Food, in medieval learning, both cures and nourishes.36 In this sense, feeding imagery asserts itself even in a treatment where the association between maternity and nurturance seems all but ignored. The passage establishes a dual understanding of spiritual motherhood. Firstly, the mother is life-giving, ‘delivering’ her offspring as Christ is formed in them, thus leading them to (eternal) life. Secondly, she is caring (chastising the offspring/monks for their salvation) and compassionate (suffering with them as she chastises them). Here there is no complementary father image to balance the maternal imagery, unlike in the Sermon 23, where maternal tenderness was com36 

On nurturance and hermeneutics, see below, Section 6.5.

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plemented by paternal severity, and paternal severity was contrasted by the negative image of the tyrant. Instead, severity is redefined within the limits of motherhood, and identified as pains of labour. Thus Bernard passes from punished to punishing, and finally to empathically suffering with his punished monks. In Sermon 42 Bernard reproposes the representation of himself as abbotmother. But here he supplies a gentler mother image, devoid of the acrid subtext of physical pain and punishment which characterized Sermon 29, although the theme of death and sufferance is still present. Once again Bernard addresses the difficult task of abbots which requires him to correct and reprimand fickle monks, yet here the tone is more sentimental and emotional. Bernard’s maternal heart mourns a lost son, a nameless monk of Clairvaux whom he was unable to rescue: Perhaps you will say that my good deed will be of benefit to me, that I freed my own soul, and am innocent of that man’s blood. For I lectured him and spoke to him, to warn him of his wicked ways that he might live. Yet even if you give me innumerable such reasons, they should not console me as I behold my dead son: it would be as if by that reprimand I had been seeking my own salvation, and not his. For who is that mother who might restrain her tears when she, even after having devoted all possible care and attention to him, sees that everything is in vain and that her son nevertheless is dying? And all this for the sake of temporal death [pro morte temporali]: how much more weeping and wailing awaits me, then, for the sake of the eternal death [pro morte aeterna] of my son, even though I am conscious of no lack on my part, for I did warn him.37

Again Bernard reallocates monastic roles. The commonplace identification of the monks as his ‘sons’ (filii, filio, filii mei), implicit in the role of abbot (‘father’) is again accompanied by a recognition of himself as mother. Of particular interest here is that the staging of this mother-son scene functions as an intensification of the emotional pitch of the passage: what mother might restrain her tears at the sight of her dead son? 37 

Scc 42.5, OSB, v.2, pp. 96–98: ‘Dicas forsan mihi, quod bonum meum ad me revertatur, et quia liberavi animam meam, et mundus sim a sanguine hominis, cui annuntiavi et locutus sum, ut averteretur a via sua mala, et viveret. Sed etsi innumera talia addas, me tamen minime ista consolabuntur, mortem filii intuentem, quasi vero meam illa reprehensione liberationem quaesierim, et non magis illius. Quae enim mater, etsi omnem quam potuit curam et diligentiam aegrotanti filio adhibuisse se sciat, si demum se frustratam viderit, et omnes labores suos esse penitus inefficaces, illo nihilominus moriente, propterea umquam a fletibus temperavit? Et illa quidem hoc pro morte temporali; quanto magis me pro morte aeterna filii mei manet utique ploratus et ululatus multus, etiamsi nihil mihi conscius sum, quominus annuntiaverim illi?’

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Bernard — the affectionate mother — insists on having done everything in his power to save his wayward son (‘I did warn him’). His assertion of his own guiltlessness (‘I am innocent’) at the ‘death’ of the fallen monk does not, however, comfort him. Indeed, had he been consoled by knowing that he had sufficiently performed his duties as abbot, he declares, it would be as if he were acting out of self-interest rather than concern for his son’s welfare (‘as if by that reprimand I had been seeking my own salvation, and not his’). Disinterested love is reaffirmed as integral to the abbot-mother role.38 Having identified himself as a mother incapable to hold back her tears at her son’s death, Bernard’s spiritual motherhood exceeds any mere fleshly motherhood. His suffering is greater, he declares, for his grief regards his son’s ‘eternal death’ (morte aeterna), not just a bodily and ‘temporal death’ (morte temporali). Staging himself as a tearstained mother witnessing her son’s death, the text invokes the image of the suffering Virgin Mother at the Cross: a rapidly developing image in Marian devotion in the twelfth-century.39 In the passages from Sermons 29 and 42, the figure of the mother appears disjointed from the figure of the bride. In both cases the exegete has strayed far from the canticle verses under consideration, leaving one to wonder about the connection, or lack of such, between this maternal figure and the bride. While the fusion of mother and bride is clearer elsewhere, the bridal subtext nonetheless remains in the current passages. It lies in the context of self-sacrifice and disinterestedness. Motherhood invokes themes which are directly related to the bride’s tribulations and her humility — themes related to the active life and treated in both sermons.40 Generally, the bride appears less exalted when she is associated with motherhood — and hence with the active life and with humility — than when she is associated with contemplation and erotic bliss. Concurrently, Bernard is also more affirmative in his identification with the mother-bride than he is with the figure of virgin-bride, to be considered below. In Sermons 29 and 42 maternal imagery suggests an ambivalence, even discomfort, in relation to the role of abbot and in relation to exercising authority.41 38 

Cf. Scc 52.7 above, Section 2.6. A displaced pietà, Bernard’s appropriation of the mother-son image resounds with the devotional emotionality which will find its most poignant expression in the thirteenth-century Latin hymn, Stabat mater dolorosa. On the Stabat mater in medieval Marian devotion, see Warner, Alone of All her Sex, pp. 213–15. 40  On the bride’s humility and tribulations, see Scc 29.7 and 42.1. 41  The cited passages may be seen to point to that which Bynum, in ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’ (pp. 154–59, 160–66), referred to as a preoccupation with ‘false’ and ‘true’ 39 

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The background for this ambivalence might be seen in light of the discussion in the previous chapter. Bernard represented the duty of fraternal love in general, and his own duty as prelate in particular, as a burden, disturbing and distracting him from his true passion, contemplation. The burden of the active life, however, cannot be evaded: there is no ascending without descending.42 Yet if pastoral care and monastic authority is to foster humility, the prelate must guard himself against being seduced by superbia as a consequence of that very authority and power which should be an instrument of humility. Thus Bernard’s construction of motherhood, implying modesty, patience, compassion, and, primarily, humility — all intimately connected with the bride’s femaleness (and her ‘blackness’, cf. Chapter 5) — is an ideal for spiritual authority: ‘Such perfection is commendable for all,’ writes Bernard in Sermon 25, ‘but it is the model for worthy prelates. Good and faithful superiors know to care for sickly souls, not for their own profit or prestige.’43 For prelates, it is crucial to counteract the potentially destructive effects of possessing power. Lending the role of abbot maternal instead of paternal implications implies rhetorically purging the model of authority of its more evident connotations to patriarchal superiority. With motherhood replacing fatherhood as symbol of authority, Bernard redefines power relations, inverting the implications of authority: servitude rather than dominion, humility rather than superiority. Bernard rewrites also other spiritual and monastic roles, however, associating them with idealized femaleness. This regards particularly the overlapping categories of virginity and widowhood. In the Sermons, virginity — and, concordantly, notions of celibacy and widowhood — is provided by metaphors from the Song of Songs, such as the lily and the turtle dove. The references to the bride as virgin, as mentioned, are less frequent and less direct than the mother references. In fact, virginity remains a rather ambivalent category in the Sermons, for reasons which will be dealt with below. authority, ‘false’ and ‘true’ dependence. When Cistercian males applied maternal imagery to male authority figures — abbots, bishops, and apostles, as well as Christ — it should, she sustains, be considered not only in the context of the growing ‘affective’ spirituality of the high and late Middle Ages but also in the context of a ‘Cistercian ambivalence about authority and a Cistercian conception of community’ (p. 113). But see also Martha Newman’s reservations and discussion of Bynum’s arguments in The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 42–43. 42  See above, Section 2.1. 43  Scc 25.2, OSB, v.1, p. 348: ‘Omnibus quidem optanda ista perfectio, proprie autem optimorum forma est praelatorum. Sciunt quippe boni fidelesque praepositi, languentium sibi creditam animarum curam, non pompam.’

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3.3 Voluptuous Virginity: Martyrdom, Asceticism, and the Eroticized Virgin The virgin represented renunciation of the flesh in patristic and medieval writing, and female virginity was definitely a more conspicuous symbol than male. The female virgin not only transcended fleshliness and worldliness, thereby subverting, symbolically and ontologically, the world and its social order (the disparaged saeculum), she even exceeded her metaphysically determined nature, her gendered nature, thus ceasing to be female and gendered.44 Since femaleness was closely associated with materiality and corporeality, the female virgin could become a potent image of an extraordinary, supernatural state analogous to the contemplative excessus: spirit exceeding flesh while, paradoxically, still in the body.45 Just as the self (the proprium, or ‘self-will’) is all but extinguished while filled by the divine in contemplation, so the virgin’s gendered nature is extinguished while she remains in her pristine, desexualized state. Resonating with paradoxical simultaneousness — the coincidentia oppositorum of worldlyheavenly, flesh-spirit, and, ultimately, male-female — the female virgin evoked notions of the suspension of a natural and worldly order, and the anticipation, instead, of a celestial and divine order. In later mystical theology such notions would develop into the trope of the simultaneous ‘divinization’ and ‘death’ of the mystic’s self. These notions have resonance in the apophatic theology of the Middle Ages, but are not commonly used in Cistercian spirituality.46 As a figure of excessus, the virgin is closely related to Bernard’s anagogic reading of the Song: the virginal bride hidden in her divine lover’s arms, unapproachable to the world, indeed, ‘dead’ to the snares of life (cf. Scc 52). In Sermon 48, Bernard expounds on Song 2. 2 (‘like a lily among thorns’), repeating the formula of hindrances which prevent and disturb the bride from enjoying her bridegroom: ‘While the soul is in the flesh it dwells among thorns and suffers necessarily from the disquietude of temptations and the piercing of tribulations.’47 With undertones of virginity, traditionally inherent in the sym44 

See above, Chapter 1, esp. Section 1.4. On the body as always already feminine, see Boyarin, ‘On the History of the Early Phal­ lus’. On virginity as rhetoric of paradox, see Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, pp. 171–88. 46  Bernard employs the former, deificare, in Dil (see below, Section 6.1), whereas the clearest instance of his use of the image of the ‘death of the self ’ is in relation to exstasis in Scc 52.4; see above, Section 2.6. 47  Scc 48.1, OSB, v.2, p. 162: ‘Donec ergo in carne est anima, inter spinas profecto versatur, 45 

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bol of the lily, Bernard evokes an image of the bride threatened by sharp — and penetrating — thorns: For if she is a lily according to the bridegroom’s word, then let her realize how vigilant and cautious she should be in guarding herself, surrounded by thorns which threaten to pierce her from all sides. For this tender flower cannot endure even the slightest prick of the thorn. It is no sooner poked than perforated.48

The passage carries significant erotic undertones, with images of ‘piercing’ (aculeos), ‘pricking’ (punctionem), ‘poking’ (premitur), ‘perforation’ (perforator), and, ultimately, of deflowering. Just as in Sermon 23, the saintly soul (‘this tender flower’) is threatened by sharp, menacing things, attesting to her vulnerability while in the body and in the world.49 The lily — figuring the virginbride, that is, the saintly soul — cannot withstand even the merest touch. Her fragility recalls Jerome’s and Ambrose’s momentous constraints on virginity — as something which might be lost by a gaze or even by a thought.50 In the following passage, the vulnerability of the bridal soul, surrounded by snares, threatened by thorns, is again underscored. Like in patristic discourse, her deliverance from these perils is related to grace, not merit: O shining lily! O tender and delicate flower! Unbelievers and destroyers surround you: see that you tread with care among the thorns. The world is full of thorns. They are in the earth, in the air, in your flesh. To live among them and not be harmed is [an act of ] divine power, not your own virtue.51

The present sermon cycle, beginning in Sermon 46 with the preparation of the bridal bed, builds up to its spiritual and narrative culmination with the eroticized death of the bride, enclosed in the arms of her bridegroom in Sermon 52, et necesse patiatur inquietudines tentationum tribulationumque aculeos.’ See Scc 1.3, 23.16, and 52.4 for other such formulas. 48  Scc 48.1, OSB, v.2, p. 162: ‘Quod si lilium est ipsa, iuxta sponsi verbum, videat quam vigilem sollicitamque esse oporteat super custodia sui, septa undique spinis, hinc inde aculeos intendentibus. Nec enim vel levissimam spinae sustinet ullatenus punctionem floris teneritudo, sed mox ut modice ut premitur, perforatur.’ 49  See Section 2.5 above. 50  See Section 1.4 above. 51  Scc 48.2, OSB, v.2, p. 162: ‘O candens lilium! O tener et delicate flos! Increduli et subversores sunt tecum: vide quomodo caute ambules inter spinas. Plenus est mundus spinis: in terra sunt, in aere sunt, in carne tua sunt. Versari in his, et minime laedi, divinae potentiae est, non virtutis tuae.’

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where she is finally free from worldly and fleshly perils. The theme of virginity emerges in Sermon 47 — and it emerges, significantly, with Bernard blending and confusing the figures of the virgin and the martyr. Applying himself to the verse of Song 2. 1 (‘I am the flower of the field’), Bernard inscribes the flower with a threefold signification: ‘The flower is virginity, the flower is martyrium, the flower is good action.’52 To each of these spiritual ideals he attaches a topography, or location: ‘In the garden there is virginity, in the field martyrdom, and in the bed good works.’53 The abbot commences his consideration on virginity accommodatingly, perhaps predictably, by relating the figure of the virgin to the Song’s image of a ‘garden enclosed’, with themes of modesty, retirement from the public sphere, and her reluctance to challenge or compete: How suitable the garden is for virginity which has modesty for companion, shuns publicity, and is happy in retirement, patient under discipline. […] You have: A garden enclosed, a fountain sealed [Song 4. 12]. In the virgin it seals up the doorway of chastity, the custody of inviolate holiness — if, that is, she is one who is holy both in body and spirit.54

After the mandatory admonition of the necessity for virginity to be ‘spiritual’, not just fleshly — ‘one who is holy both in body and spirit’, as established by the patristic writers — Bernard proceeds to blend and conjoin his categories of virginity, martyrdom, and benevolence. First connecting the three in the metaphor of the flower, ‘the flower is enclosed in the garden, exposed in the field, strewn about in the bed’,55 he next unites them in the figure of Christ, and, finally, in the figure of the persecuted Church: And all these, in each way, mean Lord Jesus. He is the flower of the garden: a virgin born of a virgin rod. He is the flower of the field: martyr, crown of martyrs, model 52 

Scc 47.4, OSB, v.2, p. 154: ‘Flos est virginitas, flos martyrium, flos actio bona.’ Scc 47.4, OSB, v.2, p. 154: ‘In horto virginitas, in campo martyrium, bonum opus in thalamo.’ The term thalamus can mean both ‘bed’ and ‘bedchamber’. In either case, it has nuptial associations, ‘bridal bed’ or ‘bridal chamber’. Here I translate simply ‘bed’ which was the leding metaphor in the previous sermon. 54  Scc 47.4, OSB, v.2, p. 154: ‘Et bene in horto virginitas, cui familiaris verecundia est, fugitans publici, latibulis gaudens, patiens disciplinae. […] Et habes: Hortus conclusus, fons signatus [Cant. IV, 12]. Quod utique claustrum pudoris signat in virgine, et inviolatae custodiam sanctitatis, si tamen talis fuerit, quae sit sancta corpore et spiritu.’ 55  Scc 47.4, OSB, v.2, p. 154: ‘in horto flos clauditur, qui in campo exponitur spargiturque in thalamo’. 53 

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for the martyr. For he was led outside the city, he suffered outside the camp; he was raised on the wooden cross to be made a spectacle for everyone, ridiculed by all. Likewise, he is the flower of the bed, mirror and exemplar of all benevolence, as he himself declared to the Jews, saying: I have done many good deeds for you [ Jn 10. 32]. And thus Scripture says of him: Wherever he went he did good deeds to all and healed all [Acts 10. 38]. If the Lord, then, is all three of these, what was the reason that of the three he preferred to be called the flower of the field? Surely that he might inspire [the bride] to endurance to sustain persecution, which he knew was imminent if she wished to live piously in Christ. Hence he eagerly proclaims himself that for which he especially wishes to have a following. This is what I have spoken of elsewhere: every time she longs for quietness, he always arouses her to labour, announcing to her that in order to enter the kingdom of heaven it is necessary to pass through many tribulations [Acts 14. 21]. When he had arranged to return to the Father, he said to the young Church on earth to whom he had recently betrothed himself: the time will come when those who will kill you will think that he is obliging God, [ Jn 16. 2] and again: If they persecute me, they will also persecute you [ Jn 15. 20].56

The humiliation sustained by Christ — ‘being made a spectacle for everyone, ridiculed by all’ — echoes that of the martyrs in the preceding passage of the same sermon, where Bernard says that ‘the martyrs are exposed to the mockery of all, they are made a spectacle to angels and to men’.57 This reversed account, with Christ’s Passion echoing the martyrs’ instead of vice versa, is rectified as Bernard, in lush Latin, underscores Christ’s function as protovirgin, protomartyr, and protobenefactor: ‘a virgin born of a virgin rod’ (virgo virga virgine), 56 

Scc 47.5, OSB, v.2, p. 156: ‘Et haec omnia, secundum aliquid, Dominus Iesus. Ipse flos horti, virgo virga virgine generatus. Idem flos campi, martyr, martyrum corona, martyrii forma. Denique foras civitatem eductus est, extra castra passus est, in ligno levatus est, spectandus omnibus, subsannandus ab omnibus. Ipse item thalami flos, speculum et exemplum totius beneficentiae, quemadmodum ipse Iudaeis protestatus est dicens: Multa bona opera feci in vobis [Ioan. X, 32]; et item Scriptura de eo: Qui pertransiit, ait, benefaciendo et sanando omnes [Act. X, 38]. Si igitur haec tria Dominus, quae fuit causa, ut e tribus se campi florem maluerit appellare? Profecto ut eam ad tolerantiam animaret, cui noverat imminere, si quidem vellet pie in Christo vivere, persecutionem pati. Id se ergo libentius profitetur, ad quod potissimum vult habere sequacem; atque hoc est quod alias dixi, quoniam semper et illa appetit quietem, et ille incitat ad laborem, denuntians ei quod per multas tribulationes oportet introire in regnum caelorum [Act. XIV, 21]. Unde cum nova in terris Ecclesia noviter desponsata sibi ad Patrem redire disponeret, dicebat ei: Venit hora ut omnis qui interficit vos, arbitretur obsequium se praestare Deo [Ioan. XVI, 2]; item: Si me, ait, persecuti sunt, et vos persequentur [Ioan. XV, 20].’ 57  Scc 47.4, OSB, v.2, p. 154: ‘dum martyres ludibrio omnium exponantur, spectaculum facti et angelis, et hominibus’.

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‘martyr, crown of martyrs, model for the martyr’ (martyr, martyrum corona, martyrii forma), ‘mirror and exemplar of all benevolence’ (speculum et exemplum totius beneficentiae). Both the image of the martyrs’ humiliation in the prior passage and Christ’s humiliation in the current are construed from i Cor 4. 9, which, as we shall see, the abbot also employs when depicting himself and his monks, thus creating an analogy between Christ’s Passion, the saints’ martyrdom, and monastic life.58 This is further reinforced by Bernard virtually blending together ‘persecution’ (persecutionem) and ‘labour’ (laborem). The young Church facing imminent persecution is rhetorically conjoined to the active-contemplative opposition (‘she always longs for quietness and he arouses her to labour’), aligning martyrdom and the active life. Here the active element not only delimits but also enforces the contemplative and salvational goal. The suspension between now and then, desire and fulfilment is enacted in terms of a self-sacrificial fight for faith and for virginity. These two themes, which overlapped in ancient hagiography, are implemented by the bridegroom’s announcement to his bride that ‘in order to enter the kingdom of heaven it is necessary to pass through many tribulations’. Having established Christ as paradigm for virginity, for martyrdom, and for benevolence, Bernard’s attention shifts, as the figure of the Church emerges as Christ’s own mirror image. Absorbing images of betrothal (‘the young Church to which he had recently betrothed himself ’) into the martyrial drama, the story which unfolds is vaguely reminiscent of Macrina’s: a virgin bride who was widowed before consummating her marriage and so united the roles of wife, virgin, and widow.59 In Bernard’s version the bride is summoned by her departed bridegroom to take over his role as heroic warrior, him performing the part of seductive warlord, her as his loyal militia, the milites Christi: I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valley [Song 2. 1]. So while she draws attention to the bed [cf. Scc 46], he summons her to the field, he challenges her to combat. Nor does he consider any other reason more persuasive for entering into the struggle than himself, either as the exemplar or the reward for the struggler. I am the flower of the field. Either of these meanings is to be understood from these words: [he is] the model for those who fight as well as the glory of those

58 

See Ep 87, Section 5.1 below. This is implied in Macrina’s brother Gregory of Nyssa’s account of her life: see Vita S. Macrinae, col. 963CD. For discussions, see Burrus, ‘Begotten, Not Made’, pp. 112–22, esp. 117–18; Clark, ‘The Lady Vanishes’; and Cloke, ‘This Female Man of God’, p. 83. 59 

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who triumph. You are both to me, my Lord Jesus, both the mirror of suffering and the reward for those who suffer [speculum patiendi, et premium patientis]. Both are most compelling and forcefully inciting. You lead my hands in battle by your example. You crown my head after victory by your majestic presence. Whether I see you fighting or whether I see you not only as the one who crowns but as the crown itself, in both ways you are marvellously alluring; each is a cord that draws most violently. Draw me after you [Song 1. 3]. Eagerly, I will follow you; more eagerly still I will enjoy you. If you are so good, o Lord, to those who follow behind you, what will you be to those who draw near to you? I am the flower of the field. Let him who loves me come into the field. Let him not refuse to undertake the fight, with me and for me, so he may say: I have fought the good fight [II Tim 4. 7].60

Here the concept of virginity all but disappears, yet perhaps less so than it immediately might seem, as we will see presently. Instead, the abbot’s exposition resonates with imagery of spiritual warfare. Brimming with military connotations, the leading reference of the passage seems to be the final biblical citation (ii Tim 4. 7: Bonum certamen certavi, ‘I fought the good fight’). ‘Struggle’ (certamen) with its variant ‘struggler’ (certantis) is repeated three times apart from the direct quotation, and the rest of the passage contains numerous references to warfare: ‘combat’ (exercitium), ‘fighters’ (pugnantis), ‘triumphers’ (triumphantis), ‘battle’ (proelium), ‘victory’ (victoriam), and ‘fighting’ (pugnantem). Yet even while the imagery of warfare is in the fore, the erotic undertones are not entirely eclipsed. Rather, themes of ‘violent attraction’ (violentissimus ad trahendum), ‘allurement’ (allicis) and ‘blissful pleasure’ (fruor — again identified as ‘reward’) blend in with the jubilant suspense of the salvific battle. Directly addressing Christ in a dialogue which escalates to become a fullblown martial enterprise, Bernard blends himself into the figure of the bride by appropriating the voice of the community of saints, the virgin martyrs of the 60 

Scc 47.6, OSB, v.2, pp. 156–58: ‘Ego flos campi et lilium convallium. Illa ergo monstrante lectulum, ille vocat ad campum, ad exercitium provocat. Nec putat quidquam persuasibilius fore illi ad ineundum certamen, quam si seipsum certantis aut exemplum proponat, aut praemium. Ego flos campi. Sane utrumvis in hoc sermone intelligi datur, vel quod sit videlicet pugnantis forma, vel quod gloria triumphantis. Utrumque es mihi, Domine Iesu, et speculum patiendi, et pretium patientis. Utrumque fortiter provocat ac vehementer accendit. Tu doces manus meas ad proelium exemplo virtutis tuae, tu caput meum coronas, post victoriam, tuae praesentia maiestatis; sive quia pugnantem te specto, sive quia te exspecto non solum coronantem, sed et coronam, in utroque mirabiliter tibi me allicis, uterque funis violentissimus ad trahendum. Trahe me post te: libenter te sequor, libentius fruor. Si sic bonus es, Domine, sequentibus te, qualis futurus es consequentibus? Ego flos campi: qui diligit me, veniat in campum, non refugiat mecum et pro me, inire certamen, ut possit dicere: Bonum certamen certavi [II Tim. IV, 7].’

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early Church, saying to Christ: you lead my hands in battle, you crown my head (tu doces manus meas; tu caput meum coronas). And finally, in the concluding climatic act of the passage, the bridegroom responds — to Bernard? the bride? the Church? One is no longer sure — by inviting his lover into this starkly eroticized battlefield: ‘Let him who loves me come into the field. Let him not refuse to undertake the fight, with me and for me.’ It seems as if Bernard is transporting his audience back to the bloody arenas of the great persecutions. The text, in fact, establishes a virtual equation between the virgin and the martyr.61 This happens, firstly, by the contemporaneousness of virginity and martyrdom in the ‘mirror and exemplar’ of Christ; and, secondly, by means of the image of the young betrothed bride — the persecuted Church — who is told that she will share the fate of her fiancé (Scc 47.5).62 Yet why this allusion to the persecuted martyrs in the exegetical context of the Song of Songs? Already in patristic writing a connection had been made between the bridal image and martyrdom. Eschewing earthly marriage in order to remain faithful wives of Christ, the martyrdom of the female virgin took the place of the bridal bed, suggests Virginia Burrus in her reading of Ambrose’s account of the martyrdom of Agnes.63 The Bishop of Milan relates of her death: As a bride to her wedding bed she would not have hastened more than she, as virgin, joyfully proceeded with hurried step to her execution site, her head not adorned with plaited hair but with Christ, not bearing the wreath of flowers but of virtues.64

61 

Compare Burrus, ‘Reading Agnes’, p.  32, who points to ‘the essential link between virginity and an eroticized self-sacrificial death’. 62  See Scc 28.10, OSB, v.1, p. 416, for another example of the conflation of martyrdom and virginity, again united by the figure of Christ: ‘circumdant flores rosarum, et lilia convallium, hoc est, Martyrum, Virginumque chori; et qui medius resideo, utrique non dissideo choro, virgo et martyr. Quomodo denique candidis non congruo Virginum choris, virgo, Virginis filius, Virginisque sponsus? Quomodo non roseis Martyrum, causa, virtus, fructus et forma martyrii? Talem talis taliterque tange, et dic: Dilectus meus candidus et rubicundus [Cant. V, 10]’ (Roses and lilies surround him, that is, choirs of martyrs and virgins; in their midst I [Christ] am, I, both virgin and martyr, and no stranger to either choir. How could I, virgin, son of a virgin, and bridegroom of a virgin, not fit in with the white choirs of virgins? How could I not fit in with the red choirs of martyrs, I who am the cause, the strength, the reward, and the model of martyrdom?). See discussion of Scc 28 below, Section 5.3. 63  On the conflation of virginity and martyrdom in Ambrose, see Burrus, ‘Begotten, Not Made’, pp. 140–43, 149; see also Burrus, The Sex Lives of Saints, p. 54. 64  Ambrose, De virginibus 1.2.8, col. 190C: ‘Non sic ad thalamum nupta properaret, ut ad supplicii locum laeta successu, gradu festina virgo processit, non intorto crine caput compta, sed

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Ambrose’s reference to ‘bridal bed’ (thalamum nupta), reminiscent of the bedchamber (cubiculum) and the bed (lectulus) of the Song of Songs, is evoked in Bernard’s image of the virgin-bride’s secret location where she blissfully enjoys the bridegroom’s kisses and embraces. The connection between bridal bed or bedchamber and martyrdom in the image of the virgin martyr’s consummation of her marriage to Christ, as explicitly proposed by Ambrose, resonates also in Bernard’s substitution of cellarium for cubiculum in his reading of Song 1. 3 — the latter term carrying the double designation of both bedchamber and burial room in the Roman catacombs, thus lending the erotic metaphor of cubiculum associations to ecstatic, martyrial death.65 Burrus has also noted an interesting convergence of the rhetoric of martyrdom and virginity in a letter by Jerome.66 But here, unlike in Ambrose, the concept of martyrdom is transported outside the context of Christian persecutions.67 Significantly, Jerome’s account of this pseudomartyr invokes the rhetoric of the virgin martyr while inserting it into quite another historical circumstance (and also, it may be added, applying it to a married woman). This transposition of martyrdom functions as a rhetorical tool with which to construct asceticism as equivalent to martyrdom. The same rhetorical process of displacement and alignment is at work in the current sermon cycle in the Sermons, thus lending an analogous discursive function to the Bernardine bride: a representation of idealized virginity which, like Jerome’s pseudo-hagiographical account of the woman of Vercellae or like Ambrose’s Agnes, is ultimately a reconstruction of idealized martyrdom. Having effectively fused virginity and martyrdom, Bernard moves on to identify martyrdom with humility in the following passage: Christo: non flosculis redimita, sed moribus.’ Note images of flowers and crowning in the con­ joining of virginity and martyrdom that appear also in Bernard’s text. 65  On twelfth-century identification with Christianity’s heroic past, promoting martyr saints and martyrs’ tombs in Rome for rhetorical, political, and decorative purposes; see Krautheimer, Roma: Profilo di una città, pp. 205–12; on prototypes in the Carolingian era, see pp. 167, 170–73. 66  Burrus, The Sex Lives of Saints, pp. 54–55. 67  Jerome, in Ep 1, relates of a woman from Vercellae falsely accused of adultery, but there is no martyrial drama as such. Applying the rhetoric of the virgin martyrs, he reports the woman’s words in Ep 1.3, col. 328: ‘Praesto jugulum, micantem intrepida excipio mucronem, innocentiam tamen [Mss. tantum] mecum leram. Non moritur, quisquis sic victurus occiditur’; (trans. by Freemantle, p. 50: ‘I offer my neck; I welcome the shining sword without fear; yet I will take my innocence with me. He does not die who is slain while purposing so to live.’)

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Since it is not the proud or the arrogant but rather the humble who, knowing nothing of self-sufficiency, are fit for martyrdom, [Christ] adds that he is the lily of the valley — that is, the crown of the humble, designating by the excellence of this flower the special glory of future exaltation. For the time will come when every valley shall be raised and every mountain and hill lowered [Is 40. 4]. […] The just man shall blossom as the lily, he says [Hos 14. 6]. Who is just if not the humble? […] The just man is humble; the just man is a valley. And if we shall be found to have been humble, also we shall grow and blossom like the lily, and bloom forever before the Lord. Will he not confirm himself as a lily of the valley when he transforms the body of our humility, making it into the body of his splendour? [Phil 3. 21] He does not say our body, but the body of our humility, to indicate that the humble alone will be enlightened by this marvellous and eternal brightness of the lily.68

Introducing eschatological images — when the humble will be exalted and the valley raised — Bernard alludes to the future transformation of the ‘just man’, conjoining it with the monastic virtue of humility: the implication of which is an assimilation of martyr and monk. Encompassing Christ, the martyrs, and the humble, the image of the lily is a unifying sign of future exaltation. As martyrdom is intertextually interwoven with ascetic practice, a rhetorical figure related to the practice of humility, Bernard seems to have taken the reader full circle: bride – virgin – martyr – ascetic – monk. Eroticized representations of female martyrs in patristic writing, exemplified by Ambrose’s Agnes, resounds in Bernard’s text while gradually leading up to the climax of the sermon cycle: the bride’s own eroticized death in Sermon 52. Thereby the cry of the exegete, mimicking the bride’s desire for death, embraces the same ritual of salvational, eroticized self-sacrifice: ‘Let me die this death again and again! […] Let my soul die the death of the just! […] Let me die the death of angels!’69 Martyrdom, in a sense, is made attainable to the medieval monk.70 Desiring death, Bernard 68  Scc 47.7, OSB, v.2, p. 158: ‘Et quoniam non superbi vel arrogantes, sed humiles potius, qui de se praesumere nesciunt, martyrio idonei sunt, addit se etiam lilium esse convallium, id est humilium coronam, specialem gloriam futurae exaltationis ipsorum huius eminentia floris designans. Erit namque cum omnis vallis implebitur, et omnis mons et collis humiliabitur [Isa. XL, 4]. […] Iustus germinabit sicut lilium, inquit [Osee XIV, 6]. Quis iustus, nisi humilis? […] Iustus ergo humilis, iustus convallis est. Et si humiles inventi fuerimus, germinabimus et nos sicut lilium, et florebimus in aeternum ante Dominum. Annon vere vel tunc maxime se lilium convallium comprobabit, cum reformabit corpus humilitatis nostrae, configuratum corpori claritatis suae? [Philipp. III, 21] Non ait, corpus nostrum, sed, corpus humilitatis nostrae, ut huius lilii miro et sempiterno candore solos significet humiles illustrandos.’ 69  For Scc 52.4–5, see above, Section 2.6. 70  Cf. evocations of rhetoric of martyrdom in twelfth-century crusading ideology, see Schein,

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mimics the consent of martyrdom, a wilful (and, we will find later, also joyful) consent to be humiliated and mocked, to be made into a ‘spectacle’, to suffer and fight, and to, finally, obtain fruition and enjoy the reward.71 Not merely transformed into a blooming lily (like the Lord) but reformed from a ‘body of humility’ (corpus humilitatis) and conformed to the ‘body of splendour’ (corpori claritatis), this eschatological body of future exaltation will partake in the virginal, martyrial body of Christ himself. There will be occasion to consider yet another, even more forceful representation of salvific and sensuous submission to an eroticized assault: in Sermons 25 to 30.72 In this sermon cycle, certainly the most violent if not dramatic in the work, Bernard the exegete aspires to mimic the self-sacrificial sufferance of the saintly, bridal body: a mortification of the flesh which, rather than being the end of desire, is really the beginning of desire, as it is redirected towards the salvational flesh of Christ. When martyrdom is displaced and transported into a discourse of asceticism, it becomes possible to rhetorically appropriate it — which is exactly what we find in Sermon 30: ‘For it is a kind of martyrdom,’ claims Bernard, ‘to mortify the flesh for the spirit: less horrible, obviously, than when limbs are severed with the sword, but more gruelling because prolonged.’73 In this context, Bernard’s concern for restaging and reperforming virginal martyrdom will take on its full potentiality of meaning. Presently, one further consideration is to be made before passing onto the category of widowhood, namely, the erotization of the figure of the virginbride. It might be pertinent to ask, at this point, if the image of the eroticized virgin suffers from some kind of metaphorical incoherence. However, as both Clarissa Atkinson and Barbara Newman have pointed out, virginity could be Gateway to the Heavenly City, pp. 46, 120–21; cf. De laude, esp. 1.1–2; 3.4–5 (cols 921B–923A; 924A–925A) On the dating of the present sermon, see Casey, Athirst for God, p. 39 n. 2, who, following Leclercq, places the present sermon-cycle in the early to mid-1140s, and thus somewhat prior to the second crusade but well after the treatise to the Templars (c. 1129). 71  On links between consent, martyrdom, and asceticism, see Burrus, The Sex Lives of Saints, p. 55: ‘Here as in other ancient Christian accounts of torture and resistance, the plot pivots on the subject’s consent: the perverse extravagance of her passivity is the source of her power. Martyrdom is thereby constructed as an ascetic practice.’ She draws the same conclusion in ‘Reading Agnes’, p. 32, noting a ‘broader pattern of reinterpreting asceticism as martyrdom’. 72  See below, Sections 5.4 and 5.5. 73  Scc 30.11, OSB, v.1, p.  452: ‘Quamquam genus martyrii est, spiritu facta carnis mortificare, illo nimirum, quo membra caeduntur ferro, horrore quidem mitius, sed diuturnitate molestius.’

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defined either physically, as one who never had sexual contact, or spiritually, as one whose primary relationship is with God.74 Indeed, as lover and spouse of Christ, the virgin is she whose desires are directed towards Christ. In this sense, she is eroticized as a desiring subject, not as an object for desire (or, rather, an object of desire exclusively for God). Virginity, in this perspective, would appear itself as a sexuality.75 In Bernard’s text, this correlation of virginitycelibacy and eroticism-desire is highly charged thematically and theologically, as we have seen. Although one should also be mindful that the virgin is here conflated with the figure of the bride — and the bride is, de facto, always already eroticized. One of the most important virginal subtexts in the Sermons has to do with notions of secluded space, for instance, in Sermon 22: ‘Let her be a fountain entirely [the bridegroom’s] own, unshared by any stranger, untouched by unworthy lips: for she is a garden enclosed, a sealed fountain.’76 Here, a familiar trope for virginity presents itself with the invocation of Song 4. 12: the closed garden and the sealed fountain.77 This and other constructions of enclosed, incorrupt space in Bernard’s text — more or less directly associated with the monastery — transmit notions of inaccessibility. They indicate hidden places where the bride is invulnerable, secure, unreachable, untouchable, and impenetrable: a spatial virginity.78 Conflating the virginal body and the ecclesiastic-monastic body creates a rhetorical effect analogous to how patristic and medieval exegesis posited the virgin’s body as metonym for the Church. Kathleen Coyne Kelly’s observation regarding ascetic discourse in the medieval Church is relevant also for Bernard’s notions of virginal or monastic space: ‘By defining virginity as an abstraction greater than the sum of body parts, patristic writers and their later commentators were able to reconfigure the boundaries of the physical body, extending the 74 

Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, p. 30, and Atkinson, ‘“Precious Balsam in a Fragile Glass”’. 75  As pointed out by, e.g., Salih, ‘Virginity’, p. 819. 76  Scc 22.2, OSB, v.1, p. 288: ‘Sit tibi fons proprius, in quo ei non communicet alienus, nec indignus bibat ex eo: est quippe hortus conclusus, fons signatus [Cant. IV, 12].’ 77  Kelly, Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity, p. 24, notes the importance of the Song of Songs 4. 12 for metaphorical and literary constructions of the impenetrable female body in the Middle Ages. See also discussion in Griffiths, The Garden of Delights, pp. 137–39, regarding the trope of hortus conclusus in the context of female monasticism and virginity. 78  See Scc 52.5–6: the bride protected in the bridegroom’s arms, Scc 23.15–16: hidden in his bedchamber, Scc 46.5: preparing their bridal bed. Discussed above Sections 2.5 and 2.6.

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“space” of the virgin body into ecclesiastical space.’79 Yet, in Bernard’s text, the juxtaposition of monastic space and virginity is subject to an ulterior association because, paradoxically, these enclosed hideouts are the very scene for the staging of the erotic encounter between the bridegroom and the bride. Thus these countererotic encounters may be seen as situated in a direct symmetrical opposition to the world and its perils — where she is exposed to thorns, traps, and so forth. Perennially on the point of penetration, the sexual union of the virgin-bride and her bridegroom is closely associated with nuptial imagery as metaphor of transformation.80 Throughout the Sermons, the tension between presence and absence, anticipation and fulfilment are reflected in the bride’s shifts between longing and pleasure. Soon, but not quite yet, desire will be fulfilled. This dialectic of ‘almost but not quite’ invokes an image of bride and bridegroom at the verge of consummation, the implementation of which is the focal point of the exegete. However, as discussed in Chapter 2, the bride is ever impeded from reaching fruition because of her maternal duty, her milk-swollen breasts, and her nagging daughters; in this life, contemplation must give precedence to activity. Ultimately, all this unfulfilled erotic desire refers to the eschatological dimension. ‘Almost but not quite’ is precisely the state of human condition before final restoration.81 Thus, as will be argued further in Chapter 5, the apparent paradox of associating the virgin-bride with the category of erotic metaphors represents a rhetorical and hermeneutical strategy of eschatological inversions rather than any metaphorical inconsistency. Indeed, what is being eroticized is the afterlife — and its fleeting foretaste in the state of contemplation — of the celibate, the ascetic, or, more specifically, of the Cistercian monk.

3.4 Weepy Widowhood. Exile, Grief, and Chastity In a previous discussion it was noted that Sermon 40 establishes an association between the bride and Mary (sister of Martha) and between the bride and the turtle dove, symbol of sexual continence.82 Embedded in this twofold associa79 

Kelly, Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity, p. 38. On this, see below Section 6.1. 81  On the connection between imagery of eros and eschatology, see Turner, Eros and Allegory, pp. 85–87. 82  See above, Section 2.7. 80 

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tion is an implicit identification between contemplation and continence, which, in light of the argument followed in the present study, suggests that celibacy, again by implication, becomes metaphorically connected to erotic imagery. The present discussion will focalize on Bernard’s treatment of the turtle dove (Song 1. 9 and 2. 12), which, as it emerges as an image of chastity and continence, signalizing world-renunciation, is modelled into an image of widow­hood. Bernard begins his consideration of the turtle dove, describing it as, ‘a chaste little bird which leads a retired life, content to live with one mate’, adding that ‘if she loses him, she does not seek another but lives alone thenceforth’.83 Immediately addressing his fictitiously attending monk so as to cast him in the role of the little female bird, Bernard advises: You [Tu] who are listening to this, in order that you do not listen in vain to what has been written for your sake, and which for your sake now is being examined and discussed: you, I say, who are moved by the incentive of the Holy Spirit and yearn to do all so that you make your soul into God’s bride, you must strive to obtain beauty in both cheeks of intention [i.e., to seek God for God’s sake], and thereby, in imitation of that most chaste of birds, seating yourself, following the prophet, in solitude, for you have raised yourself above yourself [Lam 3. 28].84

Already having established the connection of the turtle dove to Mary, sister of Martha, and thus implicitly to contemplation and frui (loving God for God’s sake), the bird, the bride, and the beautiful cheeks become directly associated with contemplation by means of the biblical allusion from Lamentations. Indeed, both the image of ‘seating yourself in solitude’ and ‘raising yourself above yourself ’ carry connotations to contemplation. The former, ‘to sit’ (sedere), subtly alludes to traditional monastic terminology indicating the state of contemplation.85 The latter part of the phrase, with its notion of levitation 83  Scc 40.4, OSB, v.2, p. 80: ‘Pudica avicula est, et conversatio eius non cum multis, sed solo degere fertur contenta compare, ita ut, si illum amiserit, alterum non requirat, sed sola deinceps conversetur.’ 84  Scc 40.4, OSB, v.2, p. 80: ‘Tu ergo qui haec audis, ut sane non otiose audias ea quae scripta sunt propter te, et nunc propter te versantur et disputantur, tu, inquam, si ad istiusmodi Spiritus sancti incitamenta moveris, et inardescis dare operam quomodo animam tuam facias sponsam Dei, stude ambas speciosas habere has genas tuae intentionis, ut, imitator castissimae volucris, sedeas, secundum prophetam, solitarius, quoniam levasti te supra te [Thren. III, 28].’ 85  On the term sedere, see Casey, Athirst for God, p.  294. He gives reference to three sermons where this topos appears: Scc 12.8, 23.16, and 48.8, ignoring the present sermon. This omission is of little relevance for our purpose, however, and Casey’s listings are generally somewhat incomplete.

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and being ‘above’ (supra) oneself, is subsequently elaborated by Bernard: ‘Surely it is well above you to be betrothed to the Lord of angels. Are you not above yourself when joined to God and become one spirit with him?’86 Bearing reference to i Cor 6. 17, ‘to join’ (adhaerere) and ‘to become one in spirit’ (unus spiritus esse) are among the abbot’s favoured phrases when indicating contemplation and mystical union.87 The theme of seclusion and withdrawal is pursued further in the following section: Sit therefore in solitude, like the turtle dove. Avoid the crowds, avoid the gathering of others. Forget even your people and your father’s house, and the king will desire your beauty [Ps 44. 11–12]. O saintly soul, remain alone, so you spare yourself for him alone — he whom you have chosen for yourself. Flee from people; flee even from members of your own household. Withdraw from your friends and your close ones, and even from those in your service. Do you not realize how shy the bridegroom is, and that he will never come to you in the presence of others? Withdraw, then, not physically but in your mind, in your intention, in your devotion, in your spirit.88

Notions of intimacy and clandestine amorous encounters, if not of betrothal or nuptials, assert themselves in the imagery of the chaste and solitary little bird who is content to devote herself entirely to her absent lover. With its undertones of desert asceticism and eremitism, the concept of solitude and withdrawal is a traditional one in monastic literature — to avoid gatherings and crowds, to flee from people, from one’s own family, friends, and loved ones. Yet, in Bernard’s treatment, the ever-present backdrop of erotic love provided by the Song gives the theme a narrative flavour reminiscent of the late ancient 86 

Scc 40.4, OSB, v.2, p. 80: ‘Omnino supra te, angelorum Domino desponsari; annon supra te, adhaerere Deo atque unum spiritum esse cum eo?’ 87  Adhaerere and inhaerere (‘adhere’, ‘join’) were central terms in Latin writings to denote union with God, and they appear throughout Bernard’s commentary. See McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 70, 136. On i Cor 1. 17 in Bernard’s Sermons, see Casey, Athirst for God, pp. 201–08; cf. McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 181. Equally important is the phrasing unus spiritus — the notion of becoming one spirit with the Lord — which not only supplies biblical foundation for the symbol of union (unus, unitas, or unio), but which also echoes biblical marriage symbolism of two becoming ‘one flesh’, una caro (Gen 2. 24). 88  Scc 40.4, OSB, v.2, p. 80: ‘Sede itaque solitarius, sicut turtur. Nihil tibi et turbis, nihil cum multitudine ceterorum; etiamque ipsum obliviscere populum tuum, et domum patris tui, et concupiscet rex decorem tuum [Psal. XILV, 11, 12]. O sancta anima, sola esto, ut soli omnium serves teipsam, quem ex omnibus tibi elegisti. Fuge publicum, fuge et ipsos domesticos; secede ab amicis et intimis, etiam et ab illo qui tibi ministrat. An nescis te verecundum habere sponsum, et qui nequaquam suam velit tibi indulgere praesentiam, praesentibus ceteris? Secede ergo, sed mente, non corpore; sed intentione, sed devotione, sed spiritu.’

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romance — the heroine caught between the conflicting loyalties of complying to her passion (which in the novels often converges with the higher goal of the well-being of the city state) and complying to a limited dynastic and familial interest — which was metamorphosed by Christian writers into the otherworldly passion of Christian saints and martyrs.89 The inverted ideology of eros, resisting civic authority and familial institutions — ultimately resisting the demand by society to accept the conjugal bed and a place in the social order — connects Bernard’s bride to ancient hagiography, particularly stories of female saints and martyrs refusing social and marital expectations and substituting them for another structure of desire. This aspect is reinforced in the current passage by the reappearance of Psalm 44, providing a faint allusion to nuptial fulfilment by the common exegetical coupling to the Song of Songs: ‘Forget even your people and your father’s house, and the king will desire your beauty’, the abbot cites (Ps 44. 11–12).90 Retreating from others, from family, friends, from the world, implies not only a dismissal of the world. It represents a redirection of desire, substituting worldly objects of desire for divine — a transferral which is mirrored by becoming, oneself, God’s own object of desire: he will ‘desire [concupiscet] your beauty’.91 The image of the turtle dove, with its theme of chaste reclusion, thus evolves into a notion of monastic withdrawal resonant of celibacy: the abbot advocating the saintly soul to remain alone, to spare itself for him alone. Yet this notion is, clearly, more spiritual than anatomical — to withdraw in ‘mind’ (mente), in ‘intention’ (intensione), in ‘devotion’ (devotione), in ‘spirit’ (spiritu). Persisting with the personalized, internalized hermeneutics manifest in the tu (you) who is being tutored to perform the part of the feathery female (the bird-bride), Bernard’s stress on inner seclusion reflects Cistercian devotional ideals, with their interest in the motivational and psychological element in devotion, as 89 

See Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride, pp. 37–39, 43–44, 54–55. The crux of Cooper’s argument is the rhetorical dimension in the parallelism between hagiography and romance in relation to their interest in passion and renewal of social order; see p. 55: ‘The challenge by the apostle to the householder is the urgent message of these narratives, and it is essentially a conflict between men. The challenge posed here by Christianity is not really about women, or even about sexual continence, but about authority and the social order. In this way, tales of continence uses [sic] the narrative momentum of romance, and the enticement of the romantic heroine, to mask a contest for authority, encoded in the contest between two pretenders to the heroine’s allegiance.’ 90  On Ps 44, see, e.g., Scc 7.2, Section 2.3 above. 91  On God’s desire, see Section 6.1 below.

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well as their cenobitic ideals which encouraged inner withdrawal while still participating in a monastic community.92 Monastic undertones emerge quite explicitly in the continuation of the passage, where Bernard states that ‘physical withdrawal can be of benefit when the opportunity offers, especially in time of prayer’.93 Prayer, the quintessential Benedictine activity, is directly associated with imitatio Christi: ‘to do this is to follow the advice and example of the bridegroom’.94 No longer imitating merely the turtle dove but the bridegroom himself, Bernard’s idealized monk appears gradually evermore elusive and disinterested.95 You are alone if you know nothing of common [gossip], if you are not affected by present things, if you despise that which many desire, if you disdain that that which everyone covets, if you avoid quarrels, disregard losses, forget insults. […] You are alone, however great the crowds that surround you, if you refrain from curiosity or judgement of other people’s conduct; even if you should discover misconduct, do not judge your neighbour but rather excuse him.96

Amplifying the monastic subtext, Bernard lists one of his principal attributes of monastic identity: to dispise and disdain what others desire (si despicias quod multi suspiciunt, si fastidias quod omnes desiderant).97 Ending the sermon, Bernard returns to the bride, again emphasizing her contemplative and monastic solitude: ‘The bride is free from these obligations; she lives for him whom she loves and for him alone, her bridegroom and Lord.’98 The contemplative life 92 

On the psychological elements in Cistercian devotion, see Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, trans. by Sebanc and Macierowski, ii, 150. On cenobitic ideals, see Casey, ‘In communi vita fratrum’. 93  Scc 40.4, OSB, v.2, p. 80: ‘interdum et corpore non otiose te separas, cum opportune potes, praesertim in tempore orationis’. 94  Scc 40.4, OSB, v.2, p. 80: ‘Tenes etiam in hoc et mandatum sponsi, et formam.’ 95  Withdrawal is here not only an ideal which is most fully expressed in the monastery, it is also an ideal to be followed in the monastery itself. Related to the present passage, is another — yet more explicit — call to inner withdrawal in the denouncement of monastic gossip and slander in Sermon 24 (see below Section 4.2). 96  Scc 40.5, OSB, v.2, p. 82: ‘Solus es, si non communia cogites, si non affectes praesentia, si despicias quod multi suspiciunt, si fastidias quod omnes desiderant, si iurgia devites, si damna non sentias, si non recorderis iniuriarum. […] Solus es in quantacumque hominum verseris frequentia: tantum cave alienae conversationis esse aut temerarius iudex, aut curiosus explorator. Etiamsi perperam actum quid deprehendas, nec sic iudices proximum, magis autem excusa.’ 97  This theme shall be further treated below; see Chapter 5, esp. Section 5.1. 98  Scc 40.5, OSB, v.2, p. 82: ‘A qua sane necessitate sponsa libera est, soli vivens sibi, et ipsi quem diligit sponso pariter et Domino suo.’

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is free from obligation and from duty. Indeed, the bride, like Mary, ‘lives alone’ (soli vivens sibi), without responsibility or authority. She is here portrayed as the opposite of the spiritual mother — but is she a virgin? While still preserving a notion of female celibacy, the categories of contemplation, inactivity, and withdrawal in the Sermons become related with the figure of the widow, that other sexually continent group which, alongside the virgins, had been idealized and spiritualized in patristic writing. Both groups, moreover, had been referred to in terms of ‘bride of Christ’.99 Yet Bernard’s construction of widowhood carries an ambiguity. On the one hand, it is related to the contemplative category, particularly to notions of inactivity, isolation, and desire; on the other hand, the widow is deprived of fruition and enjoyment, evoking instead notions of bereavement and desolation and of pilgrimage, toil, and deferral, and thus concepts related to earthly life and the active category. The image of widow emerges still more candidly in Sermon 59, where Bernard himself appears as a groaning, mourning turtle dove. In this treatment, the identification between the bride and the emerging figure of widow is assured indirectly — analogously to what we observed with the mother figure in Sermons 29 and 42.100 The direct identification is with the turtle dove, which in its turn is identified with the bride, as noted in Sermon 40.101 Parting from Song 2. 12 (‘the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land’), Bernard introduces concepts of mourning, loss, and exile: ‘With her voice more akin to mourning than to singing, she reminds us that we are pilgrims.’102 Invoking the opposition of exile versus homeland, so characteristic of Augustinian speculation, Bernard writes of the pre-Christian era: As long as men’s reward for worshipping God was only of the earth, even the earth that flows with milk and honey [Dt 6. 3], they failed to see themselves as pilgrims on earth, nor did they mourn like the turtle dove as if recalling their homeland.103 99  On the merging of widowhood and ascetic ideals in the early Church and the theme of widows as brides of Christ in i Tim 5, see Seim, The Double Message, esp. pp. 235–36, 238. 100  See above, Section 3.2. 101  See above, Section 2.7. 102  Scc 59.3, OSB, v.2, p. 294: ‘Et vox quidem gementi quam canenti similior, peregrinationis nostrae nos admonet.’ 103  Scc 59.4, OSB, v.2, p. 294: ‘Donec homines pro Dei cultu mercedem tantum in terra, et tantum terram acceperunt, illam utique lacte et melle manantem, minime se cognoverunt peregrinos super terram, nec more turturis ingemuerunt veluti patriae reminiscentes.’

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Instead, the abbot scorns, reminiscent of Augustine’s discussion of the journey (to be loved in uti-manner) and the homeland (to be loved in frui-manner): ‘They confused exile with homeland, pampering themselves with rich foods and drinking honeyed wine.’104 The era of the turtle dove began with Christ: When the promise of the kingdom of heaven became known, then men realized that they had no lasting city here, and they began seeking eagerly that future city. It was then that the voice of the turtle dove was first heard clearly in our land.105

Hitherto the longing represented by the voice of the turtle dove has been directed towards a location, a place: the ‘kingdom of heaven’ (regni caelorum), the ‘city which is to come’ (civitatem futuram), already identified as the ‘homeland’ (patriae). At this point, however, Bernard begins to fuse together kingdom and Christ as intertwined objects of saintly desire: Thenceforth the holy soul longed for the presence of Christ, painfully bearing the suspension of the kingdom and mournfully and sorrowfully saluting from afar the desired homeland. Does it not seem to you that any soul on earth affected in this way suffers like that mournful and chaste turtle dove? Thereafter the voice of the turtle dove was heard in our land. Why should the absence of Christ not move me to frequent tears and daily moaning? Lord, my every desire is before you, my moaning cannot be hidden from you [Ps 37. 10]. I was worn out with moaning, as you know, but happy is the man who can say: Every single night I cleaned my bed; with my tears I soaked my blanket [Ps 6. 7]. This moaning is evident not only in me but in all those who long for his coming. For this is what he himself said: Can the sons of the bridegroom mourn while the bridegroom is with them? But there will come a day when the bridegroom will be taken from them and then they will mourn [Mt 9. 15], as if he were saying: then the voice of the turtle dove will be heard.106 104 

Scc 59.4, OSB, v.2, p.  294: ‘Magis autem pro patria exsilio abutentes, dederunt se comedere pinguia, et bibere mulsum.’ Cf. Augustine, De doctrina christiana 1.3.3–1.4.4, cols 20–21. 105  Scc 59.4, OSB, v.2, p. 294: ‘Ubi ergo regni caelorum promissio facta est, tunc intellexerunt homines se non habere hic manentem civitatem, et futuram inquirere tota aviditate coeperunt; et tunc primum manifeste sonuit in terra vox turturis.’ 106  Scc 59.4, OSB, v.2, pp. 294–96: ‘Nam dum sancta quaeque iam anima Christi praesentiam suspiraret, regni dilationem moleste ferret, desideratam patriam gemitibus et suspiriis a longe salutaret: nonne tibi videtur vice fungi gemebundae ac castissimae turturis, quaecumque in terris anima ita fecisset? Ex tunc ergo et deinceps vox turturis audita est in terra nostra. Quidni moveat mihi crebras lacrimas et gemitus quotidianos Christi absentia? Domine, ante te omne desiderium meum, et gemitus meus a te non est absconditus [Psal. XXXVII, 10]. Laboravi in gemitu meo, tu scis; sed beatus, qui dicere potuit: Lavabo per singulas noctes lectum meum, lacrimis meis stratum

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With the arrival of Christ, desire took a new direction. Whereas men previously had ‘confused exile with homeland’ and given themselves to joyful partying (stuffing themselves on ‘rich foods’ and ‘honeyed wines’), the new dispensation is characterized by an ambivalent longing caused by the loss of Christ’s presence and the expectation of his return. The realization of this desire is suspended in the dialectics of presence (he has come and will come again) and absence (the intermittent grief and longing) — expressed in the conjunction of ‘presence of Christ’ (Christi praesentiam) and ‘absence of Christ’ (Christi absentia) in the same passage. ‘Longing’ (suspiraret), even ‘painfully’ so (moleste), the saintly soul suffers, cries, sighs, and moans. Indeed, as Bernard proceeds the moaning mounts until it is turned into fullfledged mourning: expressed by the verb lugere and its conjugation lugebunt in the quotation from Matthew. The rhetorical temperature, along with the flood of tears, rises at the very moment when Bernard’s ego enters the exposition. Once again reaffirming himself as protagonist of his own hermeneutics, the abbot sobs: ‘Why should the absence of Christ not move me to frequent tears and daily moaning?’ His rhetorical question is deftly answered by a conjoining of the two verses from Psalms which marks him as one of the select. Identifying himself with the copiously (not to say excessively) crying personage, Bernard reinscribes him(self ) as the ‘happy man’ (beatus): ‘happy’, we may presume, because all this gasping grief shall one day be replaced by jubilant joy, not unlike in Sermon 3 with its inversion of beata and misera.107 In fact, in Sermon 37 this reversal of sorrow and joy is quite explicit: The seeds are good deeds, good work; the seeds are tears. They went forth, it is written, and they wept while they sowed their seeds. But why? Will they always weep? Certainly not! Rather, they shall come exalting, bearing their bundles [Ps 125. 6]. Rightly do they exalt, for they carry bundles of glory. But to this you respond: that is for the resurrection and the new day, and it is certainly a long time to wait.108 meum rigabo [Psal. VI, 7]. Non solum autem mihi, sed et omnibus qui diligunt adventum eius, gemitus isti comperti sunt. Hoc quippe est quod ipse aiebat. Numquid possunt, inquit, filii sponsi lugere, quamdiu cum illis est sponsus? Venient autem dies, cum auferetur ab eis sponsus, et tunc lugebunt [Matth. IX, 15]; ac si diceret: Et tunc vox turturis audietur.’ 107  See Scc 3.2 above, Section 2.3. 108  Scc 37.2, OSB, v.2, p. 48: ‘Semina sunt bona opera, bona studia, semina lacrymae sunt. Ibant, inquit, et flebant, mittentes semina sua. Sed quid? Semper flebunt? Absit. Sed venient cum exsultatione portantes manipulos suos [Psal. CXXV, 6]. Merito cum exsultatione, cum reportant manipulos gloriae. Ad istud, inquis, in resurrectione in novissimo die, et est nimis longa exspectatio.’

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A few sections later in the same sermon, Bernard returns to Psalm 125 with its opposition of exaltation and weeping: O how true the words we read in the Prophet: Those who sow tears shall reap exaltation [Ps 125. 5]! Here are both kinds of knowledge comprehended: [knowledge] of ourselves in the sowing of tears, and of God in the reaping of joy.109

Aligning tears with ‘good deeds’ and ‘good work’ (bona opera, bona studia), Bernard effectively associates them with the active life. The opposition of sowing/weeping and reaping/rejoicing, then, are resonant of the active-contemplative opposition. As weeping indicates the active life, so eschatological exaltation is indicant of the reward given in merit. More than a general sign of the human condition, then, these tears are the sign of the elect. A crying man who will become a happy man, Bernard unleashes a flood of tears of his own in the Sermons.110 ‘I can hardly contain my tears,’ he commences his second sermon; and so he continues, ‘not without tears I speak,’ and again, ‘I speak in tears.’111 In the tear-stained Sermon 26 he reaches a point of virtual ineffability as he gives himself over to a verbal outburst of tears.112 ‘Flow on, flow on, my tears,’ he addresses his own tears, ‘so long on the point of brimming over, flow on. […] Open the flood-gates of my miserable head and let the well of water

109 

Scc 37.4, OSB, v.2, p. 50: ‘O quam verus est sermo qui in Propheta legitur: Qui seminant in lacrimis, in exsultatione metent [Psal. CXXV, 5]! Ubi breviter comprehensa utraque cognitio est: et nostri quidem in lacrimis serens, quae autem Dei metens in gaudio.’ 110  In addition to the ensuing examples, see also Scc 14.6, OSB, v.1, p. 186: ‘et fluebant aquae, et erant mihi lacrimae illae panes die ac nocte’ (and waters flowed, and my tears were my food day and night); Scc 15.6, OSB, v.1, p. 200: ‘Cui fons forte siccatus lacrimarum, invocato Iesu, non continuo erupit uberior, fluxit suavior?’ (This dried-out fount of tears: will it not burst forth again with sweeter abundance at the invocation of Jesus’s name?); Scc 16.4, OSB, v.1, p. 212: ‘Exitus aquarum deducite, oculi mei’ (O eyes of mine, let the waters burst forth); Scc 16.7, OSB, v.1, p. 214: ‘Quis dabit capiti meo aquam, et oculis meis fontem lacrimarum [Ierem. IX, 1], ut praeveniam fletibus fletum’ (Who will give water to my head and a spring of tears to my eyes [ Jer 9. 1], that I may forestall weeping by weeping?); Scc 33.7, OSB, v.1, p. 494: ‘manducavi panem doloris et vinum compunctionis bibi, et factae sunt mihi lacrimae meae panes die ac nocte [Psal. 126.2, 59.5, 41.4]’ (I have eaten the bread of pain and drunk the wine of compunction, and my tears have been my food day and night [Ps 126. 2, 59. 5, 41. 4]). 111  Scc 2.1, OSB, v.1, p. 42: ‘nunc vix contineo lacrimas’; Scc 22.3, OSB, v.1, p. 288: ‘quod sine lacrimis non loquor’; Scc 50.8, OSB, v.2, p. 194: ‘Quod flens dico’. See also Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought, pp. 194–95. 112  Sermon 26 is discussed below, see Sections 5.4 and 6.3.

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burst forth.’113 This sermon — the sermon dedicated to the death of his brother throughout which Bernard has been sobbing ceaselessly — ends, obviously, in tears: tears taking over for words, tears which Bernard pleas might be brought to an end while, in fact, it is the sermon being brought to its end: ‘These tears impose the end of words; impose a limit on them, o Lord, bring them to an end.’114 Thus stopping short the sermon, uncharacteristically, without the concluding amen, Bernard instead ends the sermon in tears, or perhaps with the end of tears; indeed, it is a sober and dry-eyed abbot who commences the subsequent sermon.115 We may note the intimate relation which the abbot establishes between tears and words, between weeping and speaking: quod sine lacrimis non loquor (Scc 22.3), quod flens dico (Scc 50.8). Again interrelating speaking and weeping, Bernard parallels the control — that is, absence — of tears and the absence of words: ‘I could control my tears but not my sadness, like it is written, I was troubled, and I did not speak [Ps 76. 5].’116 Thus having established a metonymical connection between speaking and weeping, a further association is induced: between weeping and preaching. For if tears are liquid words — like milk — they very much resemble Bernard’s notion of lactation: the liquid distribution of caritas in the form of well-springs gushing forth from the bride. Once more drawing on the opposition of fertility and sterility discussed previously, which was explicitly linked to sacramental themes and to concepts of bridal (maternal) fruitfulness,117 Bernard queries in Sermon 30: ‘Will a flood of tears be enough to fertilize the barrenness of my soul [Ps 34. 12]? […] Hence I ask: what amount of tears will irrigate the barrenness of my vineyard?’118 113 

Scc 26.8, OSB, v.1, p.  374: ‘Exite, exite, lacrimae iampridem cupientes; exite […]. Aperiantur cataractae miseri capitis, et erumpant fontes aquarum’; cf. Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought, p. 173. 114  Scc 26.14, OSB, v.1, p. 382: ‘Finem verborum indicunt lacrimae; tu illis, Domine, finem modumque indixeris.’ 115  Bernard’s habit to end every sermon with an amen is firmly established only after the tenth sermon. Neither Scc 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, nor 10 end in amen, but from there on, Sermon 26 is the only exception to the rule — apart from the final and unfinished Sermon 86. On weeping and tears in Bernard’s writing, see also McGuire, The Difficult Saint, pp. 133–51, esp. p. 144, where he states that Bernard’s ‘tears of human loss could become an expression of faith, hope, and love’. 116  Scc 26.3, OSB, v.1, p. 364: ‘Nec potui imperare tristitiae, qui potui lacrimae, sed, ut scriptum est: Turbatus sum, et non sum locutus [Psal. LXXVI, 5].’ 117  See above, Section 2.4. 118  Scc 30.7, OSB, v.1, p. 446: ‘Quo imbre lacrimarum perfundere sufficiam sterilitatem animae meae? [Psal. XXXIV, 12.] […] Quibus ergo lacrimis rigabo sterilitatem vineae meae?’

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The wetness of the weeping widow is analogous to the wetness of the lactating mother: a fertile, feminine contrast to dryness, or barrenness.119 Appropriating all this fecund wetness, the preaching abbot merges himself into the two female types, flens and lactans. Returning yet again to Sermon 59, where our discussion on the theme of tears began, this gender perspective sheds light on the image of the weeping Bernard in the cited passage (Scc 59.4). Tears of longing and grief rather than tears of repentance, this weeping nevertheless recalls the wailing females of Sermon 3.120 An incontinent (hysterical) flow of tears intertextually invokes other female figures as well, not least Monica, mother of Augustine, as portrayed by her son in Confessiones: a mother who is, ‘metonymically defined by her tears’, tears which, furthermore, mark the son’s salvational turning point.121 Monica, wailing and weeping (ubertim flendo), receives assurance of her son’s salvation from the bishop: ‘It cannot be that the son of all these tears should be lost.’122 Tears might be fecund, too, as Bernard just pointed out. Significantly, all the wetness and humidity of this excessive sorrow is fundamentally and metaphysically female (as opposed to the dry male), and not merely coincidental or merely conditioned by the explicit femaleness of the moaning turtle dove.123 In the present context the concept of wetness and femaleness is related to a state of unfulfilled desire, of postponed promises, abandonment, inadequacy, and desolation — a theme which, moreover, has been prepared by the image of the little widowed bird. Evocatively, in the final section of the passage under consideration in Sermon 59, bereavement is represented in imagery referring to a wedding banquet (with biblical allusion to Mt 9. 15): a wedding banquet which seems to metamorphose into a funerary banquet as the participants, ‘the sons of the bridegroom’ (filii sponsi), are turned into ‘mourners’ (lugebunt) when the bridegroom is ‘taken from them’ 119 

On fertility and fecundation, see also Section 6.3 below. See Section 2.3 above. 121  Burrus, The Sex Lives of Saints, p. 83; cf. her intertextual reading of Augustine and the French feminist philosopher and poet Hélène Cixous, pp. 76–77, referring to ‘a new beginning’, conceived by female tears. 122  Augustine, Confessiones 3.12, col. 692: ‘Non potest ut filius istarum lacrymarum pereat.’ See Atkinson’s observation in The Oldest Vocation, p. 76: ‘Augustine shared the contemporary belief that moral or spiritual qualities were ingested with the milk of mother or nurse. Monica’s milk, and her tears, kept him afloat in the “hissing cauldron of lust” in which he spent his recalcitrant adolescence.’ 123  See Section 1.5 above; cf. Scc 74, Section 4.5 below. 120 

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(auferetur). And yet, considering our intertextual reading of the passage from Sermon 37, where Bernard reversed weeping and exaltation, one may ask: will not mourning be replaced by joy? Shall not the grieving (virginal, bridal) widow once again be reunited with her bridegroom? And again: shall not also wet become dry (and female become male?) as tears give over to rejoicing? Concluding his extended associations with the transition from aspiring bride — and aspiring turtle dove — to aspiring son, Bernard states: ‘And we ourselves moan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons of God, for the redemption of our bodies [Rom 8. 23], knowing that as long as we are in this body, we are pilgrims away from the Lord.’124 Thus the wet, profusely leaking (fleshly, female) body — the body of estrangement and of separation — shall be exchanged for the dry, redeemed body of a son, indeed, of the Son: a ‘body of humility’ transformed into ‘his body of splendour’.125 Elusively appearing, disappearing, and reappearing from Sermons 40 to 59 (esp. Scc 40, 47, 48, 52, and 59), the theme of celibacy surfaces decisively in the final section dealing with the turtle dove. As the theme unfolds, the turtle dove becomes an image of chastity, as it is related to the two major categories of celibate females: widows and virgins. Bernard opens the long passage (Scc 59.7–8) commending the bird’s chastity, aligning it with widowhood: The turtle dove is not merely commended for her mourning but also for her chastity. On this merit it was worthy to be offered in sacrifice at the virginal birth. For you read, a pair of turtle doves, or two young doves [Lk 2. 24]. And although elsewhere the Holy Spirit is usually designated by the dove, yet because the dove is a lustful [libidinosa] bird it is not fit to be offered in sacrifice to the Lord unless of a young age and ignorant of lust [libidinem]. But no age is given for the turtle dove as her chastity is renowned in any age. For she is content with one mate; if she loses him she does not take another, thus arguing against the numerous marriages of man. Even if it may well be a forgivable culpability, done for the sake of [containing] incontinence, still this incontinence [that demands containing] is shameful. It is disgraceful that reason cannot achieve in man the honourability that nature achieves in a bird.126 124 

Scc 59.5, OSB, v.2, p. 296: ‘Et nos ipsi intra nos gemimus, adoptionem filiorum Dei exspectantes, redemptionem corporis nostri [Rom. VIII, 22, 23]: hoc scientes, quia quanmdiu sumus in corpore hoc, peregrinamur a Domino [II Cor V, 1–6].’ 125  See Scc 47.7, above Section 3.3. 126  Scc 59.7, OSB, v.2, p. 298: ‘Nec soli commendant turturem gemitus: commendat et castitas. Huius denique merito digna fuit dari hostia pro virgineo partu. Sic quippe habes: Par turturum aut duos pullos columbarum [Luc. II, 24]. Et licet alias quidem per columbam Spiritus sanctus soleat designari, quia tamen libidinosa avis est, non decuit offerri eam in sacrificium

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Repeating the characterization of the turtle dove as ‘content with one mate, if she loses him she does not take another’ (cf. Scc 40.4), Bernard returns to notions of seclusion and withdrawal with undertones of contemplation from his earlier treatment. Yet here the theme of celibacy resounds more strongly. Construing the turtle dove as an image of ‘chastity’ (castitas), in opposition to the lustful dove (libidinosa, libidinem), the abbot associates it (‘her’ in Latin) directly with the virgin birth.127 The subtext of widowhood, however, emerges as the oppositional pair of chaste turtle dove versus lustful dove gives way to the opposition of chaste turtle dove versus incontinent homo. Man’s tendency to remarry, states the abbot indignantly, is disproved by that little bird’s continence. Continuing, Bernard transforms the bird into the idealized image of the widow: During her widowhood you may see the turtle dove as she tirelessly and strenuously fulfils the duty of holy widowhood. You see her everywhere alone, you hear her always mourning. You never see her perched on a green branch, so you might learn to avoid the green poison of sensuous delights. Instead she dwells on mountain peaks and in tree tops, so you might learn from her example of chastity that we ought to despise what is worldly and love what is heavenly.128

As with virginity, widowhood had also been constrained by the patristic writers to be distinguished as a spiritual condition — not merely a physical condition Domini, nisi ea sane aetate quae nesciret libidinem. At turturis non designatur aetas, quoniam agnoscitur castitas in quacumque aetate. Denique compare uno contenta est; quo amisso, alterum iam non admittit, numerositatem in hominibus nuptiarum redarguens. Nam etsi forsitan culpa propter incontinentiam venialis est, ipsa tamen tanta incontinentia turpis est. Pudet ad negotium honestatis rationem non posse in homine, quod natura possit in volucre.’ 127  ‘Chastity’ (castitas) was more than sexual abstinence because it established identity, argues Karras, ‘Thomas Aquinas’s Chastity Belt’. It was expressed by men and women alike, with different emphases, but a central notion in both cases was struggle and divine assistance. On virginity in relation to chastity, see also Kelly, Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity, p. 3, who underscores the instability and negotiability of the two terms: ‘Depending on the context, the patristic authors and their later commentators who use the terms castitas and virginitas may be referring either to one’s never having experienced coitus (that is a “virgin” in one, purely physical sense); or to an individual’s commitment to the celibate religious life (regardless of whether that individual was single, married, or widowed); or to sexual faithfulness in monogamous marriage.’ 128  Scc 59.7, OSB, v.2, pp.  298–300: ‘Cernere est turturem, tempore suae viduitatis, sanctae viduitatis opus strenue atque infatigabiliter exsequentem. Videas ubique singularem, ubique gementem audias; nec unquam in viridi ramo residentem prospicies, ut tu ab eo discas voluptatum virentia virulenta vitare. Adde quod in iugis montium et in summitatibus arborum frequentior illi conversatio est, ut, quod vel maxime propositum pudicitiae decet, doceat nos terrena despicere, et amare caelestia.’

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of sexual abstinence.129 Ambrose, in De viduis (‘On Widows’), writes: ‘There is no praise simply in widowhood, only if the virtues of widowhood are added’;130 and again, ‘A widow is not only marked off by bodily abstinence, but is distinguished by virtue.’131 Bernard’s reading, like Ambrose’s, stresses the ‘duty of widowhood’ (sanctae viduitatis opus), and, particularly, its function as an example of chastity: ‘so you might learn’ (discas, doceat) to ‘avoid the green poison of sensuous delights’ (voluptatum virentia virulenta vitare), to ‘despise what is worldly and to love what is heavenly’ (terrena despicere, et amare caelestia).132 Echoing with the Latin term for widowhood, viduitatis — and also the related theme of virtus (stressed in Ambrose’s treatment) — the initial syllable viunderscores Bernard’s theme by rhythmic alliteration: videas, viridi, virentia, virulenta, vitare. Diverting from the reading of Ambrose, however, Bernard interprets the duty of widowhood as consisting of remaining in solitude and in mourning rather than in specific devotional observances. His identification of chaste widowhood with world renunciation and lofty desire is a further confirmation of this. Significantly, the exposition of virtues relating to the active life, which are in the forefront in Ambrose’s reading (and also in Jerome’s), finds little resonance in Bernard’s text.133 These divergent constructions of widowhood suggest that the figure of the widow in Bernard’s Sermons is more closely linked to the 129 

For discussion, see Cloke, ‘This Female Man of God’, pp. 82–99. Ambrose, De viduis 3, col. 235C (trans. by Romestin, p. 673): ‘Sed non simplex viduitatis laus est, nisi virtus etiam viduitatis accedat.’ 131  Ambrose, De viduis 7, cols 236–237 (trans. by Romestin, p. 674): ‘Ergo vidua non abstinentia corporis tantum definitur, sed virtute designatur.’ 132  Cf. Ambrose’s treatment of the widow Anna as an example of chastity in De viduis 21, col. 241B. 133  Compare Ambrose, De viduis 11, col. 238AB, which lists the virtues of widowhood as, firstly, piety; secondly, hospitality and humble service; thirdly, compassion and assistance; and, lastly, good deeds (‘primum, pietatis officium: secundum, hospitalitatis studium, et humilitatis obsequium: tertium, misericordiae ministerium, liberalitatisque subsidium: ad summam omnis exsecutionem boni operis flagitavit’). Compare also Jerome’s letter to the widow Furia, Ep 54.12, col. 556: ‘Intellige super egenum et pauperem [Psal. 40]. Omni petenti te, da; sed maxime domesticis fidei: nudum vesti, esurientem ciba, aegrotantem visita [Luc. 6]. Quotiescumque manum extendis, Christum cogita. Cave ne, mendicante Domino Deo tuo, alienas divitias augeas’ (trans. by Freemantle, p. 278: ‘Consider the poor and needy. Give to everyone that asks of you, but especially unto them who are of the household of faith. Clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the sick. Every time that you hold out your hand, think of Christ. See to it that you do not, when the Lord your God asks an alms of you, increase riches which are none of His’). 130 

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figure of the virgin and the contemplative-anagogic level, with its subtext of withdrawal and recluse and its allusion to monastic life. Underscoring the close relation between these two classes of celibate females, not only as idealized figures of celibacy but as figures of celestial desire and contemplative withdrawal, they represent figurae of inverted desire in Bernard’s text. There is, however, a construction of widowhood which comes close to Bernard’s own. Augustine’s representation of the widow in Epistola 130 not only displays a similar tendency towards contemplative references but, significantly, also displays a tendency towards spiritualization, particularly in his treatment of the association between widowhood and prayer (cf. Lk 2. 36–38; i Tim 5. 5). Augustine, in the current letter, is addressing the widow Proba, but the claim for widowhood is universal: everyone on earth, bereaved of Christ, is ultimately ‘Christ’s widow’: But what makes this task [prayer] especially suitable for widows if not their bereaved and desolate condition? Whichever soul, then, who understands that it in this world is bereaved and desolate as long as it is a pilgrim away from the Lord, commends its widowhood to God as protection in continual and most fervent prayer. Pray, therefore, as widow of Christ [vidua Christi], not yet seeing him whose help you implore.134

Augustine’s notion of the saintly soul as Christ’s widow echoes in Bernard’s construction of the bride. Furthermore, this condition of widowhood — the saintly soul languoring in Christ’s absence — reflects the figure of the bride as Church, historically and temporally suspended between the Crucifixion and the Last Judgement. Thus in Sermon 73 Bernard identifies the grieving apostles as widows:

For the rest, Jerome, characteristically, tutors Furia on what to eat and drink, how to dress, what company to keep, etc. 134  Augustine, Ep 130.30, col. 506 (modifying trans. by Cunningham, p. 1014): ‘Quid autem in hoc operis genere in viduis electum est, nisi destitutio et desolatio? Quapropter si se omnis anima intelligat in hoc saeculo destitutam atque desolatam, quamdiu peregrinatur a Domino, profecto quamdam viduitatem suam Deo defensori assidua et impensissima precatione commendat. Ora ergo ut vidua Christi, nondum habens ejus conspectum, cujus precaris auxilium.’ To emphasize the point that Augustine is making, that being Christ’s widow is gender neutral, i.e., for both men and women, I follow the English commonplace of referring to the ‘soul’ as ‘it’ instead of using feminine pronouns (following the Latin anima) as I normally do elswhere.

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If we consider the hour when the Lord Jesus — for he is the bridegroom — passed from this world to the Father [ Jn 13. 1], and of how this must have affected the household of the Church, his newly-wedded bride who realized she was deserted like a widow bereft of her only hope — I mean the apostles who had left everything to be with him and had remained with him even in his trials — if, I say, we consider this, I do not think it is without good reason that she seems so inconsolably sad, and so anxious for his return, when she is thus afflicted [affecta] and thus forsaken [relicta].135

It has been pointed out that the order of widows went into decline in the western Church towards the end of the fourth century, a victim of its own ambiguity, as its contemplative aspect was effectively given highest expression by the virgins, and its active aspect was held in dubious regard until it was finally absorbed into the office of the deaconess.136 In the twelfth century, however, the theme of widowhood, although no longer existing as a separate ecclesiastical category, could be recovered and recycled as spiritualized ideal. Dismissing the earlier monastic practice of child oblates, the Cistercian decision to accept only adults into their monasteries entailed an understanding of conversion as an individual and not a familial choice.137 More importantly still for our concerns, it implied that idealized identification with virginity was slightly more complicated, seeing that Cistercian monks were adults with a secular past, sometimes with families of their own, before their entry into the cloister — rather than child monks reared in the monastery as in older Benedictine institutions. For the Cistercian the ideal of celibacy was perhaps more adequately expressed by themes connected with the figure of the widow then that of the virgin. A more ambivalent and less perfect figure than the virgin, the widow may function as a trope of humility as well as continence. Associations between virginity and superbia were theological side-effects of the eulogizations of virginity in patristic writing, and the theme prevailed forcefully in the twelfth century.138 135  Scc 73.3, OSB, v.2, p. 478: ‘Et si in mentem venerit hora illa, cum Dominus Iesus — is enim sponsus est — transiret ex hoc mundo ad Patrem [ Joan. XIII, 1], simulque quid tunc animi gereret sua illa domestica Ecclesia, nova utique nupta, cum se deseri cerneret quasi viduam desolatam unica spe sua — Apostolos loquor, qui, relictis omnibus secuti fuerant eum, atque cum ipso permanserant in tentationibus suis —, si haec, inquam, cogitaverimus, non immerito neque incongrue, puto, videbitur quantum de abscessu tristis, tantum sollicita exstitisse de reditu, praesertim sic affecta, et sic relicta.’ 136  See Cloke, ‘This Female Man of God’, pp. 90–91. 137  Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 23–24. 138  On the association between viriginity and superbia, see Cloke, ‘This Female Man of God’,

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Spiritual writers invoked the most exalted rhetoric in letters and treatises on virginity; but then, observes Barbara Newman, ‘fearing that their own praise may induce a kind of giddiness, they compensate with the warning that a humble widow or wife is better than a proud virgin’.139 In being the most sublime and perfect of female types, the virgin transmitted themes of exaltation, not of lowliness and humility. In fact, Bernard’s own youthful treatise to the Virgin Mary treats the theme of Mary’s virginity by juxtaposing it with her humility as a quasi-paradoxical simultaneousness. Addressing the devotee, the young Bernard advises him on the supremacy of humility: You hear of the virgin; you hear of the humble. If you cannot imitate the virginity of the humble, imitate rather the humility of the virgin. Virginity is a laudable virtue but humility is more necessary. The former is advised, the latter is required. To the former you are invited, to the latter you are obliged. […] Therefore the former will be rewarded, the latter is demanded. You may be saved without virginity but not without humility.140

Moreover, themes which could evoke notions of widowhood — particularly exile, loss, and longing — resounded with the Cistercian interpretation of devotion and conversion. While still relevant to notions of withdrawal, recluse, and contemplation, the concept of virginity was less adapted to express the specific theme of deprivation and destitution which was so central to Bernardine

pp. 60–61; see also above, Section 1.4. Note Augustine’s warning to virgins not to believe that the gift of chastity comes from themselves, Ep 188.5, col. 850: ‘Cernis nempe quanta in his verbis sit cavenda pernicies. Nam utique quod dictum est, Non possunt esse ista bona nisi in te, optime et verissime dictum est; iste plane cibus est: quod vero ait, nonnisi ex te, hoc omnino virus est. Absit ut haec libenter audiat virgo Christi, quae pie intelligit propriam paupertatem cordis humani, et ideo illic nisi sponsi sui donis nescit ornari’ (trans. by Cunningham, p. 1171: ‘You see, doubtless, how dangerous is the doctrine in these words, against which you must be on your guard. For the affirmation, indeed, that these spiritual riches can exist only in yourself, is very well and truly said: that evidently is food; but the affirmation that they cannot exist except from you is unmixed poison. Far be it from any virgin of Christ willingly to listen to statements like these. Every virgin of Christ understands the innate poverty of the human heart, and therefore declines to have it adorned otherwise than by the gifts of her Spouse’). 139  Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, p.  29. For further references, see pp. 28–34. 140  In laudibus 1.5, col. 58A: ‘Audis virginem, audis humilem: si non potes virginitatem humilis, imitare humilitatem virginis. Laudabilis virtus virginitas, sed magis necessaria humilitas. Illa consulitur, ista praecipitur. Ad illam invitaris, ad istam cogeris. […] Illa ergo remuneratur, ista exigitur. Potes denique sine virginitate salvari; sine humilitate non potes.’

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and Cistercian devotion, poignantly expressed by Augustine in the image of all Christians as, in a sense, widows of Christ (vidua Christi). Widowhood also contained a similar reference as virginity regarding the patristic theme of renouncing social and familial ties while concurrently spiritualizing them, a theme resumed by the Cistercian movement in their stress on the personal and individual process of conversion.141 In his letter to the widow Furia (Ep. 54), Jerome applies imagery from Psalm 44 and the Song of Songs in order to invert family relations — acquiring divine family ties while rejecting those of the world: Great is the reward offered for the forgetting of a parent, the king shall desire your beauty [Ps 44. 11]. For you have heard, you have seen, you have inclined your ear, and you have forgotten your people and your father’s house. Therefore the king shall desire your beauty and shall say to you: You are all fair, my love; there is no spot in you [Song 4. 7]. What can be fairer than a soul which is called the daughter of God, and which seeks for herself no outward adorning? She believes in Christ, and, enriched with this hope of greatness proceeds to her bridegroom, to him who is both her Lord and her spouse.142

Here the central image is from Psalm 44, to ‘forget your people and your father’s house’ so the ‘king will desire your beauty’, which resounds with the intertextual reference to the Song and with bridal imagery. These notions, which appear as part of a discourse on widowhood in Jerome’s letter, resurface in Bernardine and Cistercian writing in a monastic context. Bernard, on addressing the novice Hugh (Ep. 322), elaborates on the monastic ideal of departing from one’s worldly family by an intertextual reference to Jerome’s admonishments to Heliodorus, a failed desert ascetic (Ep. 14). In the course of the letter the dual emphasis of renunciation and spiritualization is not only picked up by Bernard but reinforced. Citing Micah 7. 6, Bernard launches a favoured Cistercian theme, namely the worldly family as irrelevant, even an enemy: ‘But a man’s own household is his enemy [Mi 7. 6]. They are those who 141  For the theme of replacing and spiritualizing family ties in Cistercian literature, see Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, pp. 129, 145–46. See also Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation, pp. 19, 76. 142  Ep 54.3, col. 551 (modifying the translation by Freemantle, p. 272: ‘Grande praemium parentis obliti: Concupiscet rex decorem tuum. Quia audisti, quia vidisti, quia inclinasti aurem tuam; et populi tui, domusque patris tui oblita es, idcirco concupiscet rex decorem tuum, et dicet tibi: Tota pulchra es amica mea, et macula non est in te [Cant. 4. 7]. Quid pulchrius anima, quae Dei filia nuncupatur, et nullos extrinsecus quaerit ornatus? [Mss. amplexus.] Credit in Christum, et hac ambitione ditata pergit ad sponsum: eumdem habens Dominum, quem et virum.’

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love not you but rather the joy they can obtain from you.’143 Emphasizing the need to reject family members — the need for pious cruelty — he paraphrases Jerome: Even if your father should lie prostrate at the door, if your mother should bare her nude breast from which she nursed you, if your little nephew should cling to your neck, move on, trampling over your father, proceed, stepping over your mother, and flee with dry eyes fixed on the cross. In these things is the height of piety to be cruel for Christ’s sake.144

Bernard, however, has some rather cruel advice of his own in urging the youthful convert to disregard his own family: ‘Do not be moved by the tears of the demented, those who weep because from being a child of Hell you have become a child of God.’145 Using the very same argument as when he addresses a male, urging him to remain a monk (Ep. 14 to Heliodorus), Jerome addresses a female (Ep. 54 to Furia), urging her to remain a widow: in both cases stressing the necessity to free oneself from one’s ‘worldly’ family. There is, however, a principal rhetorical difference between monkhood and widowhood in Jerome’s usage. He applies nuptial imagery only to the female, not to the male. Bernard, on the other hand, has no such hesitations. A close reading of the turtle dove passages (Scc 40 and 59) displays a subtle identification of Bernard as mournful widow of Christ, waiting for the return of the bridegroom and the ultimate transformation from tears to bliss: first widow, then bride, paralleling a related process of transformation; first mother, then virgin.146 143  Ep 322.2, col. 527C (The Letters, ed. and trans. by James, letter 378, p. 449): ‘Sed inimici hominis domestici ejus [Michaeae VII, 6]. Ipsi sunt qui non te diligunt, sed gaudium suum ex te.’ 144  Ep 322.2, col.  527C (The Letters, ed. and trans. by James, letter 378, p.  449): ‘Si prostratus, ait beatus Hieronymus, jaceat in limine pater, si nudato sinu, quibus te lactavit, ubera mater ostendat, si parvulus a collo pendeat nepos; per calcatum transi patrem, per calcatam perge matrem, et siccis oculis ad vexillum crucis evola. Summum pietatis est genus, in hac parte pro Christo esse crudelem [Hieron. Epist. 1, ad Heliodorum].’ Cf. the similar wording in Jerome’s Ep 14: Ad Heliodorum, col. 348: ‘Licet parvulus ex collo pendeat nepos, licet sparso crine et scissis vestibus, ubera quibus te nutrierat, mater ostendat, licet in limine pater jaceat, per calcatum perge patrem, siccis oculis ad vexillum crucis evola. SOLUM PIETATIS genus est, in hac re esse crudelem.’ Note that the figure of the mother is enhanced in Bernard’s treatment as she, along with the father, is represented as prostrate and trampled on whereas Jerome’s text only has the father figure. 145  Ep 322.2, col.  527C (The Letters, ed. and trans. by James, letter 378, p.  449): ‘Phreneticorum lacrymis ne movearis, qui te plangunt de gehennae filio factum filium Dei.’ 146  See below, Section 5.3.

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3.5 Ascetic Bride: Fecundity and Celibacy In Bernard’s final treatment of the image of the turtle dove in Sermon 59, the theme of sexual continence moves from widowhood back to virginity. Guided by two prominent ascetic tropes, ‘angels’ (Lk 20. 36) and ‘eunuchs’ (Mt 19. 12),147 Bernard links celibacy and virginity, emphasizing the new dispensation: One may conclude from this that the voice of the turtle dove is also the preaching of chastity. Yet in the beginning this voice was not heard on the earth, but instead that other: Grow, and multiply, and fill the earth [Gen 1. 28]. Indeed the sounding of the voice of chastity would have been futile before the homeland of the resurrected had opened up: that homeland where far happier men neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like God’s angels in heaven [Lk 20. 35–36]. Would you say then was the time for that voice, when every barren Israelite lay under a curse, when the Patriarchs themselves had many wives simultaneously, when a brother was compelled by law to provide semen for a dead brother who was without children? But when that commendation in praise of eunuchs who castrated themselves for the kingdom of God [Mt 19. 12] sounded from the mouth of the celestial turtle dove, and when the counsel on virginity from another very chaste turtle dove everywhere prevailed [i Cor 7. 25], then for the first time it could truly be said that the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land.148

Again reaching back to the authoritative teaching on virginity in patristic theory, Bernard echoes the notion of virgins as earthly counterparts of angels. Strikingly, there is no female identification in this treatment of virginity. In fact, the ‘voice of the turtle dove’, that is, the preaching of virginity and hence the bird itself is identified with two males, Matthew and Paul (by the references 147  On celibacy/asceticism in Luke, see Seim, ‘Children of the Resurrection’, esp. p. 116. On allegorical interpretations of the eunuch in Matthew, see Taylor, Castration: An Abbreviated History, pp. 67–73, 190–97, 199, 205–06. 148  Scc 59.8, OSB, v.2, p. 300: ‘Ex quibus colligitur, quod vox sit turturis etiam praedicatio castitatis. Neque enim a principio vox ista in terris audita fuit, sed magis illa: Crescite et multiplicamini, et replete terram [Gen I, 28]. Incassum profecto vox illa pudicitiae sonuisset, necdum propalata resurgentium patria, in qua longe felicius homines neque nubent, neque nubentur, sed sunt sicut angeli Dei in caelis [Luc. XX, 35, 36]. Tunc voci illi tempus fuisse tunc dicas, cum maledicto omnis subiacebat sterilis in Israel, cum Patriarchae ipsi plures simul habebant uxores, cum frater fratris absque liberis defuncti semen suscitare ex lege compellebatur? At ubi insonuit ex ore caelestis turturis commendatio illa spadonum, qui se castraverunt propter regnum Dei [Matth. XIX, 12], et item alterius cuiusdam castissimae turturis consilium de virginibus ubique invaluit [I Cor VII, 25], tunc primum dici veraciter potuit, quia vox turturis audita est in terra nostra.’

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to Mt 19. 12 and i Cor 7. 25). The passage, then, neither constructs celibacy as idealized femaleness nor provides any distinctive theme of desire, recalling an earlier observation: erotic overtones emerge particularly in the context of female imagery and, above all, by direct identification with a female figure.149 Previously, we have observed the eroticized desire of the virgin-bride as well as the grief-stricken desire of the widow. As female celibate figures they represent a transferral of desire from the worldly to the divine. Yet, one may note that the widow-bride is never associated with fruition or with fulfilment of desire; fruition, or at least its fleeting foretaste, seems to be the prerogative of the virgin-bride. The mother-bride, meanwhile, following the ‘preposterous order’ of loving the weaker, the inferior, and the smaller more than the superior and higher, is not only disassociated with fruition but with saintly eros as well, expressing, as argued, a type for descending rather than ascending love. Celibacy — as ascetic marker, as monastic ideal, and as contemplative requirement — is a leading theme in Bernard’s reinsciptions of gendered idealization. However, Bernard’s bridal image is only complete when supplemented by the maternal figure — in other words, when celibacy is countered by and balanced with fecundity. Thus retaining a sense of the hierarchy on sexual markers from the patristic period, Bernard constructs the bride as an encompassing figure of idealized femaleness: the mother or matron, tainted by ‘the dust of the petty, transient world’ (Scc 40.3) stands lowest; the virgin, already in this life anticipating angelic life — or death? — stands highest, with the widow as an intermediate, overlapping category.150 In correspondence to this hierarchy, Bernard is most reticent in identifying with the figure of the virgin, associating himself primarily with her erotic desire as he likewise associates himself with the mournful desire of the widow, while he is most affirmative in identifying with the figure of mother, associating himself both with her maternal affections, her ability to nurture, and her fecundity. In the cited passage from Sermon 59, Bernard invokes the Jewish commendation to fertility: a commendation rendered passé with the new Christian dispensation, when the homeland ‘opened up’. In this way, the fecundity of the bridal figure produces an implicit contrast to or, rather, a spiritualization of the Jewish requirement to procreate. Bodily fecundity is replaced by spiritual fecundity. Thus the bridal, virginal, ascetic, and spiritual eros of Bernard’s 149 

Compare, e.g., with the theme of desire in Scc 40.4 and Scc 59.4 above, Section 3.4. Clark, ‘The Celibate Bridegroom’, pp. 16–17, notes that in some cases in patristic con­ structions, the metaphor of of bride of Christ was extended to virgins, widows, and the faithfully married. 150 

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exegetical banquet does not exclude fertility so much as appropriate it for the monks, extending further the Platonizing themes from the Fathers where, on the one hand, bodily fecundity was disparaged or at least dispraised; while, on the other hand, appropriated in a spiritualized and metaphorical sense. Thus even Augustine, who was fairly moderate in his views on sexuality and marriage, wrote to the widow Proba concerning her granddaughter, who had taken the veil, stating approvingly that ‘it is a richer and more fruitful condition of blessedness, not to have a pregnant womb but to aggrandize the mind’.151 The bride’s idealized femaleness, then, invokes concepts of simultaneous fecundity and celibacy. Fused together by Bernard’s hermeneutical and rhetorical strategies, the resulting bridal figure, a figure whose paradoxicalness is conditioned by her very femaleness, is closely related to ascetic ideals and ascetic discourse in patristic writing. One patristic text in particular, De virginibus (‘On Virgins’) by Ambrose of Milan, finds resonance in Bernard’s exposition, although Ambrose’s conjoining of virginal and maternal themes in the bridal figure is provided from an ecclesiological reading: And so the holy Church, by immaculate intercourse and fecund childbirth, is a virgin in her chastity, a mother in her offspring. As a virgin she delivered us, full of the spirit, not of a man. As a virgin she delivers us, not in the pain of [bodily] members but in the joy of angels. As a virgin she nourishes us, not with corporeal milk but with the apostle’s milk [i Cor 3. 2], with which he lactated the weak infancy of a growing people. For what married woman has more children than the holy Church, who is a virgin in the sacraments, a mother in her people, to whose fecundity Scripture testifies, saying: For the children of the deserted woman will be more numerous than those of her who has a man [Is 54. 1]? Our [mother] does not have a man [virum] but she does have a bridegroom [sponsum]; she is wedded, both as the whole Church and as the single soul, in eternity to the bridegroom, the Word of God, without loss of purity, dismissing injustice, delivering reason.152 151 

Modifying the translation by Cunningham, p. 1084. Augustine, Ep. 150, col.  645: ‘Haec est uberior fecundiorque felicitas, non ventre gravescere, sed mente grandescere.’ 152  Ambrose, De virginibus 1.6.31, col. 197CD: ‘Sic sancta Ecclesia immaculata coitu, fecunda partu, virgo est castitate, mater est prole. Parturit itaque nos virgo non viro plena, sed spiritu. Parit nos virgo non cum dolore membrorum, sed cum gaudiis angelorum. Nutrit nos virgo non corporis lacte, sed Apostoli [I Cor III, 2], quo infirmam adhuc crescentis populi lactavit aetatem. Quae igitur nupta plures liberos habet quam sancta Ecclesia, quae virgo est sacramentis, mater est populis, cujus fecunditatem etiam Scriptura testatur dicens: Quoniam plures filii desertae magis quam ejus quae habet virum [Esai. LIV, 1]? Nostra virum non habet, sed habet sponsum; eo quod sive Ecclesia in populis, sive anima in singulis, Dei verbo, sine ullo flexu pudoris, quasi sponso innubit aeterno, effeta injuriae, feta rationis’ (modifying a translation

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By establishing the fecund virginity of the whole Church as foundation for bridal idealization, Ambrose realigns the levels of meaning by the hermeneutical assumption of the inherent mutuality between Ecclesia and anima, a theme which is repeated and reinforced in Bernard’s reading. In this way Ambrose proceeds to apply this argument to the individual female virgin, stating how Christian virgins, more so than earthly brides, may rightfully boast of the beauty, the riches, and the power of their spouse. Assimilating the virgin with the prospective bride, Ambrose then invokes verses from the Song of Songs (4. 7–8) to demonstrate the perfect and faultless beauty of the virginal soul.153 Yet the main point of interest here, relevant to our concerns, is that the present text by Ambrose, so alike in spirit to the abbot of Clairvaux’s Sermons, posits the Song of Songs in a wider context of contemporary apologetic arguments and concern for ascetic renunciation.154 Sustaining the argument that the Song was absorbed and transformed into ascetic discourse, I hold that Bernard’s interpretation represents a recovery of the vigorous ancient Christian discourse of ascetic eros. Following this perspective, Bernard’s exegesis of the Song can be seen in the context of the reform movement of the twelfth century and its concern for celibacy and the ‘monastization’ of the Church.155 The Gregorian reform movement practically redesigned the social and ecclesiastical landscape of premodern Europe, establishing celibacy and marriage as principal discursive marker and demarcation line between the lay world and the ecclesiastical world. The social order envisioned by the reformers was dual, consisting of the celibates, that is, the clergy or professionally religious, and the married, that is, the lay. A twofold foundational division of society was thus supplanting the older triple categories of aratores, oratores, and bellatores.156 Jo Ann McNamara has drawn attention to the ideological struggle between celibate men and married men in relation to the Gregorian reforms. In the late eleventh and early twelfth century the power struggle was acute, as celibate men from Hunter, ‘The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church’, p. 286). 153  See Ambrose, De virginibus 1.7.38, col. 199CD. On Ambrose, see also Burrus, ‘Begotten, Not Made’, pp. 134–83. 154  For the argument that the Song was transformed into ascetic discourse, see Hunter, ‘The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church’, pp. 286–90, and Asiedu, ‘The Song of Songs and the Ascent of the Soul’. For a different perspective but a similar argument, cf. Phipps, ‘The Plight of the Song of Songs’. 155  On bridal imagery in Western iconography as reconfigurations of Gregorian clerical celi­ bacy, see Hodne, ‘Sponsus amat Sponsam’. See also above, Section 1.4, and Conclusions below. 156  Duby, The Three Orders, pp. 236–37. See also McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage’, p. 6.

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were monopolizing most of the positions of the Church, both ecclesiastical and monastic (at the expense of women and married men).157 The fight over celibacy and asceticism in the Gregorian era can be seen — like in the fourth and fifth centuries — as a contest for leadership of the Church. In both periods, writers were striving to define ecclesiastical hierarchical structures and authority, turning to biblical interpretation in order to construct identities and to negotiate power relations both within the Church and in relation to society. In this perspective, the bride of the Song of Songs functioned as a fertile site for shaping and reimagining ecclesiastical and spiritual authority in the context of institutional (re)affirmation and (re)consolidation.158 Patristic authors, especially Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine, put the biblical image of the virgin bride to use, according to David Hunter, in order ‘to construct his own particular vision of the church, asceticism, and ecclesiastical authority […] and to articulate their own sense of the boundaries between church and world’.159 In the same way, I suggest that Bernard’s construction of the bride articulates his vision of asceticism, authority, and the boundaries between the world and the monastery, in particular, his monastery. As in Late Antiquity, twelfth-century ascetic discourse appropriated (and sanctified) eros and its related imagery of carnal union and fecundation.160 Monastic and clerical exegesis processed bridal imagery, envisioning carnal marriage for the laity and spiritual marriage for the celibates.161 157 

McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage’, pp. 20–21. The reinforcement of the Church reforms and the imposition of celibacy were not achieved without struggle. In 1074 riots broke out in favour of clerical marriages, and at the First Lateran Council in 1123, and again at the Second Lateran Council in 1139, all priestly marriages were declared annulled. 158  On the bride shaping authority in the Gregorian reforms, see esp. McLaughlin, Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority. On the bride shaping authority in the late ancient period, see Clark, ‘The Celibate Bridegroom’, and Hunter, ‘The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church’. On boundaries between Church and world in late ancient discourse, see Brown, The Body and Society, pp. 353–54. 159  Hunter, ‘The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church’, p. 302. 160  Emphasizing this point, I propose a reading analogous to Burrus, The Sex Lives of Saints, pp. 1–18, and Boyarin, ‘What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Platonic Love?’, underscoring a (Platonic or Neoplatonic) tradition of a wholly celibate eros — or countererotics — in ancient Christianity. Cf. Clark, ‘Foucault, the Fathers, and Sex’, pp. 635–36, whose concept of an ‘aesthetics of existence’ to be found in the Church fathers seems to harmonize with this understanding of ascetic eros, in contrast to the marital and procreative ethic of sexuality found in other strands of the Christian tradition, e.g., Jovinian. 161  For the interconnections of marriage symbolism and the institutionalization of mar­

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Bernard’s bride configures a saintly love which resists not only the transient pleasures of sensory delights but, at the same time, also secular relations of authority and submission which structure and are structured by relations of sex and gender.162 Bernard envisions a parallel, subverted version of the saeculum, employing marriage, fecundity, and familial relations to figure an alternative hierarchy. Yet while oxymoronic concurrency of virginity and motherhood, in effect, openly borrowed from patristic ascetic discourse, Bernard’s extensive application of female fecundity and female celibacy to men was, on the other hand, quite idiosyncratic.

riage in canon law and theology in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, see d’Avray, Medieval Marriage. 162  Cf. Burrus, The Sex Lives of Saints, p. 14.

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The Feminized Male — Displacement, Service, and Humility nam et ego te dico pulchram, sed inter mulieres, hoc est ex parte; cum autem venerit quod perfectum est, tunc evacuabitur quod ex parte est Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica canticorum 38.5

4.1 Female Humanity and Male Divinity? The prevailing assumption of Bernard’s hermeneutical approach to the Song of Songs is the identification of ‘the soul thirsting for God’ (Scc 7.2) with the bride. Fortified by his notion of ‘reading in the book of experience’ (Scc 3.1), he instates himself and his monks as a reflexive measure of the scriptural message, internalizing his hermeneutics. The tropological identification with the bride, however, is taken a step further as he associates himself not only with the imagery of maternal fecundity and blissful bridal ecstasy, but also with other female figures, biblical and non. The present and following chapters address the question of female appropriation by a monastic male in terms of its rhetorical and hermeneutical functions. What is being established and negotiated by gendered representations? In what ways do female identifications on the part of a male (monk) function as a rhetorical code for other concerns? What do Bernard’s female performances do? A common position in scholarship is that gender constructions in Bernard’s Sermons, like in other commentaries to the Song of Songs, are primarily conditioned by grammar; both Ecclesia and anima are feminine nouns in Latin. Gender, for Jean Leclercq, was irrelevant to the symbol of the bride. Claiming that the adaption of human love language is a ‘spontaneous symbolism’, related

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to the fundamental position of love in Christianity and to the limitation in human language which favours use of analogy, Leclercq downplayed the relevance of gender symbolism, citing Robley Whitson: The languages of the writers — Greek, Latin, and Spanish — all render the word for soul as feminine gender noun (psyche, anima, alma). Thus, the extended use of the nuptial metaphor is encouraged by the language (possibly even suggested by it) and not impeded as would be the case in English where the word is neuter, making it awkward to speak of the soul as she.1

From this point of view, bridal imagery quite naturally lent itself to represent both the Church and the individual believer for grammatical reasons. Yet this point of view cannot account for the numerous occasions where Bernard assumes identification with female figures other than the bride. This alone should caution the commentator of Bernard’s Sermons not to disregard the question of gender on the basis of grammatical coincidence. On the other side of the scale, there are scholars who expressly underscore the symbolic implications of a male divinity and a female ‘everyman’. In this interpretation of gendered metaphysics, every human, male or female, would in a spiritual sense need to ‘become female’ to approach the (masculine) divine.2 Feminist scholars have emphasized this language as a historical and discursive construct, pointing to the effect of gendering the flesh as female against the male spirit in Christianity’s twofold sublimation of the body and subjugation of women.3 One recent commentator puts this in terms of queer theory: 1 

Whitson, Mysticism and Ecumenism, p. 46, cited in Leclercq, Monks and Love, p. 32; see Leclercq’s full discussion on pp. 29–37, esp. pp. 32–33. 2  So, for instance, Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages, p. 13, drawing on Jungian psychology: ‘In the metaphysics of sexuality, every person, male and female, is more feminine than masculine in relation to God — because receptive, dependant and small. Thus the same principle of complementarity that joins a woman to a man in the social sphere, and the emotions to the reason in the psychological order, also works in the religious dimension to effect contemplative unitas, the suprarational knowing of God through love.’ Another scholar who has employed a Jungian approach to bridal imagery is Krinetzki, in ‘Die erotische Psychologie des Hohen Liedes’. 3  For instance, Daly, Pure Lust, p. 72, and Beyond God the Father, p. 13, where she writes: ‘If God in “his” heaven is a father ruling “his” people, then it is the nature of things and according to the divine plan and the order of the universe that society be male-dominated. Within this context a mystification of roles take place: the husband dominating his wife represents God “himself ”’. For a more recent example of this perspective, see Wiethaus, ‘Christian Piety and the Legacy of Medieval Masculinity’.

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‘However weak or strong, whatever their individual fleshly genders, all believers were […] femmes to Christ’s butch spirit.’4 Gender hierarchy inherent in medieval asceticism and monasticism sustains divisions in which femaleness equates humanity/flesh and maleness divinity/ spirit.5 Therefore the gendering of the dramatis personae in Bernard’s Sermons may be seen to follow the corresponding division into masculine-divine bridegroom and feminized bridal soul. An analogous gendered division appears with the minor protagonists: the ‘little girls’ (adolescentulae) represent monks (female/fleshly) while the ‘companions’ (sodales) of the bridegroom represent angels (male/spiritual). Yet there is a problem with this division. As Ann Matter acutely points out, the tropological commentaries on the Song of Songs consistently portray the human soul as the female member of the love relationship.6 It does not seem quite clear how this transition from flesh-female to soulfemale might be envisioned unless by a fundamental assumption where the female is consistently allocated the inferior position. In other words, by what sanction of symmetry does one pass effortlessly from the sequence female-body and male-soul to female-body-soul and male-soul-God? Even if the question may seem purely rhetorical, seeing that Bernard is writing in the confines of a deeply entrenched exegetical tradition where the bride constantly represents the human dimension, such questions may nevertheless challenge easy or unexamined assumptions concerning the rhetorical and discursive functioning of gender in the given text. Several commentators have noted the potential homoerotic implications which hover over bridal imagery. Caroline Walker Bynum’s laconic statement regarding the feminization of religious males in Cistercian usage is relevant: Given the twelfth-century partiality for metaphors drawn from human relationships, religious males had a problem. For if the God with whom they wished to unite was spoken of in male language, it was hard to use the metaphor of sexual union unless they saw themselves as female.7 4 

Swancutt, ‘Sexing the Pauline Body of Christ’, p. 91. See above, Section 1.4. 6  Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, p. 141. It should also be remembered that the noun ‘soul’ was not exclusively female in Latin, as there existed also the masculine form, animus. See discussion of Scc 38 below, Section 4.4. 7  Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, p.  161. Cf. Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, p. 138, almost certainly inspired by Bynum: ‘If monks wished to play the starring role in this love story, they had to adopt a feminine persona — as many did — to pursue a heterosexual love-affair with their God.’ 5 

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Howard Eilberg-Schwartz called attention to a similar tension in ancient Judaism: [T]he heterosexual metaphors in the ancient texts belie the nature of the relationship in question: it is human males, not females, who are imagined to have the primary intimate relations with the deity. […] By imagining men as wives of God, Israelite religion was partially able to preserve the heterosexual complementarity that helped to define the culture.8

Feminization of men, then, may be seen to present a solution to avoid homoerotic implications, even at the cost of causing notable gender trouble. Stephen Moore’s queer reading of the medieval Song commentaries, emphasizing an ‘erotically charged relation between two male parties [Christ and the monk]’, points to the important aspect of the homosocial, that is, all-male environment of Bernard’s exegetical activity — a point which is underscored in this book.9 But his reading, however witty, downplays the rhetorical functions of a male who appropriates feminine characteristics and female roles, losing sight of the complexities inherent in appropriating simultaneously idealized and disparaged femaleness. The subsequent chapters will establish to what extent the complexity of this strategy of appropriation serves Bernard’s ongoing negotiations of the monastery, the Church, and the secular world — and their mutual relations. The present reading, while not dismissing entirely the perspective of gender hierarchy as an analogy to humanity/divinity, nonetheless complicates this assumption. Oppositions of male and female in Bernard’s text are considerably less stable and more complicated than any neat division into feminized soul and masculine divinity. Gender and gendered dualities are not only negotiated and estab8  Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus and Other Problems, p.  3. Eilberg-Schwartz argues that the heterosexual import was safe-guarded by imagining the relationship between heaven and earth in heterosexual terms, but at the cost of exegetically and metaphorically ‘veiling’ the phallus of God. 9  Moore, ‘The Song of Songs in the History of Sexuality’, p. 332. In this eloquent and witty reading, Moore states: ‘That which must under no circumstances be mentioned in the allegorical readings — the fact that the Song is suffused with erotic desire, that its cheeks are flushed with it, its pages moist with it — everywhere comes to expression in these readings […]. [F]or ancient and medieval Christian commentators, the Song simply could not be what it seemed to be. That would have been unthinkable. Yet allegorizing it only had the effect of turning it into something still more unthinkable — not just the expression of an erotically charged relationship between a nubile young woman and her virile young man, hidden away among the books of Holy Scripture like a sex manual in a monastery library, but the expression of an erotically charged relationship between two male parties instead’ (pp. 331–32).

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lished but also destabilized in the Sermons. While Bernard’s audience would understand and even presuppose a gender hierarchy which associates femaleness with fleshliness and worldliness, and maleness with transcending spirit, the text, while still upholding such discursive entailments, also disrupts an easy binary by undermining gender difference both regarding the figure of the bride and the figure of the bridegroom. As a female figura for male self-representation, the bride is hardly univocal, and, likewise, gender ambiguity is inscribed onto the androgynous body of Christ. Bipolar divisions are ultimately eroded by mutual imitation and likeness between the bride and bridegroom, aspects which destabilize inscriptions of both male and female and humanity and divinity. Anticipating the final argument of this book, the duality of gender may be seen to dissolve into a discursive impetus towards unity, in which the ‘other’, the female, the ‘un-like’ is ultimately subsumed and conformed in a process of appropriation which is ultimately a result of the hierarchization implicit in medieval gender discourse. Bernard himself offers no explicit consideration of deploying a female character as spiritual stand-in for the monastic male, not even in the case of his most blatant (and queer) gender mutations. In Sermon 8, for instance, he invokes his monastic addressee, submitting ‘him’ to a multiple metamorphosis into female familial functions. Here the femaleness of the monk is contrasted clearly with complementary divine, male roles. Yet femaleness as inferiority is not stated, nor is any explicit implication of the gendering of the soul proffered. In fact, rather than emphasizing the gender implications of feminized soul and masculine God, this passage is more concerned with constructing fictive family relations, disrupting ‘worldly’ kinship and replacing it with ‘spiritualized’ kinship. Bernard begins by urging the monk to ‘recognize that you are the daughter of the Father, the bride or sister of the Son.’10 Referring to the designation from Song 5. 1 (‘my sister, my bride’), he explains that ‘these are names that you might deserve to be called. […] Sister because you have the same father [as the bridegroom], bride because you are one in spirit [with him]’.11 But Bernard does not stop at that. Adapting a more impersonal third-person pronoun, he refers to his listening monk as ‘daughter-in-law’: ‘Hear the testimony from the Father, who lovingly and courteously calls her daughter but nevertheless invites 10  Scc 8.9, OSB, v.1, p. 108: ‘In spiritu Filii filiam cognosce te Patris, sponsam Filii vel sororem.’ 11  Scc 8.9, OSB, v.1, p. 108: ‘Utroque vocabulo eam, quae huiusmodi est, invenies appellari. […] Soror siquidem est, quia ex uno Patre; sponsa, quia in uno Spiritu.’

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her as his daughter-in-law to the alluring embraces of the Son.’12 Bernard’s seductively incestuous image of the spiritualized family is here not safeguarded by the Song’s imagery but rather by reference to the frequently recurring Psalm 44: ‘Listen, daughter, look and incline your ear, forget your people and your father’s house, and the king shall desire your beauty.’13 Subjecting the monastic male to the gender-reversed roles of bride, sister, daughter, and daughter-in-law, Bernard not only thwarts his masculinity but displaces familial — and hence worldly — roles, structures, and identities. By this rhetorical approach, worldly hierarchies and institutions are implicitly subverted and submitted under divine relations. This way, the current passage is related to others where Bernard dissolves and displaces kinship relations, for instance, in his letter to the novice Hugh (Ep 322) and in Sermon 16.14 In the latter text he spiritualizes sonship and fatherhood: I was begotten by God’s will, by his word of truth, and not by any stimulus of fleshly lust in the manner of the father of my flesh. And still he did not spare himself: for one thus begotten [he gave] his only begotten.15

Recognizing his true father, this wayward ‘son’ recognizes his true sonship, and repentance begins: Thus he showed himself as a father to me, but I did not likewise show myself a son. With what effrontery do I raise my eyes to the face of a father so good when [I am] a son so bad? I am shameful of the indignity my engenderer had to endure, shameful of having lived so degenerately with so great a father.16

Both of these examples (Ep 322 and Scc 16.4) are without any gender-crossing implications. Bernard does not seem to require the rhetoric of gender in order to state his point (of family inversions), unlike passages analysed in Chapter 12 

Scc 8.9, OSB, v.1, p. 108: ‘Sed audi etiam de Patre, quam amanter quamque dignanter et filiam eam nominat, et nihilominus tamquam nurum propriam ad Filii blandos invitet amplexus.’ 13  Scc 8.9, OSB, v.1, p. 108: ‘Audi, filia, et vide, et inclina aurem tuam; et obliviscere populum tuum et domum patris tui, et concupiscet rex decorem tuum [Psal. XLIV, 11, 12].’ 14  On Ep 322, see above, Section 3.4. 15  Scc 16.4, OSB, v.1, p. 212: ‘Voluntarie genuit me verbo veritatis, non stimulo carnalis cupiditatis excussit, quemadmodum genitor carnis meae. Deinde etiam non pepercit Unigenito pro sic genito.’ 16  Scc 16.4, OSB, v.1, p. 212: ‘Ita ipse quidem patrem se exibuit mihi, sed non ego me illi vicissim filium. Quanam fronte attollo iam oculos ad vultum patris tam boni, tam malus filius? Pudet indigna gessisse genere meo, pudet tanto patre vixisse degenerem.’

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2 and 3, where, by assimilating the bride, he simultaneously appropriates her chastity, her erotic desire, and her fecundity. As Bynum pointed out, twelfthcentury monasticism displayed a tendency to speak of the divine in ‘homey’ images to ‘emphasize its approachability’, along with an ‘increasing preference for analogies taken from human relationships’.17 While this aspect has been interpreted — most notably by R. W. Southern — to account for a general ‘sentimentalization’ of high medieval society and culture, an equally significant aspect in transferring patterns of kinship is that it retains and enforces a strong sense of power relations. The medieval family as an institutional structure was characteristically hierarchical and patriarchal. This element of hierarchy might provide an explanation as to why Bernard in this context does not need the hierarchy of gender as well.

4.2 The Monks and the Little Girls: Imitating the Imitation It should be noted that Bernard only occasionally identifies himself or his monks directly with the bride.18 The process of assimilation and appropriation is more often indirectly and cautiously achieved by grammatical reallocations and displacements, of which we have seen numerous examples in the course of the previous chapters.19 Rapid shifts in personal pronouns — ea, ego, tu, vos — serve the distinctive purpose of both affirming and negating the association with the bridal figure and her femaleness. While disassociating themselves from the potentially taxing implications of self-glorification, the exegete and his audience nevertheless enter into identification with the bride. This indirect identification with the intensely idealized bride is more discreet and therefore presents less of a challenge to Bernard’s strategy of rhetorical humility than a firmer identification would have done. Significantly, when he does make an affirmative identification with a female character in the Song, it is often with the ‘little girls’ (adolescentulae). And here, with the girls, unlike with the bride, the gendered marker of femaleness constitutes explicitly inferiority and weakness.20 17 

Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, p. 129. One of the clearest instances of Bernard directly appropriating the role of bride is in Scc 74, to be discussed below in Section 4.5. Notably, he identifies with her passionate desire at being abandoned by the bridegroom, and therefore with a position of longing and lack. 19  See Scc 57.9 above, Section 2.1; Scc 3.5 above, Section 2.3; Scc 9.7 above, Section 2.4; Scc 23.9 and 23.15 above, Section 2.5; and Scc 52.7 above, Section 2.6. See also Scc 29.6 and 42.5 above, Section 3.2. 20  The adolescentulae have been remarkably overlooked in research. Exceptions are Pranger, 18 

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In Sermon 13, Bernard identifies the little girls with a collective ‘we’, presumably the Clairvaux community: Now it suffices to caution you that if the bride would never dare to attribute to herself any virtue or grace, then how much less should we do so, who are but little girls. Let us therefore follow in the footsteps of the bride, and say: Not for us, Lord, not for us, but for your name give glory [Ps 113. 1].21

Toddling behind the bride, the girls perform an imitatio sponsae as they follow in her footsteps (vestigia insectantes). Assuming the role of little girls for himself and his monks, Bernard thus reiterates his rhetorical humility, underscoring their inadequacy in regard to the bride — while the bride, on her part, expresses her own exemplary humility in recognizing her lack of ‘virtue or grace’. In the following Sermon 14, the little girls reappear, in a context dominated by ecclesiological concerns. An image for the Church of ‘the perfect in present time’ (Ecclesia interim perfectorum), the bride here is a highly erotic figure, blissfully receiving the bridegroom’s lubricant fluids as they rub off onto her: ‘What wonder that she be anointed, she who embraces the anointed one?’22 Bernard asks, preparing one of his rhetorical indulgences. First, however, he adopts, again by means of a collective ‘we’, the role he usually assigns to the deprived adolescentulae: ‘But there is hope also for us. Imperfect as we are, let us keep guard outside, rejoicing in hope.’23 Eavesdropping at the door, he announces: ‘The bride and bridegroom are alone inside, enjoying their mutual and secret embraces, without the clamour of carnal desire, without the tumultuous turbulence of bodily fantasies.’24 Once more we find the sublimated desire of counBernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought, p. 201, who refers to them in his reading of Scc 52.7 and contextualizes them as Bernard’s fellow monks; and Newman, ‘Real Men and Imaginary Women’, p. 1204, who refers to them as characterizing ‘the early stages in [the monks’] process of reform’. 21  Scc 13.9, OSB, v.1, p. 176: ‘Nunc hoc solum admonitos vos esse sufficiat: si sponsa utique de omni virtute sua vel gratia minime audet sibi quidpiam arrogare, quanto minus adolescentulae forte, quae nos sumus? Dicamus proinde et nos, sponsae vestigia insectantes, dicamus: Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam [Psal. CXIII, 1].’ 22  Scc 14.4, OSB, v.1, p. 184: ‘Quid mirum si ungitur, quae unctum amplectitur?’ 23  Scc 14.5, OSB, v.1, p. 184: ‘Spes tamen est et nobis. Excubemus pro foribus qui minus perfecti sumus, spe gaudentes.’ 24  Scc 14.5, OSB, v.1, p. 184: ‘Sponsus et sponsa soli interim intus sint, mutuis secretisque fruantur amplexibus, nullo strepitu carnalium desideriorum, nullo corporeorum phantasmatum perturbante tumultu.’

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tererotics, where the height of saintly bliss is associated with the absence of carnal lust. Discreetly averting his gaze, Bernard directs his attention towards his controfigura — the little girls: The flock of little girls, however, who are not exempt from inquietude, must wait outside. Let them wait in confidence, knowing that they will reflect what they read: The virgins are lead after her to the king, and her girlfriends [proximae] will be brought before you [Ps 44. 15]. And that each may know what spirit she is, I call them virgins, those who joined [foederatae] themselves to Christ before they soiled [foedatae] themselves by the embraces of the world [mundi complexibus]. Persevering steadily, they are all the happier the earlier they made their promises. Those I call girlfriends, on the other hand, once deformed their pristine form [pristinam suam deformitatem] by conforming [conformes] to this world, to the princes of this world, that is, to indecent spirits, shamefully prostituting themselves to every carnal lust; now at last, blushing with shame, they hasten to be reformed [reformare] into the form of a new man [in novi hominis formam], all the more sincerely the later [they reformed themselves]. Both the former and the latter make progress; they do not grow weak or weary, but neither do they fully feel that they themselves may say: Your name is oil poured out [Song 1. 2]. Nor do the girls dare to address the bridegroom directly. Yet if they dedicate themselves to following more exactly in the footsteps of their teacher, they will enjoy at least the odour of the outpouring oil, and by perceiving its odour they will be incited to desire and to search for a more potent one.25

In this passage, the division of the adolescentulae into two types, ‘virgins’ (virgines), and ‘girlfriends’ (proximae) is provided by the cited verse from Psalm 44.26 As Bernard explains the identity of the virgins — i.e., those who com25 

Scc 14.5, OSB, v.1, pp. 184–86: ‘Turba vero adolescentularum, quae absque huiusmodi inquietudinibus nondum esse possunt, foris exspectet. Exspectentque secure, scientes ad se illud spectare quod legunt: Adducentur regi virgines post eam, proximae eius afferentur tibi [Psal. XLIV, 15]. Et ut quaeque sciat cuius spiritus sit, virgines dico illas, quae ante Christo foederatae, quam foedatae mundi complexibus, ipsi firmiter perseverant, cui se tanto felicius, quanto maturius devoverunt; proximas vero, quae pristinam suam deformitatem, in qua mundo huic quandoque conformes, mundi principibus, id est spiritibus spurcis, in omni carnali concupiscentia sese turpiter prostituerant, tandem aliquando erubescentes et exeuntes, in novi hominis formam, quanto serius, tanto sincerius reformare festinant. Et hae et illae sane proficiant, non deficiant neque fatigentur, etsi necdum plene in se sentiunt unde dicant et ipsae: Oleum effusum nomen tuum. Nec enim audent adolescentulae per se facere verba sponso. Tamen si magistrae vestigiis pressius inhaerere student, effusi olei saltem odore delectabuntur, et incitabuntur etiam de odoris perceptione cupere et quaerere potiora.’ 26  Killian Walsh and others (Song 1, p. 101) translate adolescentulae as ‘bridesmaids’ and proximae as ‘ladies-in-waiting’. Otherwise adolescentulae are translated ‘maidens’. I prefer ‘little

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mitted themselves to Christ before fouling themselves with the world — he opposes the assonant terms of ‘joining’ (foederatae) and ‘soiling’ (foedatae). Implied in this opposition is a related subset, namely Christ versus the world, or specifically, ‘embraces of the world’ (mundi complexibus), by which another instance of assonance emerges. For the term complexus (‘embrace’) echoes one of Bernard’s leading erotic metaphors, the amplexus, therefore evoking a notion of symmetry between the two forms of mutually excluding embraces, or pacts: with the world on one hand and with God on the other.27 Again, Bernard’s playful alliteration simultaneously juxtapose and counter, affirm and deny the similitude between worldly eros and saintly eros. The virgins, unsoiled, are referred to in terms of ‘happiness’ (felicius), while the girlfriends — formerly abandoning themselves to carnal lust, ‘indecency’ (spurcis), and ‘prostitution’ (prostituerant) — in terms of sincerity and repentance. Clearly, there is a hierarchical order between them. The virgins, never letting themselves be rapt in the complexus mundi, aspire to spiritual perfection in a sense that the girlfriends do not. Yet it is the latter group, the proximae, which attracts Bernard’s attention. In the latter part of this passage — the sequence dealing with the girlfriends — the abbot launches the theme of changing into a ‘new man’ (Col 3. 3–10), a theme which causes a slight but significant gender slippage in the text, from ‘girlfriend’ (proxima) to ‘new man’ (novus homo). Revolving around the related and assonant terms deformitatem, conformes, reformare, and formam, the text alludes to a gendered transition from the female figure directly associated with deformity and with world-conformity, to the form/reform implied in the (male) ‘new man’. Reverberating with Pauline intertexts, Bernard forges an inverted symmetry: in conforming to the world, one is deformed; by reforming, one recovers the pristine, original form — the ‘new man’, the form of Christ.28 We shall have occasion to return to this theme of reform, conformity, and transformation.29 But for the present purpose, we may note that con-

girls’ because the Latin adolescentulae indicates primarily young age and gender. 27  The terms, in fact, appear as synonyms in Bernard’s text, but the primal significance of complexus is ‘pact’ or ‘accomplice’. Complexus appears also in Scc 2.3 and 83.3, but amplexus is by far the more frequent term. 28  Gal 4. 19, ‘donec formetur Christus in vobis’; Phil 3. 21, ‘reformabit corpus humilitatis nostrae’; and Col 3. 9–10, ‘expoliantes vos vetrem hominem […] et induentes novum’. On the terminology of form-reform, see McGinn, ‘Freedom, Formation, and Reformation’. 29  See below, Section 6.1.

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cepts of late conversion, which is consequently a conversion after being ‘soiled’ by the world, resonates with Cistercian monastic concerns. Considering the Cistercian refusal to take child novices, an analogy — if not a direct identification — appears between the proxima and the Cistercian monk, both soiled by their worldly pasts. This again suggests why the treatment of the proximae — that most humble of female types, those who converted late after prostituting themselves with ‘the princes of the world’, is both richer and more elaborate than the treatment of the virgins. Bernard’s discussion evokes faint monastic allusions (particularly devoverunt, ‘consecrated’), an allusion which becomes an affirmation in the ensuing passage, as it opens with the entry of Bernard’s own ego: ‘Often I myself ’ (Frequenter ego ipse). Already having identified himself and his monks with the little girls, he proceeds to associate his own noviceship with their emotional numbness (corde durus et frigidus), their sluggishness (torpens et languens), and particularly their misery (taedio, tristis et pene desperans): ‘Given merely the pleasure of [the oil’s] odour and not of its touch, I saw myself as unworthy,’ Bernard admits, sniffling slightly.30 Not performing the part of the feminine protagonist (‘not daring to address the bridegroom directly’) but rather that of the minor female characters, Bernard humbly joins the all-female entourage following in the footsteps of the teacher-bride (magistrae vestigiis). Even if the monks are displaced — outside, not inside; smelling, but not touching; following, but not entering into the lubricious intimacy between the bride and bridegroom — it is nevertheless of the highest spiritual benefit, Bernard assures, since ‘through these things our pride is overwon, our humility is guarded, our fraternal love is nourished, and our desire is aroused’.31 Expounding on Song 1. 3 (‘draw me after you [in your odours] we shall run’) in Sermon 21, Bernard repeats the notion of the bride as exemplary model for himself and the monks: ‘We, however, must take care to imitate [aemulari] the liberty and constancy of the bride, who is well instructed in all things, her heart is schooled in wisdom, and she knows both to handle abundance and how to suffer want.’32 Slipping back into the role of little girl, Bernard addresses the 30  Scc 14.6, OSB, v.1, p. 186: ‘Odoratu quippe delectatus, non tactu, indignum me perinde cognoscebam.’ 31  Scc 14.6, OSB, v.1, pp. 186–88: ‘Qua in re quid sentiendum, nisi quod nostra aut superbia convincitur, aut humilitas custoditur, aut fraterna caritas nutritur, aut desiderium excitatur?’ 32  Scc 21.8, OSB, v.1, p. 280: ‘Nos vero sponsae curemus aemulari libertatem atque cons­ tantiam, quae, sicut bene instructa in omnibus, et erudita corde in sapientia, scit et abundare, et scit et penuriam pati.’

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bride reverently: O pulchra, o felix, o beata! But then, not quite hiding his indignation, he asks: ‘Draw me, you say. Why me, and not us? Do you envy us this favour?’33 The bride patiently responds to Bernard (her nagging, offended little girl), explaining the spiritual meaning of the verse: When I encounter what is hard and austere, I keep it to myself, for I am more strong and healthy and perfect, and I say: Draw me. What is delightful and sweet, I share with you, who are weak, and I say: We shall run.34

After the intimacy of the tête-à-tête between mother-bride and daughter-Bernard, the text returns to a less personal and more aloof explication, with the bride shifting from addressing the girl(s) in second-person singular to the thirdperson plural. In the course of the dialogue in Sermon 21, the dislocated voice of the ego further blurs and destabilizes gender and character. Giving voice to his fluid cast of characters without intermediate passes — and also without the quotation marks of modern translations and later editions — the first-person voice initially is that of a little girl (or Bernard) addressing the bride; next, that of the bride addressing the little girl (or Bernard); before, finally, it is that of the bride addressing the bridegroom. Furthermore, whereas Bernard’s girlish weakness was kept in the masculine gender (infimo) even as he appeared as little girl, femaleness as a gendered marker of weakness and softness emerges here more explicitly as the bride announces: I know quite well that girls are delicate and tender, ill-equipped to endure temptations. This is why I want them to run with me, but not be drawn with me. I want them with me in time of consolation, not in times of trial. Why so? Because they are weak [infirmae], and I fear they will tire and fail.35

Finally, directing his attention towards the bridegroom, Bernard gives voice to the bride: ‘It is me, says she,’ says Bernard, ‘that you must correct, o bridegroom, 33 

Scc 21.10, OSB, v.1, p. 282: ‘Trahe me, ait [Mabillon, col. 877A: ais]. Quare me, et non nos? An hoc bonum invides nobis?’ For purposes of consistancy and for my argument, I choose to translate Mabillon’s ais rather than Leclercq’s ait. 34  Scc 21.11, OSB, v.1, p.  282: ‘Ergo quod austerum et durum videtur, retineo mihi, tamquam forti, tamquam sanae, tamquam perfectae, et dico singulariter: Trahe me. Quod suave et dulce, tibi tamquam infirmo communico, et dico: Curremus.’ 35  Scc 21.11, OSB, v.1, p. 282: ‘Novi ego adolescentulas delicatas et teneras esse, et minus idoneas sufferre tentationes; et propterea mecum volo ut currant, sed non ut mecum trahantur; volo habere socias consolationis, non autem et laboris. Quare? Quoniam infirmae sunt, et vereor ne deficiant nec succumbant.’

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it is me who must be strained and put on the test, me you must draw after you; because I am ready for the whip and strong enough to endure.’36 The bride’s declared willingness to endure ordeals and her reference to ‘whip’ (flagella), one of the principal instruments of the Passion, evokes notions of imitatio Christi. Indeed, the whole passage evokes notions of a salvational procession: the bride, following in the footsteps of Christ, and the little girls following in the footsteps of the bride. ‘We’, says Bernard, ‘must imitate the bride’ (Scc 21.8), thus reiterating the call to follow in her footsteps in Sermons 13 and 14. Echoes of the Christomimetic theme of following in Christ’s footsteps may also be seen in relation to the imagery in the opening scene of Sermon 23, where the bride chases after the odours of the bridegroom and the girls chase after the bride.37 The little girls, it may be recalled — who in comparison with the bride are immature, undeveloped, and therefore slow — arrived late at the bridegroom’s quarters and were thus constricted to living in his absence.38 It is significant for Bernard’s rhetorical strategy of humility that, by appropriating the role of the little girls, he portrays himself and his monks as twice displaced. They (the girl-monks) do not imitate Christ directly or walk in his footsteps directly. Rather, they imitate the imitation, that is, the bride, and follow in her footsteps as she follows in his. I suggest that this is the crux of Bernard’s mother-daughter theme, intertextually enforced by the Pauline verse: ‘I tell you: imitate me, as I imitate Christ.’ 39 But in Bernard’s version both imitation and imitation of the imitation are female. As the Pauline theme is transported into the context of the Song of Songs, Paul himself becomes indirectly identified as bride and the Corinthians as little girls. In this allusive textual interplay, Bernard evokes a parallel, repeatedly established in the Sermons, between himself and Paul — as mothers, models, and spiritual leaders. In this perspective, the girls’ lowly place in the order of this mimetic procession is perhaps not determined exclusively by rhetorical formulas of humility. 36  Scc 21.11, OSB, v.1, p. 282: ‘Me, inquit, o sponse, corripe, me exerce, me tenta, me trahe post te, quoniam ego in flagella parata sum, et potens ad sustinendum.’ 37  The theme of following Christ’s footsteps was central to Bernard’s redemption theory, e.g., Div 62.2: ‘descendit et ascendit Dominus, relinquens nobis exemplum, ut sequamur vestigia eius’ ([T]he Lord descended and ascended, leaving us an example, so we may follow in his footsteps). See above Section 2.1. 38  On Scc 23, see above, Section 2.5. 39  i Cor 4. 16: ‘Rogo ego vos: imitatores mei estote, sicut et ego Christi’, which is cited in the current sermon cycle (Scc 22.9). On the theme of imitation in the Sermons, see below, Section 6.1.

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As implied by the intertextual reading of Bernard’s and Paul’s imitation theme, the relationship between the bride and the little girls evokes notions of spiritual authority and Church authority. The bride’s intermediate position appertains above all to her hermeneutical role as Ecclesia, and therefore Mater Ecclesia for her ‘little ones’. Two sermons later, in Sermon 23, Bernard describes the bride’s arrival at the royal bridegroom’s bedchamber, elusively identifying himself with the ‘happy bride’ (beata sponsa). Again stirring up an image of an all-female entourage surrounding the bridegroom with reference to Song 6. 7 (‘Sixty are the queens and eighty the concubines, and of the young girls there is no number’), Bernard depicts the manifold divine habitation, adding a gendered twist. Accentuating the femaleness of the bridegroom’s following, he writes: ‘I think that the king has not one bedchamber but many. For there is not just one queen but many, the concubines are numerous and of the young girls there is no number.’40 Affirming that ‘all do not enjoy the delightful and secret presence of the bridegroom in the same place’,41 Bernard allocates the female personages — the queens, concubines, and girls — various positions of intimacy in relation to the bridegroom’s body parts — at his head and at his feet. After the initial identification of the all-female entourage of the bridegroom, Bernard queerly extends the identification also to male characters: ‘Thomas attained the secret of grace in the side, John on the breast, Peter in the Father’s bosom, Paul in the third heaven.’42 Not only Bernard and his monks, then, but also the apostles partake in the female hierarchy of the divine court. Rewriting Jn 14. 2, he continues: There are many rooms in the bridegroom’s house, and whether she be queen, or concubine or one of the numerous girls, each finds place and destination in accordance with her merits until she might proceed in contemplation, and partake in the happiness of her Lord, to explore her bridegroom’s secret sweetness.43

40 

Scc 23.9, OSB, v.1, p. 314: ‘Non unum puto cubiculum Regi esse, sed plura. Nam nec una est regina profecto, sed plures; et concubinae sunt multae, et adolescentularum non est numerus.’ 41  Scc 23.9, OSB, v.1, p. 314: ‘Non omnibus uno in loco frui datur grata et secreta sponsi praesentia’. 42  Scc 23.9, OSB, v.1, p. 314: ‘Porro Thomas in latere, Ioannes in pectore, Petrus in sinu Patris, Paulus in tertio caelo.’ 43  Scc 23.10, OSB, v.1, p. 316: ‘Sic ergo apud sponsum mansiones multae sunt; et sive regina, sive concubina, sive etiam sit de numero adolescentularum, congruum quaeque pro

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In this frivolously polygamous — yet hierarchical — divine household portrayed by Bernard, the place of honour is allotted to the bride:44 ‘No girl, no concubine, nor even a queen, may gain access to the secret of the bedchamber, which the bridegroom reserves solely for her who is his dove, beautiful, perfect and unique [Song 6. 8].’45 In the present passage femaleness does not appear as connected to a characteristic (like weakness, worldliness, etc.), nor does it appear as disparaged, since it is not associated directly with a dispraised characteristic. Rather, femaleness is all-encompassing, in the sense that the bridegroom’s following consists entirely of females. Although an explicit ascription of various female roles (queens, concubines, girls) is not attempted, the text nevertheless displays a notion of a taxonomy of femaleness, where the various females function as indicators of (more or less) privileged relations with the bridegroom: there is one bride only but many queens, even more concubines, and young girls beyond counting. In the subsequent sermon, however, femaleness carries a distinctly negative rhetorical function. Commenting on Song 1. 3 (‘the righteous love you’), Bernard states that there are young girls who criticize rather than imitate the bride: ‘In almost any group of young girls, I find some who observe the bride’s acts with curiosity, not to imitate but to disparage her.’46 Immediately, the theme emerges as a complaint on gossip and slander where the combined gendered markers of ‘little girls’ (adolescentulae) and ‘gossip’ or ‘slander’ contribute to escalating the polemical tone of Bernard’s rhetoric, culminating with the gender-crossing identification of Herod and Pilate as gossiping girls. Unleashing his notorious biting irony, the abbot launches his attack: You see [the girls] walking by themselves, banding together, huddled together, and immediately loosening their wanton tongues in odious murmuring. They cluster together, one to the other, without as much as a breath of air between them, so great is their desire to slander and to listen to slander. They enter in an intimacy meritis accipit locum terminumque, quousque liceat sibi contemplando procedere, et introire in gaudium Domini sui, et rimari dulcia secreta sponsi.’ 44  Commenting on polygamy as one of the quirks of bridal imagery, Keller, My Secret Is Mine, pp. 58–60, notes that each bride must belong exclusively to the bridegroom, whereas he might possess a harem. 45  Scc 23.10, OSB, v.1, p. 316: ‘Nulli adolescentularum, nulli concubinarum, nulli vel reginarum patere omnino accessum ad secretum illud cubiculi, quod suae illi columbae, formosae, perfectae, uni unicum sponsus servat.’ 46  Scc 24.3, OSB, v.1, p. 332: ‘Ubique paene in choro adolescentularum tales inveniam, quae acta sponsae curiose observent, derogandi, non imitandi causa.’

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which purpose is malign; their accord is to promote discord. They form among themselves the most inimical friendship, and, unanimous in their malevolence, they celebrate their common hatred. Herod and Pilate once behaved just like this, for the Gospel tells of them that they became friends that very day [Lk 23. 12], that is, on the day of the Passion of the Lord.47

The leading theme of the passage is slander, that is, malicious speech (derogandi, susurrium, detrahendi, detrahentem). Slander and gossip were likely of concern to Bernard’s monastic leadership since the theme recurs repeatedly in the Sermons, although no-where quite as fiercely as in the present sermon.48 Interestingly, although all the reference characters are actually male (directly, Herod and Pilate; indirectly, the monastic community), there are clear allusions to slander and gossip as gendered speech.49 Slanderers are directly identified as a ‘group of girls’, or, more specifically, a ‘chorus of girls’ (choro adolescentularum), emphasizing the role of the voice or spoken word. In Bernard’s description, moreover, the ‘laxness’ (laxare) and ‘wantonness’ (procaces) of malign tongues suggests a further affirmation of slander as female, since the terms indicate softness, weakness, and lack of self-restraint which, implicitly and explicitly, is associated with femaleness in medieval discourse and in Bernard’s writing.50 An aspect of this passage, then, is the rhetorical effect of feminizing gossiping monks, and also Herod and Pilate. 47 

Scc 24.3, OSB, v.1, p. 332: ‘Videas ambulare seorsum, convenire sibi, sedere pariter, moxque laxare procaces linguas in detestandum susurrium. Una uni coniungitur, nec spiraculum incedit in eis, tanta est libido detrahendi, audiendive detrahentem. Ineunt familiaritatem ad maledicendum, concordes ad discordiam. Conciliant inter se inimicissimas amicitias, et pari consentaneae malignitatis affectu celebratur odiosa collatio. Haud secus egere quondam Herodes et Pilatus, de quibus narrat Evangelium quia facti sunt amici in illa die [Luc. XXIII, 12], hoc est in die dominicae passionis.’ 48  See Scc 40.5 above, Section 3.4, where widowhood as spiritual ideal implies the negligence of ‘common gossip’. The reference to the vice of slandering as directly referring to the monastic community is clearest in the next passage, Scc 24.4, OSB, v.1, p. 334, where Bernard invokes the direct experience of his listeners (in second person plural): ‘cum id praecipue vitium caritatem, quae Deus est, et quidem ceteris acrius, impugnare et persequi cognoscatur, quemadmodum vos quoque potestis advertere’ (this vice [of slander], as you can see for yourselves, is known to combat and assail, more bitterly than others vices, the love which is God). 49  On gossip as feminine speech, see Kartzow, Gossip and Gender, pp.  29–40 and her discussion of gossipy widows (i Tim 5. 3–16), pp. 142–51; cf. Scc 40.5 above, Section 3.4. 50  For example: Scc 52.1, infirmae; Scc 72.7, blanditiae, mollities; Csi 2.20, mollior, muliebri mollitie; Apo 16, De laude 2.3, mollities vestimentorum, femineo comam. For further references, see Krahmer, ‘The Virile Bride’, pp. 310–14.

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With the introduction of Herod and Pilate, the polemical tone of the text rises. Although the group of slandering girls in the previous passage represented a conspiracy towards the bride, and, implicitly, the monastic community, here the sense of ridicule and light irony is all but gone as Bernard sets the stage for his final incitement: When they unite, it is not to eat the Lord’s supper, but rather to drink the cup of demons. On their tongues they bear the virus of destruction, and through their ears they eagerly let death enter. Hence, according to the prophet, death enters by our windows [ Jer 9. 21] when we, by itching ears and mouths, busy ourselves in administering to each other the lethal cup of slander. […] See how easily and how quickly the swiftly running word [velociter currens sermo] can infect a great multitude of souls with its sickly malice. Hence that prophetic spirit said: Their mouth is full of malevolence and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood. [Ps 13. 3] Swift indeed, like the swiftly running word [velociter currit sermo]. One man speaks, and one word [verbum] only is spoken; but that one word [verbum], in one moment, is heard by many, destroying souls as it infects ears.51

In the preceding passage, Bernard invoked oxymoronic phrases implying friendship and enmity: ‘an accord to promote discord’ (concordes ad discordiam) and ‘inimical friendships’ (inimicissimas amicitias). Here he develops further on a rhetoric of reversal. The image of the ‘swiftly running word’ (velociter currit sermo), repeated twice, is from Psalm 147. 15. In the biblical text it refers to the word of the Lord bringing peace and prosperity, and hence the very opposite of the vicious sermo denounced by Bernard. The word of the slanderer is characterized as ‘sickly’ (tabe), ‘malevolent’ (malitiae), ‘infective’ (inficit), and ‘destructive’ (interficit) — a perverted parody of the divine word. Thus the evil word which penetrates and kills the soul represents a reversal of sermo Dei — yet again emphasizing the symmetry between the oppositions of worldliness 51 

Scc 24.3–4, OSB, v.1, pp. 332–36: ‘Convenientibus sic in unum, non est dominicam cenam manducare, sed magis propinare et bibere calicem daemoniorum, dum importantibus linguis aliorum perditionis virus, aliorum aures intrantem mortem libenter excipiunt. Sic quippe, iuxta prophetam, intrat mors per fenestras nostras [Ierem. IX, 21], cum prurientes auribus et oribus, letale poculum detractionis invicem nobis ministrare contendimus. […] [4.] Vides quam facile et in brevi ingentem multitudinem animarum velociter currens sermo tabe malitiae huius inficere possit! Propterea dicit propheticus spiritus de talibus: Quorum os maledictione et amaritudine plenum est, veloces pedes eorum ad effundendum sanguinem [Psal. XIII, 3]. Utique tam veloces, quam velociter currit sermo. Unus est qui loquitur, et unum tantum verbum profert; et tamen illud unum verbum, uno in momento, multitudinis audientium, dum aures inficit, animas interficit.’

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and godliness. Finally, in the last phrase, Bernard launches his stylistic coup de grâce, an untranslatable alliteration: dum aures inficit, animas interficit. In Sermon 19, commenting Song 1. 2 (‘that is why the girls have loved you’), Bernard concerns himself once more with the bride as intermediary between the bridegroom and the little girls. Posing the question — why do the girls love you? — Bernard answers: Because of the name poured out [effusum], because of the breasts by which [your name] is suffused [perfusa]. It is this which aroused their love of the bridegroom, and which caused them to love. Immediately as the bride receives the gift of infusion [infusum], the girls perceived its fragrance.52

Again, the mother-daughter relation is in the fore. The girls, Bernard states, ‘never could stay far from their mother’s side’.53 Only through the bride’s maternal breasts might they know, and love, the bridegroom. Breast imagery indicates the bride’s capacity of nurturance, which is described — as before — in terms of inpouring and outpouring (infusum, perfusa, effusum).54 Returning to the theme from Sermon 14, the girls who smell the fragrance of the bridegroom, Bernard presents one of his most explicit equations between knowledge and love:55 ‘Thus, as far as the girls are concerned, the outpouring makes your name knowable, knowledge makes it lovable.’56 Contrasting the little girls with those whose ‘capacity is greater’ (capaciores sunt), those who ‘enjoy fully, without the need for outpouring’ (integro gaudent, effuso non indigent), Bernard shifts his focus towards the angels in the next section (Scc 19.2). The shift from girls to angels is not accompanied by a gendered shift from female to male, as might be expected grammatically (from adolescentula to angelus). Instead, Bernard introduces them maintaining the feminine gender of the grammatical subject, as angelica creatura (‘angelic creature’). After a long exposition on 52 

Scc 19.1, OSB, v.1, p. 244: ‘Propter nomen effusum, et propter ubera ex eo perfusa. Inde quippe excitatae sunt in amorem sponsi, inde sumpserunt ut diligant. Sponsa infusum munus excipiente, illae mox sensere fragrantiam.’ 53  Scc 19.1, OSB, v.1, p. 244: ‘longe a matre minime esse poterant’. 54  Scc 18; see above, Section 2.4. 55  The theme is particularly connected with Gregory the Great and his dictum amor ipse notitia est; see Homiliae in Evangelia 27, col. 1206C. On the topic of intellect-love, see also McGinn, ‘Love, Knowledge, and Mystical Union’, p. 9, and Javelet, Image et ressemblence, i, 427–35. 56  Scc 19.1, OSB, v.1, p. 244: ‘Effusio quippe nomen facit capabile, captum amabile, sed adolescentulis duntaxat.’

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angels, archangels, virtues, powers, principalities, dominations, thrones, cherubims, and seraphims, largely based on Pseudo-Dionysian teaching,57 Bernard returns to the girls, again comparing them to the angelic creatures: All these love in the same measure as they understand. The girls, knowing less, understand less; they are not capable of the sublime. For they are little ones [parvulae] in Christ, feeding [nutriendae] on milk and oil. The source of their ability to love is in the breasts of the bride. By the odour of her outpoured oil, she arouses them to taste and feel how sweet the Lord is.58

Expanding on the Pauline terminology of spiritual diet (i Cor 3. 1–3), Bernard purports an association between ‘oil’ (oleo) and ‘milk’ (lacte) — both of which refer to outpouring and suffusion by means of the bride’s breasts. The girls’ dependence on the bridal breasts evokes connotations to Church, to the sacraments, and to Scripture, representing the means to ‘feel and taste’ divine sweetness. Again, conflating notions of his own spiritual authority and Church authority, Bernard assumes his role of abbot (with undertones of the motherbride), while placing himself at a clear distance from the little girls. In fact, turning his attention to his novices, Bernard identifies young, immature monks as girls. ‘Certainly, these spiritual words may implicitly be applied to you who have recently arrived,’ he begins, reproaching them for their childishness and self-indulgence, ‘The regular fast is not enough for you, neither the solemn vigils, nor the discipline, nor the share of food and clothing which we give you. You prefer your private ways rather than the common life.’59 57 

In this teaching angels constituted a hierarchical order of three degrees, subdivided into nine levels, a structure that was introduced to the Latin Church in the sixth century; see Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Evangelia 34.7, col. 1249D: ‘Novem vero angelorum ordines diximus, quia videlicet esse, testante sacro eloquio, scimus angelos, archangelos, virtutes, potestates, principatus, dominationes, thronos, cherubim, atque seraphim’ (We have said that truly there are nine orders of angels, for they are testified to in sacred writing, namely, angels, archangels, virtues, powers, principalities, dominations, thrones, cherubims, and seraphims). 58  Scc 19.7, OSB, v.1, p.  252: ‘Hi ergo omnes, prout capiunt, diligunt. Sed enim adolescentulae, quoniam minus sapiunt, minus et capiunt, nec omnino sufficiunt ad tam sublimia: parvulae quippe in Christo sunt, lacte et oleo nutriendae. Ergo ex uberibus sponsae opus sumere habent unde diligant. Habet oleum effusum sponsa, ad cuius illae excitantur odorem, gustare et sentire quam suavis est Dominus.’ 59  Scc 19.7, OSB, v.1, p. 252: ‘Vel certe magis ex obliquo vos, qui nuper venistis, tangit spiritualis sermo […]. Non sufficit vobis regulare ieiunium, non solemnes vigiliae, non imposita disciplina, non mensura quam vobis partimur in vestimentis et alimentis: privata praefertis communibus.’

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Like the girls who are small (parvulae), unknowledgeable (minus sapiunt, minus et capiunt), and incapable (nec omnino sufficient), these monks are certainly not mature enough for the ‘solid food’ which Bernard envisioned for them in the first sermon.60 In their disobedience and selfishness, they need their mother’s — Bernard’s — leadership and direction: You once entrusted yourselves to our care, why do you take charge of yourselves again? For now you have for master, not me, but your own self-will [propriam voluntatem], with which, according to your own confessions, you have so often offended God.61

Specifically linked to mother-abbot’s relation to her ‘little ones’ (the novices), the bride’s breasts represent an antidote to the ungodlike self-will: transmitting spiritual nurturance, instruction, guiding, and preaching. Concluding this reading of the little girls, I wish to point to the relation between Bernard’s female protagonists in the Sermons and the threefold hermeneutical model of spiritual ascent. Weak and immature, the girls are dependent on nourishment and affectionate care from their mother. They do not dare, or are not capable of, approaching the bridegroom directly. Still clinging onto the world and the flesh, they represent the lowest degree of spiritual perfection and, by extension, in Bernard’s monastic perspective, those who stand lowest in the monastic hierarchy, that is, the novices (Scc 19 and 24). Alternatively, Bernard also invokes the adolescent girls for his self-representation in order to implement rhetoric of humility (Scc 14 and 21). The girls, then, represent the first level — the literal and corporeal level — in Bernard’s scheme of spiritual ascent. The bride, on the other hand, stands on the highest level of spiritual development, representing — and unifying — the two higher degrees of perfection: the active or rational level and the contemplative or spiritual level. Thus the female characters may be ordered in accordance with the threefold schema of hermeneutics:62 1. The little girls (corporeal, literal level) 2. The mother-bride (tropological, rational level) 3. The virgin-bride (contemplative, spiritual level) 60 

See above, Section 2.2. Scc 19.7, OSB, v.1, p. 252: ‘Qui vestri curam semel nobis credidistis, quid rursum de vobis vos intromittitis? Nam illam, qua toties Deum, conscientiis vestris testibus, offendistis, propriam scilicet voluntatem vestram, ecce nunc iterum magistram habetis, non me.’ 62  See above, Section 2.1. 61 

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Finally, before ascertaining instances of female self-representation in the Sermons where Bernard’s identification is not obtained by an association with one of the female characters from the Song of Songs, we shall briefly consider the other minor role to appear in the Sermons: ‘the bridegroom’s companions’ (sodales). Mentioned in Song 1. 6, they represent angels.63 In Bernard’s text, they appear most often conversing with the bride. Sometimes they comfort her after she has been rebuked by the bridegroom, for instance, in Sermon 42: Imagine that the bridegroom, after he has reproved or repulsed her and sees the blush of shame on her cheeks, takes leave of the place so she might express more freely what she feels. If then, as often happens, she becomes more than duly dismayed and depressed, his companions will console and reassure her.64

At other times the bridegroom’s companions reprimand the bride, for instance, at the opening of Sermon 9, where, upon finding her downcast, they reproach her for her sadness: What is the reason for this unexpected moaning? Is it not true that you, estranged and alienated, strayed away with your lovers who mistreated you so you were compelled to return to your first husband, and, after many implorations and many tears, were you not given at least the favour of touching his feet?65

Like the bride herself, who mediates between the girls and the bridegroom, the angel-companions perform an intermediary function in Bernard’s text, as mediators between the bride and bridegroom: See the friendly and intimate communication between the aspiring soul and the powerful celestial spirits. She yearns for kisses and pleads to have what she desires, but she does not name the one she loves; she does not doubt that they know him 63 

Compare, e.g., Gregory the Great’s reading, Expositio in Canticum canticorum, col. 477D, where the sodales represent also the saints and prophets, unlike in Bernard’s Sermons. 64  Scc 42.1, OSB, v.2, p. 92: ‘Puta proinde sponsum, ubi eam — quatenus visum fuit — aut corripuit, aut repressit, comperta ex suffusione genarum verecundia, cessisse loco, ut illa se absente loqueretur liberius quae sentiret, sed et si pavidior, ut assolet, quam oportuerit, et deiectior animo facta esset, sodalium eam consolationes erigerent.’ 65  Scc 9.1, OSB, v.1, p. 110: ‘Quae inopinati murmuris causa? Certe cum aversa et alienata ires post amatores tuos, cum quibus male erat tibi, compulsa tandem reverti ad virum tuum priorem, nonne ut saltem merereris tangere pedes, multis precibus et fletibus institisti?’ See also above, Section 3.3. Here the construal of the bride’s faithlessness relies on textual interplay with Old Testament texts, particularly Hosea, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah. For examples and references of the image of adultery in the relation between Yahweh and Israel, see Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus and Other Problems, pp. 97–101.

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because they converse so often about him. Therefore she does not say: Let this one or that one kiss me. Rather she says simply: Let him kiss me. […] Thus as she speaks to her bridegroom’s companions, she knows that they know and that they understand her, so she names no name as she unexpectedly bursts forth with words of her beloved: Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.66

Witnesses to the bride’s desire, the companions of the bridegroom become her accomplices in love. Expounding on the aspiring bridal soul who longs incessantly, who prays continually, who is ready to suffer for her desire, and who is finally rewarded with the bridegroom’s visit, Bernard conjures up an intimate image of the angel watching over the bride: And this soul’s angel, one of the bridegroom’s companions, sent by him to be servant and witness of that secret and mutual exchange — that angel, I say, dances for joy, and, participating in their bliss and their delight, he turns to the Lord and says: I thank you, Lord of majesty, for you have granted her heart’s desire, not denying her what her lips long for! [Ps 20. 3] He is everywhere the soul’s tireless attendant, never ceasing to lure her on and instruct her with constant suggestions, saying: Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desire, and again: Wait for the Lord, and keep his road [Ps 36. 4, 34]. Likewise: If he seems late, wait for him, for he will come, and he will not delay [Hab 2. 3]. To the Lord he says: Like the deer longs for the spring of water, so this soul longs for you, o God [Ps 41. 2]. She has longed for you in the night and your spirit in her heart watches for you from morning onwards [Is 26. 9]. And again: All day her hands reach out to you [Ps 87. 10], grant her what she wants for she is calling out for you [Mt 15. 23]. Relent a little and be merciful [Ps 89. 13]. Look down from heaven and see, and visit this desolate one. This loyal groomsman, watching over this interchange of love without envy, seeks the glory of the Lord rather than his own. He is a mediator for the lovers, conveying promises and bearing gifts between them. He arouses her, and he placates him. Sometimes, although rarely, he brings them together, either by seizing her [rapiens], or by leading him: for he is a member of the household and a well-known figure in the palace, one who has no fear of being turned away, who daily sees the face of the father.67

66  Scc 7.8, OSB, v.1, p.  96: ‘Et vide familiare amicumque colloquium animae in carne suspirantis cum caelestibus potestatibus. Gestit in oscula, petit quod cupit; non tamen nominat quem amat, quia illos nosse non dubitat, utpote de quo sibi frequens cum illis soleat esse confabutatio. Propterea non dicit: Osculetur me ille vel ille; sed: Osculetur me tantum; […] Ita ergo et ista loquens sodalibus sponsi sui, tanquam consciis et quibus se noverat manifestam, tacito nomine repente in haec de dilecto verba prorupit: Osculetur me osculo oris sui.’ 67  Scc 31.5, OSB, v.1, p. 462: ‘Sed et angelus eius, qui unus est de sodalibus sponsi, in hoc ipsum deputatus, minister profecto et arbiter secretae mutuaeque salutationis, is, inquam,

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The passage at hand represents an excellent example of Bernard’s biblical intertextuality. 68 Weaving together biblical quotations and allusions, Bernard reproduces the angel’s speech to the bridal soul and to the Lord in the form of a series of quotes, drawing particularly on the Psalms. Alternating between repeating the verses verbatim (e.g., Ps 36. 4, 34 and Hab 2. 3) and imposing minor additions onto them, Bernard reshapes the biblical text to comply to his present concerns, for instance, adding ista to Ps 41. 2, to give emphasis to ‘this’ soul, or changing the gender of the desirous lover from ‘him’ (eum) to ‘her’ (eam) (Ps 20. 3).69 The angel-companion, referred to as ‘groomsman’ (paranymphus), is both ‘servant’ (minister, pedisequus) and ‘witness’ (arbiter) to the love affair between the soul and the Word. Participating in the lovers’ bliss and delight (collaetatur et condelectatur), this voyeuristic angel does not merely passively (yet ecstatically) look on, but even, at times, organizes the couple’s meetings. It is significant that the primary function of the bridegroom’s companions is specifically connected with a tropological reading of the bride as anima, rather than an angelus quomodo tripudiat, quomodo collaetatur et condelectatur, et conversus ad Dominum dicit: Gratias ago tibi, Domine maiestatis, quia desiderium cordis eius tribuisti ei, et voluntate labiorum eius non fraudasti eam? Ipse est qui in omni loco sedulus quidam pedisequus animae non cessat sollicitare eam, et assiduis suggestionibus monere, dicens: Delectare in Domino, et dabit tibi petitiones cordis tui; et rursum, Exspecta Dominum, et custodi viam eius [Psal. XXXVI, 4, 34]. Item, Si moram fecerit, exspecta eum, quia veniens veniet, et non tardabit [Habac. II, 3]. Ad Dominum autem: Sicut cervus, inquit, desiderat ad fontes aquarum, ita desiderat anima ista ad te, Deus [Psal. XLI, 2]. Desideravit te in nocte, sed et spiritus tuus in praecordiis eius de mane vigilavit ad te [Isai. XXVI, 9]. Et iterum: Tota die expandit ad te manus suas [Psal. LXXXVII, 10]; dimitte illam, quia clamat post te [Matth. XV, 23]; convertere aliquantulum, et deprecabilis esto [Psal. LXXXIX, 13]. Respice de caelo, et vide, et visita desolatam. Fidelis paranymphus, qui mutui amoris conscius, sed non invidus, non suam quaerit, sed Domini gloriam, discurrit medius inter dilectum et dilectam, vota offerens, referens dona. Excitat istam, placat illum. Interdum quoque, licet raro, repraesentat eos pariter sibi, sive hanc rapiens, sive illum adducens: siquidem domesticus est et notus in palatio, nec veretur repulsam, et quotidie videt faciem Patris.’ 68  On the liberty with which Bernard played with biblical texts, see Leclercq, Recueil, iii (1969), 241–45. 69  Bernard does not hesitate to rewrite gender in his biblical citations or allusions. But compare the quotation of Ps 20. 3 in Scc 9.7, OSB, v.1, p. 118: ‘impletque in ea sermonem qui scriptus est: Desiderium cordis eius tribuisti ei, et voluntate labiorum eius non fraudasti eum [Psal. XX. 3]’ (and so fulfilled in her [in ea] the words that are written: You have granted [his] heart’s desire, not denying him [eum] what [his] lips longed for [Ps 20. 3]). Here, we note that the pronoun is kept in masculine gender, eum, keeping with the biblical text. However, as one may induce from the impletque in ea, its reference is nevertheless the bride.

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allegorical reading of the bride as Ecclesia. Although Bernard’s reading, as mentioned, rarely moves exclusively on one level of meaning, one may nevertheless note that while the sodales appear in a context where the bride is (primarily) anima, they are never invoked when she is (primarily) Ecclesia, and that, conversely, the adolescentulae are almost always accompanied by either an ecclesiastical interpretation of the bride or by an interpretation where monastic leadership and Church authority emerges as subtext. The (spiritual, male) ‘angelcompanions’, then, represent a counterpoint to the (fleshly, female) ‘little girls’ in Bernard’s Sermons, both hermeneutically and ontologically.

4.3 Intermediation and Domesticity: Exegesis as Feminine Activity As is clear, Bernard of Clairvaux’s female self-representation is not limited to motherhood themes, the category of imagery in the Sermons which has received most attention in scholarship. The previous chapter argued that Bernard not only associates himself with the bride’s motherhood, he also identifies with her virginal erotic desire, as well her widowhood. In the current chapter, moreover, we find that female identification is not restricted to the bride; the little girls, too, function to establish Bernard’s identity and Cistercian identity — invoking, above all, as we have seen in the preceding discussion, notions of the primal monastic virtue, humility. Finally, Bernard even assumes female roles which are related neither to the bride nor to the little girls. Performing feminine activities like spinning (Scc 15.5), cooking, and fetching water at the well (Scc 22.2), he connects them to his own exegetical undertaking. In Sermon 15, Bernard declares his intention to explain the meaning of Song 1. 2 (‘your name is oil poured out’). ‘For I have not yet told you’, he states, referring to his former sermon where he interrupted his own explanation, ‘I began to do so, but something else which seemed to need addressing suddenly presented itself.’70 Commenting on the digression of his own exposition, he next produces an identification: firstly, between himself and the wise wife of Proverbs (Prov 31. 10–21); and, secondly, between exegesis and spinning:

70  Scc 15.5, OSB, v.1, p. 198: ‘Nam hoc nondum dixi. In sermone superiori dicere coeperam; sed intervenit subito aliud quod praedicendum videbatur’. Bernard is most likely referring to the fact that in Scc 14.8, the last section of that sermon, he began the theme of the bridegroom’s oil, which was discontinued as he started the next sermon, where he instead spoke of various meanings of the name of Jesus.

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Although I may have spent more time than I intended, in this I should think that I am no more guilty than the strong wife Wisdom, who put her hand to the rod, and with her fingers seized the spindle. For she knew how to create a long thread [longum filum] from a scarce amount [modicum] of wool or linen in order to extend the size of the textile so all her household might be doubly clothed [Prov 19. 21].71

In this fetching imagery, Bernard — almost apologetically — likens his exegetical digression (Scc 15.1–5) to the wise wife of Proverbs who is so good at spinning that she is able to clothe her household twice. Contrasting the ‘scanty supply’ (modicum) of wool or linen, and the ‘long thread’ (longum filum) which the wise wife skilfully manages to extract from it, Bernard’s parallel to his own exegesis implies a bold affirmation; like the spinning woman he is able to stretch what he has, turning a limited quantity into a sizeable result.72 The image of Bernard as spinning woman captures the style and hermeneutical ideals of his Sermons: out of a limited biblical text (modicum), he attempts to extract infinite intertextuality (longum filum), providing his audience with spiritual significations with which he ‘clothes them’. Moreover, as pointed out by David Damrosch, the modicum as a characterization of the (spiritual, material) life of the monks draws attention to the monks’ profound state of poverty.73 The image of the spinner wife providing for her family despite her desolate condition thus transmits and conflates favoured Bernardine themes: themes of lowliness and humility, themes of spiritual authority, and themes of hermeneutics and exegesis. Together with Sermon 15, Sermon 22 supplies the most interesting example of Bernard’s female self-representation without direct use of transitional female characters from the Song of Songs (i.e., the bride, the girls). Here Bernard cre71 

Scc 15.5, OSB, v.1, p.  198: ‘Quamquam intermiserim ultra quam credidi. Quod non aliud esse reor, nisi quod fortis mulier, Sapientia, misit manum ad colum, et digiti eius apprehenderunt fusum. Novit enim modicam lanam vel linum in longum producere filum, atque in telae extendere latitudinem, et sic omnes domesticos suos vestire duplicibus [Prov. XXXI, 19, 21].’ 72  Damrosch, ‘Non alia sed aliter’, p. 185, addressing the same passage, refers to Bernard as seamstress, but in fact s/he is more specifically a spinner; see Damrosch’s full discussion of the current passages from Scc 15 and 22. 73  See Damrosch, ‘Non alia sed aliter’, p.  185, where he states, perhaps with a ring of anachronism regarding earning power in a feudal, preindustrial society: ‘The woman’s poverty, like the monk’s, is not necessarily a reflection of her husband’s (God’s) true wealth; rather, like the monk, and metaphorically like the soul in general, the woman has no direct earning power and must make do with whatever amount she is given.’

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ates an image of the bride as a fountain (Scc 22.2), who later turns out to be Paul (Scc 22.4),74 while he stages himself as a woman at a public well. He opens the sequence, positioning himself at a humble distance from the idealized bride: ‘In [spiritual] matters, understanding must follow experience. I should never dare to claim for myself the prerogative of the bride.’75 Hermeneutically displaced by his recurring strategy of rhetorical humility, Bernard instead claims for himself another female role. Like the spinning wife, this is a domestic and intermediary role — fetching water at the well: Let her be a fountain entirely your own, unshared by any stranger, untouched by unworthy lips: For she is a garden enclosed, a sealed fountain [Song 4. 12]. Yet waters flow [from her] into the town-squares. This I may use, but I want no trouble or ingratitude from anyone if what I offer is drawn from a public source. I shall even compliment my service a little, for no small effort and fatigue is involved in going out each day to draw from the open streams of the Scriptures and provide for the needs of every one of you, so that without any fatigue of your own, you may have at hand spiritual waters for every occasion, for instance, for washing, for drinking, and for cooking. For the divine word [sermo divinus] is water of salutary wisdom, not only for drinking but also for cleaning, like the Lord says: And you are cleaned by the word which I have spoken to you [ Jn 15. 3]. And this divine speech [divinum eloquium], by lighting the fire of the Holy Spirit, can also cook the crude thoughts of the flesh, and transform them in spiritual meanings and food for the mind, so that you might say: My heart burned inside me, and in meditation a fire lit up [Ps 38. 4].76 74  See Scc 22.4, OSB, v.1, p. 290: ‘fons vitae, ipse fons signatus, de intra hortum conclusum erumpens, per os Pauli fistulam suam’ (a fountain of life, a sealed fountain, flowing inside the closed garden and conducted through the mouth of Paul). The intermediarly role also of Paul is underscored in this imagery: he is the fountain not the source. 75  Scc 22.2, OSB, v.1, p. 286: ‘Porro in huiusmodi non capit intelligentia, nisi quantum experientia attingit. Ego vero haud temere mihi arrogarim sponsae praerogativam.’ 76  Scc 22.2, OSB, v.1, p. 288: ‘Sit tibi fons proprius, in quo ei non communicet alienus, nec indignus bibat ex eo: est quippe hortus conclusus, fons signatus [Cant. IV, 12]. Ceterum derivantur aquae inde in plateas. Eas me habere ad manum fateor, dum tamen nemo mihi molestus sit aut ingratus, si de publico haurio et propino. Nam ut paulisper ministerium meum in hac parte commendem, nonnullius profecto fatigationis est atque laboris, quotidie exire scilicet, et haurire etiam de manifestis rivulis Scripturarum, et ex eis singulorum necessitatibus inservire, ut absque suo labore quisque vestrum praesto habeat aquas spirituales ad omne opus, verbi gratia, ad lavandum, ad potandum, ad cibos coquendos. Est nimirum aqua sapientiae salutaris sermo divinus, non modo potans, sed et lavans, dicente Domino: Et vos mundi estis propter sermonem quem locutus sum vobis [Ioan. XV, 3]. Sed et crudos carnis cogitatus, igne Spiritus sancti accendente, coquit divinum eloquium, ac vertit in sensus spirituales et cibos

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Portraying the bride as a sealed, yet overflowing fountain, the passage opens by summoning simultaneously the two themes which, as argued in the present book, relate to the bride’s dual nature. On the one hand, the notion of sealed and enclosed space (hortus conclusus, fons signatus) evokes the virgin; while, on the other hand, the image of overflowing wetness recalls motherhood themes.77 This oxymoronic fountain — the bride — is both sealed and overflowing, both chaste and fecund, thus also lending the passage strong ecclesiological reverberations. Although the passage lacks any direct reference to the breast metaphor, the abbot in effect resummons the theme from Sermon 9: the liquid flowing out from the insides of the bride, an image, as argued, particularly saturated with sacramental themes. Instead of placing himself in the bridal position, then, Bernard assumes an inferior and instrumental role: intermediating between the bride and the audience. Metaphorically, this is presented as an image of Bernard ‘drawing and offering to drink’ (haurio et propino) from the water which freely flows into the ‘squares’ (plateas) — water which is referred to as ‘public’ (de publico) and as ‘open streams’ (manifestis rivulis). Explicitly related to Scripture, this water gushing forth from the bride carries a hermeneutical emphasis. The bride’s close association with text (‘Scripture’, Scripturarum; the ‘divine word’, sermo divinus; ‘divine speech’, divinum eloquium) along with Bernard’s own intermediary role as exegete, emphasizes the bride as Church or as Church authority: guarding and supplying doctrine (a closed but overflowing fountain) which requires interpretation by the exegete (who draws and offers to drink from the fountain). A veiled comment on his own exegesis, the image of Bernard at the public well — drawing from the waters of Scripture — conjures up notions of his interpretation of vita activa. As in Bernard’s representations of the active life, the current imagery resonates with concepts of doctrinal instruction, spiritual guidance, and preaching. Labour, one of the leading themes in the Bernardine interpretation of this theme, is underscored and repeated: he describes his ‘service’ (ministerium meum) as strenuous ‘work’ (fatigationis est atque laboris), as repetitive (quotidie exire scilicet), and also as submissive, in the sense that it involves labouring for others.

mentis, ita ut dicas: Concaluit cor meum intra me, et in meditatione mea exardescet ignis [Psal. XXXVIII, 4].’ 77  On enclosed space, see above, Section 3.3; on maternal imagery inherent in the fountain metaphor, see above, Section 2.4.

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Providing his monks with ‘spiritual waters’ (aquas spirituales) and ‘water of salutary wisdom’ (aqua sapientiae salutaris), Bernard is clearly performing — once more — the role of transmitter or mediatrix between the monks and the divine. Again this role is implied in his interpretation of spiritual authority and exegesis. As Bernard draws attention to the exegetical signification inherent in the imagery of this salutary liquid, he identifies a threefold hermeneutical significance of water: it serves to clean, to drink, and to cook.78 Explicitly identifying the water in question with words — liquid words, again — Bernard develops the image of cleaning by reference to John 15. 3: ‘You are cleaned by the word which I have spoken to you.’ Imagery of drinking, on the other hand, is not expounded upon here, but one might recall Bernard’s designation of the bridal soul in Sermon 7 as ‘the soul who thirsts [sitiens] for God’.79 Finally, he turns his attention towards cooking. Like cleaning, cooking also functions as an image of transformation. The believer is not just ‘cleaned’ (lavans) but ‘cooked’ (coquit), indeed ‘burnt’ (concaluit, exardescet), so that the ‘crude carnal thoughts’ (crudos carnis cogitatus) are transformed into ‘spiritual meanings and food for the mind’ (sensus spirituales et cibos mentis).80 Conflated with the theme of transformation, the numerous references to ‘fire’ and ‘burning’ (igne, accendente, coquit, concaluit, exardescet ignis) allude to notions of passion and love, and, especially, to Bernard’s notion of the transformative power of desire.81 Yet I suggest that a principal aspect of this passage has to do with gender. Fetching water at the well, the predominant imagery here, was distinctly a woman’s labour, and likewise, the public fountain was a ‘female spot’, a gendered space in premodern Europe. 82 Thus the drawing and the offering of water are metaphors not only for quenching thirst and satisfying desire. They reflect a specific female activity, and, as we have seen, of the humblest kind: slow, patient, and tiring work. Furthermore, female representation in the current passage is not limited to Bernard himself. His own femaleness is reflected in his audience, the monks. They are also feminized, as they will use the water 78 

On the conflation of hermeneutics and water/irrigation/fertility, see also below, Section 6.3. See above, Section 2.3 (my italics); cf. the deer’s thirst as image for the soul’s desire for God: Scc 31.5 above, Section 4.2. 80  See also below, Section 6.5, for discussion on imagery of nourishment and feeding. 81  See also below, Sections 5.5. and 6.1. 82  On this and the following, see Damrosch, ‘Non alia sed aliter’, pp. 184–85; see also Kartzow, Gossip and Gender, p. 37, who points to the public well as gendered space in her reading of the Pastoral Epistles. 79 

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which Bernard brings them for performing female activities such as cleaning and cooking. Indeed, opening the next passage of the sermon (Scc 22.3), Bernard the feminized exegete develops further on the theme of intermediation. Imagery of slow and modest female labour — fetching water, cooking, cleaning — now finds a textual parallel in the slow and modest intelligence of his audience. ‘Far from disapproving of those whose purer mind enables to grasp more sublime truths than I can present, I warmly congratulate them, but expect them to allow me to provide a simpler doctrine for simpler minds.’ 83 Contrasting ‘sublime truths’ fit for ‘pure minds’ (puriori […] sublimiora) with a ‘simpler doctrine’ fit for ‘simpler minds’ (simpliciora simplicoribus), Bernard positions himself and his monks among the ‘simple minds’, in contrast to those of superior intellect. The present rhetorical formula — opposing the slow-witted and the intelligent — is found also in Sermon 16. Yet again we find the image of Bernard drawing water at the well as an image of hermeneutical activity, further enhancing the feminine connotations inherent in the monks’ affective and slow intelligence: I say, however, to those present whose ingenious minds run faster and who in every sermon would anticipate the end almost before having grasped the beginning, that I am obliged primarily to those who are slower [tardioribus]. My duty is not so much to explain words as to touch hearts. I must both draw water and offer it to drink, something which is not done by hasty summary but rather by careful exposition and frequent exhortation.84

Portraying his own exegetical activity as drawing and offering water to drink, Bernard identifies with the task of ‘touching hearts’ which he opposes with ‘explaining words’ in the form of alliteration: exponam verba, quam ut imbuam corda.85 Thus, the stress on slow-wittedness and affectivity carries a hermeneutical emphasis, as when Bernard characterizes the bride as hopelessly, passion83 

Scc 22.3, OSB, v.1, p. 288: ‘Qui mente sane puriori per seipsos apprehendere sublimiora sufficiunt, quam per nos proferantur, non solum non prohibeo, sed et multum congratulor, dum et ipsi nos patiantur simpliciora simplicioribus ministrare.’ 84  Scc 16.1, OSB, v.1, p. 206: ‘Dico tamen his qui praevolantes ingenio, in omni sermone ante pene flagitant finem, quam principium teneant, debitorem me etiam tardioribus esse, et maxime; sed nec studium tam esse mihi ut exponam verba, quam ut imbuam corda. Et haurire et propinare me oportet, quod non fit celeriter percurrendo, sed tractando diligenter et exhortando frequenter.’ 85  Compare Scc 14.8 below, Section 5.3, where Bernard opposes in codicibus and in cordibus in a hermeneutical incitement against ( Jewish) literal reading of Scripture.

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ately irrational.86 Simple-mindedness, like irrationality, seems to be affirmed as female marker while at the same time converted from a negative quality into a positive quality. Indeed, implicit in the current oppositions of quick and slow intelligence and rationality and irrationality lies the Cistercian refutation of the more philosophical modes of study in the urban schools (epitomized, for Bernard, by the dialectics of Abelard), which would allegedly emphasize reason at the expense of faith, love, and Church authority.87 His subtle rhetorical irony, therefore, carries a criticism similar to the one encountered in Sermon 18, thus effecting, in reality, an inversion of quick-witted and slow-witted.88 Like schoolmen who teach ‘what they do not grasp’, pretentious intellects ‘anticipate the end before having grasped the beginning’. Thus their superiority is, after all, only superficial and apparent, and therefore futile. On the contrary, Bernard’s educational programme emphasizes accessibility and affectivity: I, a man, describe this man to men [hominem homo hominibus], according to the human form he adopted in order to reveal himself with great esteem and love, whereby he became lower than the angels and pitched his tent in the sun like a bridegroom who comes out from his chamber [Ps 18. 6]. I speak of him as sweet rather than sublime, as anointed rather than lofty.89

As Bernard concludes his reflections of his own role as exegete in Sermon 22, he returns to his recurring opposition of contemplation and preaching, of desire and duty: ‘Who will grant me that all might be prophets?’ he exclaims, ‘Then perhaps I would not need to busy myself with these things!’90 Expressly wishing to be relieved of his burdensome role of preacher (‘prophet’) he repeats and intensifies his plea:

86 

See, e.g., Scc 9.2, OSB, v.1, p. 112: ‘Desiderio feror, non ratione.’ On this point in relation to the present discussion of ‘feminized’ hermeneutics, see Damrosch, ‘Non alia sed aliter’, p. 186. 88  On Scc 18, see above, Section 2.4. 89  Scc 22.3, OSB, v.1, p. 288: ‘hominem homo hominibus loquor secundum eam formam, in qua, ut se manifestum nimia sua dignatione et dilectione praeberet, minoratus ab angelis in sole posuit tabernaculum suum, tamquam sponsus procedens de thalamo suo [Psal. XVIII, 6]. Suavem magis quam sublimem, et unctum, non altum loquor’. 90  Scc 22.3, OSB, v.1, p. 288: ‘Quis dabit mihi ut omnes prophetent? Utinam mihi necesse non esset in his occupari!’ 87 

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Then perhaps this burden could be transferred to another, or rather, which I would prefer, that no one of you would have need of this, that you were all taught by God, and that I could be free [vacare] to contemplate God’s beauty! For the time being, however, it is not possible — in tears I speak — to seek after, let alone gaze at, the king in his beauty.91

Thus concluding his discussion, Bernard yet again underscores his role as exegete in terms of the familiar formula of self-sacrifice, humility, and disinterested duty inherent in his notion of activa–uti–descensio and in maternal imagery.

4.4 Hermeneutics of Unlikeness: Denigrated Femaleness, Displaced Beauty Bernard’s representation of femaleness may be seen as directly related to what one critic termed a ‘hermeneutics of exile’.92 In Bernard’s understanding, the exilic state of fallen humankind, the longum exsilium nostrum in Augustinian terms, entails a distance — historically, emotionally, and hermeneutically — to Scripture and the events portrayed therein. In pre-Christian times God was hidden and inaccessible: ‘our forefathers’ (patribus prioribus saeculis), says Bernard in Sermon 6, remained ‘insensitive to him’ (non sentiebatur ab hominibus) and ‘failed to recognize’ (nesciebant) him: ‘They were made by him but they were not with him; they lived through him but not for him; they had knowledge from him but not of him. They were alienated, ungrateful, and insensitive [alienati, ingrati, insensati].’93 Yet for Bernard this ‘pre-Christian’ state of affairs is not quite unlike his own times, as he laments ‘the lukewarmness and numbness of our miserable times’.94 In Sermon 11, Bernard depicts postlapsarian anthropology applying the Augustinian division of the soul into the faculties of reason, will, and memory (De trinitate 10.2.17–19). Human souls have lost the divine 91 

Scc 22.3, OSB, v.1, p. 288: ‘Utinam aut alteri cura incumberet ista, aut certe, quod mallem, nemo in vobis esset qui ea indigeret, essentque omnes docibiles Dei, et ego possem vacare et videre quoniam speciosus [Mabillon, col. 879A: sponsus] est Deus! Nunc vero quoniam minime interim, non dico intueri, sed nec inquirere quidem licet, quod sine lacrimis non loquor, Regem in decore suo’. 92  Damrosch, ‘Non alia sed aliter’; I proffer and expand on his argument in the present discussion. 93  Scc 6.2, OSB, v.1, p. 78: ‘Ab ipso erant, sed non cum ipso; per ipsum vivebant, sed non ipsi; ex ipso sapiebant, sed non ipsum, alienati, ingrati, insensati.’ My italics in translation. 94  Scc 2.1, OSB, v.1, p. 42: ‘teporis torporisque miserabilium temporum horum’. Compare also alienati, ingrati, insensati with incrassati, impinguati, dilatati of Scc 10.3, discussed above, Section 2.4.

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likeness, expressed by truth, love, and eternity, and replaced this divine trinity by its negation — error, pain, and fear: O truth, love, eternity! O blessed and beatifying Trinity! In the unhappiness of its exile my miserable trinity miserably sighs for you. Departing from you, in what errors, what pains, what fears has it involved itself ! Wretched me! What a trinity we have exchanged for you. My heart is distressed, and hence pain; my strength abandons me, and hence fear; the light of my eyes is not with me [Ps 37. 11], and hence error. O trinity of my soul, how dissimilar a trinity you present in your exile. Yet why are you so sad, my soul, why do you distress me? Put your hope in God that I shall praise him yet [Ps 41. 6] when error will have receded from the reason, pain from the will, and all fear from the memory. Then will come that which we hope for: marvellous serenity, fullness of delight, and eternal safety.95

Again following Augustine (De doctrina christiana 1.5.5; Conf 7.10.16), this trinity of truth, love, and eternity, corresponds respectively to the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Father.96 Its negation — error, pain, and fear — may be read as a representation of the fall of man in terms of an affective and an epistemological disruption.97 This disruption in the constitution of exilic humankind thus effects an exclusion from full understanding and recognition, resulting in the negative trinity. The soul’s desire to overcome this condition, then, is a hermeneutical desire to overcome any mediation or hindrance (implying 95 

Scc 11.5–6, OSB, v.1, p. 144: ‘O veritas, caritas, aeternitas! O beata et beatificans Trinitas! Ad te mea misera trinitas miseserabiliter suspirat, quoniam a te infeliciter exsulat. Discedens a te, quantis se intricavit erroribus, doloribus, timoribus! Heu me! qualem pro te commutavimus trinitatem! Cor meum conturbatum est, et inde dolor; dereliquit me virtus mea, et inde pavor; et lumen oculorum meorum non est mecum [Psal. XXXVII, 11], et inde error. En quam dissimilem trinitatem, o animae meae trinitas, exsulans ostendisti. [6.] Verumtamen quare tristis es, anima mea, et quare conturbas me? Spera in Deo quoniam adhuc confitebor illi [Psal. XLI, 6], cum error videlicet a ratione, a voluntate dolor, atque a memoria timor omnis recesserit, et successerit illa quam speramus mira serenitas, plena suavitas, aeterna securitas.’ 96  See Scc 11.6, OSB, v.1, p. 144. 97  One may consider the affective component as disrupted on account of the soul’s pain and fear (corresponding to the faculties of will/caritas and memory/aeternitas), the epistemological on account of error (corresponding to the faculty of reason/veritas). Bernard names four affectus of the soul: amor, timor, gaudium, and tristitia, see Div 50.2, col. 673A. One should take care, however, not to distinguish rigidly between affective and intellective categories in Bernardine spirituality; on this, see discussion in Casey, Athirst for God, pp. 102–03, and especially the warning by Blanpain, ‘Langage mystique’, p. 59, not to confuse Bernard’s affectus with scholastic affectus cordis, intending a movement of sensibility or sentiment closer to current use.

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even Scripture itself ) which lies between the soul and God, between words and understanding, or, as Bernard also refers to it, between speaking and kissing.98 Significantly, this condition of displacement and exile may, following the present argument, be understood as closely associated with femaleness in the Sermons. In other words, Bernard represents hermeneutical and semiotic exile as a fundamentally female condition. Affirming the association between femaleness and worldliness, Sermon 38 equates the bride’s existence on earth — ‘while she is on earth’ (quamdiu in terris est) — with an existence among women: ‘while she is among women’ (donec inter mulieres).99 Associated with worldliness and fleshliness, femaleness might concurrently function as an indicator of the worldly and inferior eros of carnal pleasure and carnal desires. In Sermon 52 Bernard identifies immature souls as the little girls (adolescentulae) who still cling to the world and its priorities, highlighting their femaleness: ‘They are delicate and tender, their feminine appetites [affectibus] and conduct still untempered.’100 Likewise, Bernard refers to the worldly minded as ‘daughters of this world’.101 In Sermon 47 he employs a gendered opposition to distinguish between good and bad conduct during mass, advising his brothers to sing the praises of the Lord with ‘virile’ and dignified voices (virili, ut dignum est). Conversely, lazy and sleepy monks behave ‘womanly’ (muliebre), characterized by ‘stuttering and nasal wheezing’.102 As virili is associated with dignum, so muliebre is associated with a conduct which is inappropriate and ridiculous. Here, then, femaleness functions as a marker of weakness in character, rather than merely reflecting a secondary or ontologically inferior position. The inherent femaleness of the human body is alluded to in the few passages where Bernard mentions Eve: in the analogy between Adam’s love for Eve and Christ’s taking of a body for love of humankind, in the identification between Eve and worldly desire, and, more explicitly, in the identification of

98 

Scc 2.2, OSB, v.1, p. 42: ‘Ipse, ipse quem loquuntur, ipse loquatur; ipse me osculetur osculo oris sui’ (He, he of whom they speak, let him speak, let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth). See also Table 6 above, Section 2.6, on the opposition of reading and feeling. 99  On Scc 38, see below in the present section. 100  Scc 52.1, OSB, v.2, p. 208: ‘Delicatae et molles, et quasi femineis adhuc affectibus et actibus infirmae.’ 101  Scc 29.9, OSB, v.1, p. 434: ‘filiae huius saeculi’. 102  Scc 47.8, OSB, v.2, p. 158: ‘non pigri, non somnolenti, non oscitantes, non parcentes vocibus, non praecidentes verba dimidia, non integra transilientes, non fractis et remissis vocibus muliebre quiddam balba de nare sonantes, sed virili, ut dignum est’.

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Eve and ‘our flesh’.103 Most importantly, however, gender marks the boundary between worldly and heavenly, fleshly and spiritual, as will become clear in the reading of Sermon 38. In this sermon Bernard proffers ‘beauty’ as demarcation line between the idealized bride and the metaphysical inferiority of femaleness. Commenting Song 1. 7 (‘o beautiful among women’), he proceeds to associate ‘beauty’ with spiritualness and ‘women’ with fleshliness: The bride is beautiful but not beautiful in every sense: beautiful among women, the bridegroom called her. With this qualification she is restrained and she will know what is lacking in her. I think that, here, souls who are fleshly and worldly [animas carnales ac saeculares] are called women, those without manliness [virile], without strength and constancy in their conduct, who are wholly sluggish, wholly feminine [femineum] and soft in their lives and their behaviour. The spiritual soul, however, while she is beautiful because she does not follow the flesh but rather the spirit, may not achieve perfect beauty as long as she is living in the body. Therefore she is not beautiful in every way but beautiful among women, that is, among earthly souls [animas terrenas] and those who are not spiritual like herself — but not among those in angelic beatitude, not among the virtues, the powers, and the dominations […] [I]n this sense the bride is called beautiful, but for the time being [interim], among women, and not among the blissful in heaven.104 103 

On Adam’s love for Eve and Christ’s taking on flesh, see Scc 20.3, OSB, v.1, p. 258: ‘Nam quos sane in carne visitavit, carnaliter tamen nequaquam amavit, sed in prudentia spiritus. […] non hominis, et certe saniori, quam primus Adam Evam suam. Itaque quos in carne quaesivit, dilexit in spiritu, redemit in virtute’ (Indeed, [Christ] never loved in fleshly way those he visited in the flesh, but rather in prudence of spirit. [...]. [C]ertainly not in the way that the first Adam [loved] his Eve. So those whom he sought in flesh, he loved in spirit and redeemed in power). On identification between Eve and worldly desire, see Scc 82.4, OSB, v.2, p. 594: ‘Evam attende, quomodo eius anima immortalis immortalitatis suae gloriae fucum mortalitatis invexit, mortalia utique affectando’ (Consider Eve, and how her immortal soul in the glory of her immortality introduced the stain of mortality by her desire for what is mortal). On Eve representing flesh, see Scc 72.8, OSB, v.2, p. 470: ‘Eva utique vivente in carne nostra’ (Eve still lives in our flesh). 104  Scc 38.4, OSB, v.2, pp. 58–60: ‘Pulchre autem pulchram, non omnimode quidem, sed pulchram inter mulieres eam dicit, videlicet cum distinctione, quatenus et ex hoc amplius reprimatur, et sciat quid desit sibi. Ego enim puto mulierum nomine hoc loco appellatas animas carnales ac saeculares, nihil in se virile habentes, nihil forte aut constans in suis actibus demonstrantes, sed totum remissum, totum femineum et molle, quod vivunt, et quod agunt. Spiritualis autem anima, etsi inde iam pulchra quod non secundum carnem ambulat, sed secundum spiritum, ex eo tamen quod adhuc in corpore vivit, citra perfectum adhuc pulchritudinis proficit; ac perinde non pulchra omni modo, sed pulchra inter mulieres, id est inter animas terrenas et quae non sunt, sicut ipsa, spirituales, non autem inter angelicas beatitudines, non inter Virtutes, Potestates, Dominationes. […] ita et sponsa modo dicitur pulchra, sed interim adhuc inter mulieres, et non inter caelestes beatitudines.’

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The bride, tropologically referred to as a ‘spiritual soul’ (spiritualis anima), is ‘beautiful’ (pulchram) because she ‘follows the spirit’ (secundum spiritum) rather than the ‘flesh’ (secundum carnem). Borrowing Paul’s division between people of the flesh and people of the spirit (Rom 8), Bernard genders the concept: ‘worldly and fleshly minded souls’ (animas carnales ac saeculares) are ‘women’ (mulierum) and ‘womanish’ (femineum) whereas ‘spiritual souls’ (animas spirituales) are ‘manly’ (virile). Male ‘strength’ and ‘constancy’ (forte aut constans) is countered and negated by female sluggishness and ‘softness’ (remissum […] et molle) as spiritual characteristics. Femaleness, then, indicates worldliness and fleshliness, in direct analogy to immaturity. Yet, clearly, this is not the case of the bride, who is spiritual in inclination and therefore designated as ‘beautiful’. Distinguishing her from ‘women’ (mulieres), Bernard connects the bridal soul to the male-spiritual virile in contrast to the female-fleshly femineum. This gendered marker conditions her beauty. But the bride, even if she is virile, still ‘lacks’ something (desit sibi), says Bernard, for she cannot be wholly spiritual while still in the body. Indeed, Bernard infers immediately that the qualification of the bridegroom’s approval — ‘among women’ (inter mulieres) — equilibrates his praise so that she ‘will know what is lacking in her’ (sciat quid desit sibi): an allusion to Psalm 38. 5 and the topos of scito te ipsum, and hence, as previously discussed, a call to humility.105 This rather complex gendered imagery of Sermon 38 raises some interesting questions because it ultimately destabilizes the bride’s gender. Grammatically, of course, the bride is referred to by feminine forms: for instance, ipsa and pulchra. But depending on the reading of ‘among women’ (inter mulieres) the text opens for two different alternatives. Either the bride is ‘one of ’ (inter) the women, although different from them, or she is a male creature ‘in the midst’ (inter) of females. In the first case, the reading proposes an understanding where the bridegroom’s positive attribution (the bride is beautiful) and his negative attribution (among women) is taken in an affirmative sense (she both beautiful and a woman). In the second case, femaleness is read as related exclusively to those souls which are worldly and carnal (which would exclude the bride). Bernard, in fact, seems to imply exactly that when he says: ‘I think that, here, souls who are worldly or fleshly are called women.’ Yet if only worldly and fleshly-minded souls are ‘women’, and they alone, then what could otherwise be seen as a significant ontological affiliation between the bride and the other 105 

See Scc 23.9 above, Section 2.5.

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women (they are alive), is undermined. Indeed, the only premise of the bridegroom’s attempt to keep her humble (that she should be ‘restrained’, that she should know what is ‘lacking’ in her) would merely be that she is ‘not beautiful in every way’ (non pulchra omni modo): if compared with worldly and fleshly minded souls, she is beautiful; if compared to the blissful, she is not. In other words, if beauty equals maleness and the bride is related as a quasi-male, then the competition in this saintly beauty pageant would not really be very hard, certainly nothing terribly ‘restraining’, because this reading does not provide for an understanding where she is beautiful although she is a woman.106 Although the bride is never directly called ‘woman’, the implication seems to be that her, as yet, imperfect beauty is somehow related to her femaleness by the fact that she is still ‘living in the body’ (adhuc in corpore vivit). In other words, her femaleness is conditioned by her mortal and earthly existence. It might seem, then, that implicitly all living souls are ontologically determined as women. If so, humanity may be divided into two female types: ‘manly women’, who are beautiful and spiritual, and ‘womanish women’, who are fleshly and worldly minded (and not beautiful). All are women; few are beautiful (i.e., ‘manly’). Since Bernard seems to imply that beauty is more appropriately associated with heavenly creatures and contrarily ugliness with bodily creatures, he lends the bride an air of paradoxicalness — fleshly in body, spiritual in mind. It might be instructive to see Bernard’s distinction between ‘virile’ (virile) and ‘feminine’ (femineum) in relation to a similar gendered marker which is found in a letter by Bernard’s contemporary and friend, William of St Thierry, addressed to the Carthusians.107 Here William proposes the same gender division between worldly souls and spiritual souls as Bernard, but uses a different vocabulary: anima and animus.108 The female anima indicates submissiveness to the body and bodily senses, while the male animus controls its bodily senses. Proposing the two gendered concepts as an image of progress from the lower to the higher, William states that anima might become animus by acquiring spirituality, thus attaining full rationality. It is significant to note that contours of the virago model emerge in both Bernard’s and William’s rhetoric, express106 

I stress this point against some claims in Bernardine scholarship that will have the bride not determined by the gender signification of the image: see above, Section 4.1 and Introduction. 107  William of St Thierry’s ‘Golden Epistle’ or Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei. 108  On these terms, see OSB, v.2, p. 60, n. 1; Newman, God and the Goddesses, p. 227; Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, pp. 22–23; and Ferrante, Woman as Image, p. 37 n. 3.

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ing the ideal of superseding femaleness-fleshliness and growing into ‘perfect manhood’.109 This means that the oppositions in Sermon 38 point to a hierarchical ordering which, ultimately, envisions overcoming the inferior, female state. In the latter section of the current passage, oppositions are requalified in terms of ‘women’ on the one hand and ‘angelic beings’ on the other. Here the bride seems to be more decisively identified with the category of ‘women’, although she stands in an ambivalent relation to it. Here, women are identified as ‘earthly souls’ (animas terrenas), which are still opposed by ‘spiritual souls’ (animas spirituales) but which do not evoke the negative ‘feminine’ (femineus) with which the ‘fleshly and worldly souls’ (animas carnales ac saeculares) may be associated. This modification is confirmed by the following biblical examples provided by Bernard: Long ago it was said of one of the Fathers that he was a just man in his generation [Gen 6. 9], that is, surpassing all others of his time and his generation; also, Thamar showed herself righteous in front of Judah, that is, more than Judah [Gen 38. 26]; and in the Gospel, the tax collector is said to have come down from the temple justified, but the Pharisee did not [Lk 18. 14]; likewise, the great John was magnificently acclaimed as having no superior among those born of women [Lk 7. 28], but not among the choirs of beatified and heavenly spirits.110

The examples of Noah (Gen 6. 9) and the Baptist (Lk 7. 28) emphasize the humanitas of these spiritually outstanding exemplars, whereas in the case of Thamar (Gen 39. 26) and the tax collector (Lk 18. 14), there is the added effect of a presumably inferior figure — a woman, a tax collector — revealing herself or himself as superior. The last reference, to John the Baptist, seems to be the most relevant to Bernard’s current discussion, since it echoes the leading theme of being beautiful, but only among (those born of ) women, not among the blissful in heaven. Reading ‘women’, then, as metonym for earthly life, its opposite — that is, the ‘male’ type — is represented by celestial beings: beatified souls in ‘angelic blissfulness’ (angelicas beatitudines) and the various orders of angels themselves (virtutes, potestates, dominationes). 109 

See above, Section 1.1. Scc 38.4, OSB, v.2, p. 60: ‘Patrum aliquis olim inventus et dictus est iustus in generatione sua [Gen VI, 9], id est prae omnibus sui temporis suaeque generationis; et Thamar iustificata perhibetur ex Iuda [Gen XXXVIII, 26], hoc est prae Iuda, et in Evangelio Publicanus descendisse refertur de templo iustificatus, sed iustificatus a Pharisaeo [Luc. XVIII, 14], et quomodo magnus ille Ioannes magnifice quondam commendatus est, quod videlicet superiorem non haberet, sed hoc inter natos mulierum [Luc. VII, 28], non autem inter choros beatorum caelestiumque spirituum’. 110 

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So just what kind of gender does the bride actually have? Is s/he a ‘virile female’, as suggested by Krahmer: man(ly) and woman at the same time?111 Introducing a subtext of eschatological beauty — her beauty is imperfect ‘now’ (iam, interim) as she is in the body, only ‘later’ (citra) might she achieve ‘perfect beauty’ (perfectum adhuc pulchritudinis proficit) — the text raises another question: Shall the bride become male in her next life as a result of eschatological perfection? In fact, there seems to be an allusion to a notion of gender crossing from female to male. Bernard’s explication of the restraint on the bride’s beauty (‘beautiful among women’) associates her explicitly with terrestrial life; whereas, on the contrary, beatific ‘perfect beauty’ seems to exclude femaleness, which instead appears associated with what ‘is lacking in her’ (desit sibi) and ‘restrains her’ (reprimatur). Evoking the recurring distinction between herethere, now-then, anticipation-fulfilment, the components of this dichotomy may be seen to express notions of exilic femaleness-fleshliness-lack on the one hand and notions of eschatological maleness-spirit-perfection on the other. The problem of the bride’s destabilized gender, which arises in a close reading of Sermon 38, has to do with the persistent hierarchical valorization of male over female, inherent in gender discourse. When the bride is described as inferior in relation to heavenly beings — that is, God, the angels, and the blissful — she is positioned as a ‘woman’ (mulier); but when she is described as superior to fleshly minded beings, these latter are characterized as ‘feminine’ (femineum), causing a slippage in signification between mulier and femineum which then can come to indicate a fleshly disposition as well as any living being. In addition, Bernard, by involving the qualification ‘beautiful’ with the gender hierarchy of male-female, creates a further set of oppositions. This is inherent in the underlying assumption that ‘ugliness’ corresponds to femaleness, ‘beauty’ to maleness. But the counterparts of ‘beautiful’ (positive quality) and ‘women’ (negative quality), that is, respectively ‘ugly’ (negative quality) and ‘men’ (positive quality), are not stated, only implied. Moreover, this is a different dyad from the gendered opposition of the adjectives ‘manly’ (virile) and ‘feminine’ (femineus) because, according to the present reading, the bride is manly but not, however, (yet) male: she is beautiful, but of an imperfect, not a perfect, 111  Krahmer, ‘The Virile Bride’, p. 305. Krahmer makes the claim that Bernard’s bride represents, simultaneously, ‘a soul who is virtuous for having renounced male privilege and become a weak woman and a soul who is valorized for having overcome feminine weakness and become virile’. She refers to the current passage, p. 313, but does not discuss it in depth. See also above, Section 1.3.

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beauty. Thus, the bride is both heavenly and earthly, both spiritual and fleshly, both ugly and beautiful, both woman and manly. In this way, the bride (spiritual-manly-imperfectly beautiful) claims a mediate position between the perfect beauty of the angels or the blissful on the ‘male’ side and fleshliness or worldliness on the ‘female’ side: Table 9. (Scc 38.4) (men) beautiful heaven later heavenly, incorporeal beings

perfect beauty

women (ugly) earth now earthly, corporeal beings

bride manly spiritual imperfect beauty

other women feminine fleshly, worldly (no beauty)

Arriving at the eschatological tensions which permeate the final section of Sermon 38, Bernard decidedly inscribes earthly life as an existence ‘among women’: While she is on earth the bride must abstain from searching too curiously into that which is in heaven, lest by scrutinizing its majesty she be overwhelmed by its glory. While she resides among women, I say, she must abstain from inquiring into powers that are [a prerogative] of the sublime [creatures], that are perceived by them alone, that are lawful for them alone; for to see heaven is for the heavenly.112

The gendered marker of earthly existence is again underscored — equating being ‘on earth’ (in terris) and ‘among women’ (inter mulieres) — whereas the female condition of estrangement, exile, and spiritual deficiency is contrasted by heavenly bliss: ‘majesty’ (maiestatis), ‘glory’ (gloria), ‘power’ (potestates), and the ‘sublime’ (sublimes). Shifting from ‘I say’ (inquam) to ‘he says’ (inquit), Bernard next gives voice to Christ himself. Staging an exegetical performance in the form of a mono112 

Scc 38.5, OSB, v.2, p. 60: ‘Desinat proinde, quandiu in terris est, quae in caelis sunt curiosius investigare, ne forte scrutatrix maiestatis opprimatur a gloria. Desinat, inquam, donec inter mulieres versatur, inquirere quae apud sublimes illas sunt potestates, solis ipsis perspicua, solis licita, tamquam caelestibus caelestia, ad videndum.’

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logue, he represents the bridegroom, who addresses his exilic bride, highlighting tensions between partial vision and eschatological vision: The vision that you request, he says, is too awesome for you, o bride. You are still not able to gaze at the marvellous midday brightness where I live. You asked: Show me where you pasture, where you rest at midday [Song 1. 6]. But to be drawn up to the clouds, to penetrate the plenitude of light, to thrust into abysses of splendour, and to live in inaccessible light — that is beyond time and beyond the body. It is reserved for you when all things will be made new, when I will behold you for myself, [and you will be] all glorious, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing [Eph 5. 27]. Do you not know that as long as you are living in this body, you are on pilgrimage away from the light? How can you see yourself fit to gaze at absolute beauty when you are still not all beautiful? How can you seek to see me in my splendour while you still do not know yourself ? For if you knew yourself better, you would know that, weighed down by a corruptible body, it is not possible to lift the eyes and fix them on that brightness on which the angels desire to gaze. The time will come when I shall appear, and you will be all beautiful, like I myself am all beautiful: you will be so like me that you will see me as I am. Then you will hear: You are all beautiful, my love, there is no spot in you [Song 4. 7]. But now, although there already is likeness in part [ex parte], there is also unlikeness in part [ex parte]; be content to know in part [ex parte]. Be aware of yourself, do not seek what is too lofty for you or scrutinize what is too powerful for you to bear. Otherwise, you do not know yourself, o beautiful among women [Song 1. 7]; for I do call you beautiful, but beautiful among women, that is, only in part [ex parte]. But when the perfect comes then that which is in part [ex parte] shall pass away [i Cor 13. 10].113 113 

Scc 38.5, OSB, v.2, pp. 60–62: ‘Mirabilis facta est, inquit, visio ista ex te, o sponsa, quam tibi postulas demonstrari, nec modo praevales intueri meridianam et miram, quam inhabito, claritatem. Dixisti enim: Indica mihi ubi pascis, ubi cubas in meridie. Sed enim induci in nubes, penetrare in plenitudinem luminis, irrumpere claritatis abyssos, et lucem habitare inaccessibilem, nec temporis est huius, nec corporis. Id tibi in novissimis reservatur, cum te mihi exhibuero gloriosam, non habentem maculam aut rugam, aut aliquid huiusmodi. An nescis quia quandiu vivis in hoc corpore, peregrinaris a lumine? Quomodo quae necdum tota pulchra es, idoneam te existimas universitatem pulchritudinis intueri? Quomodo denique quaeris me in mea claritate videre, quae adhuc ignoras te? Nam si te plenius nosses, scires utique, corpore quod corrumpitur aggravatam nullatenus posse attollere oculos, et figere in illum fulgorem in quem prospicere angeli concupiscunt. Erit, cum apparuero, quod tota pulchra eris, sicut ego pulcher sum totus; et simillima mihi, videbis me sicuti sum. Tunc audies: Tota pulchra es, amica mea, et macula non est in te [Cant. IV, 7]. Nunc vero, etsi ex parte iam similis, ex parte tamen dissimilis, contenta esto ex parte cognoscere. Teipsam attende, et altiora te ne quaesieris, et fortiora te ne scrutata fueris [Eccli. III, 22]. Alioquin si ignoras te, o pulchra inter mulieres [Cant. I, 7], nam et ego te dico pulchram, sed inter mulieres, hoc est ex parte; cum autem venerit quod perfectum est, tunc evacuabitur quod ex parte est [I Cor XIII, 10]’.

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The passage constructs unmistakable references to the bride as the Church, particularly in the reference to Ephesians 5, where the relation of Christ to his Church is recounted as analogous to the relation of a husband to his wife.114 Yet what may immediately seem like an ecclesiological reading proves at closer scrutiny to be more personalized and individuated. The verb forms, held in second-person singular (tu), and the repetition of the pronoun (te and tibi occur no less than eleven times in the passage,) produce an effectual identification with the bride in Bernard’s audience. The intimacy of the relation between the bride and the bridegroom, furthermore, is reflected and reinforced in the bridegroom’s complementary first-person declinations and pronouns (ego, me, mea, mihi, which are repeated seven times). Proposed by the bride’s desire or ‘request’ (postulas) for ‘vision’ (visio), the passage opens with themes related to the contemplative search for the ‘vision of heaven’ (caelestia ad videndum). This is the quest for God’s dwelling. The bridegroom refers to ‘where I live’ (inhabito), a theme resonant in the bride’s request for vision (provided by Song 1.  6) in the terms ubi pascis (‘where you pasture’) and ubi cubas (‘where you rest’). It soon becomes clear that the dwelling-place of the bridegroom is light itself.115 Brightness, luminosity, and splendour resonate in the text to describe the divine habitation: ‘marvellous midday brightness’ (meridianam et miram … claritatem), ‘plenitude of light’ (plenitudinem luminis), ‘inaccessible light’ (lucem inaccessibilem), and, finally, ‘abysses of splendour’ (claritatis abyssos) — the latter invoking in no small manner Bernard’s own cloister, the ‘valley of splendour’ (clara vallis). Rather than an unmediated and direct experience of God, this opening theme and its imagery convey notions of an ‘indirect’ divine vision.116 Yet the text, as it unfolds, does not seem to uphold a clear distinction between God’s abode and God himself, but blurs the objects of contemplation. Indeed, images of light and abode gradually dissolve into the notion of direct vision of God. 114 

The Vulgate has an explicit reference to Ecclesia, Eph 5. 27: ‘Ut exhiberet ipse sibi gloriosam ecclesiam non habentem maculam aut rugam aut aliquid huiusmodi.’ 115  Compare Mazzeo’s analysis of Dante-poet’s vision of Empyreum, in Structure and Thought in the ‘Paradiso’, p. 165, on the conflation of vision and light. On this theme in Dante, Paradiso, canto xxx, see ll. 1–9, 37–69, 82–117, and esp. 40–42: ‘luce intellettüal, piena d’amore | amor de vero ben, pien di letizia | letizia che trascende ogni dolzore’. 116  See also Scc 62.4 on Bernard’s division into two forms of contemplation: indirectly of the heavenly city and its inhabitants and directly of God. There is a hierarchical relation between the two, the latter being superior to the former. On the theme of vision/contemplation in Bernard, see McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 207–15.

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Elsewhere, Bernard describes the bride’s vision of the bridegroom as characterized by interiority and love, which represents a fleeting glimpse of future beatitude, but limited both by brevity and imperfection.117 Here, conversely, is the real thing, the direct, face-to-face vision: seeing God ‘as he is’ (sicut est, cf. i Cor 13. 12). However, in Bernard’s interpretation, following Augustine, there is no face-to-face vision in this life.118 This is why the bride’s request is denied, of course. Direct vision is too ‘awesome’ (mirabilis). It is beyond the body, which is corruptible, heavy, and oppressive (corpore quod corrumpitur aggravatam) and associated with pilgrimage and lack of light (vivis in hoc corpore, peregrinaris a lumine). It is also beyond time in the sense that it is reserved for eschatological restoration (in novissimis reservatur). Reconfirming the association between the bride’s exilic existence in the body and on earth on the one hand and the need for humility on the other, the topos of scito te ipsum here clearly reverberates with Song 1. 7 (‘if you do not know yourself, o beautiful among women’). ‘How can you see yourself fit to gaze at absolute beauty,’ the bridegroom asks the bride, ‘when you are still not all beautiful?’ Rephrasing the question, Bernard — dubbing the bridegroom — explicates his own exposition: ‘How can you seek to see me in my splendour [in mea claritate] while you still do not know yourself ?’ To know oneself is to know what one is not, what one is lacking.119 The bride lacks perfect beauty, and, by her untimely request for divine vision, she displays lack of selfknowledge as well. Images of ‘light’ (lumine) and ‘brightness’ (fulgorem) continue to resound throughout the passage, gradually blending into other images of visuality, especially beauty and likeness. Rather than erotic images, the text is immersed in an imagery of sight and gazing. However, the intimate relation between seeing and desiring, inherent in the gaze as focal point for the bridal soul’s yearning, does give rise to erotic undertones. For instance, in the description of the angels’ desire to gaze, Bernard — echoing i Pet 1. 12 — makes a small but significant change from the Vulgate desiderant to the (still more) sexualized con-

117 

For instance, in Scc 31.6 and 45.6, see Table 1. On the impossibility of direct vision in Augustine, see De trinitate 4.7.11; De civitate dei 22.29–30; for further references and discussion regarding Augustine, see McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, pp. 254–55. On this topic in Bernard, see discussions in McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 209, and Sommerfeldt, The Spiritual Teachings, p. 223. 119  On scito te ipsum, see Scc 23.9 above, Section 2.5. 118 

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cupiscent.120 Alongside the erotic connotations of angelic desire, also terms of ‘penetration’ (penetrare) and ‘thrusting’ (irrumpere) render graphic images to the bride’s desire.121 Indeed, gazing itself may be seen as an act of penetration: the penetrating vision of God’s indwelling. Visuality, then, is the leading image of the passage. The act of gazing is constantly repeated — ‘vision’ (visio), ‘to look at’ (intueri), ‘to see’ (videre), ‘to raise and fix the eyes’ (oculos attollere et figere), ‘to gaze’ (prospicere) — accompanied by verbs indicating the act of revealing or showing : ‘to show’ (indicare), ‘to expose, behold’ (exhibere), ‘to appear’ (apparere). But precisely who is gazing, and what or whom is being gazed at? It seems clear that the transformative eschatological vision referred to here represents the ultimate salvational and creational goal: Christ exposing himself to his mirror image. In fact, the act of gazing is reciprocal. Not only the bride gazes but also the bridegroom gazes at her (‘I will behold you for myself ’). As Bernard gives voice to the bridegroom’s depiction of the true beatific vision — the one that is immediate and direct — where God reveals himself ‘as he is’ (sicut est), a rhetorical intensification takes place in the text, concluding with the eschatological promise of perfect beauty: ‘The time will come when I shall appear,’ Bernard dubs, ‘and you shall be all beautiful, like I myself [sicut … ego sum] am all beautiful.’ Highlighting notions of reflexivity and reciprocality, Bernard fuses together beauty and likeness. His rephrasing of i Jn 3. 2, ‘we shall see him as he is’ (videbimus eum sicuti est), which appeared as an allusion in the former phrase (sicut […] ego sum) works to emphasize the final, eschatological likeness which erodes all boundaries of identity: ‘you will be so like me that you will see me as I am’ (videbis me sicuti sum). As suggested, in Bernard’s interpretation, to gaze at the bridegroom is to be transformed into his likeness: ultimately, to see him as he is means to be as he is.122 Indeed, beauty emerges as an ontological marker of godlikeness. Intertextually drawing on verses from the Song of Songs, Bernard lets Song 4. 7, ‘you are all beautiful’ (tota pulchra es), echo throughout the passage, resonating 120 

Bernard has: ‘in quem prospicere angeli concupiscent’, the Vulgate has: ‘in quem desiderant angeli prospicere’. Italics are mine. 121  Notably, the image also renders the bride as prospective masculine penetrator; see the discussion on hermeneutical penetration below in Section 6.4. 122  For full discussion, see below, Section 6.1. On beauty and likeness, see also Scc 40 above, Section 2.7. Underscoring likeness, I follow Waddell, ‘The Glorified Christ’, who argues for the pivotal role of the concept of likeness in Bernardine teaching (drawing on ii Cor 3. 18). This vision, ensuring likeness, is strictly eschatological, cf. Scc 31.2 and 69.7.

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with the canticle verse at hand, ‘beautiful among women’ (pulchram inter mulieres). Also the flawless, future beauty of the bride is highlighted, and described in terms of the biblical allusions to ‘spotlessness’: non habentem maculam (Eph 5. 27), macula non est in te (Song 4. 7). Jolting his listeners back to the present time (‘But now …’), Bernard, speaking as bridegroom to the bride, emphasizes temporal dialectics of suspended transformations: ‘Although there already is likeness in part, there is also unlikeness in part’, he says. Eschatological likeness, the mimetic beauty of the bride, shall be ontologically restored when all that is ‘in part’ (ex parte) passes away (cf. i Cor 13).123 Echoing Paul, Bernard conflates ‘likeness in part’ (ex parte iam similis, ex parte tamen dissimilis), ‘knowing in part’ (ex parte cognoscere), and ‘beautiful in part’ (ego te dico pulchram, sed inter mulieres, hoc est ex parte). Complete godlikeness — awaiting eschatological consummation — implies, then, complete knowing and complete beauty. At this point, the gendered image of ‘beautiful among women’ returns. The ‘part which is similar’, that is, godlike (ex parte similis), is blurred together with the ‘part which is beautiful’ (ex parte pulchra), and, just as noted in the analysis of the preceding passage (Scc 38.4), it is contrasted with femaleness. ‘Among women’ refers to that which is not beautiful and therefore deformed, and, ultimately, unlike. At the closing of the passage the eschatological promise is clearly stated: ‘when the perfect comes’ (cum autem venerit quod perfectum est) then this ‘other’ part — the imperfect, deformed, unlike — shall pass away (tunc evacuabitur quod ex parte est). In this perspective, the phrasing quod perfectum est reads like a subtle reproduction of the gendered ideal: in virum perfectum, ‘becoming perfect man’.124 Femaleness, then, is identified as ‘that part’ (ex parte) which is unfinished, corruptible, and partial: the part which shall pass away. Has Bernard just postulated an eschatological erasure of femaleness? The gender economy implicit in Sermon 38 reconfirms notions of gender crossing from female to male as a salvational transition from a mortal and worldly to an immortal and heavenly existence. In other words, gendered dis123 

i Cor 13. 10: ‘cum autem venerit quod perfectum est, evacuabitur quod ex parte est’ (when the perfect comes then that which is in part shall pass away); i Cor 13. 12: ‘Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate, tunc autem facie ad faciem; nunc cognosco ex parte, tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum’ (We now see through a reflection darkly, but then we will [see] face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know as I am known). 124  Evoking Eph 4. 13, the primal proof-text for gender crossing from female to male; cf. above, Sections 1.1 and 1.3.

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course related to the virago model reappears and imposes itself upon the gendered language of the bridal imagery. In light of this, Shawn Krahmer’s suggestion that Bernard’s bride represents a ‘man striving to be a woman striving to be a man’ is indeed appropriate.125 Emphasizing that the femaleness of the bride might be interpreted in terms of simultaneous idealization and denigration, both Krahmer and Bynum have drawn attention to the ambiguity involved in the rhetorical strategy of applying female imagery and typology to a male subject. But only Krahmer draws the conclusion that this ambivalence may, in fact, imply that the bride has already ‘overcome’ the negative aspects of femaleness and ‘become’ virile while at the same time affirming the gender crossing from male to female as a central hermeneutical assumption. Yet in her reading it does not seem clear whether transfiguration might be seen in terms of gender crossing or of gender blending.126 In other words, is this confluence of lowliness and superiority (Bynum) and of femaleness and maleness (Krahmer) primarily to be understood as simultaneous or as successive, or is it both? Before moving onto this broader question of inversions and transpositions, the present chapter concludes with a discussion of Sermon 74, a sermon in which Bernard assumes the bridal role directly, highlighting the ambiguity of presence and absence, of perfection and imperfection in the context of desire for contemplative union.

4.5 Bernard as Bride: Absence and Presence, Veiling and Unveiling Sermon 74 is perhaps the clearest instance of autoexegesis in the Sermons — an instance where the bride figures as trope for Bernard himself. The abbot opens the sermon citing the canticle verse Song 2. 17 (‘return’). ‘Return, she says,’ Bernard says, and explains: ‘Clearly, he whom she calls is not there, although he has been not long before, for she seems to be calling him back at the very moment he departs.’127 Didactically he inquires into the identity of the caller and the recalled: 125 

Krahmer, ‘The Virile Bride’, p. 305 n. 3. Krahmer’s suggestion of ‘a man striving to be a woman striving to be a man’ (Krahmer, ‘The Virile Bride’, p. 305 n. 3) would seem to indicate gender crossing, whereas a soul who has simultaneously ‘renounced male privilege and become a weak woman and […] overcome feminine weakness and become virile’ would indicate gender blending (p. 305). On Bynum’s notion of ‘superior lowliness’, see ‘“And Woman His Humanity”’, p. 269. 127  Scc 74.1, OSB, v.2, p. 488: ‘Revertere, inquit. [Cant. II, 17] Liquet non adesse quem revocat; affuisse tamen, idque non longe ante: quippe qui dum adhuc abiret, revocari videtur.’ 126 

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Who are these adherents of love [caritatis cultores], these unwearying lovers — one calling, the other recalled — whose love [amor] drives them on and gives them no rest? It befalls me to fulfil my promise and apply this verse to the Word and the soul.128

As he assumes the responsibility of exegete, Bernard returns to the rhetorical formula of simultaneously denying and affirming his own authority. This ambiguity becomes linked with his reluctance to the task at hand: ‘Certainly, this sermon would be more fittingly discussed by one with more experience and more knowledge of saintly and secret love. But I can neither evade my duty nor your requests.’129 At this point, he directs the attention to the ineffability of anagogy: I am aware of the danger for me, but I shall not take precautions, for you force me into it. Indeed, you force me to walk among things which are too great and too awe­ some for me. Alas! How I fear to hear: Why do you speak of my delights and take my mysteries in your mouth?130

Inherent in this representation of exegetical service — teaching, preaching, and instructing his monks — are notions of self-sacrificial duty.131 Bernard is ‘endangering’ himself, he says, by preaching on ‘saintly and secret love’ (sancti et arcani amoris), but does not try to save himself (‘I cannot evade my duty nor your requests’). Like the bride who was told by the bridegroom in Sermon 38 that certain things are too ‘awesome’ (mirabilis) while still in the body,132 Bernard likewise aspires (humbly but courageously) to walk among things which are too ‘great and too awesome’ for him (magnis et in mirabilibus super me), as he is ‘forced’ by his (ever nagging) monks. Representing himself as violating esoteric prohibitions, speaking ineffable words (telling of the bridegroom’s ‘delights’ and taking his ‘mysteries’ in his own mouth), Bernard conspiratorially clothes

128 

Scc 74.1, OSB, v.2, p. 488: ‘Qui sunt isti caritatis cultores, amatoriique tam indefessi sectatores negotii, quorum alterum prosequitur, alteram urget tam inquietus amor? Et mihi quidem, ut memini meae promissionis, incumbit assignare hunc locum Verbo et animae.’ 129  Scc 74.1, OSB, v.2, p. 488: ‘Et certe sermo iste decuerat magis expertum, magisque conscium sancti et arcani amoris; sed non possum officio deesse meo, non vestris omnino votis.’ 130  Scc 74.1, OSB, v.2, p. 488: ‘Periculum meum video, et non caveo; vos me cogitis. Prorsus cogitis ambulare in magnis et in mirabilibus super me. Heu! quam vereor ne subinde audiam: Quare tu enarras delicias meas, et assumis sacramentum meum per os tuum?’ 131  E.g., ‘not seeking what is mine, nor what is useful to me, but rather that which is useful to many’; see Scc 52.7 above, Section 2.6. 132  See Scc 38.5 above, Section 4.4.

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his language not only in ineffable secrecy (arcani, mirabilibus, sacramentum) but also in humility. The strategy of humility causes Bernard to ‘veil’ his message, but at the same time he is still under obligation to his role as spiritual authority (preacher, abbot, exegete), and this causes him to ‘unveil’ his message.133 So he says: ‘Hear me as a man who fears to speak, but cannot remain silent.’134 Failing to avoid his burden, Bernard consoles himself as best he can: ‘My audacity might perhaps be excused by my very trepidation, more still if it brings about your edification. And perhaps, likewise, these tears might be noticed.’135 Thus he begins, speaking and weeping. ‘Let him who can understand these things, understand,’136 Bernard says dismissively, emphasizing instead his and the monks’ simplicity and humility: We, however, as we proceed cautiously and simply into the exposition of sacred and secret eloquence [sacri mysticique eloquii], must adopt the way of Scripture which speaks of wisdom hidden in mystery [in mysterio absconditam] while using our words, which refers to our feelings [affectibus] while representing God, and which offers human minds to drink from the unknown and invisible things of God by using the likeness of familiar and perceptible things, like some [cup of ] cheap material [filled] with something precious.137

The abbot subtly reaffirms his and his (little, feminized) monks’ need of exegetical intermediation, thus rehearsing humility while also emphasizing hermeneutical concerns. Momentarily back at the well-springs fetching water for his little ones, Bernard conspicuously likens his exegesis to Scripture itself, while extending notions of humility onto language itself.

133 

On humility and auto-pessimism, cf. Scc 22.2: ‘I should never dare to claim for myself the prerogative of the bride’; see above, Section 4.2. On the obligation of authority, cf. Scc 23.9: ‘if I knew nothing I would say nothing’, above, Section 2.5. 134  Scc 74.1, OSB, v.2, p. 488: ‘Audite me tamen hominem, qui loqui trepidat, et tacere non potest.’ 135  Scc 74.1, OSB, v.2, p. 488: ‘Excusabit forsitan ausum trepidatio ipsa mea; magis autem vestra, si provenerit, aedificatio. Et forte hae lacrimae pariter videbuntur.’ 136  Scc 74.2, OSB, v.2, p. 490: ‘Verum haec qui potest capere, capiat.’ 137  Scc 74.2, OSB, v.2, p. 490: ‘Nos autem in expositione sacri mysticique eloquii caute et simpliciter ambulantes, geramus morem Scripturae, quae nostris verbis sapientiam in mysterio absconditam loquitur; nostris affectibus Deum, dum figurat, insinuat; notis rerum sensibilium similitudinibus, tamquam quibusdam vilioris materiae poculis, ea quae pretiosa sunt, ignota et invisibilia Dei, mentibus propinat humanis.’

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Bernard constructs tensions between the ‘familiar and perceptible’ (notis rerum sensibilium) and the ‘unknown and invisible’ (ignota et invisibilia), the ‘cheap’ (vilioris) and the ‘precious’ (pretiosa), reflecting the hermeneutical tensions lodged in seeking to give linguistic representation to the mystical encounter between the soul and God, bride and bridegroom.138 Speaking ‘in our words’ (nostris verbis) to express ‘wisdom hidden in mystery’ (sapientiam absconditam), Bernard both establishes and breaches boundaries between the spiritual and the literal meaning which, ultimately, directly concerns the eroticism of the Song of Songs.139 Here, significantly, his depiction of hermeneutics converges and coincides with the rhetoric of virginity. Virginity in medieval writing, invoking ii Cor 4. 7, was envisioned precisely as a precious ‘treasure’ (thesaurus) in a cheap and fragile ‘vase’ or ‘vessel’ (vasa).140 For example, Bernard’s Cistercian contemporaries Idung of Prüfening and Aelred of Rievaulx wrote respectively of virginity as a ‘fragile vase’ (vasa fragiliora) in need of careful custody and the virgin’s flesh as a worthless vase in which gold is stored for testing.141 Anticipating a leading theme for this book’s final chapter, this image of a cheap and fragile container (the body, the letter) carrying something precious and imperceptible (spirit, wisdom) may be seen as reflecting the relation of female letter versus male spirit. In the current passage, this image allows for an analogy between the virgin and Scripture whereby the (female) virgin may stand as a figura of hermeneutics. The gendered implications of the image links, on the one hand, the physical letter or word to the virgin’s gendered body, represented as a cheap container; while, on the other hand, it also links the hidden, inner spirit to her unsexed, transcendental state of pristine degenderedness, represented as a treasure.142 This hermeneutical tension appears, hardly by chance, immedi138 

Cf. Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, p. 25, cited in McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 208: ‘[The theologian] can clothe the mystery in the drapery of a “fine” style, either as an act of homage, or in an attempt to preserve it by veiling it.’ 139  See discussions below, Sections 5.5 and 6.5. 140  ii Cor 4. 7: ‘habemus autem thesaurum istum in vasis fictilibus ut sublimitas sit virtutis Dei et non ex nobis’. Scholars of medieval virginity have highlighted this recurring image, see Atkinson, ‘“Precious Balsam in a Fragile Glass”’, and Newman, ‘“Flaws in the Golden Bowl”’. 141  Idung of Prüfening : ‘vasa quanto sunt fragiliora, tento diligentiori egent custodia’, Argumentum 6, quoted in B. Newman, From Virile Woman, pp. 28, 256, n. 44; Aelred of Rievaulx, ‘Caro virginis, vas luteum est, in quo aurum reconditur, ut probetur’, De institutione inclusaurum 14 (quoted on pp. 29, 256 n. 45). 142  On tensions in viriginity, see above, Sections 1.3 and 3.3.

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ately prior to a sequence in which Bernard tries to verbalize the ineffable and to conceptualize the unknowable, namely, the anagogic meaning of the Song of Songs. Concurrently veiling and revealing, Bernard’s hermeneutics produces a semantic breaking point, both implying and denying literalness, both affirming and negating the similitude between worldly eros and saintly eros. Setting the stage for his performative exegesis, Bernard constructs a dramaturgical interplay between absence and presence: The Word of God, God himself, the bridegroom of the soul, comes to the soul as he pleases and leaves when he pleases. […] When she feels grace, she recognizes [his] presence; when she does not, she bewails [his] absence, and seeks [his] presence again.143

Escalating the rhetorical temperature, Bernard reproduces the passion of the soul’s desire: How could she not seek him? For when such a sweet bridegroom withdraws from her she does not want to think of anything else, let alone desire anyone else. Therefore all she can do is vigorously seek the absent one, calling him back as he leaves. So the Word is called back — called back by the desire of the soul, a soul who once enjoyed his sweetness. […] As long as the Word is absent, this one continuous voice of the soul, this one continuing desire, this one continuing cry is heard — return! — until he comes again.144

While this desperately lovesick anima is not yet directly identified as bride (she will be in the following passage), she clearly recalls the figure of the widow and the widow’s mournful desire suspended between Christ’s presence and his absence.145 With an undercurrent of the Augustinian conjunction of desire and absence, Bernard launches the theme of desiderium (here appearing both

143  Scc 74.2, OSB, v.2, p. 490: ‘Verbum Dei, Deum, sponsum animae, prout vult et venire ad animam, et iterum dimittere eam […] cum sentit gratiam, agnoscit praesentiam; cum non, absentiam queritur, et rursum praesentiam quaerit.’ Movement, then, is not attributed to God himself (who, in accordance with philosophical speculation, is immutable and immobile; cf. Scc 74.1) but to grace and the sensibility of the soul. 144  Scc 74.2, OSB, v.2, p. 490: Quidni requirat? Neque enim, subducto sibi tam dulci sponso, interim aliquid aliud non dico desiderare, sed nec cogitare libebit. Restat igitur ut absentem studiose requirat, revocet abeuntem. Ita ergo revocatur Verbum, et revocatur desiderio animae, sed eius animae cui semel indulserit suavitatem sui. […] Verbo igitur abeunte, una interim et continua animae vox, continuum desiderium eius, tamquam unum continuumque Revertere, donec veniat.’ 145  See Scc 59.4 above, Section 3.4.

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as noun and verb, desiderare).146 Standing firmly in monastic and patristic tradition, he elaborates on desire as a search for God (quaere Deum),147 giving, as we shall see later, particular emphasis on God as desiring subject. Desire in Bernard’s Sermons is specifically related to the desire of eros, engaging his metaphors not just in an erotic metaphysics (desire as spiritual ascent) but also to an erotic hermeneutics (the Word/words as object for desire). In this sermon, the familiar fluctuating interrelation between now-then, here-there, and the languor-fruor of the dialectics of eros is brought into play with hermeneutical tensions between anticipation and fulfilment — in other words, tensions between contemplation and eschatology at the anagogic level of meaning.148 Glossing the modicum (‘little while’) of John 16. 17, which carries overt eschatological references, Bernard blends it into the theme of the desirous, contemplative soul: Now the comings and the goings of the Word are truly the same fluctuations of the soul of which he speaks when he says: I am going, but I shall come back to you [ Jn 14. 28], and: A little while you shall not see me, and again a little while, and then you shall see me [ Jn 16. 17]. O little while, little while! How long a little while! [O modicum et modicum! O modicum longum!].149

Establishing a metonymic connection between desire and voice, the abbot enhances the performativity of desire by emphasizing it as a verbal utterance. ‘Is desire not a voice?’ he asks, and affirms: ‘Indeed, it is.’150 Suggesting that divine presence is enacted by the call, ‘return’, Bernard writes: ‘For when she calls him back, the bride proves beyond doubt that she deserves his presence, even if not in its fullness.’151 Again referring to contemplation as merely a fleeting foretaste 146 

Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos. In Psalmum cxviii enarratio 8, col.  1522: ‘Desiderium ergo quid est, nisi rerum absentium concupiscentia’; cf. Regula Benedicti, 4.46, col. 296C: ‘Vitam aeternam omni concupiscentia spirituali desiderare.’ 147  On Bernard’s vocabulary of desire, see Casey, Athirst for God, pp. 63–88, esp. pp. 63–65, emphasizing influence from John Cassian, Augustine, and Gregory; cf. Blanpain, ‘Langage mystique’, pp. 45–68; Leclercq, ‘La Contemplation de désir’, in Otia monastica, pp. 117–21. 148  Cf. Turner, Eros and Allegory, esp. pp. 85–87; for discussion, see below, Section 6.1. 149  Scc 74.4, OSB, v.2, p. 492: ‘Nunc vero constat in anima fieri huiuscemodi vicissitudines euntis et redeuntis Verbi, sicut ait: Vado et venio ad vos [ Joan. XIV, 28]; item: Modicum, et non videbitis me; et iterum modicum, et videbitis me [ Joan. XVI, 17]. O modicum et modicum! O modicum longum!’ 150  Scc 74.2, OSB, v.2, p. 490: ‘Numquid non desiderium vox? Et valida.’ 151  Scc 74.3, OSB, v.2, p. 490: ‘Quem enim revocat, eius absque dubio probat se meruisse praesentiam, etsi non copiam.’

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of perfection, the bride’s desire nonetheless implements its fulfilment: ‘his presence, if not in its fullness’. Presently, Bernard is ready for his own performance as bride, perhaps the most celebrated in all the Sermons: But now bear with my foolishness a little while. I want to tell you of my own experience about this sort of thing, as we agreed. Not that it is of much use. But I am disclosing it only to be helpful, and if you make any progress because of it, then I shall be consoled for my foolishness. If not, I will confess my foolishness. I admit that the Word has come also to me — I speak like a fool — and has come often.152

As Bernard tiptoes in on centre stage, invoking the full display of rhetorical modesty, his biblically trained audience cannot but note that he flauntingly stages himself not merely as bride but also as Paul. Indeed, it is Paul’s voice — not the bride’s — which he appropriates at the outset of his autoexegesis. McGinn has observed that Bernard models this passage on a similar text from Origen’s homilies on the Song of Songs.153 Teeming with allusions to Paul’s own self-construction as apostolic authority in ii Cor 11–12, I suggest that the passage can be read intertextually as an affirmation of Bernard’s parallel selfrepresentation both in terms of his position as spiritual leader for his monks and in terms of his spiritual authority as a contemplative. Bernard opens the sequence addressing his monks in nearly identical wording as that which Paul used when addressing his Corinthians, a moment before declaring that he was to betroth them to Christ as chaste virgins.154 Intertextually affirming the nuptial image, Bernard — about to become bride — stirs up notions of himself generously leading his monks along to the encounter with the bridegroom. Thereby the abbot also evokes the mother-daughter sequences — also related to Paul and the Corinthians — where mother-Bernard assures her little ones that they shall benefit from and share in her experiences with the 152 

Scc 74.5, OSB, v.2, p. 492: ‘Nunc vero sustinete modicum quid insipientiae meae. Volo dicere, nam et hoc pactus sum, quomodo mecum agitur in eiusmodi. Non expedit quidem. Sed prodar sane ut prosim, et, si profeceritis vos, meam insipientiam consolabor; si non, meam insipientiam confitebor. Fateor et mihi adventasse Verbum — in insipientia dico —, et pluries.’ 153  McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 192. The Origenist text (Homiliae in Cantica 1.7) is cited and discussed in McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, p. 124. Drawing attention to the rhetorical and stylistic aspect of the present passage, McGinn challenges scholars who have underscored its ‘autobiographical’ character in accordance with the tendency of earlier scholarship to privilege mysticism as an ‘experiental’ category. 154  Bernard has: ‘sustinete modicum quid insipientiae meae’; ii Cor 11. 1 has ‘sustineretis modicum quid insipientiae meae’.

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bridegroom.155 Paul’s repetitive claim to ‘foolishness’ (a foolishness which, in fact, is rhetorically reversed) is echoed in Bernard’s text as he interrupts himself: ‘I speak like a fool’ (in insipientia dico), creating a breach in the text similar to Paul’s insertions (ii Cor 11. 17, non loquor secundum Deum, sed quasi in insipientia; ii Cor 11. 21, in insipientia dico; ii Cor 11. 23, ut minus sapiens dico). Finally, as Bernard prospects the ‘disclosure’ of his own experience with the Word, he again adopts a Pauline phrase: ‘not that it is of much use’ (ii Cor 12. 1). Significantly, Paul’s words, appropriated verbatim by Bernard, are those with which Paul began his account of the rapture into third heaven. Bernard, then, models himself on the Pauline account — which, for medieval monks and exegetes, is the biblical paradigm for mystical rapture — before he continues to relate his ‘own’: When the Word, the bridegroom, entered into me [intrans ad me], he did not make known his coming by any signs, not by voice, not by appearance, not by touch. It was not by any movement of his, nor by any of my senses that I understood that he had penetrated deeply into me [illapsum penetralibus meis]. Only by the movement of my heart, as I said, did I recognize his presence. As my vices were put to flight and my carnal passions were brought into subjection, I could feel the power of his might; as my secrets were revealed and reproved, I admired the profundity of his wisdom; as my ways were amended, even if only slightly, I experienced the goodness of his mercy; as the spirit of my mind, that is, my interior man [interioris hominis], was renewed and reformed [renovatione ac reformatione], I perceived the appearance of his beauty; and as I beheld all this, I was filled with awe at his greatness. But when the Word left, all of this began to fade, instantly growing weak and cold from languor, like a boiling pot withdrawn from the fire. And at this sign of his leaving my soul must needs be sorrowful until he returns, and my heart is rekindled — indicating that he is returning. When I have had such an experience of the Word, what wonder that I appropriate [usurpo] the voice of the bride, calling him back when he is leaving? For I am seized with a desire which, if not equal to hers is similar, at least in part [ex parte]. As long as I live, the word of recall to recall the Word — return! — shall be on my lips. As often as he slips away, so often shall I plea with him to come back again. From the burning desire of my heart, I shall never cease to call out to him — like one calls out from behind the back of someone who is departing — to return, to give back to me the joy of his salvation, to give himself back to me.156

155  On mother-daughters in relation to Paul, see above, Section 4.2; on mother-daughter themes in general in the Sermons, see, e.g., Scc 23.2 above, Section 2.5; Scc 52.6–7 above, Section 2.6. 156  Scc 74.6–7, OSB, v.2, pp. 494–96: ‘Ita igitur intrans ad me aliquoties Verbum sponsus, nullis umquam introitum suum indiciis innotescere fecit: non voce, non specie, non incessu.

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The immediate point Bernard is setting forth in the current passage is that the Word, not being perceptible to bodily senses (hearing, sight, touch), makes his presence felt only internally in the happy anima that he visits: it is a ‘movement of the heart’.157 Bernard’s ‘experience’ of visitation is represented as an interior and individuated transformation. He lists the effects of the divine presence: firstly, saintly desire reconfigures worldly desire, bringing ‘carnal passions into subjection’ (carnaliumque compressione affectuum); next, the proprium (‘my secrets’, ‘my ways’) is revealed, reproved, and amended; finally, and most importantly, he is renewed and reformed as he contemplates divine beauty. Here, the theme of gazing and vision is less persistent than in other passages with strong anagogic readings (e.g., Scc 31, 38, 45). However, seeing — that is, ‘beholding’ — appears at a crucial point in the present sermon as Bernard takes in the totality of the bridegroom’s presence: ‘as I beheld [contuitu] all this, I was filled with awe at his greatness’. Transformation is here participation in Christomimetic ascent: partaking in saintly desire, in renewal and reformation, in divine beauty. It is a foretaste of bliss — the ‘joy of salvation’ (laetitiam salutaris sui) and, more subtly, a restoration of the ‘other’ in the ‘self ’ as the former, again, ‘gives himself ’ to the latter (reddat mihi se ipsum).158 Rather than gazing and vision, the passage is dominated by images of heat. Specifically, the abbot uses the imagery of heat to depict passion and desire, Nullis denique suis motibus compertum est mihi, nullis meis sensibus illapsum penetralibus meis: tantum ex motu cordis, sicut praefatus sum, intellexi praesentiam eius; et ex fuga vitiorum, carnaliumque compressione affectuum, adverti potentiam virtutis eius; et ex discussione sive redargutione occultorum meorum admiratus sum profunditatem sapientiae eius; et ex quantulacumque emendatione morum meorum expertus sum bonitatem mansuetudinis eius; et ex renovatione ac reformatione spiritus mentis meae, id est interioris hominis mei, percepi utcumque speciem decoris eius; et ex contuitu horum omnium simul, expavi multitudinem magnitudinis eius. [7.] Verum quia haec omnia, ubi abscesserit Verbum, perinde ac si ollae bullienti subtraxeris ignem, quodam illico languore torpentia et frigida iacere incipient, atque hoc mihi signum abscessionis eius tristis sit necesse est anima mea, donec iterum revertatur, et solito recalescat cor meum intra me, idque sit reversionis indicium. Tale sane experimentum de Verbo habens, quid mirum, si et ego usurpo mihi vocem sponsae in revocando illud, cum se absentaverit, qui etsi non pari, simili tamen vel ex parte desiderio feror? Familiare mihi erit, quoad vixero, pro Verbi revocatione revocationis verbum, quod utique revertere est. Et quoties elabetur, toties repetetur a me, nec cessabo clamitare, quasi post tergum abeuntis, ardenti desiderio cordis ut redeat, et reddat mihi laetitiam salutaris sui, reddat mihi se ipsum.’ 157  See McGinn’s reading of the present passage, underscoring this point in The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 192–93. 158  For a discussion of confusion of ‘subject boundaries’ between bride and bridegroom, see below, Section 6.1.

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like also Gregory the Great had done.159 The kindling of reforming love which accompanies the visiting Verbum sponsus is envisioned as a ‘boiling pot’ (ollae bullienti) which, when he departs, is removed from the ‘fire’ (igne) — leaving Bernard ‘weak, cold, and languid’ (languore torpentia et frigida). Imagery of fire and burning or cooking is quite frequent in the Sermons, and alludes to the intensity of desire (here described as ardenti desiderio, ‘burning desire’), but also to the purification inherent in the transformative power of divine desire.160 One might also consider that this imagery is related to a metaphysics which conflates heat with strength, superiority, and maleness, in contrast to the female and weaker cool.161 Heat, we recall, was the constitutive element in maleness, and, linked with other gendered dyads such as right-left, dry-wet, and contained-leaky, indicated the superior position of male over female. Thus heat, image of ardent love, is here contrasted with languor, indicating not just lack of desire and virile vigour, but spiritual weakness and sluggishness, associated with femaleness. What are the gendered implications of this representation of desire and passion, presence and union? And what are the implications of Bernard’s depiction of himself as he ‘appropriates the voice of the bride’ (usurpo mihi vocem sponsae)? If ‘desire is a voice’, as he affirmed, Bernard not only appropriates the bride’s voice but also her desire, something he in effect openly declares. His desire is ‘similar, at least in part’ (simili tamen vel ex parte) as hers. Marking a distinction but also a commonality between self and the bride, the phrasing ‘similar in part’, by allusion to the eschatological implications inherent in the Pauline ex parte, evokes Bernard’s previous depiction of the bride’s imperfection as fleshly and female in Sermon 38.162 But whereas the bride’s femaleness and fleshliness held a promise of erasure — when the ‘part’ dissimilar to the bridegroom passes away — Bernard in this sermon emphasizes his own imperfection in regard to the bride. Again he depicts himself — echoing the position of the little girls — as displaced, not just in regard to the bridegroom but also to the bride.

159 

On this point, see Casey, Athirst for God, p. 75. For cooking imagery, cf. Scc 1.11, 28.13, 31.4, 57.5, 84.1. See also discussion in Casey, Athirst for God, pp. 75–76. On transformation by desire, see discussions below in Sections 5.5 and 6.1. 161  See above, Section 1.5. 162  See Scc 38.5 above, Section 4.4. 160 

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The sexual allusions, as Bernard relates that the bridegroom ‘entered into’ him (intrans ad me), ‘penetrating deeply’ into him (illapsum penetralibus meis), are contrasted by the image of the bridegroom ‘slipping away’ (elabetur), leaving him ‘sorrowful’ (tristis), and it is at this precise moment — at the bridegroom’s departure — that Bernard most explicitly affirms his role as bride. Positioning himself as bride, he identifies with her desire for his return and with her (metonymically identical) cry of passion. Configurations of erotic desire are projected onto the idealized bride, attesting to the close interrelation between erotics of desire and female imagery in Bernard’s text, particularly as the exegete identifies himself and the monks directly with a female figure. Affirming identification with the bride’s passionate yearning, the current passage can be read in light of femaleness as marker for abjectness and displacement. Recalling Sermon 38, where the bride represented spiritual perfection — limited only, but notably, by her ‘lack’ (desit sibi), that is, by her condition of ‘living in the body’ (adhuc in corpore vivit) —, femaleness becomes associated with metaphysical and hermeneutical otherness, where man’s exilic state emerges as an essentially feminine condition. In this perspective, the female position indicating the frigid languor of absence is disrupted only in the fleeting heat of contemplative passion. Reading femaleness as related to frigidness, languor, and unlikeness, this would suggest that maleness, alluded to in the passage under consideration as the ‘interior man’ (interioris hominis), is reaffirmed by the ‘renewal and reform’ (renovatione ac reformatione) into likeness — that is, maleness, heat, perfection — which is inherent in and contained by being in the presence of the object of contemplative and eschatological transformative desire. If femaleness, as suggested, functions as an ontological marker of this ‘lack’, and being ‘(among) women’ indicates being in the flesh and in the world, then Bernard posits himself squarely in the transitory female position of ontological lack. This might be attested to here in the way that Bernard assumes identification with the bride explicitly and directly when he is about to be abandoned by the bridegroom: in other words, when he finds himself in a position of lack, longing, and alienation. Bernard, then, instates himself as bride awaiting transformation into maleness, awaiting final participation in Sonship — to be ‘adopted as sons’ and transformed into the ‘body of his splendour’.163 Lingering beneath the gender allusions and the bridal imagery is the notion of transition into ‘perfect man’ and, analogously, as in the depiction of eschatological perfection in Sermon 38, notions of femaleness as ex parte, the ‘other’ 163 

See Scc 59.5 above, Section 3.3.

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part, that which is ‘un-like’, ‘un-beautiful’, and ‘imperfect’: the part that shall pass away.164 Mimicking the abandoned bride’s perpetual cry, Bernard imagines himself as lifelong bride, languishing in the bridegroom’s absence, ever awaiting consummation. As he closes the present passage, he provides another of his characteristic inversions, a chiasmus: ‘as long as I live, the word of recall to recall the Word [Verbi revocatione revocationis verbum] — return! — shall be on my lips’. Deprived and displaced, s/he calls back the departed bridegroom — not once, but ‘incessantly’ (nec cessabo) and for the rest of his earthly life (quoad vixero). Thus, from one point of view, femaleness and females — even the idealized bride — signalize a position of lack in Bernard’s Sermons, representing the unperfected, transient state of unfulfilment. This representation is analogous to other forms of lack in the Sermons, like thirst; like hunger, especially the image of the monks represented as starving children; and like poverty.165 However, from another point of view (to be pursued in the following chapter), Bernard’s self-representation in terms of femaleness and abjectness also transposes humility and exaltation. As Bynum famously argued, medieval male authors could express complicated and simultaneous notions of superiority and lowliness by appropriating feminine imagery for their self-representation. Expanding on her point, I suggest that the monks’ appropriation of femaleness stages an imitation of Christ. Following Christ’s example of descent by deliberately and voluntarily choosing an inferior nature (femaleness) — like they also choose poverty and humility — the monks transcend temporality (here-now): anticipating the day when all will be overturned, reversed, inverted, and thereby rectified. Inverting physical and worldly desire, inverting the hierarchy of gender, the Cistercian monk attempts to reverse the fall, hermeneutically enacting a kind of ‘realized eschatology’,166 where tensions between humility and exaltation sometimes appear as successive transformations (‘crossing’) and sometimes as simultaneously interwoven (‘blending’).167

164 

On vir perfectus, see Scc 12.8 and 27.10 below, Section 5.2; on ex parte and femaleness, see Scc 38 above, Section 4.4. 165  On thirst, see Scc 7.2 above, Section 2.3; Scc 31.5 above, Section 4.2; Scc 22.2 above, Section 4.3; Scc 83.6 below, Section 6.1; and Scc 32.2 below, Section 6.4; on hunger, see Scc 1.4 above, Section 2.2; on poverty, see discussion above in Section 4.3 and Scc 81.1 below, Section 6.1. 166  On the term ‘realized eschatology’ in reference to the monastery, see Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity, p. 25; see also below, Sections 5.1 and 5.5 on Bernard’s rhetorical strategy of implementing and anticipating eschatology. 167  On crossing, see below, Section 5.3; on blending, see below, Section 5.4.

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In Sermon 74, the feminine condition of lack or loss is countered by divine reform and participation, and structured by a dialectic between absence and presence. But in this dialectic there is absolutely no equality between the two poles. Granted that the soul ever should achieve moments of bliss and rapture in the presence of the bridegroom, she immediately slips back to her state of deprivation and languor. The human condition, even the monastic condition — or perhaps especially the monastic condition — is dramatically and violently torn between despair and hope, positioned at the sharp edge of salvation and damnation. In spite of its apparent peacefulness and uneventfulness, the monastic site — like the Egyptian and Syrian desert on which the Cistercians modelled their monastic ideals — is a battleground haunted with perils. The Cistercian monastery represents a ‘slow and sustained fight’ where time and eternity, life and death, pain and pleasure meet and merge and, sometimes, invert. Like a manic-depressive, observed Pranger, the monk could ‘turn suddenly from ecstatic joy about the pleasures of the divine presence to a sense of utter sadness and desolation’.168 As we enter into the monastic world of topsy-turvy reality, where the artificiality of the densely poetical and inverted world of Bernard’s exegesis clashes with worldly reality and worldly hierarchies, we should keep this in mind: While the monks’ hermeneutical and monastic strategies carry a high degree of optimism, deceit and despair — the ‘noonday demon’ — is nevertheless always present.169 Although the potential force of language — its performability, that 168 

Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity, p. 4. See his discussion, pp. 3–5, on demonology and the threat of ‘death in the afternoon’ in the cloister. More seriously still, Pranger observes, are the violent attacks of sadness, melancholy, and lethargy. The characterization ‘slow and sustained fight’ is from Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity, p. 9. See also his remarkable analysis of the conflation between the image of the lovers’ embrace and the image of Jacob’s fight with the angel in Bernard’s In nat BVM, in Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought, pp. 150–62. 169  Cf. Scc 33.9, OSB, v.1, p. 496: ‘Non enim aliter nos custodire sufficimus ab incursu et daemonio meridiano [Psal. XC, 6], nisi in meridiano aeque lumine. Quod quidem daemonium idcirco meridianum dictum existimo, quia sunt aliqui de numero malignorum, qui cum merito tenebrosae obstinataeque voluntatis suae nox et nox perpetua sint, diem tamen se ad fallendum simulare noverunt, nec modo diem, sed et meridiem’ (For we cannot defend ourselves from the assault of the noonday demon, except by the noonday light. I believe that this demon is called noonday because there are some malign spirits who—even if they have wills as dark and obstinate as the night, even perpetual night—know how to appear bright as day, even as noonday, in order to deceive). The daemonio meridiano is a simulator and deceiver, and in Bernard’s treatment, significantly, a figure of ‘counterseduction’ tempting the monk into ascetic

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is, its power to make and unmake worlds — lends a mighty instrument to the monks in their fight with the world and with themselves, they are ever in a position of lack, loss, displacement, unlikeness, abjection, femaleness, and, also therefore, vulnerable to conceit and self-deception. Perhaps their weakness is not a superior weakness but just frailty, their lowliness not a superior lowliness but just unworthiness, or even worse, perhaps their superior humility is pride? The Cistercians sought humility as antidote to the primary fall into pride.170 Thus the horrible prospect of failure signalized by the possibility of a reversal — humility reverting into pride — keeps the abbot walking a fine line between apotheosis and hellfire. In light of this, Bernard’s female imagery serves important functions. The bridal roles, along with other, inferior female roles, allow him to negotiate the poles of lowliness and superiority in establishing identity. When Bernard identifies himself with the bride, he is negotiating the roles inherent in the twofold ideal of spiritual perfection, as interpreted by the Cistercians: the just equilibrium — and, thus, the mutual reinforcement — of bliss and obligation, contemplation and activity. When, on the other hand, Bernard invokes a female role unrelated with the bride, it evokes notions of inferiority and lowliness. Bernard establishes hierarchies of femaleness which function to affirm, deny, and negotiate degrees of humility and authority. Most insistently he identifies himself as mother who stands lowest in the bridal hierarchy, representing activity and selfless duty. Also quite affirmatively, he identifies himself as widow, associated with the grief and longing of exile, and who, having begun the process of inverting desire, figures continence and thus celibacy. By extension, Bernard is least assertive with regard to the elusive figure of the virgin, who evokes themes of contemplative fruition and pleasure and whose defeminized and desexualized state sets her above the other female roles. As noted in the discussion of Sermon 74, the blissful fruitio of divine presence seems instead to imply participation in maleness — reflected in the androgyny of the virgin who is always already defeminized in ascetic discourse. Contrarily, expressions of absence — longing and languor — are reflected in the figures of the widow excess and immoderation. For a general contextualization of the theme of noonday demon, see Jeffrey, A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature, pp. 553–54. 170  This point has recently been underscored by Astell, Eating Beauty, see esp. p. 16, who distinguishes between four monastic schools of sanctity in the medieval and early modern period: Cistercians, who seek humility as the antidote to pride; Franciscans, who offer poverty as corrective of avarice; Dominicans, who preach Word and Wisdom to atone for gluttony; and Ignatians, who pledge obedience to rectify original human disobedience.

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and the mother, pointing to feminized tears and grief and maternal duties and burdens. When Bernard invokes the little girls or the serving women, however, gender implications are less ambiguous than those of the bride. Indeed, the bride is potentially at odds with the rhetorical strategy of humility which is so fundamental to his use of female imagery. To unambiguously establish humility, he draws on the inferior female characters. Performing female domestic roles like spinning, fetching water, cooking, and cleaning, Bernard produces notions of submission and servitude. The little girls, who represent spiritual immaturity and hermeneutical displacement, function as markers of an even lowlier condition. They are usually associated with Bernard’s monks, sometimes only with the novices, but in some instances Bernard assumes direct identification with them himself, thereby emphasizing his own humbleness. In this way, as shall be discussed further in the next chapter, femaleness, analogously to blackness (Song 1. 4), functions as a hermeneutical-rhetorical tool, a thermostat or regulator for degrees of humility and degrees of saintly superiority.

Chapter 5

Inverting Hierarchies, Staging Eschatology — Unmaking and Remaking Worlds hoc ludo et nos interim ludamus, ut illudamur, confundamur, humiliemur, donec veniat qui potentes deponit et exaltat humiles. Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola 87

5.1 Performing Reversibility This chapter deals with how the complexities of gendered imagery reflect and capture the wider monastic setting of the Sermons on the Song of Songs, representing an ‘inverted world’ which reverses and subverts worldly hierarchies.1 Bernard’s inversions emphasize and sharpen prior formulations. As Averil Cameron has noted, paradoxes and reversals were staples of early Christian rhetoric and metaphor, contributing to the ‘essentially paradoxical aspect of Christian discourse’ as it developed into the Middle Ages.2 New Testament inversions provided an exegetical framework for notions of paradox and reversal, and these were effectively exploited by Bernard, as by other twelfth-century commentators.3 In addition, Mariology and Christology, sharply formulated in 1  On devotional language of inversion, see Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, pp. 128, 144; Bynum, ‘“And Woman His Humanity”’, pp. 269, 273; Bouchard, ‘Every Valley Shall Be Exalted’, pp. 77–93. On Cistercian inversion in relation to the priority of the figura, in which the linguistic or figural may precede religious content, see Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought, p. 149, and discussions below Sections 5.5 and 6.3. 2  Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, p. 155, see pp. 155–56, 179, 181. 3  E.g., valley-mountain (Lk 3. 5, cf. Is 40. 4: vallis-mons); full-hungry and laughing-

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terms of paradox since the fourth and fifth centuries, contributed to the critical role of inversions in Christian discourse. The centrality of these themes in medieval discourse was further incited by the fundamental paradox inherent in linguistic representation itself: the paradox of describing in language what is by definition indescribable (e.g. God, bliss, the mystery of redemption) — a central insight not just in the apophatic tradition.4 Bernard’s inversions acutely bring out Christological contradictions of lowliness and exaltation, life and death. At the same time, they elaborate on contradictions and transpositions inherent in the patristic theme of ascetic eros and nuptial mysticism with its themes of desire and procreation, delight and erotic pleasure in a context of bodily renunciation and celibacy.5 Bordering on semantic collapse by its metaphorical incoherence, this rhetoric carries the Christological paradox at the heart of Christian discourse — Christ’s death, which triumphed over death — beyond inversions of life and death, corruption and incorruption, by relating the life-death paradox to equally paradoxical themes of nuptial consummation on one hand and virginity or celibacy on the other.6 Bernard’s notion of the monastery representing an inverted world is particularly conspicuous in a noted letter to Oger, a regular canon of Mont-Saint-Éloi who had resigned as bishop (to Bernard’s discontent).7 The abbot of Clairvaux urges his weeping (Lk 6. 25: saturati-esurietis, ridetis-flebitis); small-large (Lk 9. 48: minor-maior); to exalt the humble and humble the exalted (Lk 14. 11, 18. 14: exaltat humiliabitur-humiliat exaltabitur); first-last (Mk 9. 35: primus-novissimus and 10. 31: primi novissimi, et novissimi primi); the eschatological reversals listed in the Sermon on the Mount (Mk 5–7), most notably that of the meek who shall inherit the earth (Mt 5. 4); and Pauline inversions, e.g., weak-strong (ii Cor 12. 10: infirmor-potens) and wisdom-foolishness (i Cor 1. 20: stultam-sapientiam). 4  McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, notes that ‘Bernard, like all Christian mystics, insisted that […] contemplation and vision do not render God any less ineffable. Although he does not often dwell on the divine unknowability in the way which mystics of a more apophatic cast of mind do, there are a number of dicussions in his writings, both early and late’ (p. 207). For examples of the ineffability topos in Bernard, see, e.g., Gra 7.21, Scc 85.14, Csi 5.13.27. 5  See discussions above in Chapter 3, esp. Section 3.5; see also Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, who furnishes an eloquent example from the fifth-century homilist Hesychius of Jerusalem: ‘a sepulchre which gives birth to life, a tomb exempt from corruption and purveyor of incorruptibility, a marriage bed which has held the sleeping spouse for three days, a bridal chamber which saw the bridegroom wake as a virgin after his marriage’ (p. 164). 6  On this language bordering on metaphorical incoherence, see Clark, ‘The Celibate Bridegroom’, esp. pp. 6–9. But see below, Section 5.5. 7  On dating, see The Letters, ed. and trans. by James, p. 129. On the theme of inversion in relation to Ep 87, see Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, pp. 127–28.

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addressee to humility depicting monks as jugglers walking on their hands, feet up, heads down — ridiculed by the world but admired by God and angels: Let me play [ludam], let me be disparaged [ii Kings 6. 22]. Let me play [ludam] so I may be ridiculed [illudar]. It is a good play [bonus ludus], which enraged Michol and pleased God. A good play, which seems ridiculous to men, but which is a most beautiful spectacle to the angels. A good play, I say, by which we are despised [opprobrium] by the rich, and humiliated [despectio] by the proud. For in the eyes of the seculars, does it not seem as if we are playing when what they most desire in the world, we flee from; and what we desire, they flee from? We are like jugglers and acrobats who, head down and feet up, stand and walk on their hands contrary to human ways, and who thus draw all eyes to themselves. This is no child’s play; this is not the theatre where sordid acts are performed, provoking lust with its effeminate and filthy tricks. This is, on the contrary, a delightful play, decent, grave, and admirable, which the heavenly spectators are pleased to watch. This chaste and holy play was played by him who said: We have become a spectacle to angels and men [i Cor 4. 9]. Meanwhile [interim] let us play this play, too, that we may be ridiculed, discomforted, humbled, until [donec] he comes who deposes the powerful and exalts the humble.8

The passage announces and links two themes: playing and being humbled. The keyword in the passage is ‘play’ (ludere, ludus), repeated no less than twelve times. We also find an assonant term, illudere. While its primary sense still refers to ‘playing’, ‘joking’, or ‘mocking’, its secondary sense might be translated ‘to disparage’ or ‘to ridicule’. Hence Bernard’s wordplay ludamus ut illudamur — ‘let us play, that we may be ridiculed’ — combines his two leading themes, playing and being humbled. These two themes are ulteriorly interwoven by biblical allusions (ii Kings 6. 22 and i Cor 4. 9). 8 

Ep 87, col. 217CD (The Letters, ed. and trans. by James, letter 90, p. 135): ‘Ludam, et vilior fiam [II Reg. VI, 22]. Ludam scilicet ut illudar. Bonus ludus, quo Michol irascitur, et Deus delectatur. Bonus ludus, qui hominibus quidem ridiculum, sed Angelis pulcherrimum spectaculum praebet. Bonus, inquam, ludus, quo efficimur opprobrium abundantibus, et despectio superbis. Nam revera quid aliud saecularibus quam ludere videmur, cum, quod ipsi appetunt in hoc saeculo, nos per contrarium fugimus; et quod ipsi fugiunt, nos appetimus? More scilicet joculatorum et saltatorum, qui capite misso deorsum, pedibusque sursum erectis, praeter humanum usum stant manibus vel incedunt, et sic in se omnium oculos defigunt. Non est hic ludus puerilis, non est de theatro, qui femineis foedisque anfractibus provocet libidinem, actus sordidos repraesentet: sed est ludus jucundus, honestus, gravis, spectabilis, qui coelestium spectatorum delectare possit aspectus. Hoc casto et religioso ludo ludebat qui dicebat: Spectaculum facti sumus Angelis et hominibus [I Cor IV, 9]. Hoc ludo et nos interim ludamus, ut illudamur, confundamur, humiliemur, donec veniat qui potentes deponit, et exaltat humiles’.

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The Pauline reference to ‘becoming a spectacle to angels and men’ intertextually introduces notions of persecution (i Cor 4. 11–13) along with another image, the ‘holy fool’ (cf. i Cor 4. 10). This intertextual figure of the ‘holy fool’, while still remaining an allusion, is affirmed in the text in the form of a related figure: the ‘juggler’ or ‘acrobat’ (joculatorum et saltatorum). Like the fool, this character is an object of attention (‘drawing all eyes’) but also of disdain in medieval society.9 Personifying differentiation, otherness, and nonconformity, the juggler is an image of idiosyncrasy — an ‘exception to human ways’ (praeter humanum usum) — one who turns, literally, the human body upside down: ‘head down and feet up, they stand and walk on their hands’. Bernard juxtaposes the literal and physical inversion of the human body on the part of the acrobat or juggler by the spiritual inversion represented by monastic life. Like acrobats, so also the monks overturn — quite literally and physically — the sensory body and the world. That is, they overturn the dynamics of desire or perhaps more precisely the hierarchy of worldly pleasure: restraining both worldly ambition and bodily pleasures (not only sexual pleasures but also other sensory pleasures such as eating, drinking, sleeping, talking, laughing, etc.). Bernard describes this inversed opposition between worldly eros and saintly eros in the memorable phrase: ‘all they desire in this world, we flee from; and all that they flee from, we desire’ (quod ipsi appetunt in hoc saeculo, nos per contrarium fugimus; et quod ipsi fugiunt, nos appetimus).10 Embodying ascetic inversion, the monks emerge in the text as exempla of reversed desire: spiritual acrobats who, as figures of ‘contrariness’ (contrarium), reflect the ordeal of turning the body and the world upside down.11 In this sense, then, the acrobat-juggler becomes a figura for the monk. 9 

On the low social status of the medieval performer, see Hauser, The Social History of Art, p. 79, who states that after the Carolingian Renaissance and the clericalism of the following generation, even the ‘professional’ court minstrel lost his social status, becoming a jack of all trades: ‘no longer merely a poet and singer, but also a musician and dancer, dramatist and actor, clown and acrobat, juggler and bear-leader, in a word, the universal jester and maître de plaisir of the age. […] From now on he is one of the déclassés, in the same class as tramps and prostitutes, runaway clerics and sent-down students, charlatans and beggars’. 10  Cf. Scc 40.5, discussed above in Section 3.4, for a similiar chiastic formula of inverted desire, related with widowhood as representing withdrawal and monastic life: ‘if you despise that which many desire, if you are disgusted by that which everyone covets’ (si despicias quod multi suspiciunt, si fastidias quod omnes desiderant). 11  Bredero, Bernard of Clairvaux, p. 265, points to the aspect of monkish exemplum, citing Sententia: ‘insignificant monks, since they help the people, when they see their humiliation and humility, to show remorse and to repent.’

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The conjunction of the terms ‘play’ (ludus, ludere, illudere) and ‘spectacle, spectators’ (spectaculum, spectatorum) enforces the impression that Bernard is evoking a whole dramatic scenery, that he is performing — indeed, staging — the spiritual dramaturgy of monastic life, and perhaps also of all salvation history.12 This evocation of staging and performance is further reinforced by associated images: in the allusion to David’s dancing, in the description of monks as jugglers and acrobats, and in the direct mention of theatre and theatrical gestures (‘tricks, acts’). Indeed, Bernard refers to both the biblical sequences (ii Kings 6. 22, i Cor 4. 9) as ‘spectacles’ (spectaculum). It is significant that Bernard elsewhere uses the terms spectandus and spectaculum in relation to both martyrdom (Scc 47.4) and the Crucifixion (Scc 47.5).13 It was noted in a prior discussion that martyrdom — as literary construction — becomes obtainable for the monk when it is rhetorically displaced and incorporated in ascetic discourse. By applying the overarching concept of ‘spectacle’ as referring to the Passion of Christ, the martyrdom of the saints and apostles, and the asceticism and humility of monastic life, Bernard aligns them and establishes a rhetorical assimilation of Christ, martyr, and monk. Inviting the monks into this discursive appropriation, the exegete urges them to mimic saintly abjection (‘let us play this play, too’). The ‘play’, then, is a martyrial drama, even a Passion Play. It proposes explicit themes of humility, and implicit themes of asceticism, with subtle allusions to martyrdom and to the Crucifixion. Interweaving notions of monastic humility, asceticism, and martyrdom, the terms ‘despised’ (despectio) and ‘humiliated’ (opprobrium) refer not only to the taxing spectacle of self-humiliation, but also to the Passion as it is restaged by Bernard.14 Thus constructing monastic identity in terms of performative self-abjection, he presents himself and his monks as Christomimetic objects of ridicule for the world. Bernard assures that, unlike the theatre (de theatro), which is ‘sordid and effeminate’ (femineis foedisque), this ludic play is on the contrary ‘good’ (bonus ludus), indeed ‘delightful’, ‘decent’, ‘grave’, and ‘admirable’ (jucundus, honestus, gravis, spectabilis). It has been pointed out that Bernard draws on analogues to the theatre, amphitheatre, and circus as representation for the world and for conflict or tribulation, a theme present in patristic writing, but that he intro12 

On the concept of dramaturgical staging in Bernard, see Verbaal, ‘Timeless Time’, p. 240. See discussion above, Section 3.3. 14  See discussion of Scc 25.8–9 below, Section 5.3, where opprobrium is repeatedly used for Christ’s sufferance. 13 

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duces a new emphasis on the role of the spectators. Only in relation to the audience — God, the angels, men — is the performance given meaning.15 In the present letter, two different audiences are implied: on the one hand, worldly spectators — ‘men’, the ‘rich’, the ‘proud’, ‘seculars’ (hominibus, abundantibus, superbis, saecularibus) — who represent worldly values and hierarchies, and on the other hand, ‘heavenly spectators’ (coelestium spectatorum), that is, the angels, the blessed, and God. Thus the value of the performance, whether it is degrading or pleasing, is reflected by the perspective of the audience — the godly versus the worldly point of view. There is yet another audience, however — namely, Bernard’s audience: the monks, positioned somewhere in between angels and seculars. The monks, at the same time both performers and audience,16 are invited to avert their attention and their desire from the transient world and witness instead Bernard’s eschatological panorama. Closing the cited passage (Ep. 87), he situates both his monks and himself within this spiritual drama: ‘Meanwhile [interim] let us play this play, too, that we may be ridiculed, discomforted, humbled, until [donec] he comes who deposes the powerful and exalts the humble [potentes deponit, et exaltat humiles].’ Here, another inverted opposition emerges. Having already inverted desire on an individual plane (by the upside down juggler-monks), Bernard concludes his letter by staging the monastic world as an eschatological reversal. Following both Latin and Greek patristic practice, Bernard tends to organize his rhetoric, as well as his imagery, in antithetical terms which preserve the basic tension between present reality and future consummation, thus following the very structure of salvational history: now-then, below-above, herethere, believing-seeing. Recent scholarship has emphasized, over against older Bernardine studies, the element of malleability and instability inherent in such antitheses. Whereas the relationship between these antitheses were generally represented in more rigid terms by Étienne Gilson, Jean Leclercq, and, more recently, John Sommerfeldt, other scholars, for instance, Chrysogonus Waddell and M. B. Pranger, underscore their dynamic quality. As Waddell points out, relations between Bernard’s antitheses are fluctuant because the ‘then’ is already 15 

Morrison, ‘Hermeneutics and Enigma’, p. 146; and Drumbl, ‘Ludus iucundus, honestus, gravis, spectabilis’. Both are cited and discussed in Verbaal, ‘Timeless Time’, p. 245 n. 33. 16  On the monks as audience, see Verbaal, ‘Timeless Time’, p.  243, and Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity, p. 303 n. 14. On the audience of letters in the Middle Ages, stressing that production, transmission, and reception of letters were not solitary or private events, see Camargo, ‘Special Delivery’.

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present in some sense in the ‘now’, what is ‘above’ is already accessible to some extent in and through what is ‘below’, and the ‘there’ is at least inchoatively already ‘here’.17 In the Cistercian monastery especially, the split between the terrestrial here and the heavenly there is brought almost to a breaking point. ‘Reality, that is, the extramural world of time and history,’ writes Pranger, ‘is overtaken and absorbed by the drama of ritual. As a result, life in the monastery proves to be conspicuously artificial, to the point of uneventfulness and timelessness.’18 Wim Verbaal concurs: [M]onastic life offers a certain image of eternity by the silence reigning in a Cistercian community, by the regular, almost daily return of words and gestures that ritualize everyday life. Monastic reality tends to become atemporal, not timeless, nor eternal, but something of a no-time, in which every day is the memory of all days and at the same time the image of all days to come.19

The temporal displacement of eschatological restoration (now-then) is implemented Bernard’s letter by the adverbs interim and donec (‘meanwhile’ and ‘until’).20 His performance as abject juggler (or his meta-performance, performing a performer) induces what Verbaal terms ‘eschatological dramatics’.21 Bernard’s audience, Verbaal states, ‘became the audience of a spiritual spectacle […]. They saw how heaven opens to their earthly reality and how the distance between time and eternity, for a short moment, is spanned’.22 This ‘spanning’, or ‘opening up’ of eternity — as the ‘now’ partakes in the ‘then’ — is here achieved by means of a reversal which reveals the final act in the drama of salvation: when the powerful shall be made powerless and the humble be exalted. Bernard’s sublime ‘foolishness’, then, anticipates and stages the eschaton. In his reading of Bernard’s Sermon on the Nativity of Virgin Mary, Pranger draws attention to how monastic tensions between desire and reality move

17 

See Waddell, ‘The Glorified Christ’. Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity, p. 50. On ‘artificiality’ and monastic writing, esp. in relation to time, see pp. 18–38. 19  Verbaal, ‘Timeless Time’, p. 235. 20  On interim, see Leclercq, Recueil, i, 328–29, who points to this being one of Bernard’s principal terms for evoking eschatology. 21  Verbaal, ‘Timeless Time’, p. 239. 22  Verbaal, ‘Timeless Time’, p. 240, commenting a different text by Bernard. 18 

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beyond doctrinal formulations, entering into the language of love poetry.23 Courtly love and monastic love share a common structuring theme: the suspense of delayed fulfilment. In the epistemological opposition between res and nomen, which in the famous opening phrase (ibi res, et hic nomen) is linked to the eschatological opposition between ‘there’ and ‘here’, tensions are patterned on the ‘shadow of memory’ (umbra memoriae) and the ‘light of presence’ (lux praesentiae).24 Pranger points out that Bernard’s love language — like that of the courts — lends itself to notions of temporariness and incompleteness rather than to the static matrimonial terms that Leclercq and Gilson used to describe it.25 Above all, Bernard’s Virgin Mary, as interpreted by Pranger, is shifty, shadowy, and transitory, merging here-there, above-below, now-then, absence-presence, and desire-fulfilment. In this she remarkably resembles our bride. Leaning heavily on an ecclesiological interpretation which sees the Church as simultaneously in patria and in via, that is, as encompassing the saints and the blessed in heaven as well as earthly sinners, Bernard extends notions of eroding the boundaries of above-below and now-then both to the monastery, specifically Clairvaux, as well as to the individual monk. It is in this sense that Bernard can claim that his monastery is a short cut to the heavenly Jerusalem.26 It is in this sense, too, that Cistercian monks are caught in the tensions between maternal imagery (here, now, below) and erotic imagery (there, then, above). Bernard uses oxymorons to express his devotional ideal, namely, finding the ‘right equilibrium’ between contemplation and activity, and inversions to express eschatological restoration. Yet, given the dynamic character in Bernard’s treatment of antithetical tensions, particularly in the temporal displacements of now and then, it appears difficult, if not impossible, to sustain a definite distinction between oxymoronic tension (simultaneous), characterized by paradox, and eschatological tension (here-there, now-then), characterized by reversal and inversion. For instance, when Bernard describes the bride as not being beautiful by the standards of the world, he also implies that, on the contrary, she is beautiful according to a heavenly or spiritual perspective, or that she is 23 

Pranger, ‘The Virgin Mary and the Complexities of Love-Language’. In nat BVM 13, col. 444C: ‘Modicum plane memoria ad praesentiam, modicum ad id quod cupimus, magnum ad id quod meremur; longe infra desiderium, sed nihilominus supra meritum.’ 25  Pranger, ‘The Virgin Mary and the Complexities of Love-Language’, p. 133, and Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought, p. 161. 26  See Ep 64 above, Section 2.1. 24 

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ugly outside and beautiful inside, and hence that there is simultaneousness of ugliness and beauty.27 Yet he implies, too, that her ugliness is only temporary (now). In the afterlife (then), she will be all beautiful — and hence there is succession, from ugly to beautiful. This is relevant for concepts of male and female, as well. No static divisions can be definitely established between gender blending (simultaneous, oxymoronic) and gender crossing (successive, inversive) in the Sermons. Sometimes grammatically implied, sometimes explicitly stated, gender identification is contingent, elastic, and versatile. While late ancient gender symbolism proposed salvation by becoming male, there is no corresponding model of gender crossing in Bernard’s bridal imagery. But there are notions of feminization and notions of defeminization; and above all, there is the basic hermeneutical assumption of a male assuming the part of a female. Despite the almost extreme contingency of gender in the Sermons, femaleness as trope for the male appears consistent and controlled in terms of its rhetorical functions. With this, we turn to Sermon 12, Bernard’s most overt instance of female self-representation, in which he has Christ declare that he — Bernard — is ‘not a man, as you think, but a woman’.

5.2 Inverted Gender Paul, for whom Bernard admits his predilection — ‘the first who springs to my mind, as invariably happens, is Paul’ — is the first of a series of males to be identified as female in Sermon 12.28 Bernard opens the sermon discussing the ointments of the bride (Song 1. 2), and, associating ointments with breasts and motherhood, he proceeds to apply maternal imagery to both Paul and Moses. But, as we shall see, when Bernard eventually arrives at the assertion of himself as female, he completely abandons maternal imagery. In Sermon 12 Bernard returns to the association between breasts and spiritual nurturance in his representation of Paul. ‘His breast [pectus] effused sweet fragrance far and wide, for he was so seized with concern for all Church communities.’29 The passage recalls yet also reformulates the prior figure of Paul in Sermon 10.30 There, Paul’s mouth was depicted as pouring out benign liquid; 27 

See below, Section 5.3. Scc 12.2, OSB, v.1, p. 150: ‘primus occurrit, sicut ubique solet, mihi Paulus’. 29  Scc 12.2, OSB, v.1, p.  150: ‘Multae profecto suavitatis fragrantiam longe lateque spargebat pectus illud, quod sic affecerat sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum.’ 30  Scc 10.1, see above, Section 2.4. 28 

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hence, he was referred to as a ‘mighty and unfailing fountain’. Here, instead, Paul’s ‘breast’ (pectus) submits ‘sweet fragrance’. The leading metaphorical theme in both passages, however, is breast imagery. Yet while the representation of Paul clearly absorbs the Song’s imagery — primarily the image of the breasts — the bride herself remains a faint subtext, not mentioned directly since the opening of the sermon. Gradually, the identification between Paul and the maternal figure becomes more explicit. As this intensification in maternal representation of Paul is effected, Bernard shifts from the gender neutral pectus to the gendered, maternal ubera (‘udders’), a transition which we have observed before but in opposite order.31 Still the bride is present in the text solely as a resonance, an exegetical pretext, whereas the proof-text for Bernard’s reading of Paul as mother is from Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians:32 Fittingly, they smelled of the best and finest spices, these breasts [ubera] which lactated the members of Christ: those to whom Paul was certainly a mother, giving birth again and again until Christ was formed in them [Gal 4. 19], so that the members might be reformed to their head.33

As noted previously, motherhood is constructed privileging suckling and nurturance over against other themes, such as birth and generative aspects. In fact, in the present passage Bernard associates Gal 4. 19 directly with the breast metaphor, even though the theme is absent from the biblical text itself. Persisting with the theme of odours (Song 1. 2), Bernard moves on to Job, linking good odour to good deeds: We might imagine how sweet a smell this man must have effused by his good deeds. Every single deed was fragrant; they filled his conscience so that the stench of his putrid flesh was tempered by the sweet odours exhaled from within.34 31 

Scc 9.7, see above, Section 2.4. Damrosch, ‘Non alia sed aliter’, refers to Bernard’s treatment of Paul as mother as a feminization of the fatherhood reference in i Cor 4. 15 in which Paul calls himself a father for the Corinthian community. In Scc 10.2, Bernard draws on the mentioned Corinthian verse, but the most relevant proof-text for the Paul-as-mother passages seems not to be i Cor 4. 15 but rather Gal 4. 19 with its birthing imagery, which appears in the most explicit passages in this regard: Scc 12.8 and 85.12. See also above, Section 2.8. 33  Scc 12.2, OSB, v.1, p. 150: ‘Decebat namque primis et purissimis aromatibus redolere ubera, quae Christi membra lactarent, quorum Paulus mater erat pro certo, parturiens semel et iterum, donec Christus formaretur in eis [Galat. IV, 19], ac membra suo capiti reformarentur.’ 34  Scc 12.3, OSB, v.1, p. 150: ‘Quanto putamus, vir iste odore terram resperserat in his 32 

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Opposing Job’s ‘exterior’ and ‘interior’ smell — the former putrid, the latter sweet — Bernard at first glance seems to oppose flesh and spirit. Yet this theme of the ascetic body as sweet-smelling resounds with a topos often found in writing on the desert fathers: despite their eremitic desert existence the ascetics effused pleasant odours, annulling and reversing the dreaded process of putrification.35 Hence Job, smelling sweetly despite his rotting, boil-covered flesh, stands in relation to Cistercian interpretation of desert asceticism: the selfmartyrized body wearing the sign of the elect in earthly anticipation of future bliss. This is closely related to a theme which will be encountered shortly: outward ugliness and blackness which reveals itself as beautiful (Scc 25). As shall be argued in the subsequent discussion, these oppositions are not identical with an opposition of flesh and spirit, but rather indicate a more complicated salvational and eschatological process of reversal.36 But Job, although he does smell sweet, is not a mother. Moses, on the other hand, is: Clearly [Moses] speaks with the affection of a parent [parentis affectu], for whom [quam] there is no joy beside the fate of those to whom she has given birth. For instance, if a rich man should say to a pauper woman: Come, join me for dinner, but leave the child you are carrying in your arms outside, for he cries and will be a nuisance to us — what would she do? Would she not rather choose to fast than to leave the dear child and dine alone with the rich man? Hence Moses does not seat himself alone to be introduced to the joy of his Lord while his people remain outside; even if they are restless and ungrateful, he adheres to his people with the affection of a mother [affectione matris]. His heart suffers but he judges this tribulation to be more supportable than separation.37

operibus? Singula opera singula erant aromata. His propriam repleverat conscientiam, ut foetorem putidae carnis internae suavitatis exhalatione sibi temperaret.’ 35  On the anxieties of corruption of the flesh in late ancient and medieval discourse, see Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, passim, e.g., pp. 11–12. 36  Below, Sections 5.5 and 6.6. 37  Scc 12.4, OSB, v.1, p. 152: ‘Loquitur plane parentis affectu, quam nulla possit delectare felicitas, ex sortibus quos parturivit. Verbi gratia, si dives quispiam mulieri pauperculae dicat: Ingredere tu ad prandium meum, sed quem gestas infantulum relinque foris, quoniam plorat, et molestus est nobis: nunquid faciet? Nonne magis eliget ieiunare quam, exposito pignore caro, sola prandere cum divite? Ita nec Moysi sedet solum se introduci in gaudium Domini sui, foris scilicet remanente populo cui, licet inquieto et ingrato, vice pariter et affectione matris inhaeret. Dolent viscera, sed tolerabiliorem sibi iudicat tortionem quam evulsionem.’

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The patriarch Moses displays the ‘affection of a parent’ (parentis affectu) — a father one might imagine initially, but for the relative pronoun in the feminine, quam (‘for whom’), which fixes the female gender of Moses’ parenthood. Moses’ femaleness is further affirmed as the passage continues. Bernard associates Moses with a ‘pauper woman’ (mulieri pauperculae) before he effectively identifies the patriarch, in the closing of the passage, as ‘mother’: ‘he adheres to his people with the affection of a mother’ (affectione matris inhaeret). Resuming the concept of maternal affection as an ideal for spiritual authority, Moses’ motherhood represents his self-sacrificial care and love for his people. This might be an indication as to why Job, in the passage immediately after mother-Paul and immediately before mother-Moses, was not a mother: Job’s (self-)sacrificial sufferance was not related to leadership or authority but rather to endurance in faith. Like the bride, Moses is torn between his maternal duty and affection and his desire for the Lord. As in other passages treating the prelate’s internal conflict, torn between usefulness and pleasure, we find a scenario of three: the pauper mother (Moses), the rich man (the Lord), and the child (Israel) — analogously to the bride (Bernard), the bridegroom (Christ), and the daughters (the monks) who are cast in a similar triangular model, while also recalling the amorous triad of Bernard, Rachel, and Lia.38 Bernard’s use of the image ‘he seats himself ’ (sedet), bearing connotations to contemplative vocabulary, likewise evokes the opposition of selfish bliss and selfless duty, emphasized by the notion of ‘being alone’ (solum). Similarly, the opposition ‘introduced to joy’ (introduci in gaudium) versus ‘remaining outside’ (foris […] remanente) recalls the mother-daughter scenes discussed above, as does the theme of the ‘restless and ungrateful people’ (populo […] inquieto et ingrato), represented as ‘the dear child’ (infantulum, pignore caro) who does not appreciate its mother’s sacrifices, creating a firm parallel between Moses’ Israelites and Bernard’s monks.39 After praising also David, and associating him, like Paul and Job, with sweet-smelling perfumes (but not with maternal imagery) (Scc 12.5), Bernard introduces a woman carrying fragrant ointments. Her entry in the text carries an element of surprise: ‘And all of a sudden,’ says Bernard, ‘a woman appears, who in one place kisses [Christ’s] feet and anoints them with ointments, and in another place — either she, or another woman — brings in alabaster oint38  On the triad of bride-bridegroom-daughters, see Scc 52.6–7 above, Section 2.6; on Bernard-Rachel-Lia, see Scc 9.3 and 41.5 above, Section 2.4. 39  See Scc 23.1 and 52.6–7 above, Sections 2.5 and 2.6; on mother-daughter themes, see also Section 4.2.

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ments and pours it over his head.’40 Squinting into the thick, exegetical haze of Gospel harmonization, he both affirms and questions the identification of the unnamed woman as Mary Magdalene.41 Having introduced the Magdalene — and we shall see to what end shortly — Bernard slips ahead to the theme of anointing Christ’s body, namely the Church: [The Church] is the most dear body of Christ, for which, as any Christian knows, the other body was delivered to death so that she would not taste death. He desires that she be anointed, that she be cared for, that her weak members be strengthened by the most efficient remedies.42

From the lofty heights of allegorical explication, Bernard suddenly swoops down to a more tangible reality, re-enacting the woman anointing Christ. Preparing a dramaturgical reconstruction of the biblical scene(s) in question, he begins by drawing the audience’s attention to Jesus’s rebuff at those who protested at the woman’s anointment of Christ:43

40 

Scc 12.6, OSB, v.1, p.  156: ‘Sed de subito introducitur mulier, uno quidem in loco osculans pedes, et unguento ungens; in altero vero vel ipsa, vel altera, habens alabastrum unguenti, et illud mittens in caput.’ 41  The first ‘place’ (uno […] in loco) refers to Lk 7. 38 and Jn 12. 3, where a woman kisses/ anoints Christ’s feet, whereas the ‘other place’ (in altero) — and here Bernard professes doubts as to whether it is still the same woman — refers to Mk 14. 3 and Matt 26. 7, where a woman pours ointments over Christ’s head. Neither the text of Luke, Mark, or Matthew names the woman, but John identifies her as Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. In the Latin tradition all four passages were associated with Mary Magdalene, who was conflated with Mary of Bethany. While Bernard in Scc 12.6 and Scc 23.9 expresses doubt as to whether all four Gospels (Lk 7. 38, Mt 26. 7, Jn 12. 3, and Mk 14. 3) refer to the same woman, he is more assertive in In assumptione BMV: Sermo iii, in line with the Latin exegetical tradition, e.g., Ambrose and Gregory the Great. Seeing that the Latin tradition harmonizes the four figures, and that Bernard in the following passages draws on all four gospel texts, I shall, for convenience and clarification, refer to the anointing woman as Mary Magdalene. See also OSB, v.1, p. 314 n. 2. On the problem of the exegetical tradition of identification of Mary Magdalene, see editorial comment to Scc 23.9 (n. 175) in Migne, PL, clxxxiii, cols 889C–890D. On Mary Magdalene in Bernard, see Leclercq, Monks on Marriage, pp. 79–105. 42  Scc 12.7, OSB, v.1, p. 156: ‘Ipsa est carius corpus Christi, quod ne mortem gustaret, morti illud alterum traditum fuisse nullus christianus ignorat. Ipsam ungi, ipsam foveri desiderat, ipsius infirma membra cupit fomentis accuratioribus relevari.’ 43  That is, Simon the Pharisee in Luke (7. 36–48), unspecified table companions in Mark (14. 3–9), the disciples in Matthew (26. 6–13), and, finally, Judas Iscariot in John (12. 1–8).

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Did he try to prevent it when valuable ointment was poured out over his head and his feet? Rather, he opposed those who would prevent it. For to Simon, who was indignant that [ Jesus] would let himself be touched by a sinful woman, he fabricated a long parable to rebuke him, and, likewise, he responded those who complained at the waste of the ointment by saying: Why are you troubling this woman?44

At Christ’s defence of the anointing woman — ‘why are you troubling this woman?’ — Bernard steps up, front stage, and appropriates the role of Mary Magdalene, even more resolutely than he did in Sermon 3: There have been times when I — if I may digress a little — sat down sadly at the feet of Jesus, and, recalling my sins, I offered my repentant spirit in sacrifice, or when, although rarely, I exalted at his head, recalling his goodness. Then I could hear people saying: Why this waste? They complained that I was living only for myself when, in their view, I could be useful to many. And so they said: This could be sold for a lot of money, and given to the poor. [Mt 26. 8–10] But it would not be a good transaction for me: to destroy and lose myself, even if I were to gain the whole world.45

Bernard positions himself, mimicking the anointing Magdalene, now at the feet of Jesus, now at his head. These positions echo, yet again, themes from Sermon 3. The position at the feet of Christ is related to the kiss of the feet which, like in the present passage, was connected with repentance and conversion (and with Mary Magdalene). Even though Bernard uses the term ‘to sit’ (cum sederem mihi), which is often associated with contemplation, in this passage — applying the qualification ‘sadly’ (maerens) — he evokes instead the repentant, wailing women of Sermon 3: a theme reinforced further on in the same phrase by the reference to sins and contrition (contribulati, peccatorum 44 

Scc 12.7, OSB, v.1, p. 158: ‘Cum in caput eius, aut etiam in pedes funderetur unguentum, ipsumque satis pretiosum, numquid prohibuit? Immo et obstitit prohibentibus. Nam et Simoni indignanti, quod se tangi a peccatrice permitteret, longam texuit reprehensionis parabolam; et aliis perditionis unguenti causantibus respondit, dicens: Quid molesti estis huic mulieri?’ 45  Scc 12.8, OSB, v.1, p.  158: ‘Nonnunquam ego, ut modicum faciam excessum, cum sederem mihi ad pedes Iesu maerens, et offerens sacrificium spiritus contribulati in recordatione peccatorum meorum, aut certe ad caput, si quando vel raro starem, et exsultarem in recordatione beneficiorum eius, audivi dicentes: Ut quid perditio haec? Causantes videlicet quod soli viverem mihi, qui, ut putabant, multis prodesse possem. Et dicebant: Potuit enim venumdari multo, et dari pauperibus [Matth. XXVI, 8–10]. Sed non bonum mercatum mihi, etiam si universum mundum lucrer, meipsum perdere et detrimentum mei facere.’ On identification with Mary Magdalene in Scc 3.2, see above Section 2.3.

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meorum). The image of ‘exalting’ (exsultarem) at the head of Jesus is related to the kiss of the mouth, and calls forth notions of ascent and contemplation. What is missing here is the intermediary stage, namely the level of rational love or vita activa, in other words, we are missing the sister: Martha. The theme of the active life emerges, nonetheless, but from the point of view of the scrutinizing critics: those who protest at the waste of ointment. Having established himself as the anointing woman, Bernard evokes her critics who then become his own critics: ‘Why this waste?’ he asks, miming the murmuring disciples (Mt 26. 8). Explaining to his audience the nature of the complaint, Bernard recurs to the familiar opposition of ‘living for oneself ’ (soli viverem mihi) versus ‘being useful to many’ (multis prodesse possem). Pursuing this theme, Bernard again invokes Matthew 26 to give voice to the disciples’ complaint: ‘this could be sold for a lot of money, and given to the poor’. Here, however, he finally responds, if not to his critics directly (he will leave that to Christ, as we shall see in a moment), then at least by an apologia directed at his audience. It would be a bad transaction for me, he tells them, to ‘win the world’ but ‘lose myself ’. With this opposition, we are back to considerations regarding the just equilibrium in spiritual life. Preparing a defence for feminine passivity and withdrawal, Bernard suggests that in being ‘useful to many’ and ‘giving to the poor’ — that is, practicing the active life and the pastoral handling of humans affairs — there is a risk of destroying oneself by following the world, not God: in other words, seeking recognition from people rather than from God. Thus far, Bernard has addressed the audience rather than his critics directly. Like the accused woman on whom he is modelling himself, he does not raise his voice to respond his accusers. But presently, as in the biblical story, Christ himself speaks up for Bernard: Let those who accuse me of idleness [otio] listen to the Lord who justifies me and responds for me: Why, he says, are you troubling this woman? This means: You are looking at appearances [in facie], and you judge according to appearances [faciem]. This is not a man, as you think, one who can handle great things, but a woman. Why try to impose on him a burden which I can see he [eum] is not up to? He has done a good deed to me. Let him do good deeds until he has the strength to do better. If he eventually progresses from woman to man, and to perfect man [virum perfectum], he may also perform perfect deeds.46 46 

Scc 12.8, OSB, v.1, p. 158: ‘Verum audiant excusantem Dominum, et respondentem pro me, qui me quasi de otio incusant: Quid, inquit, molesti estis huic mulieri? Quod est: Vos videtis in facie, et ideo secundum faciem iudicatis. Non est vir, ut putatis, qui possit mittere manum ad fortia, sed mulier. Quid tentatis ei imponere iugum, ad quod ego eum minus sufficientem

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Bernard — in the words of the Lord — declares himself a woman: ‘This is not a man, as you think, one who can handle great things, but a woman [mulier].’ At the accusation on the part of Bernard’s critics — ‘why this waste?’ — Christ defends the feminized Bernard: ‘why are you troubling this woman?’ Christ rebukes Bernard’s accusers by turning the accusation back at them, stating that they ‘judge according to appearances’ (videtis in facie, secundum faciem iudicatis) — thus evoking notions of superficial judgement related to a worldly perspective and implicitly contrasted with a divine (profound, interior) perspective.47 Bernard’s identification with the anointing woman is reconfirmed by Jesus’s response to her accusers, citing Matthew 26. 10: ‘s/he has done a good deed to me’. The undercurrent of references to the scene in Matthew 26 is actually what provides the dramaturgical structure of the passage, by weaving together — intertextually — the whole narrative. But what are the implications of gender in this passage and of Bernard’s assertion of himself as female? While his femaleness is made explicit, the referring pronoun is nevertheless kept in the masculine form, ‘him’ (eum), which seems to indicate that femaleness here functions in a slightly different way than when female identification is grammatically effected by the reference to anima, using the feminine pronoun ‘her’ (ea).48 Indeed, this passage bears no reference to anima and does not have Bernard performing the bride, even indirectly. The bride is all but eclipsed, as sometimes happens. Instead, he has assumed the part of the (repentant and contemplative) Magdalene, performing the exegetical part of the anointing woman. For the bridal figure, as argued, requires both activity and contemplation, both Mary and Martha (who is absent), just like it is not complete without both eroticism and maternity. Female self-representation in this passage seems to serve a distinct function as marker of imperfection and weakness. In identifying Bernard as female, Christ highlights his weakness: Bernard cannot ‘handle great things’ (mittere manum ad fortia) nor has he ‘sufficient strength’ (minus sufficientem) to carry any ‘burden’ (iugum). Here, a striking rewriting of Eph 4. 13 adds a gender crossing twist to the notion of developing into ‘perfect man’ (vir perfectus), intueor? Bonum opus operatur in me. Stet in bono, quamdiu non convalescit ad melius. Si quando de muliere in virum, et virum perfectum profecerit, poterit et in opus perfectionis assumi.’ 47  On judging ‘by the face’, see also Scc 25.5 below, Section 5.3. 48  For instance, in Scc 25 where Paul is identified as bride by the feminine pronoun ea (‘she’), a reference to Paul’s anima; see below, Section 5.3.

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envisioning progression ‘from woman to man’ (de muliere in virum) and to ‘perfect man’ (virum perfectum).49 As has been observed, Bernard sometimes alters biblical passages to give a female cast where none appears in the original text.50 In this case, the gender reinscription is exceptionally conspicuous because Eph 4. 13 was exegetically associated with the virago model: the notion of spiritual progression whereby a female could partake in the ideal of vir perfectus by ‘becoming male’. Bernard’s rewriting of the biblical verse, then, is remarkable because he applies this gender-crossing model — from female to male — to himself. Again traces of the virago model emerge in the context of the bridal model.51 There is another direct reference to vir perfectus associated with the figure of the bride, namely, in Sermon 27.52 But only in Sermon 12 does Bernard identify directly with the notion of gender crossing from female to male. In Sermon 12, moreover, he nuances progression from ‘woman’ (de muliere) to ‘perfect man’ (virum perfectum) by an intermediary ‘man’ (in virum). These three figures — woman, man, and perfect man — are related to ‘deeds’ (opus) and qualified by the adjective ‘good’ (‘good deeds’, bonum opus), the comparative ‘better’ (melius), and the absolute adjective ‘perfect’ (‘perfect deeds’, opus perfectionis). In this hierarchy of spiritual perfection, Bernard identifies explicitly with the lowest rung, ‘good’ (associated with mulier), while aspiring to ‘do better’ (associated with vir), and finally to be incorporated into Christlike vir perfectus, thus ‘performing perfect deeds’. The dual structure of female displacement versus male eschatological perfection is recognizable. But the particular pattern found here, alluding to an intermediary degree of a ‘better’ but not yet ‘perfect’ male, situated between the female fleshly level and the male eschatological level, is not pursued further in the Sermons.

49  Eph 4. 13 has: ‘into perfect man, into the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ’ (in virum perfectum in mensuram aetatis plenitudinis Christi). 50  Pointed out, e.g., by Damrosch, ‘Non alia sed aliter’, pp. 181–85. 51  Krahmer, ‘The Virile Bride’; see Scc 38 above, Section 4.4. 52  In Sermon 27 Bernard supplies another fleeting implication of gender crossing from female to male as the male vir perfectus of Eph 4. 13 is applied to the feminine anima — or sponsa — in describing the bride: Scc 27.10, OSB, v.1, p. 398: ‘crescit et in gloria; crescit denique et proficit in virum perfectum, in mensuram aetatis plenitudinis Christi [Ephes. IV, 13]; crescit etiam in templum sanctum in Domino’ (she grows in glory; she grows until she advances to perfect man, to the measure and fullness of Christ [Eph 4. 13]; for she grows [to be] a sacred temple of the Lord).

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In Sermon 12 Bernard’s self-representation involves the femaleness of a figure not directly assimilated with the bride (or only with an incomplete part of the bride). As discussed, female characters disassociated with the bride evoke notions of inferiority and lowliness. Like the little girls, who represent spiritual immaturity and hermeneutical displacement, and the domestic roles of spinner and woman at the well, who represent submissive service, this female figure signalizes spiritual and devotional imperfection.53 All these female characters express humility. In conflating the notion of femaleness directly with the notion of humility, Bernard absorbs both notions into a performative rhetoric of self-representation. In the current passage, drawing on Matthew and the figure of the anointing woman, the biblical verses — the dialogue, the personages — clearly function as pretext for self-representation, rather than, more simply, as a gloss on the biblical text. This concern for establishing identity, particularly monastic identity, emerges even more resolutely in the subsequent passage: My brothers, let us revere bishops but fear their burdens [labores]. If we think of their burdens, we shall not desire [affectamus] their honour. Let us recognize that our strength is unequal and that our soft and feminine [femineos] shoulders cannot bear the burdens of men. Let us not scrutinize them but rather honour them. It is surely churlish to criticize their doings if you shun their responsibilities. Foolishly the woman reprimands her husband returning from the battlefield, while she herself is at home spinning. For I say that if a monk [qui de claustro est] observes that one who moves among the people [qui versatur in populo] comports himself with less constraint and less restriction than he — for instance as regards speaking, sleeping, laughing, being angry and judgemental — then let him not immediately rush to judge him, but remember Scripture: Better the wickedness of a man, than a woman who does good. [Ecclus 42. 14] For you do well to vigilantly guard yourself, but he who helps many, acts better and more manly.54

53 

On the little girls, see above, Section 4.2; on the serving women, see above, Section 4.3. Scc 12.9, OSB, v.1, pp. 158–60: ‘Fratres, revereamur episcopos, sed vereamur eorum labores: si labores pensamus, non affectamus honores. Agnoscamus impares vires nostras, nec delectet molles et femineos humeros virorum supponere sarcinis; nec observemus eos, sed honoremus. Inhumane nempe eorum redarguis opera, quorum onera refugis. Temerarie obiurgat virum de proelio revertentem mulier nens in domo. Dico enim: si is, qui de claustro est, eum qui versatur in populo interdum minus districte minusve circumspecte sese agere deprehenderit, verbi gratia in verbo, in cibo, in somno, in risu, in ira, in iudicio, non ad iudicandum confestim prosiliat, sed meminerit scriptum: Melior est iniquitas viri quam benefaciens mulier [Eccli. XLII, 14]. Nam tu quidem in tui custodia vigilans bene facis; sed qui iuvat multos, et melius facit, et virilius.’ 54 

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In this passage, Bernard extends female identification also to his fellow monks, not just to himself: they are of ‘unequal strength’ (impares vires nostras), having ‘soft and feminine shoulders’ (molles et femineos humeros) which cannot ‘bear the burdens of men’ (virorum supponere sarcinis). Affirming the monks’ association with femaleness, he continues by likening the monks to a ‘woman at home spinning’ (mulier nens in domo) — evoking the female domestic image inherent in his self-representation as a spinning wife in Sermon 15. Contrasting the monks with the episcopate, Bernard represents the former as female insofar as they do not partake in worldly power and responsibilities; monks are powerless and passive (like the woman at home spinning). The gendered opposition to the feminized cloister, then, is the masculinized episcopate: those who exercise power and authority, undertaking the burdens of the secular world (like the man in the battlefield). Femaleness, then, indicates withdrawal from the world, while maleness, conversely, is represented as assertive and world-affirmative. Throughout the passage Bernard instates oppositions of ‘them’ and ‘us’ — referring to bishops versus monks. The former are characterized by ‘work’ and ‘burdens’ (labores, sarcinis, onera), ‘reverence’ and ‘honour’ (revereamur, honores, honoremus), and they are described as ‘moving among the people’ (qui versatur in populo). On the other hand, the latter — the cloistered monks (qui de claustro est) — are depicted as absorbed in a vigilant and self-reflexive scrutiny (in tui custodia vigilans). Apparently they do not scrutinize themselves only; Bernard transmits unmistakable notions of watchful monks critically measuring the behaviour of ecclesiastical leaders. ‘Let us not scrutinize them but rather honour them,’ the abbot cautions. Criticizing is ‘churlish’ (inhumane) and ‘foolish’ (temerarie) if one does not also carry burdens and responsibilities. The current feminized representation of Bernard and his monks is no doubt related to the recurring monastic ideal of humility. Self-feminization functions rhetorically as a call to humility — ‘to be restrained and to know what is lacking in oneself ’, as stated in Sermon 38. The same point is underscored here by the biblical reference: ‘better the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good’ (Ecclus 42. 14). Identifying with a woman who ‘does good’ — that is, the anointing woman — the monk must still recognize his inferiority with regard to the episcopate. Reconfirming the link between ‘more manly’ (virilius) and ‘better’ (melius), Bernard implies that his monastic audience — who have now become a singular entity (tu), perhaps for the rhetorical purpose of a firmer identification with the mulier of Ecclesiasticus —are less than manly. Thus, following the exegetical implications of his performance of the anointing woman, Bernard presents himself as contemplative monk (female), not active prelate (male). In the process, he destabilizes his previous treatment of

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activity and spiritual leadership. Depicting Moses and Paul as mothers, Bernard represented their leadership and authority as feminized. Instead we find that the figure of spiritual authority and active service is now represented as male. Indeed, the masculinization of the active life — and the concurrent feminization of the contemplative life — momentarily disrupts the whole scheme of maternal imagery in the Sermons. As discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, the established gendered model for representing activity is related to the figure of the mother-bride, and it is female. The omission of maternal imagery in this passage is striking because female self-representation in this instance occurs in a context where Bernard is discussing authority and power — since motherhood, elsewhere, is the chosen vehicle to negotiate spiritual authority and leadership. It should be recalled, however, that motherhood serves specifically to counterbalance potentially harmful notions of superiority connected with a high office. Insofar as Bernard here is explicitly rendering the monastic world as powerless, contrasting it with the powerful ecclesiastic prelates, maternity is simply not necessary for his self-representation. Gendering contemplation female and activity male, the passage under consideration proposes a direct inversion of Augustine’s gendered opposition in De trinitate which links contemplation to maleness and activity to femaleness. In arguing for the superiority of contemplation over activity, Augustine, glossing the creation story in Genesis 2. 24, associates activity with lower reason and with corporeality, and thus with the female, and, conversely, contemplation with higher reason and with intellect, and thus with the male. 55 Apart from testifying to the plasticity of gender symbolism in ancient and medieval Christian discourse, Bernard’s and Augustine’s diverging representations testify also to the general impetus in gender discourse where femaleness is situated on an incline. Thus the two representations — female activity and male contemplation (Augustine) versus male activity and female contemplation (Bernard) — may appear shifty, indeed inverse; yet they nevertheless retain the hierarchical assumption whereby femaleness expresses that which according to the context is being proposed as inferior. In Sermon 12, however, there is an element which subtly complicates all these assumptions of inferiority and superiority: the ironic undertone. When Bernard implies that bishops, qua men, are better and stronger (than the feminine monks) he echoes a worldly perspective. Men (bishops) have more power, 55 

De trinitate 12. 3, cols 999–1000; on gender in De trinitate, see Lloyd, Man of Reason, pp. 28–34.

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more honour, and therefore heavier burdens. So while contrasting the superior (male) with the inferior (female), he actually also subverts this notion. By alluding to the monks’ knowledge of the bishops’ blameworthy conduct, he smugly lets it be understood that they speak, eat, sleep, laugh, and rage too much. The subtext in this passage seems to challenge, rather than uphold, the hierarchy of superior and inferior: For is not the feminized cloister ultimately superior — in its humility and its world renunciation — to the masculine prelates who follow the logic of the secular world, and not of God? Cistercian elitism was notorious among contemporaries.56 Cistercian monasteries consistently ‘presented themselves as communities of the spiritual elite’ and laid ‘claims to a superior holiness’ — not just in relation to the lay population but also to other religious groups.57 In fact, they were particularly critical towards the potentially corruptible effects of spiritual and pastoral authority inherent in the role of prelate.58 As noted, Bernard’s defence for (female) withdrawal over against (male) activity centred precisely on this: the risk of being destroyed in being ‘useful to many’ (i.e., in the practical and pastoral handling of humans affairs) as it may entail following the world and not God (Scc 12.8). Consequently, gendering the episcopate male and the monastery female may be understood in relation to Cistercian concerns to see the monastery untainted by worldly or secular power. The issue of differentiation between secular and religious spheres was a political concern for Gregorian reformers in general and for the Cistercians in particular. The Cistercians aimed not only towards a differentiation between the poles of the Church and of secular society, often discussed by means of the imagery of the ‘two swords’:59 they also attempted to differentiate, within the Church itself, the role of monks and regular clergy from that of the secular clergy.60 Cistercians were generally not in conflict with the episcopate. On the contrary, they were important supporters and advisors to high prelates in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, even holding 56 

On the theme of Cistercian elitism, see Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 123–40, esp. pp. 126–27. 57  Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, p. 136. 58  Cf. above, Section 3.2, on maternal imagery as counter-effect to superiority and pride. 59  On the image of the two swords in Bernard, see Bredero, Bernard of Clairvaux, pp. 145–59. 60  The clergy was traditionally divided into secular and regular clerics: the former ministered directly to the public (the saeculum) and ranged from the parish priest to bishops and archbishops, whereas the latter was originally limited to monastics, who took a vow and lived under a codified rule (regula); on this division, see Bouchard, ‘Strong of Body, Brave and Noble’, pp. 146–47.

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important ecclesiastical positions themselves.61 Still, as Martha Newman has made clear, there is little doubt that the Cistercians — while acknowledging the authority of ecclesiastical prelates as well as the worldly authority of the aristocracy and monarchy — nevertheless perceived of these groups as spiritually inferior to themselves and their own, more perfect roles. While they considered the salvation of the laity to be the responsibility of the secular clergy, they concurrently viewed them as lacking the virtues necessary for their positions of authority.62 Cistercians were quick to criticize and denounce any prelate who, in their view, presumed to govern others before being able to govern himself: expressed, for instance, in Bernard’s image of the ‘canals’ (Scc 18.3).63 Cistercian claims to spiritual superiority resided in what Bynum termed ‘superior lowliness’.64 Subversively describing himself and his monks as ‘women’ and bishops as ‘men’, Bernard negotiates Cistercian monasticism. While evoking a secular perspective — male is better than female, power and honour is better than poverty and humility — he concurrently reverses the asymmetry of gender valorization. For shall not the powerful be deposed and the humble exalted? Shall not all that once was ugly and black — and therefore without value by the world’s standards — become bright and beautiful? Shall not everything one day be turned upside down and inside out? ‘What to say of voluntary poverty? And of humility?’ queries Bernard, ‘Nothing other than that the one shall gain an eternal kingdom, and the other eternal exaltation.’65 In this perspective, the rhetoric of self-feminization is analogous to Bernard’s depiction of himself and his brethren as jugglers and acrobats. As noted, the 61 

Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 2, 142, and appendix pp. 247–51. Cistercian monks began to hold episcopal positions already from the 1120s, and at the time of Bernard’s death there had been around fifty Cistercian bishops, ten Cistercian cardinals, and a Cistercian pope. 62  Although to draw the conclusion that in Bernard’s writing there is an incompatibility between a ‘Gregorian’ concept of ecclesiastical leadership (i.e., authority resides in the office) and a ‘charismatic’ concept of leadership (i.e., authority resides in moral supremacy), as does White, ‘The Gregorian Ideal and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux’, is probably inaccurate, as argued by Sommerfeldt, ‘Charismatic and Gregorian Leadership’. On the problem of Bernard’s position on Gregorian leadership, see also Grey, ‘The Problem of Papal Power’. 63  On the complex relationship between Cistercians and bishops, see discussion in Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 141–70, esp. p. 155. 64  Bynum, ‘“And Woman His Humanity”’, p. 269. 65  Scc 27.3, OSB, v.1, p. 388: ‘Quid voluntaria paupertas? Quid humilitas? Nonne altera regnum aeternum [Matth. V, 3], altera aeque exaltationem promeretur aeternam? [Luc. XIV, 11].’

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medieval itinerant jester or actor was a depreciated figure, standing on the lowest rung of society, and thus — just like the female — another negative or reversed ideal. In a Christian discourse founded on rhetoric of inversion and paradox, Bernard presents himself and his monks as a reversed elite. For the monks are precisely those who do not follow human order, but rather God’s, turning ‘human convention’ (humanum usum) upside down. Whether Bernard performs a female or whether he performs a juggler-acrobat, he stages the same ‘play’ (ludus): performing simultaneous humiliation and glorification. In this way, inverted gender is closely related to the familiar Christological theme of descent-ascent. Yet femaleness is, metaphysically, an even more potent symbol than the acrobat juggler. By feminizing himself, Bernard — as male — not only volunteers abject femaleness, exposing himself to degradation in the eyes of the world. He quite literally assumes an inferior nature — in perfect ontological analogy to and emulation of the Word assuming flesh. Choosing poverty, choosing humility, and now also choosing femaleness, the monks in Bernard’s construction reject and invert worldly distinctions of hierarchy and gender, inscribing instead another version of an ascetic or ecclesiastical hierarchy which relocates heaven on earth and displaces the future in present time.66 Anticipating eschatology, Bernard’s rhetoric of gender poses (voluntary) femaleness analogously to (voluntary) poverty and (voluntary) humility as a type of inverted Dantesque contrapasso. Instead of a continuity between earthly sin and infernal punishment, the inverted monastic world prefigures — here, now, below — final restoration by turning the secular world upside down. In this way, the feminized monk partakes in Bernard’s hermeneutics of inversion, connected to the Cistercian monastery as a reversed image — a mirror image — of worldly values. By this rhetoric, the elitist monks of the Cistercian order may assert their legitimacy and their position over against antagonists or competitors in the struggle for influence over ecclesiastical, monastic, and educational matters. Maintaining a hierarchy — not a secular hierarchy but a monastic and a moral hierarchy which is already established on earth by anticipation of future reversal — they promote and undergird the authority of that very same moral and monastic hierarchy also on earth.

66 

Cf. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, pp.  109–10, commenting on late ancient asceticism.

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5.3 Inverted Beauty The preceding chapters have considered, firstly, how oppositions of maternalactive and erotic-contemplative are negotiated in terms of paradoxes and oxymorons (Chapters 2 and 3), and, secondly, how gender inscriptions suggest eschatological transformation from female to male (Chapter 4). When Bernard interprets Song 1. 4, ‘I am black but beautiful, o daughters of Jerusalem’ (nigra sum sed formosa, o filiae Ierusalem), notions of both paradox and reversal reappear, while still related to female imagery.67 In fact, the oppositions of black and beautiful which permeate this sermon cycle, beginning in Sermon 25 and concluding with Sermon 30, provide an important framework for ascertaining rhetorical and discursive functions of female self-representation in the Sermons. Oppositions and transpositions in Sermons 25 and 28, including beauty and blackness, inner and outer, appearance and authenticity, and letter and spirit will be discussed before assessing the inversions in Sermons 26, 27, and 29, centring on life and death, pleasure and pain, asceticism and eroticism. Bernard begins the gloss on ‘I am black but beautiful’ (nigra sum sed formosa) with a fleeting reference to his hermeneutical programme of providing doctrine for ‘simple’ or ‘slow’ minds.68 ‘I speak,’ he says, ‘for the simple [simplices] who have not learned to distinguish between colour and form.’69 Drawing on the Latin similitude between formosa (‘beautiful’) and forma (‘form’), he underscores that there is no contradiction in terms in the bride’s statement, ‘for form refers to the shape, while blackness is a colour. Not everything which is black is therefore deformed [deforme]’.70 Bernard exemplifies his point, transferring his attention to (the bride’s) feminine, fleshly beauty which becomes, albeit indirectly, the focal point for the exegetical gaze: ‘Blackness, for instance, in the pupil of the eye is not unbecoming; black gems are agreeable in ornaments; and 67  Jerome’s Latin translation, ‘nigra sum sed formosa’, lends an air of paradox and opposition to Song 1. 4, whereas LXX and early patristic writing gives ‘and’ (et) rather than ‘but’. Latin commentators, like Bernard, follow Jerome’s sense of contradiction between blackness and beauty, a supposition not lost on modern commentators who have denounced its inherent ‘melainophobia’ (fear of blackness), others have pointed out that it reflects an genuine ambiguity in the Hebrew conjunctive itself. See Iyengar, Shades of Difference, p. 50. 68  Cf. Scc 22.3, simpliciora simplicoribus; Scc 16.1, tardioribus; see discussion above, Section 4.3. 69  Scc 25.3, OSB, v.1, p.  350: ‘Propter simplices dico, qui inter colorem et formam discernere non noverunt.’ 70  Scc 25.3, OSB, v.1, p. 350: ‘cum forma ad compositionem pertineat, nigredo color sit. Non omne denique quod nigrum est continuo deforme est’.

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black locks of hair framing a pale face enhance its grace and charm.’71 Leaving the audience with this depiction of exotic female beauty, Bernard returns to verbal associations, juxtaposing the assonant pair decoloria and decora: ‘There are many instances where you will find a discoloured [decoloria] surface in a beautiful [decora] shape.’72 Presently, the gaze alights decisively on the bride: And so the bride, despite her shapely beauty [pulchritudine], may not be exempted from the stain of blackness [nigredinis], but this is only in her place of pilgrimage. It will be otherwise in the homeland, when the bridegroom in his glory will behold her for himself, [and she will be] all glorious, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. But now, if she were to say that there is no blackness in her, she would be deceiving herself, and truth would not be in her. […] How can she be other than beautiful, when it is said to her: Come, my beautiful one [Song 2. 10]. But one to whom it is said, come, has not yet arrived. So no one should think that this was said to the happy woman [beatae] who already reigns without blackness in the homeland [in patria], rather than the black woman [nigra] still toiling along the way [in via].73

The bride’s blackness refers to the exilic condition of terrestrial life, which, in its turn, as argued, is directly associated with femaleness. Her ‘stain’ (naevo) of blackness is restricted to ‘her place of pilgrimage’ (in loco peregrinationis suae); in the ‘homeland’ (in patria) it will be otherwise, Bernard claims, and invokes notions of spotlessness from Eph 5. 27. The contrast between ‘toiling along the way’ (laborabat veniendo in via) and ‘reigning in the homeland’ (regnat in patria) is represented by two female characters: the ‘black woman’ (nigrae) and the ‘happy woman without blackness’ (beatae […] absque nigredine). It is not the bride’s ‘beauty’ (pulchritudine) but her ‘blackness’ (negridinis) that is conditioned by this spatial displacement. We may note that the verbs laborabat and 71  Scc 25.3, OSB, v.1, p. 350: ‘Nigredo, verbi causa, in pupilla non dedecet; et nigri quidam lapilli in ornamentis placent, et nigri capilli candidis vultibus etiam decorem augent et gratiam.’ 72  Scc 25.3, OSB, v.1, p. 350: ‘Quamquam sine numero sunt, quae in superficie quidem reperies decoloria, in compositione vero decora.’ 73  Scc 25.3, OSB, v.1, p. 350: ‘Tali fortassis modo potest sponsa, cum pulchritudine utique compositionis, naevo non carere nigredinis: sed sane in loco peregrinationis suae. Alioquin erit cum eam sibi in patria exhibebit sponsus gloriae gloriosam, non habentem maculam, aut rugam, aut aliquid huiusmodi. At vero nunc si diceret, quia nigredinem non haberet, seipsam seduceret, et veritas in ea non esset. […] Quomodo enim non formosa cui dicitur: Veni, formosa mea? [Cant. II, 10.] Cui autem dicitur: Veni, nondum pervenerat, ne forte quis putet hoc dictum, non quidem huic nigrae quae adhuc laborabat veniendo in via, sed beatae illi, quae iam prorsus absque nigredine regnat in patria.’

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regnat are disconnected temporally by the past and the present tense. Yet the adverbs point less towards temporal displacement than towards simultaneousness: the nigra is ‘still’ (adhuc) toiling along the way, while the beata is ‘already’ (iam) in the homeland. In these temporal and spatial tensions, the contemporaneousness of pilgrimage and homeland suggests an ecclesiological subtext: the conjoining of the blessed (beatae) and the living (nigrae) in the membership of the Church and in the figure of the bride. Significantly, the two verbs — ‘toiling’ and ‘reigning’ — oppose notions of servitude, labour, and strenuous work, inherent in the former, with notions of freedom from work and from submission, and hence of repose and reward, implied by the latter, thus evoking the familiar oppositions of vita activa and vita contemplativa. Shifting his reading, Bernard relates the canticle verse to concepts of interior and exterior beauty. The saints, he states, are characterized by being ugly outside and beautiful inside: If we consider the outward appearance of the saints — that which is visible [in facie] — how lowly and abject they are, how dishevelled through want of care. Yet at the same time, inwardly, with revealed faces reflecting the glory of God, they are transformed into his image from splendour to splendour, in the Spirit of the Lord [II Cor 3. 18]. Does it not seem to us that such a soul might justly answer those who reproach her for her blackness: I am black but beautiful?74

Blackness, then, indicates an exterior unsightliness (humilis, abiectis, neglectus incuria) — an unsightliness, however, which is only apparent (in facie est). Bernard not only underscores the ‘inner’ (intus) beauty of the soul in question but implies — by invoking ii Cor 3. 18 (‘transformed into his image from splendour to splendour’) — that this inner beauty is Christlike. This Pauline theme hints also at Bernard’s notion of the close connection between beauty and contemplation.75 At this point in the sermon, Paul emerges as intertextual protagonist, as Bernard continues to conjure up oppositions of black and beautiful. At the 74  Scc 25.5, OSB, v.1, p. 352: ‘Si consideremus habitum exteriorem sanctorum, eum qui in facie est, quam sit humilis utique et abiectus, et quadam neglectus incuria, cum tamen identidem intus revelata facie gloriam Dei speculantes, in eamdem imaginem transformentur de claritate in claritatem, tamquam a Domini Spiritu [II Cor III, 18], nonne una quaelibet talis anima merito nobis videbitur posse respondere exprobrantibus sibi nigredinem: Nigra sum, sed formosa?’ 75  Cf. Scc 57.11 above, Section 2.7, and Scc 38.5 above, Section 4.4. On Bernard’s reading of the Pauline claritas/splendour, see Waddell, ‘The Glorified Christ’. For further discussion on splendour and transformation as anagogic-contemplative theme, see below, Section 6.1.

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same time, the oppositions shift slightly, from tensions between inner and outer towards tensions between worldly and heavenly. In effect, the perspective subtly shifts towards the question of the eyes of the beholder: that which is ugly in the eyes of the world but beautiful in the eyes of God.76 Taking upon himself the role of exegetical guide for his simple-minded (and again, it appears, feminized) listeners, Bernard volunteers: Shall I demonstrate to you a soul at once both black and beautiful? The epistles, they say, are powerful, but his physical appearance is weak, and his speech worthless [ii Cor 10. 10]. This was Paul. Do you perhaps judge Paul by his physical appearance, o daughters of Jerusalem? Do you despise his discolouration and his deformity since you see a little man, afflicted by hunger and thirst, by coldness and nakedness, by many trials, countless beatings, often on the verge of death? [ii Cor 11. 23, 27] These are the things that denigrated Paul; because of this the Doctor of the nations was reputed inglorious, ignoble, black, insignificant, like refuse of this world. Yet is this not the same man [ipse] who is rapt into paradise, and who, passing through the first and the second heavens, penetrates by [his] purity to the third? O truly beautiful soul, whom, although dwelling in this little body, heavenly beauty did not disdain to let enter, angelic sublimity did not reject, and divine splendour did not repudiate! Would you call her black? She is black but beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem. Black in your opinion, but beautiful according to God and the angels. And if she is black, it is on the outside. Not that your opinion matters the slightest to her, or the opinion of any one who judges according to appearances. Man looks at appearances, God scrutinizes the heart. [i Kgs 16. 7] Although externally black, she is beautiful inside, so that she is pleasing to him for whom she proved herself. For it was not you [s]he tried to please. Then he would not have been Christ’s servant. Happy is the blackness which begets [parit] the candidness of the mind, the light of knowledge, the purity of conscience.77 76 

Cf. Ep 87, above Section 5.1. Scc 25.5, OSB, v.1, pp. 352–54: ‘Vis tibi denique demonstrem animam et nigram pariter, et formosum? Epistolae, inquiunt, graves sunt, sed praesentia corporis infirma, et sermo contemptibilis [II Cor X, 10]. Paulus hic erat. Itane Paulum, o filiae Ierusalem, de praesentia corporis aestimatis, et tamquam decolorem deformemque contemnitis, quia cernitis homunculum afflictari in fame et siti, in frigore et nuditate, in laboribus plurimis, in plagis supra modum, in mortibus frequenter? [II Cor XI, 23, 27.] Haec sunt quae denigrant Paulum: pro huiusmodi Doctor gentium reputatus inglorius, ignobilis, niger, obscurus, tamquam denique peripsema huius mundi. Enimvero nonne ipse est qui rapitur in paradisum, qui unum alterumque perambulans, usque ad tertium sui caelum penetrat puritate? O vere pulcherrima anima quam, etsi infirmum inhabitantem corpusculum, pulchritudo caelestis admittere non despexit, angelica sublimitas non reiecit, claritas divina non repulit! Hanc vos dicitis nigram? Nigra est, sed formosa, filiae Ierusalem. Nigra vestro, formosa divino angelicoque iudicio. Et si nigra est, forinsecus est. Sibi autem pro 77 

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The passage is steeped in Pauline intertexts.78 What is more, Paul is given the honour of performing the black but beautiful bride. Bernard represents him in sharply binary terms of interiority and exteriority. Having suffered hunger, thirst, cold, beatings, and other tribulations, he is physically weak (praesentia […] infirma), a ‘little man’ (homunculum), ‘discoloured and deformed’ (decolorem deformemque), and ‘denigrated’ (denigrant). Escalating his rhetoric, Bernard portrays him with a string of adjectives as ‘inglorious, ignoble, black, insignificant’ (inglorius, ignobilis, niger, obscurus).79 Confronting his audience, Bernard challenges them: ‘Would you call her black?’ (Hanc vos dicitis nigram?) Indeed, would the monks call the apostle of the gentiles a ‘black woman’ (nigram)? They would, and they should. She — that is, Paul-bride — is ‘black but beautiful’ (nigra est sed formosa), affirms Bernard. Paul’s gender, which is evermore feminized as the female forms are continuously replicated throughout the passage, is deftly manipulated by means of the reference to ‘soul’ (o vere pulcherrima anima) — Paul’s anima — which appears midway and blurs together the figures of the bride and Paul. In fact, in the latter part of the passage, the bride and Paul are indistinguishable as separate identities.80 minimo est ut a vobis iudicetur, aut ab his qui secundum faciem iudicant. Homo siquidem videt in facie, Deus autem intuetur cor [I Reg. XVI, 7]. Propterea etsi nigra foris, sed intus formosa, ut ei placeat cui se probavit. Non enim vobis, quibus si adhuc placeret. Christi servus non esset. Felix nigredo, quae mentis candorem parit, lumen scientiae, conscientiae puritatem.’ 78  It carries two direct quotes from ii Cor (10. 10 and 11. 23, 27), as well as several indirect Pauline references: ‘refuse of this world’ (i Cor 4. 13); being rapt into paradise and third heaven (ii Cor 12. 4, 2); ‘not that your opinion matters the slightest to her’ (i Cor 4. 3); and the expression ‘Christ’s servant’ (Christi servus) (Gal 1. 10). 79  Holsinger, ‘The Color of Salvation’, eruditely observes: ‘Again Bernard’s language is highly performative: Paul was reputed inglorius, ignoblilis, niger, obscurus, a string of adjectives through which Bernard replicates the percussiveness of the physical and verbal beatings Paul endured at the hands of his tormentors by rhetorically hurling his own invective at the saint, an effect augmented through the anagrammatical beginnings (ing-, ign-, nig-) of the first three terms’ (p. 167). 80  At a certain point, the passage shifts from using masculine forms (e.g., ipse, indicating Paul) to using feminine forms (nouns and adjectives ending in -a, indicating anima), with the exception of Christi servus with which the grammatical gender is changed back to the masculine. This grammatical gender blending is a vital part of Bernard’s gendering in the text but upholding this distinction has an odd ring to it in English, almost over-emphasizing the issue. Still, precisely because it is a stylistic and literary device that is closely related to the abbot’s rhetorical strategy, I choose to translate, following the Latin, using the pronoun ‘she’, unlike in most English translations — including the commonly used CF translation — which give the

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Analogously, the monks, no longer addressed as ‘brothers’ (fratres) or ‘sons’ (filii) but ‘daughters’ (filiae), blend in with the ‘daughters of Jerusalem’ (filiae Ierusalem), echoing Song 1. 4. Bernard feminizes his audience, not for the first time. Interestingly, the audience’s gender crossing has actually anticipated Paul’s. As Bernard began his ‘demonstration’ of Paul as black but beautiful, he employed the second-person singular form (tibi). In styling the auditors or readers filiae Ierusalem, he — unnoticeably in English translation — shifts to the second-person plural form and its corresponding pronouns (vos, vestro, vobis, vobis), as if to prepare for Paul’s parallel femaleness and re-evoke the mother-daughter themes of the Sermons. Inscribed in the text as representing humankind — in opposition to God and the angels — Bernard’s feminized audience supports a notion of an ontological duality between the worldly (superficial) and the godly (profound) perspective. According to the former, Paul-bride is black (nigra vestro […] iudicio); according to the latter, s/he is beautiful (formosa divino angelicoque iudicio). Cast, then, as ‘daughters of Jerusalem’, the monks themselves — rather than Paul-bride — hold (once again) the denigrated position of representing worldliness and fleshliness: those who judge by appearances, who find the bride ugly because she is black, who even disparage her. The monks/daughters (i.e., Bernard’s audience) hold the opinion that ‘does not matter’, not to Paul, not to God and the angels. The dualism between the worldly and the godly point of view is expressed as ‘black outside, beautiful inside’ (nigra foris, sed intus formosa) and replicated in the oppositions of judging according to ‘exteriority’ (forinsecus) rather than ‘interiority’ (intus), scrutinizing the ‘face’ (secundum faciem, videt in facie) rather than the ‘heart’ (intuetur cor). Paul’s exemplary blackness (and femaleness), suggests Bernard, resides in the abjection and trials of Paul’s earthly life. Although this is a mere exterior blackness, it seems nevertheless a precondition for attaining whiteness. Bernard terms it a ‘happy’ blackness (felix nigredo). Allusively invoking imagery and vocabulary from Gal 4. 19, he describes the blackness as ‘begetting’ or ‘giving birth’ (parit). This birth is internal — taking place in the ‘mind’, the ‘intellect’, the ‘consciousness’ (mentis, scientiae, conscientiae) — but, more to the point, it is a reversal: a blackness which begets ‘whiteness’ and ‘brightness’ (candorem, lumen, puritatem). This first, careful inversion — as black becomes white — pronoun for anima as ‘it’ or even ‘he’. This illustrates the hazards of translating this text into English, while Romance languages, using gendered pronouns also for common nouns, are closer to Latin, and thus less problematic in this context.

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shall be repeated and emphasized in the current sermon, and finally developed into a series of inversions and reversals which run throughout the sermon cycle. In the next passage, Bernard’s strategy of inversion asserts itself more boldly, along with a stronger emphasis on the opposition of blackness and whiteness: ‘For hear what God promises, through his prophet,’ begins Bernard, ‘to those who are black in this way: those who seem discoloured as if burnt by the sun, either by the humility of penitence or by the zeal of love [caritatis].’81 Subsequently proffering citations from Isaiah and Wisdom, Bernard sharpens the opposition of colour — although fleetingly introducing redness instead of blackness as contrary to whiteness — in which the theme of transformation into whiteness emerges resonantly: Even if your sins were red like scarlet, they shall become white as snow; and if they were red like crimson they shall be white as wool [Is 1. 18]. This outer blackness of the saints is certainly not to be condemned; it produces inner whiteness [candorem […] internum] and prepares the seat of wisdom. For the wisdom of eternal life is white, according to the definition of the wise [Wis 7. 26]; and its chosen seat must be a white soul [candidam […] animam].82

Still maintaining the division of outer and inner, Bernard elaborates on this distinction in terms of outer blackness versus inner whiteness. While whiteness hitherto has been all but absent — hardly any more than a presupposition in Bernard’s discussion of blackness — in this passage it appears, instead, as the dominant image: ‘to become white as snow’ (nix dealbabuntur), ‘white wool’ (lana alba), ‘white inside’ (candorem internum), ‘white wisdom’ (candor sapientia), and ‘white soul’ (candidam animam). Evoking subtexts of cleaning and repentance, whiteness resounds with Christlikeness by means of an intertextual play with Wisdom. Allusions and wordplay often transmit, even indirectly, Bernard’s notions of spiritual ascent or perfection. In this case, the invoked verse from Wisdom (7. 26) is rendered only fragmentarily in the text.83 81 

Scc 25.6, OSB, v.1, p. 354: ‘Audi denique quid per Prophetam Deus promittat istiusmodi nigris, quos aut humilitas paenitentiae, aut caritatis zelus, tamquam solis aestus, decolorasse videtur.’ 82  Scc 25.6, OSB, v.1, p. 354: ‘Si fuerint, ait, peccata vestra ut coccinum, quasi nix deal­ babuntur; et si fuerint rubra quasi vermiculus, velut lana alba erunt [Isai. I, 18]. Non plane contemnenda in sanctis extera ista nigredo quae candorem operatur internum, et sedem perinde praeparat sapientiae. Candor est enim vitae aeternae sapientia, ut Sapiens definit [Sap. VII, 26]: et candidam oportet esse animam, in qua ipsa sedem elegerit.’ 83  Wis 7. 26 has: ‘candor est enim lucis aeternae, et speculum sine macula Dei maiestatis,

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The full verse, however, alongside whiteness evokes concepts of ‘spotlessness’ (sine macula) and ‘likeness’ (speculum, imago) — affirming the association between ‘blackness’ and macula while with resounding with Bernardine concerns with eschatological Christlikeness. Thus the current rhetoric of whiteness and purity comprises, concurrently, the Sapiential figure of Christ and the saintly soul, which implicitly enhances the notion of whiteness as the focal point of the (future) similarity between the two. It may also be considered that the opposition of black and white evokes a significant aspect of the delineation between Cistercians and other monks. Ever conscious of their distinctiveness in regard to other religious communities, the Cistercians dressed exclusively in habits of undyed wool, earning the nickname of ‘white monks’, as well as a reputation for a presumptuous desire to be different.84 The ‘black’ Benedictine Robert of Deutz remarks that Cistercians sported white, undyed habits in an attempt to set themselves apart, suggesting that if monks had traditionally worn white, these new monks would wear black.85 Less polemically, the abbot of Cluny Peter the Venerable, in a letter to Bernard of Clairvaux, seeks to smooth over the differences in clothing which had become a symbol of the growing chasm between the two monastic groups: Why, o white monk, do you so abhor the blackness of your brother, that is, not of his soul, but of his garment? And you, black monk, why are you so amazed about the whiteness of your brother, that is, not of his soul but of his habit? […] What human shepherd, not to say God, ever objected to the colour of the hide of his sheep?86 et imago bonitatis illius’ (For she is the brightness of eternal light, and the spotless reflection of God’s majesty, and the image of his goodness). Bernard not only renders the biblical verse fragmentarily, he also replaces lucis aeternae (eternal light) with vitae aeternae (eternal life). 84  Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 127, 129. 85  Robert of Deutz, Super quaedam capitula regolae divi Benediciti abbatis 3.13, col. 521CD: ‘Nam erat in coenobiis, ut nunc est, niger color vestium, usitatus utrique sexui, scilicet et monachis et monialibus. Ipsi autem subalbo dubioque et incerto colore uti coeperunt, cujus rei causas ignoramus. Forsitan si nos albidis vestibus usi fuissemus, ipsi nunc nigris uterentur’ (For the colour of clothing in monasteries was black, as now, and used by both sexes, that is, both monks and nuns. But those [Cistercians] began wearing a whitish, indistinct and incertain colour, for what reason we do not know. Maybe if we had worn white clothing, they would now be using black). 86  Peter the Venerable, Ep 17, col. 332C: ‘Cur tibi, o albe monache, nigredo fratris tui non mentis, sed vestis, exsecranda videtur? Cur tibi, o niger monache, albedo fratris tui, non mentis, sed vestis admiranda creditur? […] Et quis unquam pastor, non dicam Deus, sed vel homo, de velleribus ovium suarum discoloribus disputavit?’ Cited in Bredero, Bernard of Clairvaux, pp. 237–38, in a translation that I have modified.

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These examples suggest that the white attire of Cistercians carried symbolic meaning which exceeded the mere question of dressing differently. Rather, the issue called forth underlying notions of whiteness as the colour of salvation, and testified, at least for some contemporaries, to Cistercian arrogance.87 Whiteness in Bernard’s text signalizes essential beauty and godlikeness. In Sermon 28 — to be discussed presently — the opposition of black and white is figured as the black, wrinkled, and feminized body of earthly life in contrast to the smooth and whitened resurrection body. In this perspective, the whiteness associated with Cistercians can be seen to signalize an anticipated erasure of the ‘stigma of blackness’, that is, the visible mark of the body’s corruptibility. In Sermon 25 Bernard momentarily lays aside the opposition of black and white, returning once more to his original opposition of blackness and beauty, and to Paul: So the blackness of Paul is more beautiful than any jewel, more beautiful than any royal ornamentation. Nothing of bodily beauty may compare with him, no skin however soft and luminous, not the coloured cheek which soon will putrefy, nor the precious garment which time will wear out, nor glittering gold or sparkling gems, or any such thing — for they are all destined for corruption.88

Here the rhetorical strategy of reversal has become more urgent, entailing concepts of true versus false beauty. What is ugly by the world’s standard (Paul) is actually more beautiful than any bodily — and, thus, exterior and transient — beauty, and vice versa. What is beautiful by the world’s standard (a pretty face, costly garments or jewels), is actually destined for corruption, and therefore ugliness. Steeped in Platonizing aesthetics, Bernard implements concepts of incorruptibility and perpetuality as a measure of true beauty. Worldly beauty, being corruptible, is therefore only apparently beautiful: The lovely skin and the pretty face will ‘putrefy’ (putredini), the costly garment will ‘wear out’ (vetustati), and even gold and gems are destined for ‘corruption’ (corruptionem). Constructing oppositions in terms of appearance and authenticity, Bernard says that the saints, while ‘scorning all jewels and ornamentation [ornatu cul87 

On whiteness as the colour of salvation, but from a different perspective, see Holsinger, ‘The Color of Salvation’, pp. 168–72, 178. 88  Scc 25.6, OSB, v.1, p. 354: ‘Ideoque et quod nigrum est Pauli, speciosius est omni ornatu extrinseco, omni etiam regio cultu. Non comparabitur ei quantalibet pulchritudo carnis, non cutis utique nitida et arsura, non facies colorata vicina putredini, non vestis pretiosa obnoxia vetustati, non auri species, splendorve gemmarum, seu quaeque talia, quae omnia sunt ad corruptionem.’

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tuque] which superfluously adorns the outer man’, dedicate themselves to ‘cultivate and beautify the inner man, which is made in the image of God [imaginem Dei] and renewed day by day. For they are certain that nothing is more pleasing to God than his own image when restored to its original beauty’.89 With the reference to the imago Dei of creation and with yet another Pauline allusion (ii Cor 4. 16) — one which, in fact, blends the Pauline ‘outer man’ (foris homo) and ‘inner man’ (intus homo) into imagery of blackness and beauty — Bernard reconfirms beauty as a measure of godlikeness (cf. Scc 38). Opposed to this is the apparent —transient and corruptible — beauty of the world, revealed by Bernard as deceptive, illusory, and secondary. Embedded in patristic and medieval attitudes was a deep mistrust towards exteriority, particularly the cosmetic and ornamented — which Bernard above refers to as ornatu cultuque superfluo. Following an argument by R. Howard Bloch, the topos of the cosmetic as feminine, linking women to decoration and ornamentation, is a result of early Christian gender discourse.90 Through a historical and discursive process, Christian gender constructions feminized the flesh, aestheticized the feminine, and subsequently condemned aesthetics in theological terms. This assimilation, according to Bloch, constituted a substantial element in the language of gendered differentiation as it came to comprise the opposition between interiority-intellect-male and exteriority-bodyfemale. Hence, femaleness became inscribed as outwardness, ornamentation, and therefore godunlikeness and transience, while maleness was assimilated instead with godlikeness and divinity’s spiritual imprint: the genderless (yet male-associated) imago Dei. Therefore, still within the framework of Bloch’s argument, the Bernardine bride would naturally not be depicted in terms of a cosmetic and ‘feminine’ beauty, but rather an inner and spiritual beauty.91 Yet, as noted, her very femaleness carries a significant marker of physicality and fleshliness (connected with ‘living in the body’). In this sense the bride expresses a hermeneutical tension between apparent meaning and hidden meaning — a tension which is ultimately analogous to that between ‘letter’ (outward, superficial, female) and 89  Scc 25.7, OSB, v.1, p. 354: ‘spreto ornatu cultuque superfluo exterioris sui hominis […] omni se diligentia praebet et occupat excolendo ac decorando interiori illi, qui ad imaginem Dei est et renovatur de die in diem. Certi enim sunt Deo non posse esse quidquam acceptius imagine sua, si proprio fuerit restituta decori’. 90  Bloch, Medieval Misogyny, pp. 37–47; for discussion, see also below, Section 6.6. 91  I want to underscore that Bloch does not discuss Bernard of Clairvaux, but rather considers patristic writers and medieval lay authors.

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‘spirit’ (inward, profound, male). This may be clarified by considering a passage from Sermon 14. Here Bernard creates frictions, not just tensions, in the relation of the literal to the spiritual level and, analogously, outer to inner. This is negotiated and enacted in terms of a hermeneutical condemnation of the Jews. The Crucifixion is inscribed — with references to ii Cor 3. 6 and Mt 27. 51 — as a hermeneutical event, indeed as a hermeneutical imperative to pass beyond the letter, beyond physicality: When the veil of the letter that brings death is torn in two at the death of the crucified Word, the Church, led by the spirit of liberty, daringly penetrates [penetralia […] irrumpit] to his inmost depths. She is acknowledged and taken delight in, and occupies the place of her rival [the Synagogue] to become his bride, to enjoy [fruitur] the embraces of his newly emptied arms.92

Revealing — or unveiling — the letter ‘that brings death’ (occidentis litterae, cf. ii Cor 3. 6), Christ/the Word’s death signalized the triumph of the Church and of Christian hermeneutics, and simultaneously the destruction of the Temple: the ‘torn veil’ (scisso velo, cf. Mt 27. 51–52). For Bernard, the Jews’ hermeneutical fault is a literal reading of Scripture, insisting on the letter of the Law. Speaking of ‘carnal Israel’ (Israele secundum carnem),93 Bernard expounds the image of the oil which is poured out: It is not that he [Israel] has no oil, but that he does not pour it out. He has it, but hidden. It is in the books [in codicibus], but not in the hearts [in cordibus]. He adheres to the outwardness of the letter. He clutches in his hands a jar which is full but closed; nor will he open it and be anointed.94

For Bernard, spiritual understanding is a hermeneutics of the ‘heart’, not the letter; it is internal, not external.95 This hermeneutical tension is here expressed 92  Scc 14.4, OSB, v.1, p. 184: ‘At vero Ecclesia, scisso velo occidentis litterae in morte Verbi crucifixi, audacter ad eius penetralia praeeunte spiritu libertatis irrumpit, agnoscitur, placet, sortitur aemulae locum, fit sponsa, fruitur praereptis amplexibus.’ On hermeneutics and the opposition between literal and spiritual reading, see also discussions below, Sections 6.4 and 6.5. 93  Afterwards referred to by the male pronoun ille, hence I translate ‘he’. 94  Scc 14.8, OSB, v.1, p. 188: ‘Non quod non habeat oleum, sed non habet effusum. Habet, sed reconditum; habet in codicibus, sed non in cordibus. Foris haeret in littera, contrectat manibus vas plenum et clausum, nec aperit ut ungatur.’ 95  The term Bernard more commonly uses for what generally is translated ‘heart’ is viscera, which more generally indicates the ‘insides’ or ‘intestines’. The emphasis, then, is on insideness, not primarily affectivity, although both are implied.

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in the assonant opposition: in codicibus versus in cordibus, ‘in books’ versus ‘in hearts’, analogous to the letter versus the spirit. Spiritual interpretation stands for the attempt at recuperation of unity between letter and meaning which was made (partly) possible by the Crucifixion: the hermeneutical sacrifice of the living Word which unveiled the letter of death. By refusing to read spiritually, the Jews deny the allegorical sense (the relation between Christ and the Church), the tropological sense (the saintly soul’s self-sacrificial and agapic love), and the anagogic sense (saintly eros): levels of meaning which Bernard sees as the entire point of the Song of Songs, indeed of the Old Testament as a whole. David Damrosch has suggested that there is a hermeneutical parallel between Jews and women in Bernard’s writing : both represent a position of hermeneutical displacement.96 Sustaining this assessment, Ulrike Wiethaus — discussing Bernard’s Homilies to the Virgin — has stated that whereas Christians are credited by Bernard with a spiritual understanding of Scripture, Jews, like women, are associated with the body, which then becomes a metaphor for a literal reading of the Bible.97 Ann Matter, too, refers to a profound link between body and Scripture in medieval hermeneutics on the Song. Citing Peter Brown’s reading of Origen, in which the body is envisioned as a ‘humble “ass”’ which ‘could become the “resplendent” vehicle of the soul’, Matter makes the following significant addition to Brown’s statement: ‘just as the coarse texture of Scripture is the earthly vehicle for God’s revelation’.98 Like Damrosch and Wiethaus, Matter sees a correspondance between physical text and physical body, contrasted by spiritual interpretation and the soul. This analogy, as we saw, was made explicit by Origen himself in the threefold hermeneutical scheme with its division into body, soul, and spirit, corresponding to literal, tropological, and allegorical understanding. Similarly, for Augustine, Scripture comes in ‘fleshly wrapping’ (carnalibus integumentis); in order to find the hidden meaning or ‘mystery’ (mysteria), he states, it is necessary to know that ‘ideas are to be preferred to words, just as the soul is preferred to the body’.99 96 

Damrosch, ‘Non alia sed aliter’, pp. 192–95. With reference to Scc 8, Damrosch sees women, Jews, and heretics as models for or image of ‘participation without plenitude’, which, he argues, Bernard uses to understand and represent the hermeneutical situation of the saintly soul. See also discussions above in Chapter 4. 97  Wiethaus, ‘Christian Piety and the Legacy of Medieval Masculinity’. 98  Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, p. 34; cf. Brown, The Body and Society, p. 177: quoting Origen (In librum judicum 6.5, col. 977D), he writes: ‘The humble “ass” of the body could become the “resplendent” vehicle of the soul.’ 99  Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus 9.13, col.  320: ‘ita esse praeponendas verbis

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With this perspective in mind, the ‘letter’ (littera) may be seen as related — in its physicality, in its character of appearance and outwardness — to the (female) body of estrangement and unlikeness, whereas ‘penetration into profundity’ (penetralia […] irrumpit) or the hermeneutical act of ‘un-veiling’ spiritual meaning, may be represented by the transcendental (male) principle of spirit. These hermeneutical tensions in the discussion of the present sermon may be illustrated in the following table. Table 10. (Scc 25.5–7) black outer man face apparent meaning cosmetic beauty letter female

beautiful inner man heart hidden meaning incorruptible beauty spirit male

I will caution, however, against automatically assuming a strong dualism, requiring one term to be rejected and the other embraced. The opposition between female-body-literal meaning and male-soul-spiritual meaning which emerges from this analysis of Bernard’s text may be seen primarily as complementary and hierarchical rather than binary. It is important to note that in the current tensions between interior and exterior beauty — and concurrently between inner and outer man — there emerges an opposition which is not simply identical with the division of body and soul, although they are related.100

sententias, ut praeponitur animus corpori’, quoted in Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, p. 59, whose translation I use. 100  For a passage tending towards a more dualistic interpretation of body and soul, see Scc 27.14 and 29.7, discussed below in Section 5.4. Sustaining a non-dualistic reading of Bernard, especially in relation to the importance of the resurrection of the body, see Casey, Athirst for God, pp. 234–37, and McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 172–73. For references to studies highlighting Bernard’s negative view of the body, see references in McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 490, n. 59. For Bynum’s discussion on the aspect of the relation of body and soul, in a resurrectional perspective, relevant to Bernard, see The Resurrection of the Body, esp. pp. 163–68. Bernard is in my view highly ambiguous on the matter of the relation of body to soul, which emerges by comparing Scc 25 and Scc 29; on this, see full discussion below, Section 6.6.

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Rather than a body-soul dualism, oppositions are instated more subtly in terms of a tension between the body of pilgrimage (‘black’) and the eschatological, resurrectional, and Christlike body (‘smooth, spotless’), a tension which replicates as the tension between an ‘outer’ body and an ‘inner’ body, and, yet again, between that which Bernard portrays as a black, maternal body and a white, virginal body. This body — whether white or black — is either way directly linked to the soul. Hence Bernard, while speaking of Paul’s exterior blackness, undermines a division into body and soul: while on ‘pilgrimage’ (i.e., on earth, in via) Paul’s anima is referred to as black, just like his body (Scc 25.5). Likewise, in Sermon 31, Bernard proposes the eschatological opposition of now and then in terms of ‘this mortal body’ (in corpore hoc mortali) and ‘that immortal body’ (in immortali) (Scc 31.2). Not only does Bernard instate the carnal level (‘body’) as starting point for spiritual ascent, even the anagogic level retains an element of physicality and corporeality.101 Both soul and body are humbled or exalted together in what Bynum has labelled a ‘psychosomatic unity’.102 Again, the ultimate reference is Christ, prefiguring the Resurrection by rising in the body, and prefiguring the bride’s and Paul’s saintly blackness by dying on the cross. Indeed, in the final passages of Sermon 25, the exegetical gaze is finally transferred onto the body of Christ himself. Bernard’s reading inscribes blackness onto the divine body, relating it to the Passion, Christ’s humiliation and sufferance. Thus the model for the bride’s black beauty is no longer Paul but the bridegroom himself: She does not blush [erubescit] at this blackness, which she knows the bridegroom had endured before her: and what greater glory than to be like him? She holds nothing to be more glorious for her than to bear the ignominy [opprobrium] of Christ.103

The bride’s Christlikeness is realized by being both ‘black’ and ‘beautiful’; hence, her Christlike blackness is turned into glory. She does not ‘blush’ — actually, ‘redden’ (erubescit) — says Bernard, fleetingly echoing the earlier distinction between whiteness-brightness and discoloration (red or black). 101 

See above, Section 2.1 and esp. below, Section 5.5. On Christ’s body and hermeneutics, see Chapter 6. 102  Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, p. 166. 103  Scc 25.8, OSB, v.1, p. 356: ‘Non erubescit nigredinem, quam novit praecessisse et in sponso, cui similari quantae etiam gloriae est? Nil sibi proinde gloriosius putat quam Christi portare opprobrium.’

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Gently anticipating the erasure of discoloration from the flesh of the bride (not red, not black, but colourless), Bernard discloses her future salvational glory. Significantly, the imitatio Christi theme is absorbed into the imagery of the Song in the image of the bride reflecting the bridegroom’s blackness: he has ‘preceded’ her (praecessisse), she is ‘like’ him (similari), and her blackness reflects the ‘pattern and likeness of the Lord’ (forma et similitudo Domini). At the end of the sermon, blackness and beauty is definitely instated as Christological paradigm, further emphasizing the themes of imitation, replication, and reflection. It was he, not she, who first was black but beautiful. Blackness as trope for Christlikeness is resonantly affirmed as Bernard appropriates the bride’s words for his staging of the bridegroom himself, in a gendertwisting final: Does it not seem to you, according to what has been said, that also he [ipse] could have responded to the rivalrous Jews: I am black but beautiful, sons of Jerusalem? Clearly black: in him there was neither comeliness nor decorum. Black because he was a worm and not a man, ignominious [opprobrium] among men and despised among the people [Ps 21. 7]. Finally he made himself into sin [ii Cor 5. 21]: shall I not dare call him black? Gaze well at him: his filthy clothes, his bruises from blows, smeared with spittle, pale as death. Then you must surely call him black. But ask also the apostles how he was, he whom they saw on the mount, and ask the angels who it is they desire to gaze at, no doubt to admire his beauty. Beautiful, then, in himself, black because of you.104

‘I am black but beautiful, sons of Jerusalem’ (Niger sum, sed formosus, filii Ierusalem), says Christ, says Bernard, thus rewriting Song 1. 4, grammatically shifting from feminine to masculine forms. Now a male addressing other males, Christ is depicted as he responds to the ‘rivalrous Jews’ of Jerusalem (aemulis Iudaeis). Bernard thus restages the day of the Passion, inviting his audience into the crowd as witnesses. Hurling insults on Christ (‘a worm and not a man’) as if he himself were one of the rivalrous Jews, Bernard portrays vividly, graphically his humiliation and sufferance, while urging the audience to ‘stare intently’ at 104 

Scc 25.9, OSB, v.1, pp. 356–58: ‘Non tibi recte et ipse videtur secundum ea quae dicta sunt, aemulis posse respondere Iudaeis: Niger sum, sed formosus, filii Ierusalem? Niger plane, cui non erat species, neque decor; niger, quia vermis et non homo, opprobrium hominum et abjectio plebis [Psal. XXI, 7]. Denique se ipsum fecit peccatum [II Cor V, 21]: et nigrum dicere verear? Intuere sane pannis sordidum, plagis lividum, illitum sputis, pallidum morte: nigrum vel tunc profecto fatebere. Percunctare etiam apostolos eumdem ipsum qualem in monte perspexerint; aut certe angelos in qualem prospicere concupiscant, et nihilominus formosum mirabere. Ergo formosus in se, niger propter te.’

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him (intuere sane). Clearly, Christ’s blackness surpasses any mere metaphorical sense: he is soiled, bruised, and filthy. Yet, in approaching death, he has already begun the process of transformation into whiteness. He is ‘pale as death’, Bernard says, creating a metaphorical incoherence as he continues, ‘[t]hen you must surely call him black’. Already whitening in front of the crowd of Jews and monks, the figure of Christ alludes to the leading theme of this sermon: the simultaneousness and tension between blackness-ignominy (opprobrium, ignominia) and whiteness-glory (glorians, gloriosius), alongside the promise of transformation from black to white. Indeed, Christ’s beauty — as seen by the apostles and the angels — reverses the perspective and reveals his true form, behind the spittle and the bruises. Throughout this sermon, instances of assonance and alliteration simultaneously counter and juxtapose oppositions of beauty and unsightliness: deforma–formosa, decoloria–decora, pulchritudine–nigredinis, ignominia–gloria. Stressing frictions between inner and outer, surface and interior, authenticity and appearance, these assonant dyads refer to the devotional model of humility-exaltation and ascent-descent, and, more subtly, to the hermeneutical problem of the relation of literal to spiritual understanding. Bernard’s inversion of ugly and beautiful — beginning with the transformation whereby that which is beautiful now (smooth skin, costly clothes), shall become ugly then (destined for corruption) — is yet more forcefully asserted in Sermon 28 by the affirmation that ‘that which is ugly now shall be beautiful then’ (Scc 28.10). Much like with the ‘holy fools’ in the letter to Oger, Bernard stages humiliation and lowliness analogously to martyrdom and abjection. Monastic humility is aligned with — and absorbed into — the concept of martyrdom: both depicted in terms of ‘being made ridiculous’ and a ‘spectacle to the world’. The tenet of the exposition — akin to the Benedictine oxymoron (exaltatione descendere, et humilitate ascendere) — is the overturning of lowliness and exaltation, ascent and descent, beauty and ugliness, black and white, both as devotional model and as eschatological promise. In Sermon 28 the emphasis on hermeneutics, which has accompanied the reading of Song 1. 4 like an undercurrent, is affirmed and reinforced. Invoking noli me tangere of Jn 20. 17, Bernard gives voice to Christ in the first-person singular, addressing Mary Magdalene in the second-person singular: Let her touch me worthily who will recognize me as seated with the Father, no longer in lowly guise, but in heavenly: the same flesh but in another form. Why do you wish to touch what is ugly [deformem]? Have patience that you may touch what is beautiful [formosum]. For that which is ugly now — ugly to touch, ugly to

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look at, ugly even to you in your ugliness, you who adhere more to the senses than to faith — shall be beautiful then.105

Repeatedly echoing the assonant oppositions ‘beautiful’ (formosum) and ‘ugly’ (deformem) with their shared etymon (forma), Bernard implements the inversion from ugly to beautiful. That which is ugly now shall be beautiful then, says Christ, says Bernard (qui deformis modo, tunc formosus). Rather than the simultaneousness of Sermon 25 — whereby the bridegroom is beautiful from a heavenly perspective but ugly from a worldly perspective — the inversion of ugly and beautiful in this sequence is emphatically eschatological: a transformation from ‘now’ (modo) to ‘then’ (tunc). Reduplicating the body of Christ, Bernard represents his terrestrial body as lowly and ugly, the ascended body as transformed, heavenly, and beautiful. He — the bridegroom — is the pattern and model of the final resurrectional reversal from black to white, from ugly to beautiful: ‘But shall I still be black? Certainly not! Your beloved will be white and ruddy [Song 5. 10], absolutely beautiful.’106 Christ embodies the transformation from ugliness, related with physicality, into beauty and spiritual sense. Evoking a parallel between ‘touching’ and ‘spiritual understanding’, the image of touching the radiantly beautiful, transformed Christ becomes a figure for anagogic reading: Become beautiful and touch me, become faithful and you will be beautiful. In your beauty you will touch my beauty more worthily, and more happily. You will touch me with the hand of faith, with the finger of desire, with the embrace of devotion; you will touch me with the eye of the mind.107

The tangibility of Christ (‘touch me!’) signalizes the hermeneutical imperative of passing beyond the sensual, literal level: touching not the flesh but the spirit of Scripture. Figuring the hermeneutical passage from literal to spiritual understanding, Mary becomes a trope for the exegete, that is, the hermeneu105 

Scc 28.10, OSB, v.1, p.  416: ‘Illa igitur digne me tanget, quae Patri consedentem suscipiet, non iam in humili habitu, sed in caelesti carne ipsa, sed altera specie. Quid deformem vis tangere? Exspecta ut formosum tangas. Nam qui deformis modo, tunc formosus: deformis tactui, deformis aspectui, deformis denique deformi tibi, quae sensibus plus inhaeres, fidei minus.’ 106  Scc 28.10, OSB, v.1, p. 416: ‘At nunquid adhuc nigrum? Absit! Dilectus tuus candidus et rubicundus. Formosus plane.’ 107  Scc 28.10, OSB, v.1, p. 416: ‘Esto formosa, et tange me; esto fidelis, et formosa es. Formosa formosum et dignius tanges, et felicius. Tanges manu fidei, desiderii digito, devotionis amplexu; tanges oculo mentis.’

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tical subject. Thereby the transformation from ugly to beautiful is not only Christ’s but also Mary’s. Become beautiful and you will touch my beauty, he tells her, echoing the theme of the bride’s likeness and beauty in Sermon 38: ‘you will be all beautiful, like I myself am all beautiful’, ‘you will be so like me that you will see me as I am’. Touching, like gazing, requires likeness. In the process, understanding — ‘reading’ Christ’s flesh, that is, Scripture — is no longer carnal but spiritual. As the risen flesh of Christ is inscribed as an image — and vehicle — of transformation, it becomes the focal point of the final reversal from black to white. In the last section of Sermon 28 blackness returns as primal identification of saintliness indicating, above all, caritas and the active life.108 Like blackness indicates the exile, persecution, and pilgrimage of the active and earthly life, whiteness indicates the reward of the afterlife and, evocatively, the figura of contemplation, the virgin. Affirming the association between whiteness and virginity, Bernard declares that the bridegroom shall be among the ‘white choirs of the virgins’ — indeed, that he himself is ‘virgin, son of a virgin, and bridegroom of a virgin’.109 The inner and spiritual beauty of the devotional body, humbled by abjectness and self-sacrificial love, will be turned inside out, manifesting its inner beauty as outer beauty — white, spotless, virginal, Christlike. Shedding her blackened, feminine skin, the bride is transformed into the smooth (male) whiteness of the resurrection body. Bernard’s hermeneutics mirrors Christ’s transition from flesh to spirit — requiring everything to become reversed, inverted, overturned. Fruition will replace use; the contemplative life will replace the active life; black will become white; the ugly, beautiful; the widow, a bride; and the mother, a virgin.

108  See Scc 28.13, OSB, v.1, pp.  420–22: ‘Vel decolorari a sole, est ignescere caritate fraterna, flere cum flentibus, gaudere cum gaudenti bus, cum infirmitantibus infirmari, uri ad scandala singulorum. Vel sic: Sol iustitiae decoloravit me Christus, cuius amore langueo’ (To be discoloured by the sun may also mean to be on fire with fraternal love, to weep with those who weep, to rejoice with those who rejoice, to be weak with those who are weak, to burn when someone sins. Or to say: Christ the sun of justice discoloured me, because I languish with love for him). 109  Scc 28.10, OSB, v.1, p. 416: ‘Quomodo denique candidis non congruo Virginum choris, virgo, Virginis filius, Virginis sponsus?’

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5.4 Life and Death, Pleasure and Pain Bernard’s interpretation not only exceeds worldly understanding but also inverts worldly understanding. But just as with erotic imagery — kisses, embraces — also beauty supersedes its apparent and perceptible meaning while still retaining an element of literal meaning. This rhetorical and hermeneutical strategy is brought to its peak in the remaining sermons of the present sermon cycle, especially in Sermons 26 and 29. From the tensions and transpositions of Sermons 25 and 28, Bernard here leads his audience into a violent and libidinous trajectory revolving around stark oppositions and inversions of life and death, pleasure and pain. At the opening of Sermon 26, Bernard establishes an association between darkened, sunburned bodies and scorched soldier’s tents in the desert. Continuing the opposition between blackness as the mark of the elect — that is, the humble, the abject, the martyred — and whiteness as the colour of salvation and exaltation, Bernard’s exegesis develops around a series of metonymic associations bearing allusions to pilgrimage and crusading. Invoking the quest for spiritual Jerusalem, ‘the homeland’, these associations are developed from identification between (blackened) tents and (blackened) flesh, which again is linked firstly to pilgrimage (‘for what are tents but our bodies, in which we wander as pilgrims?’110) and secondly to ‘doing battle’ (militamus in hoc corpore) and notions of soldiers or ‘violent men’ (violenti) taking the kingdom by force: For we have no lasting city here, but rather seek that which is to come. We even do battle in [our bodies], like soldiers in tents, like violent men taking the kingdom. Thus life of men on earth is a battle, and as long as we do battle in this body, we travel [peregrinamur] away from the Lord, that is, the light.111

The pilgrimage of terrestrial existence is interpreted by Bernard in terms of battle and warfare, as well as physical displacement (travelling, being in the body, living in tents). This notion is extended and countered by the ultimately eschatological goal of reaching and conquering heavenly Jerusalem: the ana110 

Scc 26.1, OSB, v.1, p. 360: ‘Quid enim tabernacula, nisi nostra sunt corpora in quibus peregrinamur?’ 111  Scc 26.1, OSB, v.1, p. 360: ‘Nec enim habemus hic manentem civitatem, sed futuram inquirimus. Sed et militamus in eis, tamquam in tabernaculis, prorsus violenti ad regnum. Denique militia est vita hominis super terram, et quamdiu militamus in hoc corpore, peregrinamur a Domino, id est a luce.’

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gogic figure of the future kingdom. Continuing this association between corporeality and warfare, he states: ‘This, then, is the dwelling of our bodies: neither a city mansion nor one’s native home, but rather a soldier’s tent or traveller’s hut.’112 ‘The crusading body’, Bruce Holsinger comments, ‘is not a permanent home or native residence, but a peripatetic tabernaculum, an everpresent but mobile reminder of humanity’s displacement from the true Holy Land above.’113 Arguing that the current sermon cycle contains a veiled crusade ideology, Holsinger suggests that Bernard produces a ‘metonymic spectacle’ in which black bodies are repeatedly ‘gazed at, beaten, and penetrated, only to shed their darkened skin and reveal the underlying whiteness of the Christian soul, and finally, the resurrection body’.114 In this concept of spiritual warfare and conquest, sacrifice and saintliness is perceived of in ambiguous terms as the desirability of blackness and the desirability of overcoming blackness: possessing and fighting black bodies — one’s own and others’. Bodies are ‘frail’ (fragili) and ‘heavy’ (gravi), says Bernard, and, because they are subject to ‘corruption’ (corrumpitur), they ‘weigh down the soul’ (aggravat animam). ‘Hence some souls,’ he writes, ‘long to die, so that they — freed from the body — may fly to the embraces of Christ.’115 Identifying the ‘tents of Kedar’ (Song 1. 4) as bodies, Bernard invokes yet again the eschatological body ‘without spot or wrinkle’ from Ephesians: ‘Such a soul knows that it is not possible to live in the tent of Kedar and be completely pure, without spot or wrinkle, without a bit of blackness. So he yearns to die, and be free.’116 This desire for death, here emerging as a mere allusion in the aloof phrasing, ‘some souls long to die’, shall gradually escalate in the text: developing from Bernard’s bittersweet lament for his dead brother (Scc 26) before it finally culminates in a darkly erotic crescendo where desire is not just for death but for the mutilation and perforation of the saintly body (Scc 29).

112  Scc 26.1, OSB, v.1, p. 362: ‘Est ergo hoc habitaculum nostri corporis, non civis mansio aut indigenae domus, sed aut tabernaculum militantis, aut stabulum viatoris.’ 113  Holsinger, ‘The Color of Salvation’, p. 173. 114  Holsinger, ‘The Color of Salvation’, p. 169. 115  Scc 26.2, OSB, v.1, p. 362: ‘Propterea et cupiunt dissolvi, ut corpore levatae, Christi avolent in amplexus.’ 116  Scc 26.2, OSB, v.1, p.  362: ‘Scit nimirum quae hujusmodi est, quod non possit in tabernaculo Cedar carere ad purum macula, aut ruga, non quantulacumque nigredine, et cupit exire, ut se possit exuere.’

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After the initial exposition (Scc 26.1–2), Sermon 26 passes onto Bernard’s elegy at the death of his brother Gerard.117 This sermon has often been read as a free-standing sermon — a ‘spontaneous’ digression caused by Gerard’s death and Bernard’s grief at this event.118 Rhetorically, the sermon is related to other personal laments which concurrently serve to set forth theological points, and which constitute a rich tradition in Christian, especially patristic, writing: for example, Gregory of Nyssa’s Dialogus de anima et resurrectione, written at the death of his sister Macrina; Ambrose’s De excessu fratris, for his brother Satyrus; and Augustine’s Confessiones (9.12, 27–33), for his mother Monica.119 All of these are literary compositions where the pretext — mourning a beloved relative — serves rhetorical purposes. Indeed, in the present perspective Bernard’s lament fills a significant rhetorical function. This aspect has also been noted by Holsinger, who considers Bernard’s ‘elegiac performance’ as ‘an attempt to instil in his readers and auditors a longing for and acceptance of death, both their own and one another’s’.120 Initially, however, the bereaved brother — abandoning himself to a display of grief — complains at the bitterness of death: We loved each other in life; how can it be we are separated by death? O most bitter separation, which only death might bring about! For were you yet alive, when would you have deserted me? It is surely death’s doing, this horrid parting. Who would not have spared so sweet a bond of mutual love if not death, enemy of all that is sweet? […] o cruel death.121

But from this point on, Bernard transforms his complaint over death (‘o cruel death’) into a complaint over life. Following a violent outburst into tears (exite, exite lacrimae), he begins to construct himself, not Gerard, as death’s true victim: 117 

Gerard was second-born and Bernard third-born. They had four other brothers and a sister. Gerard was a knight before he entered the monastery of Cîteaux to join Bernard and his other brothers, after which he accompanied Bernard in the founding of Clairvaux. He fell ill in Viterbo when travelling to Rome with his brother in 1137, but managed to return to Clairvaux where he died the next year. On Gerard’s death, see Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought, pp. 166–67. 118  E.g., McGuire, The Difficult Saint, p. 144. 119  On Gregory of Nyssa’s text, see Burrus, ‘Begotten, Not Made’, pp. 112–22, and Clark, ‘The Lady Vanishes’; on Ambrose’s text, see McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, pp.  68–78; on Augustine’s text, see Shanzer, ‘Latent Narrative Patterns’. 120  Holsinger, ‘The Color of Salvation’, p. 174. 121  Scc 26.4, OSB, v.1, p. 366: ‘Amavimus nos in vita: quomodo in morte sumus separati? Amarissima separatio, et quam non posset omnino efficere nisi mors! Quando enim me vivus vivum desereres? Omnino opus mortis, horrendum divortium. Quis enim tam suavi vinculo mutui nostri non pepercit amoris, nisi totius suavitatis inimica mors? […] o austera mors.’

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We were one heart, one soul. The sword pierced my soul as well as his, and cleaved us in two parts: one part was placed in heaven [in caelo] and the other part was abandoned in the mire [in caeno]. And I, I am that miserable half that lies prostrate in the mud, mutilated by the loss of a part of itself, and its better part.122

In this carefully constructed literary composition, Bernard’s Latin echoes the split from oneness and wholeness to duplicity by verbal reduplications and the familiar technique of assonant oppositions: partem/partem, caelo/caeno, ego/ ego, parte/parte. Depicting his union with Gerard as both emotional and spiritual (cor unum, anima una), Bernard imagines a sword literally cleaving the two brothers apart.123 Abandoned in the mire, Bernard is abject, miserable, immersed in mud, and therefore ‘black’ — like Paul, like the bride, and like Christ himself. Discoloured and deformed, the living brother’s sufferance is explicitly related to his earthly existence — the fact that he is still alive. In this way, death quietly metamorphoses from cruel into desirable. The transformation is complete as Bernard’s lamentation is turned into an explicit desire for death. Weeping and wailing, Bernard begs that someone will immediately concede death also to him: Who will grant me death [quis mihi tribuat cito mori] so I might follow immediately after you? […] It is I who am touched and stricken, not he; he is summoned to repose, but as he died, I was cut down [me occidit, cum succidit illum]. Yet can anyone really say that he is dead and not rather brought to life? For what was for him the entry into life, to me was simply death. I would rather say, at his death I died.124

By this transposition of life and death, Bernard pursues the strategy of inversion from the previous sermon. In the course of the lamentation, he has gradually turned everything upside down: Gerard has been given life, Bernard death. Sombrely returning to the monastic ideal of moderatio — in contrast to the abundant if not excessive grief displayed in the former sermon — Bernard opens Sermon 27 by announcing that the show must go on: ‘I resume, my 122 

Scc 26.9, OSB, v.1, pp. 374–76: ‘Cum ergo essemus cor unum et anima una, hanc meam pariter atque ipsius animam pertransivit gladius, et scindens mediam, partem locavit in caelo, partem in caeno deseruit. Ego, ego illa portio misera in luto iacens, truncata parte sui, et parte potiori.’ 123  See also below, Section 6.3, for a discussion of the union between Bernard and Gerard. 124  Scc 26.8, OSB, v.1, p. 374: ‘Quis mihi tribuat cito mori post te? […] Me, inquam, tetigit et percussit, non illum, quem vocavit ad requiem: me occidit, cum succidit illum. Numquid enim occisum quis dixerit, quem plantavit in vita? At quod illi vitae ianua fuit, mihi plane est mors; meque illa morte mortuum dixerim.’

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brothers, the instruction which I interrupted. It is out of place to weep extendedly for one who is happy, and improper to shed tears for one who is seated at a banquet.’125 With the image of the newly dead Gerard happily seated at the heavenly banquet, Bernard returns to his own banquet, the exegetical banquet of the Song of Songs.126 With death still hanging in the air, Bernard replicates oppositions of spiritual and fleshly, eternal and transient, heavenly and worldly throughout Sermon 27, not unlike the dyads in Sermon 38.127 One part of the bride is perfect, another part is imperfect, unlike, deformed; she is in exile (nigra) like all earthly souls but more spiritual and godlike than others (formosa); she is alive in the body (‘like the tent of Kedar’, cf. Song 1. 4) but her contemplative soul is a heaven, an abode for God (‘like the skins of Solomon’, cf. Song 1. 4) (Scc 27.13); or, yet again, in the gendered language of Sermon 38: she is ‘female’ (mulier), yet ‘beautiful’ (pulchra) and ‘manly’ (virile). These dyadic concepts are transformed into an elaborate image of the bride’s condition of simultaneous exaltation and lowliness: O lowliness! O sublimity! At the same time both tent of Kedar and sanctuary of God; both an earthly habitation and a heavenly palace; both a mud hut and a royal hall; both a body of death and a temple of light; both despised by the proud and bride of Christ. She is black, but beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem. Although the

125  Scc 27.1, OSB, v.1, p. 384: ‘Redeo, fratres, ad propositum aedificandi, quod intermiseram. Incongruum namque est diu flere laetantem, et sedenti ad epulas lacrimas multas ingerere importunum.’ 126  Berengar, a contemporary critic, accuses Bernard of confusing ‘genres’ and thus breaking the rules of literary composition, creating a rhetorical disorder of sorrow (the lament) and joy (the wedding song ). Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought, pp. 177–79, draws attention to Berengar’s indictment against Bernard, composed in defence of his master Abelard. Berengar complains that Bernard ‘brings his dead man to the wedding party […] The bridegroom is lying at the bosom of the bride and the friends of the bride and groom are having their pleasure with one another when all of a sudden the sound of the trumpet announces a funeral. The dinner party is turned into a gathering of mourners, the musical company into a funeral procession.’ I use Pranger’s translation, p. 177. Berengar’s text, Apologeticus, col. 1864A reads: ‘mortuum suum ducit ad nuptias […] Discumbente itaque sponso in sponsae gremio, et juvenculis sponsi sponsaeque juvenculabus alterna jucunditate plaudentibus, tuba funebris subito clangit. Epulae in luctum eunt, organa vertuntur in funus’. See also Pranger’s full discussion of Sermon 26 (pp. 163–80) in an overall discussion of order and disorder. 127  See discussion above, Section 4.4.

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burden of work and pain discolours her complexion during her long exile, she is adorned by a heavenly beauty, adorned by the skins of Solomon.128

Constructing oppositions of lowliness and exaltation in terms of ‘tent of Kedar’ and ‘skin of Solomon’ — metaphorically expressing, respectively, ‘body’ and ‘heaven’ — Bernard elaborates on the metonymic implications of a shelter or covering inherent in imagery of tents and skins as metaphors for the body: on one hand, the ‘tent’ (tabernaculum), the ‘earthly habitation’ (terrenum habitaculum), and ‘mud hut’ (domus lutea) identified as the ‘body of death’ (corpus mortis); on the other hand, the ‘sanctuary’ (sanctuarium), the ‘heavenly palace’ (caeleste palatium), the ‘royal hall’ (aula regia) and ‘temple of light’ (templum lucis). Here the oppositions of lowliness (‘black’ – bodily abode) and sublimity (‘beautiful’ – God’s abode) are simultaneous, not successive. The element of paradox is strongly emphasized, distinctly more so than in Sermons 25 and 28, where Bernard’s representation was characterized by reversal and therefore by temporal displacement: from ignominy to glory, from nigra to beata. As a consequence, the oppositions to emerge here seem more dualistic — more paradoxical and oxymoronic — than in the previously discussed sermons, where oppositions centred on frictions between the exilic and transitory body versus the redeemed resurrection body. In Sermons 25, 26, and 28, the stain of earthly existence was not associated primarily with flesh but with a twofold condition: firstly, being unconform with the world and ignominious in the eyes of the world; and, secondly, being persecuted and fighting or doing battle. In other words, the bride’s blackness functioned prevalently as relational marker based on the dichotomous opposition God-world — she is black to the world, beautiful to God. Instead, in Sermon 27 we see a slight exegetical shift whereby the bride’s blackness functions as an ontological marker: she is fleshly (i.e., alive) and therefore black, but spiritual (i.e., progressed, perfected) and therefore beautiful. Transmitting notions of simultaneousness of lowliness and of sublimity (o humilitas! o sublimitas!), this dual condition reverberates with theological associations to the Virgin Mary. Mariology in the later Middle Ages tended 128  Scc 27.14, OSB, v.1, p. 402: ‘O humilitas! o sublimitas! Et tabernaculum Cedar, et sanctuarium Dei; et terrenum habitaculum, et caeleste palatium; et domus lutea, et aula regia; et corpus mortis, et templum lucis; et despectio denique superbis, et sponsa Christi. Nigra est, sed formosa, filiae Ierusalem: quam etsi labor et dolor longi exsilii decolorat, species tamen caelestis exornat, exornant pelles Salomonis.’

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to underscore evermore the paradox of her simultaneous humility and exaltation.129 As is often the case in the Sermons, however, the Marian reference is not explicit. But it is significant to note that Bernard associates the bride — and through her, all redeemed mankind — with a notion of idealized femaleness and idealized paradoxicalness. Several critics have noted that Bernard’s gendered language of devotion incorporates both a ‘feminine-negative’ pole (i.e., weakness, fleshliness) and a ‘feminine-positive’ pole.130 Identifying this inherent paradoxicalness with the polarized position of the antithetical pair Mary and Eve, the most assertive see Bernard’s feminine imagery as a reflection of the Western split between virgin and whore.131 It is easy to see how formulations regarding medieval gender discourse — particularly regarding the simultaneousness of exalted and denigrated femaleness — might be seen to resonate in Bernard’s imagery. Again, Bloch’s position may serve as example. The female in medieval discourse, he claims, is trapped in an overdetermined and polarized position of being simultaneously ‘bride of Christ’ and ‘devil’s gateway’, at the same time idealized and condemned, or rather, as he puts it, ‘being neither one or the other but both at once’.132 Analogously, Bernard’s oxymoronic bride is structured in terms of simultaneous, paradoxical ascent-descent (exaltatione descendere, et humilitate ascendere). The bride is both, not either: both lowly (o humilitas) and exalted (o sublimitas), both despised by the world and espoused by Christ, both mother and virgin, both black and beautiful. However significant this aspect may be in terms of discursive traces in the bride, it is nonetheless opportune to note that Bernard’s Mariological subtext resonates with yet another theological formulation of simultaneous oppositions: the Christological dual nature. Founded upon formulations of the dual nature of Christ as both man and God, Bernard’s Christological stress on ascent-descent transports this doctrinal theme into the heart of devotional 129  Illustrated famously in the final canto of Dante’s Commedia: ‘Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo figlio | umile et alta piú che creatura’ (Paradiso xxxiii.1–2); see also Bernard’s In laudibus, above Sections 3.1 and 3.4. 130  Krahmer, ‘The Virile Bride’, pp. 310–14, 321–24, uses the terminology of ‘femininenegative’ and ‘feminine-positive’. See also Bynum, ‘“And Woman His Humanity”’, pp. 268–69, and ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, p. 128; Newman, ‘“Flaws in the Golden Bowl”’, p. 26; and Damrosch, ‘Non alia sed aliter’; cf. Cloke, ‘This Female Man of God’, pp. 75, 200–02, 216–17, 220, for discussions related to patristic writers. 131  Wiethaus, ‘Christian Piety and the Legacy of Medieval Masculinity’, pp. 51–55. 132  Bloch, Medieval Misogyny, p. 164. Italics are mine.

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language in the form of Christ’s exemplum. Drawing the attention to Christ rather than Mary, I wish to point to an important difference. While the Marian simultaneousness of humility and exaltation was embodied physically, if paradoxically so, in her female body by her dual roles of virgin and mother, Christ’s simultaneous humility-descent and exaltation-ascent, on the other hand, could expressly be envisioned as a dual gender: both divine-male and human-female. Perhaps the bride is better compared with the dual-sexed Christ than the all-feminine Mary? In such a perspective the ambiguity of the bride’s gender references reappear.133 Resonating with the discursive impetus in which gender is systematically situated on a hierarchical incline, representations of the bride sometimes slip towards defeminization — particularly in the context of exaltation. Conversely, when a tension appears between the poles of exaltation and humility, femaleness as rhetorical marker of humility is underscored. Whichever way, anagogic reading — both vertical and horizontal anagogy, evoking either eschatology or contemplative bliss — profoundly destabilizes femaleness in Bernard’s text.134 Again the lingering figure of the virago resurfaces when themes of fruition and exaltation — the domain of the defeminized virgin-bride — are evoked. After having expanded on blackness and whiteness, life and death, lowliness and exaltation, both in terms of inversion and paradox, Bernard concludes the present sermon cycle in Sermon 29 with a series of complex reversals of pain and pleasure. As the sermon opens, he abandons the theme of discolouration and blackness which has occupied him throughout the previous three sermons (Scc 25–28), turning his attention to the verse from Song 1. 5: ‘the sons of my mother attacked me’. Attributing the exclamation to the bride, Bernard dubs her ‘the daughter of the Synagogue’ (Synagogae filiam). Given the subject matter and prior exegesis, one would expect an ecclesiological reading, and, in fact, Bernard goes on to mentioning Annas, Caiaphas, and Judas Iscariot as the ‘sons of the Synagogue’ (filii Synagogae) who attacked the young Church. But he quickly drops the allegorical reading. Instead Bernard stages a battle between fleshliness and spiritualness — with the devotional body as battlefield. Glossing on the ‘sons of my mother’, he identifies them as ominous but redeeming figures: [They are] those in the Church who are spiritually minded [spirituales] and who fight their brothers who are fleshly minded [carnales fratres] with the sword of the 133  134 

See Scc 38 above, Section 4.4; Scc 74 above, Section 4.5, cf. Scc 12 above, Section 5.2. For full discussion, see below, Sections 6.3 and 6.4.

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spirit, which is the word of God [Eph 4. 17], wounding them for their salvation and leading them to spirituality [spiritualia] by this assault.135

Here Bernard begins the sequence, discussed before, where he stages himself as spiritual assailant, performing the role of chastising abbot-mother vis-à-vis his monks.136 The theme of physical and spiritual assault (‘punish me, wound me and heal me, kill me and give me life!’) is decisively carried over into the current section. It soon becomes clear that it is the bride herself — the Church or the saintly soul — who demands, indeed desires to be assaulted and castigated, and thus to be ‘lead like a captive to faith and love’.137 With a series of biblical allusions, Bernard depicts this desirous assault on the bride in terms of piercing and penetration. Transmitting her yearning to be ‘pierced’ (confixam) by the arrows of spiritual warriors, she cries: ‘The arrows of the mighty are sharp [Ps 119. 4]: Your arrows have pierced deep into me [Ps 37. 3]’;138 and again, ‘Pierce my flesh with your fear [Ps 118. 120]’.139 Even with the references to the Psalms, the subtext which emerges is Pauline: the distinction between flesh and spirit. Indeed, Bernard construes a harshly dualistic opposition of flesh and spirit, quite different from the prior reading of Sermon 25. Citing Paul’s inversion of strong and weak (ii Cor 12. 10), Bernard incorporates the opposition into his present discussion in terms of physical weakness and spiritual strength versus physical strength and spiritual weakness: ‘Do you see that the infirmity of the flesh increases the robustness of the spirit, and enforces it? And contrarily, you know that the strength of the flesh provokes the weakness of the spirit.’140 Evoking a battle between spirit and flesh, Bernard represents it as an inner conflict, conjuring up highly ascetic notions in which the oppositions are diagonally opposed: that which reinforces the one, debilitates the other.

135 

Scc 29.6, OSB, v.1, p. 432: ‘spirituales, qui sunt in Ecclesia, adversus carnales fratres suos dimicant in gladio spiritus, quod est verbum Dei [Ephes. VI, 17], vulnerantes eos ad salutem atque ad spiritualia istiusmodi impugnationibus provehentes.’ 136  For Scc 29.6, see above, Section 3.2. 137  Scc 29.7, OSB, v.1, p. 432: ‘captivam ducerent ad fidem amoremque’. 138  Scc 29.7, OSB, v.1, p. 432: ‘Sagittae potentis acutae [Psal. CXIX, 4]; et item: Sagittae tuae infixae sunt mihi [Psal. XXXVII, 3].’ 139  Scc 29.7, OSB, v.1, p. 434: ‘Confige timore tuo carnes meas [Psal. CXVIII, 120].’ 140  Scc 29.7, OSB, v.1, p.  434: ‘Vides quia carnis infirmitas robur spiritui augeat, et subministret vires? Ita e contrario noveris carnis fortitudinem debilitatem spiritus operari.’

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With this inverse opposition of physical infirmity and spiritual strength, Bernard proclaims the blissfully perforated bride as an image of ascetic perfection: How excellent that arrow of fear that pierces and kills the desires of the flesh, so the spirit may be saved. Is it not clear to you that whoever castigates his body, and subdues it into subjection, is aiding the hand that fights against him?141

Having associated the maternal figure — and himself — with a ‘good adversary’ (bonus adversarius) who charitably castigates the one she loves (Scc 29.6), Bernard now escalates his rhetoric, staging a full-blown metaphorical assault on the bridal body.142 The ‘salvational assault’ (salubriter expugnarent) in terms of piercing arrows (Scc 29.7) is followed by an even more explicit assault, depicted as a rapturous penetration of the Virgin Mother (Scc 29.8). In this exegetical elaboration, the penetrating instrument subtly shifts its reference. Designated earlier as an ‘arrow of fear’ (timor sagitta), it metamorphoses into ‘the exceptional arrow of Christ’s love’ (sagitta electa amor Christi), piercing and wounding as it thrusts into body and soul, filling the subject with delirious — and also fruitful — love: Also the living and active word of God is an arrow, and penetrates more deeply than any double-edged sword [Heb 4. 12], of which the Saviour said: I have not come to bring peace, but the sword [Mt 10. 34]. For Christ’s love is an exceptional arrow. It not only pierced [confixit], but even penetrated [pertransivit] Mary’s soul, until there was no part of her virginal breast that was not permeated by love, so that she might love with her whole heart, her whole soul, all her strength, and be full of grace. It penetrated [pertransivit] her so completely that it came down to us, and from its plenitude we might all receive [acciperemus], and she became the mother of that love whose father is God who is love; giving birth, she placed his tent in the sun [Ps 18. 6], bringing to fulfilment Scripture: I have given you as a light to all people, so you might be my salvation to the ends of the earth [Is 49. 6]. This was fulfilled by Mary, who brought forth in visible flesh he who was invisible, and who was conceived neither from the flesh nor by the flesh. Thus she received [accepit], in her whole being, a mighty and sweet wound of love. And I would truly consider myself happy if I were only rarely to feel the slightest prick of the point of this sword; for even if it were only a modest wound of love that I received [accepto], 141 

Scc 29.7, OSB, v.1, p. 434: ‘Optima timor iste sagitta, qui configit et interficit carnis desideria, ut spiritus salvus sit. Sed et qui castigat corpus suum, et in servitutem redigit, nonne is tibi videtur etiam manum contra se pugnantis ipse iuvare?’ 142  The erotic and violent quality of Scc 29 has been noted also by Holsinger, in the context of his discussion of crusader ideology; see ‘The Color of Salvation’, pp. 176–79. This aspect has otherwise been systematically ignored in Bernardine research.

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my soul would still be able to say: I am wounded by love [Song 2. 5, cf. LXX]. Who will grant me that I not only be wounded in this way, but that I might be completely mutilated until all colour and heat is exterminated from that which battles against the soul?143

With biblical allusions to sharp and piercing objects like arrows (sagitta) and swords (gladio ancipiti, gladium), Bernard elaborates and expands on the image of the penetrated bride introduced in the previous passage. Here, however, the figura and model for the saintly soul as well as for Bernard’s own ego — which appears towards the end of the passage — is no longer the bride directly, but the Virgin Mary (with undertones of Lk 2. 35). In fact, the bridal or nuptial subtext has all but disappeared — but for the allusion to Ps 18. 6, which upholds, albeit implicitly and indirectly, themes of the bridegroom who exits from the bridal bedchamber.144 The leading subtext, instead, is the Incarnation, confirmed by the references to Mary who ‘becomes mother’ (fieret mater) and ‘gives birth’ (parturiens). The embodiment of the Word is represented in the text as an arrow that, by entering into the virgin (‘her virginal breast’, pectore virginali), is made ‘visible flesh’ (in carne visibilem). The image is sustained by a metonymical association between the ‘wound of love’ and conception or birth. Modelled on the conception of the Word, the fruitfulness of the devotional subject is assured by a participation in Mary’s ‘mighty and sweet wound of love’ (grande et suave amoris vulnus). Participating in this paradigmatic ‘wound of love’, the saintly soul (ego)

143 

Scc 29.8, OSB, v.1, p. 434: ‘Est et sagitta sermo Dei vivus et efficax, et penetrabilior omni gladio ancipiti [Hebr. IV, 12], de quo Salvator: Non veni, inquit, pacem mittere, sed gladium [Matth. X, 34]. Est etiam sagitta electa amor Christi, quae Mariae animam non modo confixit, sed etiam pertransivit, ut nullam in pectore virginali particulam vacuam amore relinqueret, sed toto corde, tota anima, tota virtute diligeret, et esset gratia plena. Aut certe pertransivit eam, ut veniret usque ad nos, et de plenitudine illa omnes acciperemus, et fieret mater caritatis cuius pater est caritas Deus, parturiens et in sole ponens tabernaculum eius, ut Scriptura impleretur quae dicit: Dedi te in lucem gentium, ut sis salus mea usque ad extremum terrae [Isa. XLIX, 6]. Hoc enim impletum est per Mariam, quae in carne visibilem edidit, quem invisibilem nec de carne, nec cum carne suscepit. Et illa quidem in tota se grande et suave amoris vulnus accepit; ego vero me felicem putaverim, si summo saltem quasi cuspide huius gladii pungi inter me sensero, ut vel modico accepto amoris vulnere, dicat etiam anima mea: Vulnerata caritate ego sum [Cant. II, 5, secundum LXX]. Quis mihi tribuat in hunc modum non modo vulnerari, sed et expugnari omnino usque ad exterminationem coloris et caloris illius, qui militat adversus animam?’ 144  Ps 18. 6: ‘In sole posuit tabernaculum suum | et ipse tamquam sponsus procedens de thalamo suo’.

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participates in the sanctifying mystical ecstasy of mimetically conceiving the Word, that is, restoring lost godlikeness.145 As elsewhere, Bernard proposes rapid shifts between different levels of interpretation in the same passage. Relocating the target of the arrow’s spiritual ravishment, he passes from Mariology to ecclesiology and to tropology. Concurrently, the site of the struggle is relocalized and finally transferred onto the devotional subject. As Bernard moves his reading — from Mary, who is pierced by the arrow; to the ‘we’ participating in its plenitude; and finally to the ‘I’, who desires the ‘prick of the point of the sword’ — the individuated object for God’s penetrating love shifts from third-person singular to first-person plural, and to first-person singular, as well as from past to future tense. This parallel hermeneutical and grammatical movement is focalized in the verb accipere: ‘she received’ (accepit), ‘we might receive’ (acciperemus), ‘I shall feel that I have received’ (sensero […] accepto). At this point, with the transition from third-person (Mary) to first person (ego), the event is restaged and reperformed by the hermeneutical subject. The ‘I’ declares its desire to be ‘wounded’ in the same way as Mary, and so say, ‘I am wounded by love’, Bernard here opting for the Septuagint version (Song 2. 5: vulnerata caritate ego sum) rather than the Vulgate (amore languor). Just as Bernard implored that he be put to death in Sermon 26 (quis mihi tribuat mori?), he now pleas to be assailed and wounded (quis mihi tribuat vulnerari?), indeed, to be ‘completely mutilated’ (expugnari omnino) so all cravings in him are ‘exterminated’ (exterminationem). Darker, more ecstatically violent and eroticized, it is nevertheless the very same desire: the desire to overcome flesh, the desire for purification and transformation, the desire for whiteness, ultimately, the desire to be pierced and penetrated by Christ. As all this desire unfolds, distinctions between body and text begin to dissolve. Not just penetration and piercing but also desire is given a somatic as well as an emotional and psychological emphasis (‘soul’ and ‘breast, ‘heart’ and ‘soul’), while the verbal nature of this simultaneous pleasure-pain (‘the wound of love’) is ever emphasized. Indeed, words are the very instruments in this metaphorical assault on the saintly body: the sword is identified as the ‘word of God’ (verbum Dei) and, likewise, the arrow is the ‘word of God’ (sermo Dei). Words are transformed into sharp objects which pierce through flesh: 145 

On the topic of godlikeness and restoration, see McGinn, ‘Freedom, Formation, and Reformation’, and The Growth of Mysticism, p. 172. See also below, Section 6.1. On the descent of the Word in the soul in the present sermon, see Verbaal, ‘Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons for the Liturgical Year’, p. 57.

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Words are arrows. Words are swords. The Word himself is an arrow. The desire to be pierced and perforated, then, is in effect a desire for words. For the text in question is the Song of Songs, the manifestation of desire in text. Bernard thus invites the saintly body to be penetrated by words — words which literally wound, mutilate, and pierce (Scc 29.6, vulnerantes, dimicant; Scc 29.7, expugnarent; Scc 29.8, confixit, pertransivit, pungi). Yet, it seems clear that hermeneutical desire is not only directed towards mere words but also towards a physical body — towards Christ’s own flesh, the incarnate Word. In the Sermons both pain and counterpleasures are enacted and implemented by hermeneutical engagement, specifically, by an ‘erotically joyful’ participation in the body of Christ, that is, in Scripture itself.146 Merging divine desire and pain, the text points to the growing positive significance identified in pain in the later Middle Ages, where physical sufferance could be seen as morally uplifting and physically salutary as well as a symbol of holiness.147 Christ himself, of course, ‘was anything but impassible, and the impassibility of martyrs had dissolved into fortitude’.148 At this point I venture that Bernard’s imagery, resounding with the rhetoric of martyrology and hagiography, may be seen to turn the sacrificial self-negation of pain and death into desirable and pleasurable self-affirmation.149

5.5 Erotic Hermeneutics, Ascetic Hermeneutics Dissolving boundaries between pain and pleasure, Bernard’s erotic hermeneutics configure a vision of salvation which entails highly ambivalent notions of blissful agony, figured as the ecstatic, penetrating, and redemptive mutilation of the ascetic body: ‘mighty and sweet wounds of love’ (grande et suave amoris vulnus). Bruce Holsinger sees the eroticized violence in the sermon cycle under consideration in a perspective of (pre-)colonial conquest and crusading, referring to Western colonialism as ‘an erotics of ravishment’.150 Commenting on the potential for ‘agonizing pleasure’ in ancient hagiography, Virginia Burrus 146 

For further discussion, see below, Section 5.5 and Chapter 6, esp. Sections 6.4 and 6.5. Cohen, The Modulated Scream, pp. 4–5. 148  Cohen, The Modulated Scream, p. 259. 149  See Holsinger, ‘The Color of Salvation’, p. 174, referring to Fradenburg, ‘“Be not far from me”’, who argues that medieval discourses of selfhood are characterized by their profound dependence upon loss as fundamentally constitutive of Christian subjectivity. 150  Holsinger, ‘The Color of Salvation’, p. 178, referring to McClintock, Imperial Leather. 147 

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has suggested that saintly pleasure-pain participates in ‘a self-mortifying jouissance […] a divinely erotic joy’ which reveals itself as a ‘mode of ascesis’, writing: ‘When jouissance is understood as “a mode of ascesis,” the ascetic emerges into view as an erotically joyful “body in pain,” disclosing suffering as the vehicle of the ongoing unmaking and remaking of worlds.’151 Burrus’s perspective, emphasizing the ‘unmaking and remaking of worlds’, captures the concerns of Bernard’s text. I am suggesting that Bernard performatively restages ancient and patristic hagiography, making the martyr’s self-sacrificial sufferance and death attainable and realizable also for the monk by rhetorically conflating the figures of the virgin, the martyr, and the ascetic.152 Participating in an ‘unmaking and remaking of worlds’, the Sermons on the Song of Songs creates a parallel but topsy-turvy world which subverts the hierarchy of the flesh and the world by prefiguring eschatological restoration, thus reattuning to the strong oppositions between the world and God characteristic for much early Christian and patristic hagiography.153 Transformative divine desire engages an element of physical sufferance because the ascetic requirement of overcoming the body and the pleasures of the body overturns the natural order which operates in postlapsarian (and preresurrection) flesh. Bernard’s text reflects twelfth-century notions of localizing salvation in the suffering flesh of Christ, and related notions of the Crucifixion as love’s greatest exemplum. Physical agony, as a constituent element of devotion, carries references to imitation of Christ. Bernard, therefore, is particularly concerned with ‘assaults’ which involve piercing and nailing — like the arrows and the sword in Sermon 29 — since they recall the Passion of Christ.154 This imagery stands in relation to other instances in the Sermons where Bernard fixes his exegetical gaze on Christ’s salvific ‘body in pain’, rendering it hermeneutically readable like a text. In Sermon 61 the ‘clefts’ or ‘slits’ in the perforated body of Christ (per foramina corporis) become peepholes, so to speak, into which the exegete may 151 

Burrus, The Sex Lives of Saints, pp. 14–15. Burrus borrows the concept of ‘unmaking and remaking of worlds’ from Scarry, The Body in Pain, but with some important qualifications, see p. 169 n. 75. Cf. Bataille’s emphasis on the relation between sacrifice-sufferance-sacredness and eroticism in Erotism: Death and Sensuality, pp. 19–22, 89–93. 152  See discussions above, Sections 3.3 and 5.1. 153  See Meeks, ‘The Image of the Androgyne’, p. 207, who points to the potential for subversiveness, or ‘metaphysical rebellion’ in realized eschatology. 154  Imagery of piercing also recalls compunctio; on this theme, see Casey, Athirst for God, pp. 120–29.

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gaze.155 ‘Why should I not gaze through the cleft,’ inquires Bernard and, gazing, finds that ‘the secrets of his heart are laid open through the clefts of his body’.156 The nail wounds and side wound of Christ’s violated flesh figure hermeneutical exposure; they speak — indeed, they cry out: ‘The nail cries out, the wound cries out [clamat clavus, clamat vulnus] that God is truly in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.’157 Developing on the image of the nail which, having pierced the divine flesh, leaves perforations or lacerations for the reader, Bernard states that ‘the nail that pierced him has become for me a keyhole for seeing God’s will’.158 Another instance of the desirability of the Christlike body in pain — this time with more devotional than hermeneutical implications — is in Sermon 48, where Bernard plays on the assonance between ‘piercing’ and ‘conversion’ (confixus, conversus), ‘wounding’ and ‘repenting’ (pungeris, compungeris): ‘Well pierced is the one who converts. Well wounded are you if you repent.’159 Hermeneutical participation in the divine body of pain entails sufferance, but an ‘erotically joyful’ sufferance — hence the deliberate inversion of agony and bliss in Sermon 29 which corresponds exactly to the general inversion, running throughout the Sermons, of asceticism and eroticism. Bernard’s Sermons reverberate with notions from his patristic predecessors — ascetic eroticists, like himself — who incorporated the Song’s imagery in their letters and treatises in order to give expression to saintly desire. Paulinus of Nola, in a letter to his friend Severus, envisions a ‘chaste’ yet nonetheless sexually construed relation with Christ, and, like Bernard and his audience casting themselves in the role of Christ’s lovers, Paulinus understands it as an invitation: ‘Let us kiss him whose kiss is chastity. Let us have intercourse [copulemur] with him with whom marriage is virginity.’160 Paulinus’s contemporary Jerome gives 155 

On this passage in relation to hermeneutical penetration of Christ’s body, see below, Section 6.4. 156  Scc 61.4, OSB, v.2, p. 320: ‘Quidni videam per foramen? […] Patet arcanum cordis per foramina corporis’. 157  Scc 61.4, OSB, v.2, p. 320: ‘Clamat clavus, clamat vulnus, quod vere Deus sit in Christo mundum reconcilians sibi.’ 158  Scc 61.4, OSB, v.2, p. 320: ‘At clavis reserans, clavus penetrans factus est mihi, ut videam voluntatem Domini’. 159  Scc 48.1, OSB, v.2, p. 162: ‘Bene confixus, qui conversus exinde est. Bene pungeris, si compungeris.’ 160  Paulinus of Nola, Ep 23.42, col. 284A: ‘Illum osculemur, quem osculari castitas est. Illi copulemur, cui nupsisse virginitas est.’

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expression to a similar notion of inversion of desire in the letter to Eustochium, and this text — echoing throughout with phrases and images from the Song of Songs — comes close to Bernard’s own vision of desire: ‘Carnal love [carnis amor] is overcome by spiritual love. Desire [desiderium] is quenched by desire. What is taken from the one is added to the other.’161 Jerome presents desire for the world and desire for God in terms of direct symmetry — a symmetry which allows for metaphorical coherence: for by substituting spiritual and eternal for fleshly and transient objects of desire, they might both be encompassed by the same erotic language. Pursuing this notion, Bernard construes the imagery of the Song: for instance, in Sermon 9 where the notion of symmetry between ‘carnal lust’ and ‘spiritual delights’ (carnis voluptatem – deliciae spirituales) prepares for a transposition of desire whereby the former may be replaced by the latter.162 Or, as stated in Sermon 50, summoning the passionate yearning of the monk-bride: ‘Let him embrace eternal things with eternal desire.’163 Yet there is one important difference between Bernard’s and Jerome’s concept of desire, which disassociates Bernard’s interpretation from the strong dualism of Jerome and other patristic authors. This is the centrality of the body of Christ. For Bernard, there is one body which is and should be object for chaste desire, namely God’s own flesh: carnal Christ. This is emphasized in a noted passage in Sermon 20: Notice that the love [amorem] of the heart is, in a sense, fleshly [carnalem], because it is attracted most towards the carnal Christ and the things he did or commanded while in the flesh. […] I believe this is the primal reason why the invisible God wanted to be seen in the flesh and as man live among men. He wanted to recapture the affections [affectiones] of fleshly men, those who could not love other than in a fleshly way [carnaliter amare], by first drawing them to salutary love of his flesh [ad suae carnis salutarem amorem], and then gradually leading them to spiritual love.164

161  Jerome, Ep 22.17; trans. by Wright, p.  88: ‘Carnis amor spiritus amore superatur; desiderium desiderio restinguitur. Quidquid inde minuitur, hinc crescit.’ 162  See Scc 9.9, discussed above, Section 2.4. 163  Scc 50.8, OSB, v.2, p. 194: ‘aeterna desiderio amplectatur aeterno’. 164  Scc 20.6, OSB, v.1, p. 264: ‘Et nota amorem cordis quodammodo esse carnalem, quod magis erga carnem Christi, et quae in carne Christus gessit vel iussit, cor humanum afficiat. […] Hanc ego arbitror praecipuam invisibili Deo fuisse causam, quod voluit in carne videri et cum hominibus homo conversari, ut carnalium videlicet, qui nisi carnaliter amare non poterant, cunctas primo ad suae carnis salutarem amorem affectiones retraheret, atque ita gradatim ad amorem perduceret spiritualem.’ On Scc 20, see also above, Section 2.1.

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Bernard McGinn has authoritatively underscored both the novelty of Bernard’s concept of ‘fleshly love’ (amorem carnalem) as a starting point for spiritual ascent and the centrality of this concept in his overall thinking.165 Fleshly love, for Bernard, has become a precondition — not only for the spiritual ascent of contemplation but for the salvation of all humanity. It cannot and should not be dismissed, but rather canalized towards the ‘love of fleshly Christ’ (amor carnalis Christi). Unable to love in any other than a fleshly way (carnaliter amare), mankind, according to Bernard, was redeemed by Christ’s taking on flesh, thereby capturing and redirecting their affections towards God. Because of the Incarnation, divinity is no longer distant or ‘invisible’ (invisibili), Bernard points out. Rather, God became present among men just like other objects of desire. ‘Christ sacrificed his flesh to those who knew only flesh, so that they also might know the spirit,’ he says in Sermon 6.166 ‘What is new,’ states McGinn, ‘in the abbot’s development of this theology of redemption is the emphasis placed on the necessity of the carnal starting place.’167 This relative importance accorded to Christ’s body and fleshly love in Bernard’s doctrine is directly related to the emphasis on the humanity of Christ which medieval scholars commonly hold to prompt a more including attitude towards the human body, even in monastic asceticism.168 I suggest that Bernard’s ‘new’ interpretation of desire, canalized towards Christ’s flesh as salvific starting place, profoundly conditions his use of erotic imagery. While Bernard, like Augustine and Origen, subordinates the worldly-corporeal under the heavenlyspiritual, the emphasis on carnality and physicality gives a distinguishing feature to Bernard’s rhetoric and to his treatment of the Song’s imagery, providing an exceptionally dynamic interrelation between imagery and theology, sign and signification, literal and spiritual meaning. Seeking bliss — jouissance — or hermeneutical ‘excess’ in Christ’s (perforated) body restores physicality to the concept of saintly desire, saintly eros.169 165 

McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 174–77; see also Morris, The Discovery of the Indi­vidual, p. 153. 166  Scc 6.3, OSB, v.1, p. 80: ‘Obtulit carnem sapientibus carnem, per quam discerent sapere et spiritum.’ 167  McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 175. 168  On this, see above, Section 1.3. 169  See Miller, ‘“Pleasure of the Text, Text of Pleasure”’, p.  242, on Origen: ‘Origen’s descriptions of “word” and “words” as kisses, wounds of love, darts, and love-charms are various ways of suggesting how “word” is “flesh”, that is, how the Scriptural text can be seen as the erotic “body” of God.’ Applying Roland Barthes’s characterization of the jouissance — or eros — in the

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In this way, eroticism in all its carnality becomes conflated, even identified with spiritual desire, providing a dimension of literalness also to the imagery under consideration: the kiss, the embrace, erotic lust and longing. At the same time, these kisses and these embraces not only supersede but also banish any element of worldly eros. In the arms of the bridegroom — this virginal and secluded space — the bride is dead to the world and to worldly and sensual cares (Scc 52). This subjection of the flesh and the world (qui adversus animam) is thus, as pointed out, distinctly a ‘mode of ascesis’ — a mode no longer pungent and painful but sweet and blissful, for spiritual desire has replaced carnal desire. This perspective provides a correlation between redemption theory and imagery in Bernard’s text, which may be illustrated by a passage from Sermon 20 in which pleasure (‘sweetness’) and pain (‘the nail’) conjoin and blur into the desired and pierced figure of Christ: ‘Let your affections [affectui] for your Lord Jesus be blissful and sweet, so as to oppose the falsely sweet allurements of fleshly life. Let sweetness conquer sweetness as one nail drives out the other nail.’170 Intertextually echoing with Jerome’s symmetry of desire (Ep 22.17), the passage proposes an image of sweetness conquered by sweetness (dulcedo dulcedinem), just like a nail is removed by another nail (clavum clavus). Desire is thus banished by desire, and ascesis ultimately reveals itself as ‘a mode’ of erotic joy. Bernard’s ascetic mode, then, does not extinguish desire, but rather directs it towards the right object: towards the eternal rather than the transitory, the superior rather than the lowly. Far from expelling desire, Bernard reappropriates desire. Presupposing a metaphysics of desire in which fleshly or worldly desire represents a corruption, in the sense of a misdirection of primeval and paradisiacal desire, we find that, in this perspective, Bernard’s inversions performatively restore the prelapsarian order of things. By reversing relationship of the reader with a text to Origen’s commentary on the Song of Songs, she writes, p. 251: ‘For Origen, as for Barthes, the text is an erotic body where word and reader, Bridegroom and Bride, are joined.’ The Song of Songs, for the Platonizing commentator, celebrates the erotic desire, the seduction, and the wounding — the ‘deep lacerations’ — which Barthes termed the jouissance of the text. See also reference, p. 243 n. 4, to jouissance as the ‘active capacity of words to unsettle — even ravage — the reader with an almost terrifying excess of meaning, an excess that is nevertheless experienced as pleasurable.’ This point is underscored also by Pedersen, Bernhard af Clairvaux, pp. 41, 50, who points to the anthropomorphic images as extending beyond metaphor to become actually physical. In this sense, she points out, Bernard’s exegesis of the Song differs from that of previous commentators, like Origen or Gregory of Nyssa. 170  Scc 20.4, OSB, v.1, p. 260: ‘Sit suavis et dulcis affectui tuo Dominus Iesus, contra male utique dulces vitae carnalis illecebras, et vincat dulcedo dulcedinem, quemadmodum clavum clavus expellit.’

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the world, the ungodlike ‘region of unlikeness’ (regio dissimilitudinis), he reestablishes a godlike world.171 Bernard addresses his audience in their shared knowledge that the day shall come when that which once was godlike, and now is ungodlike, will once again be godlike. The perverse or reversed order of striving downwards instead of upwards — both the impious ordo praeposterus and the saintly ordo praeposterus — shall yet again be reversed, and God’s scheme will be reinstated.172 Bernard simply anticipates the reversal. Desire, in this understanding, then, is in and by itself a neutral force.173 It is the Fall which caused desire to be directed towards the wrong objects, pulling the desiring subject down instead of up.174 Desire will potentially always lead to God because by its very nature it can never be satisfied until it arrives at the summum of all good, although the short human lifespan does not allow for this natural ascent of desire, thus requiring intervening action of devotion and grace.175 Nevertheless, in this non-dualistic interpretation, Bernard does indeed attend to worldly desire: not by turning away or turning off but by attuning to the possibility of a further seduction at which it always hints — a seduction already there, an original and superior manner of enjoyment.176 In this way, Bernard does not shy away from summoning elaborate sensual images in the mind of his readers or listeners. In Sermon 40 he abandons himself and the audience to a sensuously physical image of the bride’s beauty while also transporting it to an ‘incorporeal and invisible’ (incorporea invisibilisque) level of meaning: You must not give a carnal meaning to this colouring of the corruptible flesh, to this gathering of golden-red liquid that spreads evenly beneath the surface of her 171 

For regio dissimilitudinis, see, e.g., Scc 27.6. The term seems to have passed into Christian usage by Augustine, Conf 7.10.16. On this topographical metaphor, carrying Platonic and Neo­ platonic connotations, see Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. by Downes, pp. 33–59. 172  On the impious ordo praeposterus, see Scc 46.5 above, Section 2.5; on the saintly ordo praeposterus, see Scc 50.5, above Section 2.1. 173  On desire as effect of the incompleteness of human existence on earth, see Casey, Athirst for God, p. 66 n. 7: ‘Desiderium is simply an objective lack which is sometimes mirrored into a subjective want.’ See also pp. 72, 131–89 for his discussion of Bernard’s anthropology of desire. 174  See Div 32.3, col.  626A, where Bernard explicitly associates carnal desires with punishment for original sin: ‘carnalia desideria sunt poena peccati.’ 175  Dil 7.17–22, cols 984C–987D. 176  See MacKendrick, with reference to Augustine, in ‘Carthage Didn’t Burn Hot Enough’, p. 211.

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pearly skin, quietly mingling with it to enhance her physical beauty by the pink and white loveliness of her cheeks.177

Evoking a vividly literal image, Bernard engages in the ambiguous rhetorical act of simultaneously veiling and revealing. This is one of the clearest instances of Bernard’s doublespeak.178 Having already provided his audience with a decidedly physical image, he refers them to its spiritual level. This may be seen as an attempt to sustain representation — and the seductiveness inherent in representation — rather than allowing desire to stop and be satisfied by worldly beauty. At the same time, this interrelation between perverted desire (worldly, fleshly) and primeval desire (godly, spiritual) — conjoined by the desire for the flesh of Christ — provides more than just a spiritualized version of a language of desire (kisses, embraces, pleasure). More importantly, it produces a transfer upwards — from a literal to a spiritual understanding. Bernard’s opposition between worldly-secular-literal understanding and godly-monastic-spiritual understanding, established already in the opening scene with the division into ‘milk’ and ‘bread’, is, in the course of the Sermons, sharpened until it is brought to a breaking point. Turning the world and its hierarchy of pleasure and power upside down, Bernard subverts the secular world while asserting godliness or otherworldliness. Yet while overturning and subverting — ‘unmaking’ — the secular world, the inverted world — the exegetically ‘remade’ world — aims simultaneously, and perhaps paradoxically, at reinstating a lost literalness: not merely spiritualizing the corporeal sense but also incorporating the spiritual sense, in the sense of actualizing or anticipating eschatology. When primal desire is reconquered, divinely erotic joy not only expels secondary and worldly desire — it reveals itself as more real, more ‘dense’ and as infinitely superior.179 For Bernard, the metaphor is an instrument 177  Scc 40.1, OSB, v.2, p. 76: ‘Vide autem ne carnaliter cogites coloratam carnis putredinem, et purulentiam flavi sanguineive humoris, vitreae cutis superficiem summatim atque aequaliter suffundentem: e quibus sibi invicem moderate permistis, ad venustandam genarum effigiem rubor subpallidus in efficientiam corporeae pulchritudinis temperatur.’ 178  Another is in Scc 25.3, see above, Section 5.3. Cf. Burrus’s reading of Sulpicius’s Martin in The Sex Lives of Saints, pp. 91–103, which presents an analogy to my reading of Bernard’s simultaneous veiling and revealing. On concealing in the act of revealing, see also McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 208, with references and Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus and Other Problems, pp. 110–33. 179  On reality/density, see Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity, pp. 50–51; cf. Chenu, ‘The Symbolist Mentality’, pp. 133–34: ‘the potentialities of this system tend readily toward imbalance; symbolic value tends to empty things of their earthly reality, their ontological reality,

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by which the exegete might, precisely, ‘unmake and remake worlds’. I suggest that Bernard, in this way, severely undermines any distinction between reality and imagery: which, may one ask, is ultimately more ‘real’, the distorted unmade world or the inverted remade world? Pranger argued that the monastic world was an artificial and dense world into which the monk moved from an unstable, fragile, chaotic, and weak but real world. We know little of individual Cistercian monks’ common understandings of symbols and concepts, other than public expressions of symbolic meaning through text, action, and ritual.180 Still less do we know their personal histories, their individual experiences, and their private thoughts. But we do know that the nameless and mute monks who consituted a large part of Bernard’s audience did share a common liturgy and a common reading. If Brian Stock is right in his suggestion that the Song of Songs played a prominent role in establishing a specific Cistercian textual community, then the Sermons offered a means to recharge and restructure the monks’ shadowy and ephemeral past experiences and transform them into meaningful and comprehensible monastic experiences.181

their conceptual reality [sa densité terrestre, sa densité ontologique et sa densité conceptuelle]. It is so with the Pseudo-Dionysian symbol of eros, with the signum tantum of the Augustinians, with the allegory of love in the Song of Songs.’ 180  See Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 7–8. 181  Stock, The Implications of Literacy, pp. 452, 526.

Chapter 6

Appropriation and Unification — Feminized Man, Divinized Man Quidni eruam dulce ac salutare epulum spiritus de sterili et insipida littera? Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica canticorum 73.2

6.1 Reflection and Seduction: Configuring Transformation The previous chapter argued that in Bernard’s hermeneutics the letter is not so much to be rejected as absorbed — and thereby transformed — into the spiritual sense. The same, I suggested, applies to the body and fleshly desire: they are not so much rejected as transformed. And the same process, I argue in the present chapter, guides also configurations of gender: the feminine is not so much rejected as subsumed. This final chapter emphasizes the salvific process whereby unification is achieved by likeness and imitation: a process where the hierarchical ordering between female and male, on one hand, and spirit and flesh on the other, disrupts dualities. In medieval discourse, dual constructions of male-female and flesh-spirit collapsed precisely in the paradigmatic body of Christ. In this way, Christ the dual-sexed bridegroom will be seen as the primary reference for the male bride’s gender indeterminacy. Bernard represents both the monk-bride and Christbridegroom in terms of sublimated erotic passion and maternalized fecundity, just like he also represents both figures as penetrated and penetrating, as virgin and mother, as black and beautiful, as male and female. The impetus towards oneness and unity, accompanied by a pronounced emphasis on hierarchy and subsumption, is, I argue, a significant factor in establishing (and destabilizing) gender in the Sermons on the Song of Songs.

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This perspective points to the relation between the two gendered devotional models discussed in Chapter 1: the woman who becomes male and the monk who performs the bride of Christ. While the former is imagined straightforwardly as a progressive movement from an inferior female level to a superior male level, the latter represents a more complicated but still recognizable version of transcendentalized maleness: an ideal male who absorbs all femaleness. Borrowing the discursive functions of femaleness, the male bride appropriates the mother’s fecundity and capacity for nurturance, the widow’s chastity and grief, and the virgin’s exaltation and fruition. Concurrently, s/he embodies (as Bynum put it) a ‘superior lowliness’, while at the same time participating in a process of transformation from worldliness to spiritualness, from unlikeness to likeness, from female to male — thus making this entrenched, ascetic-devotional language accessible also to males.1 My argument of a discursive impetus towards oneness, unification, and universalization will supply a framework for what might be seen as a ‘double movement’ in gendered representations in the Sermons. On the one hand, Bernard appropriates femaleness while, on the other hand, he defeminizes the bride and hermeneutical agency. What emerges in the course of this (re)reading of gender representations and feminized significations is neither a consistent idealization nor a consistent denigration but rather something more complex. It is both an affirmation and a dismissal — an unresolved, suspended, and deeply ambivalent tension. Dichotomous yet complementary oppositions appertaining to Cistercian devotion are reaffirmed in a femaleness encompassing fertility and celibacy, humility and exaltation, bliss and obligation, fulfilment and suspense. Yet at the same time this appropriated femininity is disavowed insofar as it is anything other than a reflection of the paradox by which a transcendent masculinity incorporated characteristics or stances traditionally marked as feminine.2 This is the argument pursued in the current chapter. The starting point for this discussion are notions of transformation, conformity, and imitation, which destabilize dualities in the last sermon cycle of the Sermons on the Song of Songs (Scc 80–85). With the notion of twoness collapsing into oneness, the undercurrent in Bernard’s discussions on mystical marriage is the allusion to ‘two in one spirit’ (i Cor 6. 17), echoing with ‘two in one 1 

See above, Section 1.1 and below, Section 6.6. See Burrus’s formulation, ‘Begotten, Not Made’, p. 185: regarding the concerns of the fathers of trinitarian doctrine which was, she holds, not to ascribe human form to God but rather to lay claim to a transcendentally divine form for man — the consequence of which is an idealized masculinity and a masculinized transcendence. 2 

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flesh’ (Gen 2. 24), which provides Bernard with a hermeneutical key to figuring spiritual marriage between the soul-bride and the Word-bridegroom: ‘if a carnal marriage makes one flesh of two,’ he asks, ‘how much more will not a spiritual union of marriage make one spirit out of two?’3 This analogy points to the inherent interrelation between the corporeal and the spiritual in Bernard’s bridal mysticism, where the two levels reflect each other while still requiring the subject to surpass and transform the lower in order to arrive at the higher. Bernard opens, however, by emphasizing precisely dualities, that is, the dual nature of human condition. In Sermons 80 to 82 he sharpens antithetical tensions as to previous sermons, representing creational godlikeness as partially lost and partially retained.4 Caught in a dialectical tension between godlikeness (similitudo) and unlikeness (dissimilitudo), this representation of human condition extends across the dual poles of hope and hopelessness, immortality and death, freedom and slavery.5 Evidently, this is a different kind of duality than the tensions centring on duty and bliss, activity and contemplation. It is more related to the oppositions between worldliness and fleshliness, for instance, in Sermons 9 and 38, and instated as the very ontological status of postlapsarian humanity.6 Preparing for the image of nuptial union, Bernard compares the soul to the Word: ‘What can there be in common between majesty so great and poverty so extreme that such sublimity and such lowliness might embrace in the manner and love of bride and bridegroom as if they were on equal terms?’7 Indeed, how might such incommensurability and disparity be overcome? How might the demarcation between humanity and divinity be dissolved so that they are no longer two but one: non duos, sed unum (Scc 83.6)? The answer supplied in 3 

Scc 8.9, OSB, v.1, p. 108: ‘Nam si carnale matrimonium constituit duos in carne una, cur non magis spiritualis copula duos coniunget in uno spiritu?’ 4  McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p.  172, terms it ‘an almost unbearable tension between what we were meant to be and what we are.’ On this point, see also Casey, Athirst for God, pp. 161–70. 5  On the systematic aspects of this topic, see discussions in McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp.  168–72, and ‘Freedom, Formation, and Reformation’; see also Pedersen, Bernhard af Clairvaux, pp. 59–61, and Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. by Downes, pp. 150–52. 6  See Tables 5 and 9 above, Sections 2.4 and 4.4. 7  Scc 81.1, OSB, v.2, p. 574: ‘Quae enim conventio tantae majestati et tantae paupertati, ut more et amore sponsorum, veluti ex aequo, sese complecti referantur sublimitas illa, et illa humilitas?’

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Sermon 83 offers an encompassing argument by which the prevailing themes of love, desire, likeness, and union are subsumed and conjoined. ‘God demands that he be feared like a Lord, honoured like a father, and loved like a bridegroom. Which of these is the highest,’ asks Bernard, ‘which is the most excellent?’ And he answers: ‘Surely it is love.’8 Re-raising the issue of disinterested love, Bernard dismisses the slave and the son as spiritual models. While he admits that sons do love their fathers, he sustains that they are thinking of their inheritance, and as long as they have any fear of losing it, they take care to honour — more than to love — the one they expect to inherit: ‘I suspect the love which seems to be founded on some hope of gain.’9 ‘Pure love,’ he insists, ‘does not demand reward.’10 Neither instrumental nor self-interested, then, the bride’s love is directed solely towards the bridegroom: ‘He asks for nothing else, and she has nothing else to give. Therefore, he is the bridegroom and she is the bride.’11 And therefore the bride stands highest in the hierarchy of love: ‘Love is a great thing, but there are degrees to it. The bride stands highest [sponsa in summa stat].’12 Adapting three ‘degrees’ of affections to the triple hermeneutical structure (cf. Table 1), this hierarchy may be represented as follows: 1. The disciplined but fear-motivated affection of the slave for his master 2. The dutiful but reward-motivated affection of the son for his father 3. The selfless yet salvific and blissful love of the bride for the bridegroom Expounding on the bride’s disinterested love, Bernard constructs a concept of love — pure bridal love — without any resort to imagery or metaphor, nakedly and explicitly: Love is sufficient unto itself: it pleases in itself and it pleases because of itself. It is its own merit and its own reward. Love seeks neither cause nor fruition beyond itself.

8  Scc 83.4, OSB, v.2, p. 606: ‘Exigit ergo Deus timeri ut Dominus, honorari ut pater, et ut sponsus amari. Quid in his praestat, quid eminet? Nempe amor.’ 9  Scc 83.5, OSB, v.2, p. 606: ‘Suspectus est mihi amor, cui aliud quid adipiscendi spes suffra­ gari videtur.’ 10  Scc 83.5, OSB, v.2, p. 606: ‘Purus amor mercenarius non est.’ On the theme of pure love, see McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 199–200. 11  Scc 83.5, OSB, v.2, p. 608: ‘Nec is aliud quaerit, nec illa aliud habet. Hinc ille sponsus, et sponsa illa est.’ 12  Scc 83.5, OSB, v.2, p. 606: ‘Magna res amor; sed sunt in eo gradus. Sponsa in summo stat.’

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It is its own fruition; it is its own use [fructus eius, usus eius]. I love because I love; I love that I may love.13

Assimilating the dyadic pairs of ‘merit’ and ‘reward’ (meritum–praemium) and ‘use’ and ‘fruition’ (usus–fructus), Bernard presents love as both cause (amo quia amo: ‘I love because I love’) and effect (amo ut amem: ‘I love that I may love’). With firm rhetorical control, he introduces a notion of duality which is immediately disrupted and subverted. Love, in this interpretation, thwarts all oppositions, all notions of twoness, while the exegete poetically composes a closed circle: ‘I love because I love, I love that I may love.’ According to Étienne Gilson, Bernard draws on Cicero’s depiction of disinterested love in De amicitia in this passage.14 Just as conspicuous, I suggest, is the reverberation of Augustine’s uti-frui in the text: usus and fructus are participles of the two deponent verbs that otherwise are referred to in their infinitive form. There is yet another Augustinian allusion in the passage: amo ut amem (I love that I may love) reads like an echo of Augustine’s credo ut intelligam (I believe that I may understand).15 Thereby alluding to the epistemological aspect of love (the identification of loving and knowing), Bernard concurrently emphasizes love’s unique ontological status as both instrumental and absolute, both merit and reward, by the tautological construction: amo quia amo, amo ut amem. Having shifted to the first-person singular form, Bernard has abandoned the figure of the bride — or, rather, he has transformed himself into bride. Again it is the ‘I’ speaking now: amo, amem. Bernard’s ‘experiential’ reading blends in with his self-representation, as he assumes the part of lovesick bride. Again seeking a hermeneutical leap from ‘reading’ to ‘feeling’, Bernard instates his ego as mirror of the scriptural message. Enhanced by its rhythmic quality, the intensity of the passage seems to invite — or perhaps seduce? — his audience into a reflexive jouissance, further dissolving the already eroded confine between text and experience. Spiritual arousal in Bernard’s Sermons, as Christine Mohrmann 13 

Scc 83.4, OSB, v.2, p. 606: ‘Is per se sufficit, is per se placet, et propter se. Ipse meritum, ipse praemium est sibi. Amor praeter se non requirit causam, non fructum: fructus eius, usus eius. Amo, quia amo; amo, ut amem.’ 14  Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. by Downes, pp. 10–13. Citing Cicero (De amicitia, cap. IX and cap. XIV), Gilson supplies several passages which might have influenced Bernard’s text, e.g.: ‘sic amicitiam, non spe mercedis adducti, sed quod omnis eius fructus in ipso amore inest’ (my italics), and, ‘Non igitur utilitatem amicitia, sed utilitas amicitiam, consecuta est.’ 15  Popularized in the twelfth century by Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion 1, col. 227C; cf. Augustine, e.g Classis prima De Scripturis: Sermo xliii 6, col. 257.

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has observed, is rhetorically and stylistically regulated, somewhat like a thermostat.16 The audience is drawn into a series of escalations and climaxes, which constitute spiritual and dramaturgical peaks in the text, reproducing the bride’s (or Bernard’s) bliss in the listening monk. Yet, even while seducing his audience, Bernard-bride is attempting, I shall argue, to seduce God. Departing from a reference to Deus caritas est (i Jn 4. 16), Bernard arrives at the designation sponsus Amor: the bridegroom who is Love itself (and not the desexualized caritas but the erotic amor). ‘How can the bride — the bride of Love — not love?’ he croons, ‘How can Love not be loved?’17 Unleashing his literary and rhetorical proficiency, Bernard captures the mirroring motion of love. Spiritual and emotional excess is, as so often in the Sermons, matched by stylistic excess. Yet alongside the poetic and rhythmic effects of the prose, he is also building an argument. The argument regards the transfiguring capacity of amor, which allows him to establish mutuality and to pass from mutuality to conformity and finally to the transformative seduction inherent in his vision of spiritual nuptials. Bernard begins, ‘Among all the motions, the senses, and the affections [affectibus] of the soul it is only love by which the creature, even if not as equal, might respond its creator and might recompense his favour as a similar.’18 However, it might seem that the disproportion between the lovers is too great: Abundance [of love] does not flow equally from her who loves and from him who is Love [amans et Amor], the soul and the Word, the bride and the bridegroom, the Creator and the creature — any more than it does from a thirsty man and a fountain [sitiens et fons].19 16 

Mohrmann, ‘Observations sur la langue e le style de Saint Bernard’, p.  xxv: ‘D’une manière générale, c’est la tension plus ou moins grande qui constitue, pour ainsi dire, l’élément régulateur du style de saint Bernard. La fréquence des éléments du style figuré — parallélismes, antithèses, jeux de mots et de sons, images, métaphores — augmente à proportion d’une tension intérieure qui résulte, selon les cas, de l’enthousiasme religieux, de la colère, de la douleur, de la tendresses ou d’autres mouvements de l’âme.’ 17  Scc 83.5, OSB, v.2, p. 608: ‘Quidni amet sponsa, et sponsa Amoris? Quidni ametur Amor?’ 18  Scc 83.4, OSB, v.2, p. 606: ‘Solus est amor ex omnibus animae motibus, sensibus atque affectibus, in quo potest creatura, etsi non ex aequo, respondere auctori, vel de simili mutuam rependere vicem.’ 19  Scc 83.6, OSB, v.2, p. 608: ‘Non plane pari ubertate fluunt amans et Amor, anima et Verbum, sponsa et sponsus, Creator et creatura, non magis quam sitiens et fons.’ See also Scc 68.1, OSB, v.2, p. 410: ‘Quid sibi ergo vult ista inter tam dispares comparatio? Aut illa in immensum

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Representing the incompatibility between bride and bridegroom, humanity and divinity, Bernard defines him as source and origin of love (‘fountain’), placing her in a position of lack or need (‘thirst’). Love, again, appears liquidized, envisioned as an overflowing fountain. But in this image, the earlier depictions of the bride as a fountain is reformulated: he is fons, she is sitiens.20 As in previous representations, the sacramental subtext — both Eucharistic and baptismal — maintains a notion of discrepancy between plenitude (the source, the pouring over) and participation (the recipient) which is upheld both on an ecclesiological or allegorical level and on a tropological level. Love — referred to in this sermon not only by the continuously repeated amor but also by the related (if less sexualized) terms diligere and caritas — is the only way of bridging humanity and divinity because it seeks nothing but itself: For example, if God is angry with me, shall I similarly be angry with him? No, indeed, rather I should tremble and fear and I should beg for mercy. Likewise, if he accuses me I shall not accuse him in return, but rather justify him. Nor will I judge him if he judges me, but adore him. Saving me, he does not ask to be saved by me; he who liberates everyone does not need to be liberated by anyone. If he exercises his power, I must serve; if he commands, I must obey and not demand his service or obedience in return. Now you will see how different love is. For when God loves, he wills nothing else than to be loved, knowing that those who love him are blessed by their very love.21

Alluding to the union of nuptial mysticism, amor joins that which otherwise cannot be joined — human and divine, lowly and lofty — by providing communality between the soul and the Word, bride and bridegroom. This theme gloriatur, aut is in immensum amat’ (What meaning can there be in a comparison between two so dissimilar beings? Either she glories herself beyond measure or else he loves beyond measure). 20  On the bride as fons, see Scc 9.10 above, Section 2.4, and Scc 22.2 above, Section 4.3. On the bride as sitiens, see Scc 7.2 above, Section 2.3; and Scc 32.2 below, Section 6.4. Generally, the former emerges in an ecclesiological context, the latter in a tropological context. 21  Scc 83.4, OSB, v.2, p. 606: ‘Verbi gratia, si mihi irascatur Deus, num illi ego similiter reirascar? Non utique, sed pavebo, sed contremiscam, sed veniam deprecabor. Ita si me arguat, non redarguetur a me, sed ex me potius iustificabitur. Nec si me iudicabit, iudicabo ego eum, sed adorabo: et salvans me non quaerit a me ipse salvari, nec vicissim eget ab aliquo liberari, qui liberat omnes. Si dominatur, me oportet servire; si imperat, me oportet parere, et non vicissim a Domino vel servitium exigere, vel obsequium. Nunc iam videas de amore quam aliter sit. Nam cum amat Deus, non aliud vult, quam amari: quippe non ad aliud amat nisi ut ametur, sciens ipso amore beatos, qui se amaverint.’

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appears also in Sermon 59, where Bernard refers it directly to the Song of Songs: ‘Love speaks,’ he purrs, ‘knowing nothing of lordship, for this is a song of love and intended for lovers alone.’22 Indeed, he says, ‘Love makes them not just equal but one. Perhaps you think that God would be an exception to this law of love [amoris regula], but anyone who adheres to God, becomes one spirit with him [i Cor 4. 17].’23 Having established a concept of love as ontological equalizer, indeed unifier, Bernard directs the audience’s attention to themes of likeness and imitation. The bride’s godlikeness is affirmed when she loves like he loves: ‘When he loves, he wills nothing else than to be loved.’ Throughout the Sermons, the bride’s burning, restless yearning for the bridegroom has been a focal point for Bernard’s reading, for instance, in Sermon 9, where she cries: ‘I beg, I implore, I beseech; let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.’24 In Sermon 57, however, Bernard emphasizes that he, the bridegroom, loved first: ‘It is his desire which creates yours […]. For it was not we who loved him, but,’ here he cites i Jn 4. 10, ‘he who loved us first.’25 The bride’s desire, then, has been anticipated by the bridegroom’s all along. It was after all his desire which was to be consummated by the kiss and by the embrace.26 Having departed from the bride’s immodest, indeed shameless desire which knows no reason (Scc 9.2), Bernard in the course of the exposition inverts the order, presenting her as the responsive one, him as the active. In this perspective, her desire implements likeness in that it imitates his. It has previously been noted that likeness is a precondition for gazing and for touching.27 Reaffirming the notion of likeness as requirement for God’s involvement with the bride, Sermon 82 presents likeness in terms of reciprocal vision: 22  Scc 59.1, OSB, v.2, p.  292: ‘Amor loquitur, qui dominum nescit. Carmen nimirum amoris est, nec aliis hoc quam amatoriis fulciri oportuit.’ 23  Scc 59.2, OSB, v.2, p. 292: ‘nec modo pares, sed unum eos facit. Tu Deum forsitan adhuc ab hac amoris regula excipi putas; sed qui adhaeret Deo, unus spiritus est [I Cor VI, 17].’ 24  Scc 9.2, OSB, v.1, p. 112: ‘Rogo, supplico, flagito, osculetur me osculo oris sui.’ See above, Section 2.4; cf. Scc 74 above, Section 4.5. 25  Scc 57.6, OSB, v.2, p. 268: ‘Illius namque desiderium tuum creat […]: non enim nos eum, sed ipse, inquit, prior dilexit nos [I Joan. IV, 10].’ 26  See Casey, Athirst for God, pp. 74–75, who regards Bernard’s emphasis on God’s active desire for mystical union with humanity as ‘somewhat characteristic’ for Bernard, not found as strongly in Bernard’s principal sources. 27  On gazing and likeness, see Scc 38.5 above, Section 4.4; on touching and likeness, see Scc 28.10 above, Section 5.3.

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Certainly in the natural order like seeks like. This is the voice of one who seeks: Return, Shunamite, return, so we may gaze at you [Song 6. 12]. He would not gaze at her when she was unlike [him], but he will gaze at her when she is like [him], and he will also let her gaze at him.28

Here, again, the desiring subject — the ‘seeker’ (requirentis) — is not the bride but God. With this shift of perspective, attention is squarely transferred onto God’s own desire, to his eros urge — as opposed to the bride’s yearning in the bridegroom’s absence. Ordered love, according to Christianized interpretation of eros, always seeks what is ontologically superior. Therefore, God — the ultimate telos, the summum bonum — seeks and desires what is most like himself: ‘like seeks like’ (similis similem quaerit). In fact, finding the bride to be ‘like’ (similem) himself, God gazes; and gazing at her, he lets her gaze at him. Gazing at her, then, he is, in fact, mirroring himself in her — like an autoerotic Narcissus gazing at his own reflection. The future tense of their gazing (intuebitur, intuendum praestabit) points to an eschatological dimension, evoking i Cor 13. 12: ‘when we shall see face to face’ (facie ad faciem). Here, as elsewhere, the hermeneutical level of anagogy subsumes both contemplative and eschatological themes in a dynamic and reciprocal structuring in which the two dimensions of anagogic meaning reflect and mutually explain each another. Eschatology reflects contemplation and vice versa, and it is precisely this analogy which allows Bernard to evoke both levels. Reading anagogically, he represents contemplation as an anticipated and incomplete but nevertheless blissful conjunction of here-now and there-then: an ‘imperfect perfection’ (imperfecta perfectio), as he terms it elsewhere.29 According to Waddell, the central point in Bernard’s Christomimetic process is that contemplative vision of the Verbum sponsus implies assuming his likeness, and that perfect vision postulates perfect conformity.30 Aligning conformity and transformation, Bernard writes in Sermon 69 that ‘when the soul is able to gaze on the revealed face of God’s glory, she is compelled to conform [conformari] and to transform [transformari] into his 28  Scc 82.7, OSB, v.2, pp. 598–600: ‘Et certe de ratione naturae, similis similem quaerit. Vox requirentis: Revertere, Sunamitis; revertere, ut intueamur te [Cant. VI, 12]. Intuebitur similem, qui dissimilem non videbat; sed et se intuendum praestabit.’ 29  QH 10.1, col. 221C; the phrasing is borrowed from Jerome, Adversus pelagianos 1.14, col. 508A. 30  Waddell, ‘The Glorified Christ’. For a different perspective on gazing and ‘mimetic desire’ in the Platonic and Neoplatonic tradition, see Miles, ‘“Facie ad Faciem”’.

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image’.31 To become wholly transformed by divine splendour is to have reached divine presence, and, as noted, ‘seeing him as he is, is the same as being as he is’ (non aliud est videre sicuti est, quam esse sicuti est) — a completion to be fully realized only ‘then’ (tunc), in the eschatological future.32 Yet, clearly, whether eschatologically or contemplatively, if God is to enter into union with the de-formed soul, she must be re-formed, trans-formed, conformed — regaining his form, the godlike form. This means to recover the original divine image, if only in part, momentarily, and imperfectly in this life.33 The remodelled bride is admitted into the bridegroom’s nuptial embrace when she ‘returns and converts to the Word to be reformed [reformandae] by him and conformed [conformandae] to him’.34 Love, it seems, effects mutuality — and therefore unity — even in this life because of its mimetic quality. When the soul loves, she mirrors God’s own affective movement. She begins to resemble him: Such conformity [conformitas] weds the soul to the Word, for she shows that she is like him not only in her nature but in her will: loving as she is loved [diligens sicut dilecta est]. If she loves perfectly, she is wedded. What is more delightful than this conformity? What might be more desirable than that love, o soul, by which you are not content with a human master but rather, with a capacity of the intellect which equals the fervour of desire, you trustingly approach the Word, constantly cling to the Word, and familiarly seek answers and advice in all things from the Word? Truly this is a spiritual and saintly wedding contract. But I say too little, speaking of a contract: it is an embrace [complexus]. Clearly an embrace, where one single will makes of two one spirit.35 31 

Scc 69.7, OSB, v.2, p. 430: ‘cum semel revelata facie gloriam Dei speculari anima poterit, mox illi se conformari necesse est, atque in eamdem imaginem transformari.’ 32  Scc 31.3, OSB, v.1, p. 458: ‘esse autem clarissimum, pervenisse est […] non aliud est videre sicuti est, quam esse sicuti est […] Sed id tunc.’ 33  See McGinn, ‘Freedom, Formation, and Reformation’ and The Growth of Mysticism, p.  172. Discussing Scc 80–82, McGinn schematizes these terms into a triple theme of 1) formatio: the similitudo in creation, 2) deformatio: the fall, and 3) reformatio: redemption and rectification by Christ. On form-reform, see also Scc 14.5 above, Section 4.2. 34  Scc 83.2, OSB, v.2, p. 604: ‘animae reditus, conversio eius ad Verbum, reformandae per ipsum, conformandae ipsi’. 35  Scc 83.3, OSB, v.2, p. 604: ‘Talis conformitas maritat animam Verbo, cum cui videlicet similis est per naturam, similem nihilominus ipsi se exhibet per voluntatem, diligens sicut dilecta est. Ergo si perfecte diligit, nupsit. Quid hac conformitate iucundius? Quid optabilius caritate, qua fit ut, humano magisterio non contenta, per temet, o anima, fiducialiter accedas ad Verbum, Verbo constanter inhaereas, Verbum familiariter percuncteris, consultesque de omni re, quantum intellectu capax, tantum audax desiderio? Vere spiritualis sanctique connubii

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Conformitas means likeness, similitude, and accordance; conformitas or conformare is the process of reconquering divine similitude by reconquering primeval desire. Created in God’s image, the soul resembles the Word per naturam, which applies to all humanity (likeness is not totally lost, but partially concealed).36 But the bride resembles the Word even by her will (per voluntatem) because she loves as she is loved, desires as she is desired. Loving, for Bernard, is an act of and in the will,37 and the mutual love between the bride and bridegroom implies that his will — to love and be loved — is precisely reflected in her as she loves as she is loved. An imitatio Dei on the most sublime and subtle level, this nuptial embrace entails becoming a living mirror to God: a reflexive restoration of godlikeness, not as devotional praxis but as a process of transformative Christomimetic ascent. Conformity, then, implies identity of will which provides the unitive nuptials, where ‘two become one spirit’ (cf. i Cor 6. 17). In this context, the embrace metaphor reappears. Here designated as complexus rather than amplexus, Bernard plays on its assonance with (marriage) ‘contract’ (contractus) as well as its double meaning of ‘embrace’ and ‘pact’, hence evoking, like in Sermon 14, a notion of two forms of mutually excluding embraces or pacts: with the world on one hand and with God on the other.38 The bride’s turn towards God — her ‘return’ (reditus), her ‘conversion’ (conversio) — hints, as suggested in the preceding chapter, at the potential seduction inherent in desiring God which, rather than effacing corporality and literalness affirms and restores it. In this sense, the ‘image’, that is, the divine embrace, establishes a primacy over the ‘reality’ of a physical and sexual union while upholding the literal meaning in the dynamic of desire. Again emphasizing the transformative aspect of conformitas, Bernard applies a gloss on ii Cor 3. 18 in Sermon 62: ‘Gazing with revealed faces, we are transformed into his image, from splendour to splendour, by the spirit of the Lord [ii Cor 3. 18]. We are transformed as we are conformed [transformamur cum conformamur].’39 Implied in transformare and conformare are notions of concontractus est iste. Parum dixi, contractus: complexus est. Complexus plane, ubi idem velle, et nolle idem, unum facit spiritum de duobus.’ 36  I refer again to McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, esp. p. 171. 37  In Cistercian interpretation of the anatomy of love, affectus is closely connected with the will, voluntas. See also above, Section 4.4, on Scc 11.5–6. In Blanpain’s reading, ‘Langage mystique’, Coll.cist., 36, the dyad of affectus carnalis and amor castus, are related to, respectively, ‘désir intéressé’ and ‘désir désintéressé’. 38  See Scc 14.5, above Section 4.2. 39  Scc 62.5, OSB, v.2, p. 336: ‘Etenim revelata facie speculantes, in eamdem imaginem

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templative gazing (speculantes), notions of creational and salvific godlikeness (imaginem), and notions of eschatological splendour (claritate). Annulling the incompatibility between the lovers, the reciprocal mimetic movement of love — upwards, downwards — implements unification by similitude. Conforming, then, is transforming. And it is, concurrently, a seduction of God and by God. Seduction, it has been argued, differs from other forms of exchange (e.g., rape or proposal) precisely in relation to the will. Rather than upholding distinct beings with separate sets of wishes, seduction disrupts the distinction of wills: ‘Seduction depends on X convincing Y that she already secretly desires the same amorous play that X desires, and that she has the potential to amalgamate with Y into a single being, a “we” that will replace “I” and “you”’.40 As Karmen MacKendrick points out: ‘Seduction, rendering subject boundaries untidy, cannot be a one-sided play of power.’41 Indeed, the seductive power of the mimetic soul proves irresistible to Bernard’s God: Although the creature loves less, being lesser, yet if she loves with all of herself, still there is nothing lacking because everything is given. Hence to love [amare] like this, as I said, is to have entered into wedlock: for she cannot love [diligere] like this and not be loved; complete and perfect marriage consists in consensus of two.42

Again emphasizing the will, Bernard invokes the juridical principle of consensus (i.e., free consent to marriage) which was rapidly taking hold as the formative element of marriage in twelfth-century canon law.43 Yet while the passage is garbed in marriage imagery, notions of seduction still prevail. For Bernard, divine seduction is all about the will (voluntas), about willingly or unwillingly desiring the same as the other: s/he ‘cannot love like this and not be loved’. God cannot be loved like this and not love. They are both seduced. This means transformamur de claritate in claritatem, tamquam a Domini Spiritu [II Cor III, 18]. Trans­ formamur cum conformamur.’ 40  Ostriker, ‘Anne Sexton and the Seduction of the Audience’, pp. 154–55. In rape, Ostriker observes, X subdues Y by force and by the proposal X promises Y an exchange of goods and services; both cases, unlike seduction, admits an interchange of distinct and separate wills. See MacKendrick, ‘Carthage Didn’t Burn Hot Enough’, p. 207, who cites Ostriker. 41  MacKendrick, ‘Carthage Didn’t Burn Hot Enough’, p. 207. 42  Scc 83.6, OSB, v.2, p. 608: ‘Nam etsi minus diligit creatura, quoniam minor est, tamen si ex tota se diligit, nihil deest ubi totum est. Propterea, ut dixi, sic amare, nupsisse est, quoniam non potest sic diligere, et parum dilecta esse, ut in consensu duorum integrum stet perfectumque connubium.’ 43  On consensus in canon law, see d’Avray, Medieval Marriage, pp. 124–29.

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that in this erotic game of seduction, God may be evasive but he may not evade the rules of seduction: ‘He cannot but respond’, in Baudrillard’s words.44 God is, as Bernard stated above, no exception to the ‘rule of love’ (Scc 59.2: regula amoris). If desire is a voice, it is also a performative voice in that it implements the realization of that desire.45 What exactly, one may ask, is the seductiveness by which God responds and which might ‘render untidy’ the very subject boundaries of the human and the divine, thereby destabilizing their otherwise ‘one-sided play of power’? And it would be tempting to answer tautologically: in Bernard’s text, God is seduced by the very break-down of subject boundaries which is the self-same result of divine seduction. McGinn describes Bernard’s concept of ‘pure love’ (amor purus) as a ‘soul so lost in love of God that she no longer has any thought beyond love with the ontological or “objective” perspective according to which a universe governed by a just God cannot allow such selfless love to go unrewarded (God must crown the merits that are nothing more than his own gifts)’.46 This description softens the question of disinterested love and of subject boundaries, a question which touches upon one of the most debated aspects of Bernard’s theology in the past century.47 For is this interpretation of desirous love really divested of self-interest and self-love? Can it be? This debate involved, above all, another and earlier Bernardine text, On Loving God (De diligendo deo). Bernard’s depiction of spiritual advancement in this text, in the form of a fourfold scheme of love, finds little resonance in the Sermons.48 He also employs the evocative 44 

See Burrus, The Sex Lives of Saints, pp. 15–16, quoting Baudrillard, Seduction, trans. by Singer, p. 142: ‘One seduces God with faith, and He cannot but respond, for seduction, like the challenge, is a reversible form. And He responds a hundredfold by His grace to the challenge of faith.’ See also MacKendrick, quoting the same passage, in ‘Carthage Didn’t Burn Hot Enough’, p. 216. 45  Cf. Scc 74.2 above, Section 4.5. 46  McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 199. 47  Bernard’s interpretation has been criticized by Protestant scholars, most notably Nygren, Den kristna kärlekstankan genem tiderna, ii, 463–69, and defended by Catholic scholars, particularly Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. by Downes, pp. 116–18, 141–47, and D’Arcy, The Mind and Heart of Love, esp. chaps 1 and 2. 48  See Dil 8.23–10.29 (cols 987D–992C). The four degrees are ordered in the form of a chiasmus from the classical tradition, i.e., ABBA: Aa amor sui propter se Ba amor Dei propter se Bb amor Dei propter Deum Ab amor sui propter Deum

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term deificare (‘to divinize’), which he never uses in the Sermons. In proposing a reading of a central passage in this text, I want to emphasize an aspect which does, however, resonate with the nuptial symbolism at hand, namely, that the juxtaposition of willing and loving implies a conformity with the divine which assumes notions of entering into godlikeness, to the point of dissolving into the divine: We should abandon [transire] ourselves to love [affectum] so that in the same way that God wills everything to exist for him, also we should want that nothing — neither we ourselves nor any other thing — existed if not for him, but only if it is his will [vountatem], not for our pleasure [voluptatem]. […] O holy and chaste love! O sweet and lovely feeling [affectio]! O pure and unblemished intention of the will! Even purer and more unblemished in that nothing of its own [de proprio] remains, even sweeter and lovelier in that all that is felt is divine. To be affected like this, is to be divinized [Sic affici, deificari est]. Like a little drop of water infused in a quantity of wine seems to lose itself as it takes on the taste and colour of wine, like a burning and glowing bar of iron becomes like fire itself and abandons its own previous form, like air filled with sunlight is transformed into the light’s own splendour so it seems not only illuminated but rather to be light itself: just so, in the saintly, it In the first degree, which represents innate and carnal self-love, one loves oneself for one’s own sake. But because of the unsatiable nature of desire, the subject is driven towards God and to the second degree, whereby one begins to love God, though not yet for God’s sake. In experiencing the transformative love of God, however, the loving subject supersedes this selfish love and arrives at disinterested love: the third degree where one loves God for God’s sake. Bernard, remarkably, does not stop here; the fourth and final degree represents a return to self-love — but now one loves oneself solely for God’s sake. Cf. the fourfold scheme in Scc 40.2–3 quid intendas, et propter quid (see above Section 2.7), which is not chiastic: Aa intendere in saeculum, propter saeculum (anima secularis) Ba intendere in Deum, propter saeculum, (anima hypocrita) Ab intendere in saeculum, propter Deum (Martha) Bb intendere in Deum, propter Deum (Mary) As can be seen, in both sequences Aa and Bb conflate object and purpose of love: the prior is self-centred and inferior, the latter is God-centred and superior. But the positions of Ab and Bb are inverted in the two texts. Both, however, entail subsuming love for the self and the world in a scheme which, in accordance with uti-frui, encompasses amor Dei without interfering or competing with it — loving God for God’s sake and the self and the world for God’s sake. Cf. Augustine’s structure in De civitate dei 14.28, col. 436, which is a chiasmus between self and God, but which is more dualistic than Bernard’s: ‘Fecerunt itaque civitates duas amores duo; terrenam scilicet amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei, coelestem vero amor Dei usque ad contemptum sui’ (italics are mine) (‘Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self ’; trans. by Dods, p. 649).

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is necessary that all human affections [affectionem] be ineffably dissolved and completely immersed into the will of God.49

The highest degree of love, corresponding to the anagogic telos of love in both a contemplative and an eschatological sense, is attained when the soul is emptied of its self-will and filled completely with God’s will. Dismissing the position of the self, reflected in the negative language of the opening phrase (nec, nec, nisi, non), Bernard holds that self-will, even if in accord with God’s will, must be extinguished, leaving the sole possibility of willing God’s will.50 By banishing all which is its ‘own’ (proprium), the soul is absorbed into the divine, and ‘divinized’ (deificari est), says Bernard, advancing the language of divinization more typical of the Eastern mystical tradition than the Latin.51 Generally, he prefers the Pauline terms transformatio and conformitas (and the connoted verbs transformare and conformare) when referring to the transformative process inherent in divine presence. These latter terms preserve Bernard’s notion of contemplative unification as founded on notions of reflection, imitation, and likeness, rather than on notions of the human substance being annihilated into the divine. The image of the three elements are also from the Greek tradition, reappearing in the medieval West in a text by Maximus the Confessor translated into Latin by John Eriugena, and which might, then, have been available to Bernard.52 They figure the transformation whereby the saintly soul is ‘dis49 

Dil 10.28, col.  991AB: ‘Oportet proinde in eumdem nos affectum quandocunque transire: ut quomodo Deus omnia esse voluit propter semetipsum, sic nos quoque nec nosipsos, nec aliud aliquid fuisse, vel esse velimus, nisi aeque propter ipsum, ob solam videlicet ipsius voluntatem, non nostram voluptatem. […] O amor sanctus et castus! o dulcis et suavis affectio! o pura et defaecata intentio voluntatis! eo certe defaecatior et purior, quo in ea de proprio nil jam admistum relinquitur: eo suavior et dulcior, quo totum divinum est quod sentitur. Sic affici, deificari est. Quomodo stilla aquae modica, multo infusa vino, deficere a se tota videtur, dum et saporem vini induit, et colorem; et quomodo ferrum ignitum et candens, igni simillimum fit, pristina propriaque forma exutum; et quomodo solis luce perfusus aer in eamdem transformatur luminis claritatem, adeo ut non tam illuminatus, quam ipsum lumen esse videatur: sic omnem tunc in sanctis humanam affectionem quodam ineffabili modo necesse erit a semetipsa liquescere, atque in Dei penitus transfundi voluntatem.’ I have modified a translation by McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 213. 50  On discussions on disinterested love in the high medieval period, see Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, especially on Heloise, pp. 70–75, and Marguerite Porete, pp. 158–64. 51  On this point, see McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 213, 509 n. 333. 52  On the theme of the three images, see discussion in McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 116, 213–14. On the question of influence on Bernard by Maximus, see Gilson, The Mystical

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solved’ (liquescere) and ‘immersed’ (transfundi) into the divine. Each of the images portrays a process in which a substance seems to abandon its original nature and take another form. The terminology sustains this interpretation: ‘losing’ or ‘abandoning’ itself (the drop of water infused in wine), ‘being freed from’ or ‘deprived of ’ its form (the glowing iron), and ‘being transformed’ or ‘altered’ (the sunlit air). A careful reading of Bernard’s three images, however, suggests that a distinction between humanity and divinity remains, as Gilson maintained.53 In fact, the ‘self ’ is sonorously affirmed by the self-love which remains in the fourth and highest degree of love, ‘loving oneself only for the sake of God’, it is merely the self-will which is destroyed.54 Yet this reminiscence of self-love on an anagogic level is ambiguous, for the self which loves itself is radically transformed (dissolved, immersed) into godlikeness. So who really loves whom? Some critics have suggested that Bernard here falls into self-divinization.55 Others see a reconfirmation of concepts of paradoxical divinization and annihilation (‘death’ of the soul) in which human self-love is sublimated rather than expelled.56 McGinn, following Gilson, may well be correct in maintaining that Bernard’s depiction of union, whether in the Sermons or in On Loving God, envisions neither a ‘union of identity’ nor an ‘indistinction’ with God.57 But it may be equally emphasized that whatever distinctions remain are reduced to an absolute minimum. It is significant that ‘divinization’ (deificari), as it appears in the text, does not entail ontological transformation but rather reflection: in the highest degree of love, the soul’s amor sui appears as an identical copy of God’s amor sui. God loves the soul insofar as she is like him, and she loves Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. by Downes, pp. 26–28, who is too affirmative according to McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 509 n. 336. For further references on the theme of the three images, see McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 509 n. 335. 53  See Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. by Downes, p. 123: ‘The mystical union integrally respects this real distinction between the Divine substance and the human substance, between the will of God and the will of man; it is neither a confusion of the two substances in general, nor a confusion of the substances of the two wills in particular; but it is their perfect accord, the coincidence of two willings.’ 54  Dil 10.27, col. 990B: ‘seipsum diligat homo nisi propter Deum’. 55  This view is exposed in older studies, e.g., Rousselot, Pour l’histoire du problème de l’amour. See Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. by Downes, pp. 239–40 nn. 179–81, where he dismisses the arguments of Rousselot. 56  As does Nygren, Den kristna kärlekstankan genem tiderna, ii, 466–68. 57  McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, p. 213.

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herself insofar as she is like him. Admitted as participant in Gods self-love, her amor sui is nothing other than his amor sui reflected in her.58 Reformed, conformed, and transformed into his image by mirroring him perfectly and exactly, she mimetically reproduces God’s self-love: a living, translucid speculum for his self-directed and self-desirous voluntas, his amor sui. Thus, she is ready for the wedding (cf. Scc 85.12). John Sommerfeldt has suggested that Bernard refers solely to the visio beatudinis, or the eschatological state of bliss in the passage cited above.59 Although there is an apparent temporal displacement in the reference to ‘then’ (tunc) and use of the future tense (erit), I find this to be an unduly disjunctive and static reading. Bernard states clearly that in this life, love of the fourth degree cannot be fully and perfectly implemented (Dil 10.29), but he also establishes, in the preceding passage (Dil 10.27), a contemplative reference to his treatment of transformative love.60 As noted, Bernard glides between and engages both levels of anagogic meaning, the contemplative and the eschatological, allowing for the dynamic character in his imagery and exegesis.61 Despite the apparently tidy categories of amans and Amor, soul and Word, bride and bridegroom, Creator and creature, Bernard’s configuration of godlikeness (loving him, gazing at him, being like him — being him?) nevertheless creates ‘untidiness’ in distinctions between ‘subject boundaries’. This erosion of subject boundaries emerges in the symmetry that Bernard establishes in amatory gazing as well as in his emphatic use of a symmetrical pattern of language (‘how can love not be loved’, ‘loving as she is loved’, ‘she cannot love like this and 58  The fourth degree has no mutuality, object and subject are identical, unlike the third degree, where the human is subject and God is object. The subtlety of Bernard’s amatory mysticism is that he relocates divine autoeroticism into the human subject’s interior. An element of inherent narcissism in Bernard’s concept of spiritualized love has been suggested both by Blanpain, ‘Langage mystique’, Coll.cist., 36, and by Kristeva, Tales of Love, trans. by Roudiez, p. 160. But it is important to note that, ultimately, this element of spiritual narcissism is founded in God, rather than in man. One may say that if God is Narcissus, the bride is the pool. 59  Sommerfeldt, The Spiritual Teachings, p. 226. 60  Dil 10.27, col. 990C: ‘Beatum dixerim et sanctum, cui tale aliquid in hac mortali vita raro interdum, aut vel semel, et hoc ipsum raptim, atque unius vix momenti spatio experiri donatum est’ (I would count him blessed and holy to whom it has been given to experience, rarely or now and then or even just once, in this mortal life such rapture). 61  For a similar reading of Bernard, opposing Auerbach’s emphasis on bipolarity in typo­ logical ‘figura’, in other words between prefiguration and realization, see Pranger, ‘The Persona of the Preacher in Bernard of Clairvaux’.

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not be loved’). Bernard destabilizes both subject boundaries and power play by enforcing mimesis as the ‘law of love’. As Blanpain laconically stated, ‘un certain narcissisme est à réhabiliter’.62

6.2 Divine Androgyny and Saintly Gender Trouble Recognizing the destabilization of identity between bride and bridegroom in Bernard’s text opens onto a further recognition, namely, the destabilization of male and female, humanity and divinity — a destabilization, moreover, which was discursively inscribed onto the very body of Christ. Historically, tensions in these dichotomies mounted in twelfth-century Latin Christendom by the twofold emphasis of affective piety: an increasing sense of, on the one hand, man’s creational likeness as image of the divine; and, on the other, the humanity of Christ as guarantee for an inextricable union between humankind and divinity.63 Bynum has famously argued that medieval representations increasingly feminized Christ’s body through its association with maternal breasts, an imagery which became particularly popular in and after the twelfth century.64 Recent commentators have expanded on Bynum’s observations, reflecting on the queer aspects of the relationship of medieval mystics (both nuns and monks) to Christ — for the body they desire and identify with is both male and female.65 In devotional writing of the high and late medieval period, Christ’s body — particularly, his suffering body — becomes a site where corporeal boundaries have been breached: it is porous and penetrable, with openings and excudings, and it is depicted as both male and female.66 Grounded on medieval exegesis of the creation story of Genesis 1 and Galatians, and nourished by the growing ‘paraliturgical’ cult of Sapientia — that feminine alter ego of Christ in the Sapiential books — the androgyne lingered on in medieval devotion in the guise of androgyne Christ.67 The androgyny of Christ in medieval devotion 62 

Blanpain, ‘Langage mystique’, p. 232. Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, p.  130; Stock, The Implications of Literacy, pp. 438–54. 64  Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’ and ‘The Body of Christ’. 65  See Hollywood, ‘Sexual Desire, Divine Desire’, and Moore, ‘The Song of Songs in the History of Sexuality’. 66  Bynum, ‘The Body of Christ’, pp. 109–14. 67  On Christ and Sapientia, see Newman, God and the Goddesses, pp. 190–244. See also above, Section 1.4. 63 

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drew on the economy of gender discourse, representing Christ’s descent into vulnerable flesh as an adoption of tacitly feminine traits, expressing simultaneously notions of the descent of the Incarnation and the shame and humiliation of the Passion. Still, one should keep in mind Barbara Newman’s prudent warning that in the medieval period the theme of androgyny and feminization of the divine ‘could be handled only at a metaphorical depth which lay well beneath the ken of doctrinal pronouncements’.68 One of the discursive sites most adapted to handle this kind of ‘metaphorical depth’ was exegesis of the Song of Songs. Gender-destabilizing readings of Christ the bridegroom were proffered in commentaries long before Bernard of Clairvaux and the twelfth century. Origen, Bernard’s precursor as Song commentator with a bent towards tropology, had already associated the maternal breasts of Song 1. 1 with Christ, noting that when the bride ‘reflects upon the teaching that flows from the bridegroom’s breasts, she is amazed and marvels’.69 In a recent article, Stephen Moore underscores the queerness of Origen’s reading, associating the ‘hermaphroditic cleavage’ of the bridegroom with Origen’s own gender indeterminacy: [T]he thrilling being who is the ultimate object of desire in Origen’s commentary on the Song, and whom he terms ‘the Bridegroom’, is ‘himself ’ anatomically indeterminate. He is obviously quite a man — utterly masterful, utterly capable of exhibiting his ‘husband’s’ power to the ‘virginal’ soul, and initiating her into the ‘perfect mystery’, as Origen coyly puts it (Commentary, prologue, 4) — yet he is not all man. And not because he is also God, but because he is also a woman. We receive the first inkling of this when, with a ceremonious flourish, Origen unhooks the straps of Song 1:2, ‘For thy breasts are better than wine’, and the hidden glory of the Bridegroom flops forth.70

In Bernard’s work the clearest instance of the feminization of the bridegroom occurs in Sermon 9. Here, as in Origen’s work, the androgynous bridegroom is intimately related to notions of maternal Christ. Following Origen, Bernard comments on Song 1. 1–2, identifying Christ as nurturing mother (Scc 9.5–6) even before he identifies the bride as such (Scc 9.7).71 Sermon 9 opens with the bride in a fit of passion, desperately and shamelessly begging the absent bride68 

Newman, God and the Goddesses, p. 326. Commentary on the Song of Songs 1.2, trans. by Lawson, quoted in Moore, ‘The Song of Songs in the History of Sexuality’, p. 336. 70  Moore, ‘The Song of Songs in the History of Sexuality’, p. 335. 71  See discussion of Scc 9.7 above, Section 2.4. 69 

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groom for his kiss, telling his companions (the angels) to ‘let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth’. At this point, relates Bernard, he suddenly appears: The bride, conscious of the bridegroom’s presence, falls silent. She is ashamed that he is aware of her presumption, for she judged it more modest to obtain her purpose by means of intermediaries. So she immediately turns to him to try as she may to excuse her audacity: For your breasts are better than wine, she says, fragrant with the finest ointments. That is to say: If I seem to seek the heights, o bridegroom, it is because of you; for you have generously lactated me with the sweetness of your breasts [uberum] that by my love for you, and not by my own audacity, I have put aside all fear, and so I dare more than is fitting. I dare by remembering your piety and by forgetting your majesty.72

The idiosyncratic breasts of the bridegroom (ubera: ‘maternal breasts’ or ‘udders’) with which, Bernard says, he has lactated the bride, seem to be the reason for the bride’s excessive audacity in applying for his kiss. Transmitting his taste, his ‘sweetness’ (dulcedine), by his breast milk, he concurrently demonstrates to the bride his ‘piety’ (pietatis), making her forgetful of his majesty — thus inspiring love (caritate) in her. Clearly, emphasizing pietas and caritas and contrasting these with maiestas, the figure of the lactating bridegroom resonates with the affective Christology of the twelfth century, highlighting Christ’s approachability. However, as is widely recognized in scholarship, the medieval image of the lactating bridegroom also presupposes specific features of contemporary physiology insofar as it establishes an interconnection between lactation and the Eucharist. Bynum has pointed out that the connection of milk and blood in medieval texts is ‘based on more than merely the parallelism of two bodily fluids’.73 In medieval reproductive theory, drawing in particular on Galenic and Hippocratic writings, bodily fluids — blood, semen, milk, and various effluvia — were presumed interchangeable and fungible across gender boundaries. The fluids of the medieval body were neither easily distinguished nor easily assignable to gender: digestion and generation, menstruation and other bleed72  Scc 9.4, OSB, v.1, p. 114: ‘Sponsa ergo sponsum adesse persentiens, substitit; pudet enim praesumptionis in qua se deprehensam intelligit, nam verecundius id moliri per inter­ nuntios aexistimarat. Moxque conversa ad ipsum, temeritatem, prout valet, excusare conatur: Quia meliora sunt, inquiens, ubera tua vino, fragrantia unguentis optimis. Ac si dicat: Si altum sapere videor, tu fecisti, o sponse, qui in dulcedine uberum tuorum tanta me dignatione lactasti, quatenus omni metu, tui caritate, non mea temeritate depulso, audeam plus forte quam expediat. Audeo sane pietatis memor, immemor maiestatis.’ 73  Bynum, ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, p. 132.

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ing were all elements of a free-trade fluid economy.74 Establishing an ontological identity between blood and milk, Isidore of Sevilla instructs the reader of Etymologies that ‘after birth whatever blood has not yet been spent in the nourishment of the womb flows by natural passage to the breasts, and whitening [hence lac from the Greek leukos, ‘white’, explains Isidore] by their virtue, receives the quality of milk’.75 Evoking Eucharistic subtexts, the conjunction of milk and blood may be seen also in the interrelation between Christ’s breasts and his side wound. This connection is explicitly established in one of Bernard’s letters (Ep 322). Writing to a young novice named Hugh, Bernard urges him to recognize Christ as his mother, and to seek comfort in the divine maternal breasts: Do not let the roughness of our life frighten your tender years. […] If you feel the sting of temptation, […] suck not so much the wounds as the beasts of the Crucified [suge non tam vulnera quam ubera Crucifixi]. He will be your mother, and you will be his son.76

Playing on the assonance between vulnera and ubera,77 Bernard both opposes and juxtaposes wound and breast as objects for sucking and/or nurturance — 74 

Laqueur, Making Sex, pp.  34–43. For example, in Hippocratic accounts, current throughout the Middle Ages, sperm is refined out of blood as it travels from the brain to the spine and spinal marrow, on to the kidneys, the testicles, and finally, the penis. Menstrual blood, like sperm, was transformed in the process of digestion of food (or excess food): pregnant women, who transformed otherwise superfluous food into nourishment for the fetus, and nursing mothers, who converted extra blood into milk, did not have a surplus and hence did not menstruate. See also above Section 1.5. 75  Isidore, Etymologiarum, 11.1.77, col. 407B: ‘Lac vim nominis a colore trahit, quod sit albus liquor, λευκὸς enim Graece album dicunt, cujus natura ex sanguine commutatur; nam post partum si quid sanguinis nondum fuerit uteri nutrimento consumptum, naturali meatu fluit in mammas, et earum virtute albescens lactis accipit qualitatem’ (using the translation in Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 36). 76  Ep 322.1, col. 527C: ‘Non aetatem teneram ordinis asperitas terreat. […] Si tentationum sentis aculeos […] suge non tam vulnera quam ubera Crucifixi. Ipse erit tibi in matrem, et tu eris ei in filium.’ Cf. James’s translation of suge non tam vulnera quam ubera Crucifixi (The Letters, ed. and trans. by James, letter 378, p. 449): ‘draw life from the wounds of Christ’, which quite prudishly omits the image of breasts. 77  Some scholars see a third assonance in the medieval pairing of vulnera-ubera, namely vulva, associating the side wound both to the breast and the vagina, again drawing on medieval physiological associations between milk and blood from surplus menses. See, e.g., Lochrie, ‘Mystical Acts, Queer Tendencies’; Hollywood, ‘Sexual Desire, Divine Desire’, pp. 119–20; Hollywood, ‘“That Glorious Slit”’; Lewis, ‘The Wound in Christ’s Side and the Instruments

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although recommending the ‘gentler’ act of drinking (milk) from the breast rather than (blood) from the side wound, which may seem to imply different degrees of maturity or strength. Loosely echoing the crucified Christ’s words to his mother and his disciple (‘He will be your mother and you will be his son’, cf. Jn 19. 26–27), Bernard redefines family relations by substituting fleshly family with spiritual family.78 He continues the present letter by urging the young man to renounce and reject his own family members, thereby in effect replacing them with Christ. This image of lactating Christ emphasizes the interconnection between his sacrifice and spiritual nurturance, both in the association between his wound and his breasts and in the allusion to the Crucifixion. In Sermon 9 the plurivocality inherent in the image of the lactating bridegroom is carried on into the following passage. Again, the exegetical gaze alights on the bridegroom’s maternal breasts. Bernard, speaking for (or as) the bride, continues: The abundance of grace that flows out of your breasts is more efficacious for my spiritual progress than the biting reprimands of superiors. Not only are they better than wine, they are even fragrant with the finest ointments. For not merely do you nourish those present with milk of inward sweetness, but you spray the absent with the pleasant odour of good repute, enjoying good testimony both from those inside and from those outside. You have, I say, milk within and ointment without, for those you feed with milk would not have arrived, unless you first attracted them with ointments.79

Breasts, as ever, are metonymically associated with milk, and, as in Sermon 23, opposed by severity: ‘the biting reprimands of superiors’.80 Again maternal imagery, represented by the breasts of the bridegroom, emphasizes assisting the needy — represented by the suckling bride, who seems momentarily, then, to dissolve into the figure of ‘little girl’. Here the theme of nurturance of the Passion’. For these and further references, see Hollywood, ‘Sexual Desire, Divine Desire’, pp. 119, 404–06 nn. 1–3. Bynum also notes an association between sidewound, breast, and/or womb, but down-plays its sexual import, see ‘The Body of Christ’, p. 87. 78  See above, Sections 3.4 and 4.1. 79  Scc 9.6, OSB, v.1, p. 116: ‘Pinguedo gratiae, quae de tuis uberibus fluit, efficacior mihi est ad spiritualem profectum, quam mordax imprecatio praelatorum. Nec solum meliora vino, sed et fragrantia unguentis optimis, quia non modo internae dulcedinis lacte praesentes alis, sed bonae quoque opinionis grato odore respergis absentes, bonum habens testimonium et ab his qui intus, et ab his qui foris sunt. Habes, inquam, lac intus, et foris unguenta: quoniam quidem non essent quos lacte reficeres, si non prius odore attraheres.’ 80  See Scc 23.2 above, Section 2.5.

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is stronger than in the previous section. Profusely and fragrantly overflowing (abundantiam, pinguedo, flui, respergis), the lactating bridegroom squirts out his abundance of liquid, both to those ‘outside’ (foris) and to those ‘inside’ (intus). Alluring the former and feeding the latter, this strangely sexed bridegroom is envisioned as having ‘milk within’ (lac intus) and ‘ointments outside’ (foris unguenta). With fragrant ointments s/he ‘attracts’ (attraheres) the ‘absent’ (absentes) so they might enter his/her presence, and with milk s/he ‘nourishes’ and ‘feeds’ (alis, reficeres) the ‘present’ (praesentes). Yet again associating milk and oil with the breast metaphor and with nourishment, these substances are both connected and opposed in terms of insideoutside.81 Since the opposition of inside-outside here is focalized on Christ’s body, which was commonly identified as Ecclesia, it lends an ecclesiastical subtext to the passage, perhaps indicating that the division of inside-outside refers to the boundaries between the Church the secular world, championed by the Gregorians. Those inside the Church (the ‘present’) who are lactated by the bridegroom are the clerics and monastics, whereas those outside the Church (the ‘absent’) who do not feed are the lay. Milk and ointment allude to two sacramental liquids: respectively, Eucharistic wine, which was taken by monks and clergy on behalf of everyone, and the consecrated oil, which was distributed also among the lay, especially in connection with the holy oils of baptism, confirmation, and extreme unction.82 In this sense, images of milk and oil establish liturgical boundaries between clergy and laity, analogously to the concerns of the Gregorian reformers to instate clear demarcation between the secular world and the ecclesiastical world. Concurrently, a subtext of monastic elitism seems to emerge in the passage — notions of a spiritual hierarchy within the Church, possibly within the monastic world itself. An association between oil and absence in the recurrent imagery of the little girls chasing after fragrant ointments was noted in a previous discussion,83 and can be seen to repeat itself here in the association of ointment and outsideness. The displaced position of the girls indicates, I have argued, spiritual immaturity, as when Bernard complained of his own days as a novice, that he was ‘given merely the pleasure of the ointment’s odour and 81 

On the association between milk and oil, see Scc 19.7 above, Section 4.2. On this, see, e.g., Dudley, ‘Sacramental Liturgies in the Middle Ages’, and Flanigan, Ashley, and Sheingorn, ‘Liturgy as Social Performance’. 83  See Scc 14.5–6 and 19.1 above, Section 4.2; cf. the bride chasing the bridegroom’s odours in Scc 23.1 above, Section 2.5. 82 

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not of its touch’. In Sermon 19, similarly, we found that the abbot contrasted little girls with angels: the former need fragrance to lead them on, the latter have no need for ‘outpouring’. In these related passages, the little girls who participate only indirectly (in odour/oil) were associated with novices and seculars, whereas the bride and the bridegroom’s companions who participate more directly (by touching and tasting) were associated with angels and with contemplative monks. Oppositions of inside-outside, presence-absence resonate with degrees of spiritual perfection by directness in divine participation. Thus relative positions of hermeneutical advancement are envisioned as a more or less immediate experience of tasting and feeling how the Lord is sweet — specifically, how his breasts are sweet (dulcedo uberum tuorum, de tuis uberibus […] abundantiam suavitatis).84 In this sense, the passage instates a second level of differentiation, one of particular concern to the Cistercian reform movement — namely, between the elite monk, that is, the Cistercian choir monk, and those who do not fully participate in this model of perfection, namely, secular clergy, novices, and lay monks. Alluding both to the Church and the Cistercian contemplative, the bride in the present passage is depicted as being lactated by (‘tasting’) the bridegroom. Yet in the same sermon, indeed the very same passage, she is also depicted as kissing him, even being impregnated by him. Bernard seems to imply a queerly all-encompassing involvement in Christ the bridegroom’s androgynous body. Indeed, in this sermon a whole series of remarkable reallocations and displacements take place. Initially, the bride begs the bridegroom for a kiss (Scc 9.2) — a sweet and inconspicuous image, but for the depiction of the bride as immodest adulteress. This image, however, is soon replaced by another in which the bridegroom is envisioned as having lactating breasts with which he feeds the bride (Scc 9.4–6). Next, the bride kisses her androgyne lover and, upon being fecundated, sprouts lactating breasts of her own (Scc 9.7). In a final, dizzying twist, the image of the fruitful and lactating mother reappears as a transvestite monk at prayer, breasts still dripping with fecund milk (Scc 9.7).85 Thus representing the bride and her groom as engaging in physical intimacies which completely destabilize relational categories of motherhood and loverhood, not to mention categories of gender, Bernard conflates the maternal metaphor of lactation and the erotic metaphor of kissing. With the maternal bridegroom it seems that the imagery and its dual division into eroticism and 84  85 

On tasting, see also below, Section 6.5. See above, Section 2.4.

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maternity are brought to the verge of metaphorical collapse. Blending notions of nurturance and lactation (breasts) with erotic desire and bliss (kiss), as well as gender distinctions between (and of ) the bride and bridegroom, our previous divisions into descent and ascent, using and enjoying, sacrifice and fruition, seem to disintegrate. Perhaps the bride enjoys being lactated, tasting his sweetness like she does when she kisses him? Perhaps the bride-monk desires maternal participation in self-sacrificial sharing of his Christlike blood-milk? And perhaps the monk’s dual sexuality (‘more than a man’) reflects identification with the bridegroom’s (dual) sex rather than with the bride’s femaleness (which would imply blending gender rather than crossing gender)? Can the boundaries between erotics and motherhood be determined or a dual structuring of gender be upheld in view of the arresting (if perhaps disturbing) reconstructions in Sermon 9? Should they be? Yet these fluctuations, particularly the fluid boundaries between the bride and the bridegroom, allow for a significant hermeneutical identification. They affirm that the bridegroom constitutes the symbolic paradigm for the bride — that she mimics him.86 In the disruption of dual structures (motherhood-eroticism, lowliness-exaltation, humanity-divinity, heaven-earth, and male-female), the emphasis shifts to likeness, similitude, conformity, and imitation — not just as a future eschatological goal but as an implementation which is already prefigured or anticipated here, now. Subsuming categories of difference and duality, the hermeneutical drive towards hierarchization seems, ultimately, to deconstruct and dissolve the dyadic formulations in the text.87 The impetus towards hierarchization, whereby the lower is subordinated and subsumed into the higher, like the letter into spirit, privileges a discourse of oneness at the expense of dualism and dichotomy, so that divisions into twoness and dual differentiations are submitted to a centripetal force of unification and universalization. In short, I suggest that the operation of a master discourse privileging likeness and oneness ultimately destabilizes notions of a feminized soul and a masculine God. The bride is modelled on Christ, the bride imitates her bridegroom — this theme echoes throughout the Sermons. She imitates him in order to be ready for the nuptial and unitive embrace. She imitates him by nurturing and in her maternal care for her little ones; she imitates him in his blackness in order to 86 

See above, Section 6.1. On hermeneutical hierarchization, cf. above, Section 2.1; on hierarchization as privileging oneness, cf. below, Section 6.6. 87 

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achieve beauty and whiteness; and she imitates him in her physical and spiritual withdrawal.88 Analogously, Bernard states that the ‘reservoir imitates the fountain’,89 implying that spiritual leaders (the ‘reservoir’) must imitate Christ the bridegroom and Ecclesia the bride. ‘And also you,’ he tells his listener, ‘must do likewise’: that is, either imitate Christ or imitate the imitation of Christ.90 The reservoir, imitating the fountain, pours out without ever running dry — just like the bride’s breasts, again testifying to the Christomimetic element in the related concepts of lactation, nurturing, and outpouring. But even as she imitates him, he imitates her. The Incarnation was traditionally understood as divinity adopting humanity, and Bernard draws on this, describing the bridegroom as imitating the bride’s lowliness so that ‘through lowliness he might draw near to her lowly person’.91 Advancing the devotional language of the dual-sexed Christ, Bernard envisions the bridegroom as adopting not only humanity but also femaleness. Thereby the monk’s gender trouble reflects and reproduces the gender trouble of the bridegroom.92 For while the bride-monk is envisioned as assuming female roles — ranging from displacement to servitude, from virginity and widowhood to motherhood, from dejection to exaltation — the bridegroom has already preceded him in absorbing femaleness. In Sermon 27 the mimetic likeness between the bride and the bridegroom is brought to a point where subject boundaries, as well as gender boundaries, all but collapse. The discussion of their likeness begins with the now familiar theme of her resembling him: ‘It is not without merit that she appropriates [his] likeness, [it is] where her origin comes from.’93 Indeed, the bride’s inverted desire — ‘desiring and savouring’ (quaerit et sapit) heaven, not the world (Scc 27.6) — marks her as an ‘angelic’ creature even while living in an ‘animal’ body: What can be clearer evidence of celestial [caelestis] origin than that she retains an innate likeness in the region of unlikeness, that as an exile on earth she appropri88 

On imitation as requirement for embrace, see Scc 83.3 above, Section 6.1; on blackness as imitation, see Scc 25 and 28 above, Section 5.3; on withdrawal as imitation, see Scc 40.5 above, Section 3.4. 89  Scc 18.4, OSB, v.1, p. 238: ‘Concha imitetur fontem […] Ergo et tu fac similiter.’ 90  On Christ as fons, see, e.g., Scc 83.6 above, Section 6.1; on the bride as fons, see, e.g., Scc 22.2 above, Section 4.3. 91  Scc 57.2, OSB, v.1, p. 262: ‘ut humili sibi per humilitatem propinquaret’. 92  On this, see also below, Sections 6.3 and 6.4. 93  Scc 27.6, OSB, v.1, p. 390: ‘Nec immerito usurpat inde similitudinem, unde originem ducit.’

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ates [usurpari] the glory of the celibate [caelibis] life, that she lives like an angel in an animal body? This is a power that is of heaven rather than of earth, indicating clearly that a soul who is able to do this, is truly from heaven. Hear Scripture which is clearer still: I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her bridegroom [Rev 21. 2].94

Again, the bride appears as topos for divine similitude: ‘retaining a natural likeness in the land of unlikeness’ (in regione dissimilitudinis retinere similitudinem). Blending the figures of bride and descending Jerusalem by the biblical intertext from Revelations, Bernard identifies her as a soul (anima) who reveals her heavenly origin by being able to sustain celibate life. Thus another identification takes place: the bride adorned for her bridegroom emerges as a trope of celibacy. Celibate life is effectively inscribed as celestial life, enforced by the assonance between caelestis and caelibis. This notion of celibacy in the thick of marriage symbolism is significant in terms of the rhetorical strategy of reversing and rectifying desire, but also in terms of its ecclesiological entailments. Celibate life, involving contemplative union as primal reference, mirrors the union of Christ-bridegroom and Church-bride.95 Rather than rejecting procreative and marital conventions, Bernard’s bridal imagery in effect merely subordinates it under clerical celibacy. The fleshly union signalizes the inferior, that is, the corporeal and literal level of marriage symbolism which is still within the realm of the world and the flesh but which, nevertheless, undergirds the sacrality of lay marriage.96 The celibate life of the monk (or monkish prelate), for Bernard, signalizes a superior, that 94 

Scc 27.6, OSB, v.1, p. 392: ‘Quod evidentius caelestis insigne originis, quam ingenitam, et in regione dissimilitudinis retinere similitudinem, gloriam caelibis vitae in terra et ab exsule usurpari, in corpore denique paene bestiali vivere angelum? Caelestis sunt ista potentiae, non terrenae, et quod vere de caelo sit anima quae haec potest, aperte indicant. Audi tamen apertius: Vidi, inquit, civitatem sanctam Ierusalem novam, descendentem de caelo a Deo, paratam tamquam sponsam ornatam viro suo [Apoc. XXI, 2].’ 95  On connections between clerical celibacy and marriage symbolism, see d’Avray, Medieval Marriage, pp. 88–91, 129, and Elliott, The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell, pp. 111–13. 96  This was a commonplace in Gregorian rhetoric, promoting nuptial imagery in establishing episcopal authority and insisting on the superiority of the ‘spiritual marriage’. On this, see McLaughlin, Sex, Gender, and Episcopal Authority, p. 56, citing from Raoul of SaintSépulchre of the mid-eleventh century: ‘A carnal bride is wedded to the King of the Franks, while the holy Church is committed to the Lord Lietbert, bishop of Cambrai […]. How much more holy, how much better was this second union. While the first generates offspring in the flesh, the second produces a holy progeny by adoption; the first in corruption, the second in virginity.’

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is, spiritual, participation in the symbol. While both carnal and spiritual marriage was modelled on the union of Christ and Church, the bridal position occupied by the celibate reflects a more profound likeness within an ascetic and monastic frame of reference. Thus the concept establishes a spiritual hierarchy, endorsed by the Cistercians, in which the monk or the monkish prelate occupies the bridal position, but without interfering with the notion of the sacrality of lay marriage, merely allocating the latter to an inferior level of participation in the symbol. Ecclesiological themes mount as Bernard pursues his reading. Gliding towards an allegorical reading while constructing an identity between the heavenly and the earthly Jerusalem in a way which clearly recalls his proposition of Clairvaux as earthly Jerusalem, Bernard figures the heavenly and the earthly as two aspects of the same figure, that is, the bride: It pleased [the bridegroom] to summon the Church from among men and unite her with the one from heaven, that there might be but the one bride and one bridegroom. The one from heaven perfects the earthly one; it does not make two. Hence he says: My perfect one is only one [Song 6. 8]. Conformity makes them one, one now [nunc] in their similar devotion, one afterwards [postea] in shared glory.97

Maintaining communality but also tension between the heavenly and the earthly, Bernard is at pains to represent unity: una, unus, non duplicate, una, unam. Simultaneously ‘from heaven’ (de caelo) and ‘from men’ (de hominibus), the bride is perfected, not duplicated (perfecta est illa, non duplicate): not two but one — for perfection resides in oneness, not twoness. Again, as with Clairvaux identified as Jerusalem, oneness of identity is secured by conformitas: ‘now’ (nunc) in their similar purpose or devotion, ‘then’ (postea) in their shared glory. Passing onto the next section, Bernard confirms the similitude between the bride and the bridegroom while still retaining a notion of separate identities: ‘These two [utrumque] have their origin from heaven — Jesus the bridegroom and Jerusalem the bride.’98 But having underscored that the bride is ‘one’ and the bridegroom is ‘one’ (una sponsa, et sponsus unus), he proceeds to thwart differentiation or twoness altogether. By means of the blended figure Christ, 97 

Scc 27.6, OSB, v.1, p. 392: ‘Placuit ei et de hominibus convocare Ecclesiam, atque unire illi quae de caelo est, ut sit una sponsa, et sponsus unus. Ergo ex adiecta ista, perfecta est illa, non duplicate; et agnoscit de se dictum: Una est perfecta mea [Cant. VI, 8]. Porro unam conformitas facit, nunc quidem in simili devotione, postea vero et in pari gloria.’ 98  Scc 27.7, OSB, v.1, p. 392: ‘Habes itaque utrumque de caelo, et sponsum scilicet Iesum, et sponsam Ierusalem.’

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he establishes an all-embracing unity involving both bride and groom. In what form and in what guise did the bride appear to him (i.e., John) who saw her descend, asks Bernard, and turns to the identification of the body of Christ with the Church: It is more appropriate to say that [ John] saw the bride when he saw the Word in flesh, recognizing two in one flesh. When holy Emmanuel brought the teaching of heavenly doctrine to earth, when heavenly Jerusalem, who is our mother, became known to us and her image and beautiful appearance was made visible to us in Christ, what did we see if not the bride in the bridegroom? What did we admire but that one and same Lord of glory, both crowned bridegroom and adorned bride? So he who descended is also he who ascended, for no one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven — that one and same Lord who as head is the bridegroom and as body is the bride.99

Bride and bridegroom are subsumed in the figure of Christ along with figures of descent: descending doctrine, descending Jerusalem, descending mother. Significantly, all this descending is placed squarely on the side of femaleness, intimately linked to Christ’s becoming flesh. In the moment he takes on flesh, Christ becomes (partly) female — s/he is ‘bridegroom as head and bride as body’ (sponsus in capite, et sponsa in corpore). Drawing on two biblical intertexts, unity is envisioned as part female, part male: the conjoining of ‘two in one flesh’ (Gen 2. 24) and of male head and female body (Eph 5. 23). In this striking imagery, Bernard leans heavily on patristic uses of marriage symbolism to represent the union of Christ and the Church. Augustine, for instance, in the commentary to the first letter of John, writes: The bridal bed of the bridegroom was the uterus of the Virgin, for in this virginal uterus the two, bride and bridegroom were conjoined — the bridegroom Word and the bride flesh, like it is written: They shall be two in one flesh [Gen 2. 24]. Also the Lord said in the Gospel: Now they are no longer two, but one flesh [Mt 19. 6]. And great Isaiah spoke of the two who are one in Christ’s person, and said: Like a bridegroom he has covered my head, and like a bride he has adorned me with 99 

Scc 27.7, OSB, v.1, pp. 392–94: ‘Sed melius dicimus, quod sponsam tunc viderit, cum Verbum in carne vidit, agnoscens duos in carne una. Dum enim sanctus ille Emmanuel terris intulit magisterium disciplinae caelestis, dum supernae illius Ierusalem, quae est mater nostra, visibilis quaedam imago et species decoris eius, per ipsum nobis et in Christo expressa, innotuit, quid nisi in sponso sponsam perspeximus, unum eumdemque Dominum gloriae admirantes, et sponsum decoratum corona, et sponsam ornatam monilibus suis? Ipse igitur qui descendit, ipse est et qui ascendit: ut nemo ascendat in caelum, nisi qui de caelo descendit, unus idemque Dominus, et sponsus in capite, et sponsa in corpore.’

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ornaments [Is 61.  10]. There is only one who seems to speak, declaring himself both bride and bridegroom, for the Word was made flesh and lived among us [ Jn 1. 14]. The Church joined herself to that flesh, and became the whole Christ, head and body.100

In this passage, Augustine exploits sexual and nuptial imagery in representing the mystery of the Incarnation and of the union between Christ and the Church.101 Like in Bernard’s text, there is a marked prominence of Eph 5. 23 and Gen 2. 24, intertextually affirming the image of nuptial unity. Resonating with marriage imagery, both treatments also establish direct textual associations between the Incarnation and the marriage of Adam and Eve, thus letting the coupling of male-female echo the nuptial union of Christ and Church as well as Christ’s dual nature. Affirming a connection between the unification of two in one flesh, the unification of male and female in marriage, and the unification of two natures in Christ, the oneness of bride and bridegroom suggests a textual relation between nuptial union and the creation of male and female. As Bernard, following the same exegetical tradition as Augustine, evokes the ‘second’ creation story of Genesis — the two becoming one flesh — and combines the theme of creational gender with the dually sexed Christ (both bride and bridegroom, both male head and female body), he concurrently evokes notions of androgyny. Indeed, Bernard’s patristic borrowings are precisely what allow for the return of the primeval androgyne. Augustine, it may be recalled, refuted but did not resolve this exegetical problem.102 As noted in Chapter 1, whichever way this issue was argued, by Eastern or by Western exegetes, the notion 100 

Augustine, In epistolam Joannis 1.2, col. 1979: ‘Et illius sponsi thalamus fuit uterus Virginis, quia in illo utero virginali conjuncti sunt duo, sponsus et sponsa, sponsus Verbum et sponsa caro; quia scriptum est, Et erunt duo in carne una [Gen II, 24]; et Dominus dicit in Evangelio, Igitur jam non duo, sed una caro [Matth. XIX, 6]. Et Isaias optime meminit unum esse ipsos duos: loquitur enim ex persona Christi, et dicit, Sicut sponso imposuit mihi mitram, et sicut sponsam ornavit me ornamento [Isai. LXI, 10]. Unus videtur loqui, et sponsum se fecit et sponsam se fecit; quia non duo, sed una caro: quia Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis. Illi carni adjungitur Ecclesia, et fit Christus totus, caput et corpus.’ 101  Several scholars have recognized Augustine’s disinterest towards the marriage sym­ bolism of the Song of Songs; see Hunter, ‘The Virgin, the Bride, and the Church’, p. 296; Asiedu, ‘The Song of Songs and the Ascent of the Soul’; cf. Clark, ‘The Uses of the Song of Songs’, pp. 407–10. However, Augustine does use quite extensively the wedding imagery of Psalm 44, as discussed by both Hunter and Asiedu. 102  See above, Section 1.4.

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remained of an initial split from oneness (the masculus-femina of Gen 1. 27) into twoness (by the appearance of the vir and mulier of Gen 2. 22–23), which somehow was echoed, and restored, in the dual nature of Christ. Concepts of likeness, unity, and gender blending in Bernard’s treatment of the marriage symbolism in Sermon 27, along with exegetical concepts from patristic writing, appear to evoke notions of male and female (re)unification as a restitution of primeval oneness. For the present concerns, the significance of these series of intertextual associations — Christ-bridegroom/bride-head/body-male/female-Adam/Eveandrogyne — arises on two different levels. Firstly, Bernard’s text (re)affirms dual sexuality by producing an association between Christ and the androgynous primal man. Femaleness (bride, body, female, Eve) is absorbed into this encompassing, dually sexed figure so that bride and bridegroom no longer figure as two, but one. Secondly, these related associations affirm the function of the nuptial metaphor as a vehicle to envision and reinstate (gender) oneness. In this way, gender indeterminacy carries not just creational and eschatological implications but seems to be embedded within the very framework of nuptial mysticism and the image of union between bride and bridegroom.

6.3 Fecundation and Germination: Performing Hermeneutics I Representations of Christ as bridegroom and also bride, perfect man and lactating mother, male head and female body, places gender (or, more exactly, gender appropriation) at the service of universalizing discourse. Femaleness is not so much rejected, negated, and disavowed as appropriated for a pervasive configuration of maternalizing fecundity and transformative erotic passion. Indeed, Christ the sponsus Verbum does not simply transcend gender; rather, he seems to ‘occupy all imaginable gender space’.103 Directing our attention to the tropological reference of the bride, that is, the celibate or monk, we find a similar encompassing ‘occupation’ of gender. Thus gender indeterminacy in representations of Christ is reflected in Bernard’s own gender indeterminacy. While gender and self-representation hitherto have been considered from the point of view of feminization of males (Chapters 4 and 5), I shall presently assess the few instances in the Sermons where maleness rather than femaleness or brideship is asserted in representations of the human subject. Passages where 103 

Borrowing a phrase from Rambuss’s reading of Richard Crashaw’s devotional lyrics in Closet Devotions, p. 42.

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Bernard implicitly or explicitly assumes a male role or male characteristics (for himself or for the idealized monk) are interesting not just because they are few, but because they shed further light on the economy of gender and gender constructions in the Sermons. Significantly, these instances of masculine selfrepresentation occur, as will be seen, particularly in the context of Bernard’s enactments of hermeneutical agency. Sermon 51 is remarkable both for its gender representations and for the density of Bernard’s imagery and figurative language. Here, the sisters Mary and Martha and Rachel and Lia appear together in the same sermon for the first and only time (Scc 51.2–3). Again, fruits and flowers are in the fore.104 Interpreting Song 2. 5 (‘support me with flowers, surround me with apples for I languish with love’), Bernard enquires into their ‘moral meaning’ (moralem sensum) and envisions fruits and flowers as, respectively, activity and faith. At this point, he enters into the familiar discussion of the bride who cannot remain long in contemplation while still alive but must alternate between contemplation and action, enjoyment and good deeds, repose and work. The complementarity of the contemplative-active dyad is underscored in terms of the sisterhood and vicinity of Martha and Mary. Passing from one to the other is like passing to and fro between ‘companions’ (contubernales) of the same household (cohabitant): Therefore the mind [mens] accustomed to repose [quietis] receives consolation through good deeds rooted in sincere faith, when, as is customary, the light of contemplation [lux contemplationis] is withdrawn. For who can enjoy the light of contemplation [lumine contemplationis fruatur] — I do not say continually, but even for a longer period — while still in the body? However, as I said, when [the mind] falls away from contemplation it dedicates itself to activity, before it again returns to the former in an even more familiar way, since these two are companions and live together — for Martha is Mary’s sister. Thus, even though it falls from the light of contemplation, it does not let itself plunge into the shadows of sin or idle repose but keeps itself well in the light of good works.105

104 

On flowers and fruits, see also Scc 46.5 above, Section 2.5. Scc 51.2, OSB, v.2, p. 198: ‘Ergo ex bonis operibus in fide non ficta radicatis recipit consolationem mens assueta quietis, quoties sibi lux, ut assolet, contemplationis subtrahitur. Quis enim non dico continue, sed vel diu, dum in hoc corpore manet, lumine contemplationis fruatur? At quoties, ut dixi, corruit a contemplativa, toties in activam se recipit, inde nimirum tamquam e vicino familiarius reditura in idipsum, quoniam sunt invicem contubernales hae duae, et cohabitant partier: est quippe soror Mariae Martha. Neque enim, etsi a contemplationis lumine cadit, patitur tamen ullatenus se incidere in tenebras peccati seu ignaviam otii, sane in luce bonae operationis se retinens.’ 105 

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Bernard does not directly identify, nor even mention, the bride in the passage. Rather, the devotional subject is denoted as ‘the mind’ (mens) which, while still grammatically gendered feminine, did not carry so close associations to the bride as did anima.106 This lack of the familiar undertones of feminization, signalled by the absence of anima-sponsa, prepares for the oncoming masculinization of Bernard’s self-representation. With the entry of Rachel and Lia in the subsequent passage, the treatment is intensified while also eroticized. The emphasis of the imagery also changes, from images of ‘light’ which dominate the passage of Mary and Martha (lux, lumine, and the contrasting tenebras) to images of fertility which accompany Rachel and Lia. Bernard’s rhetorical intensification — enhanced both by the complexity of imagery and stylistic expression — is, here as elsewhere, announced by the appearance of the exegete’s ego, by which the exegetical model involving the sisters is appropriated and integrated into his immediate monastic context. Re-enacting his own exegesis, Bernard begins by a reference to his own experience: ‘I am telling you what I have experienced.’107 Next he enters into direct interlocution with his audience: Whenever I discover that any one of you have made progress because of my admonitions, then I admit that I do not regret having preferred preparing a sermon to my own leisure and quietude [otio et quieti]. […] There is, I tell you, no reason for the mind to suffer sadness at the interruption of its pursuit of the pleasure of contemplation [iucundae contemplationis] for I shall be surrounded by these flowers and fruits of piety. Patiently I let myself be torn away from the unfruitful embraces of Rachel as I see the fruits of your progress growing forth in abundance. I am not in the least regretful of having to interrupt my quietude for the preparation of my sermon when I see my seed germinating in you.108

106  Hence I translate the personal pronoun using the gender neutral ‘it’, because the reference is the mind, not the bride. (The bride is not mentioned in the present sermon until Scc 51.4.) The translation thus underscores the fact that Bernard is identifying not with animasponsa, but a more ‘neutral’, i.e., less exegetically entrenched, entity. 107  Scc 51.3, OSB, v.2, p. 198: ‘Loquor vobis experimentum meum quod expertus sum.’ 108  Scc 51.3, OSB, v.2, pp. 198–200: ‘Si quando sane comperi profecisse aliquos vestrum ex meis monitis, tunc non me piguit, fateor, curam praetulisse sermonis proprio otio et quieti. […] non est, dico vobis, unde subeat mentem, quasi pro intermisso studio iucundae contemplationis, tristitia, cum talibus fuero circumdatus floribus atque fructibus pietatis. Patienter avellor ab infecundae Rachelis amplexibus, ut mihi exuberat fructus profectuum vestrorum. Minime prorsus pigebit me intermissae quietis pro cura sermonis, cum videro in vobis germinare semen meum.’

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Passing from Mary and Martha as types for the complementarity of the two lives, Bernard moves on to relate what he announced to be his ‘own experience’. In this highly performative representation of the tensions between contemplation and activity, he reconciles selfish pleasure and sacrificial duty by transferral. His joy at seeing the progress of the monks, that is, the ‘fruits’ (fructus) of his work, allows him to accept the abandonment of his own contemplative enjoyment. Elaborating on this theme, the abbot subsequently presents an erotically tantalizing image of himself, tearing himself away from the clinch with desirable Rachel. As one discerns the undertones of the fecund sister Lia, 109 the imagery changes, mobilizing the attention of the audience towards conception and fruitfulness in contrast to the former sister’s ‘sterility’ (infecundae). In the ensuing and final image, the expected arrival of fecund Lia is replaced by fruitful monks as Bernard witnesses his ‘seed’ (semen meum) literally impregnate his monks (in vobis germinare). Bernard’s hermeneutical act of fecundation highlights two interrelated aspects of fertility and reproduction in the Sermons. One aspect regards the underlying assumptions of germination and fecundation, in other words, the presuppositions which allow for and underlie imagery of fertility both in this passage and more generally. Another aspect regards the dissonance of gender patterns in the current passage compared to other fecundation scenes that we have considered, for instance, in Sermon 9. Instead of Bernard enacting the role of fruitful bride, he here assumes the part of male inseminator. At the outset, it should be noted that the cited passage follows familiar patterns involving eroticism and fecundity in the Sermons. Just like the bride longs for the bridegroom but is obliged to lactate her children, Bernard longs for ‘the pleasure of contemplation’ but is obliged to preach and care for his monks. He is still caught in the ménage-à-trois, prefigured in the story of Jacob and his wives — drawn, like Jacob, between desire (God, Rachel) and obligation or duty (the monks, Lia).110 In Sermon 51, however, although erotic desire is still directed at Rachel, fecundity is assured only indirectly by the unnamed Lia. Instead the feminized position of pregnant fruitfulness is held by the monks. Their fecundity is passive; they are acted upon by the active and life-giving semen of Bernard. 109  In the PL edition of the Sermons, showing slight variations from Leclercq’s edition, Lia is explicitly mentioned: see col. 1026D: ‘Patienter avellor ab infecundae Rachelis amplexibus, ut de Lia mihi exuberent fructus profectuum vestrorum’ (my italics). 110  On Jacob, Rachel, and Lia, see Scc 9.8 and Scc 41.5–6 above, Section 2.4.

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While it seems clear that medieval physiological theories shed light on Bernard’s imagery of motherhood, especially lactation,111 it does not seem immediately clear how they might do so in regard to insemination and fecundity. In Sermon 51 the context of fertility (Lia) and erotic embraces (Rachel) makes quite evident the subtext of procreation, thus acutely raising the question of fecundity. What, then, are the assumptions inherent in images of semen, germination, and fertility in the Sermons? As noted, numerous formulations of ‘one-seed’ and ‘two-seed’ theories existed, but there was no hegemonic interpretation of the term ‘seed’ (semen) in twelfth-century usage.112 While the passage might arguably be seen as adaptation of the Aristotelian ‘one-seed’ theory where the active male form acts on the passive female matter, there are good reasons to be cautions. First of all, the theory of females lacking generative seed should not be applied uncritically to the twelfth century when Aristotelian teaching was as yet undeveloped.113 Furthermore, Bernard’s representation — ‘I see my seed germinating in you’ — provides a clear clue as to the subtext of this image of fecundation. Bernard unmistakably construes the saintly body as a site of fecundity, but a fecundity which — I suggest — is more related to metaphors of cultivation, agriculture, and irrigation than to any consistent medical or physiological theory.114 This fertile body — whether that of the mother-bride or, in this instance, the monks — may be seen as metonymically related to the agricultural programme of Cistercian settlements, especially their emphasis on fertilization of virginal and uncultivated soil.115 Echoing desert aesthetics, the sites of 111 

Discussed above in Section 6.2. On medieval reproduction theory, see above, Section 1.5. 113  Scholarship has emphasized the Aristotelian interpretation of male form versus female matter, when discussing gender constructions in medieval literature, theology, and philosophy; see, e.g., Bynum, working on a somewhat later material: ‘The Body of Christ’, pp. 100, 109–14, and ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother’, p. 133. See also Bullough, ‘Medieval Medical and Scientific Views of Women’, and Benton, ‘Clio and Venus’, p. 32. 114  See Økland, Women in their Place, pp. 42–44, who finds an ancient Mediterranean way of thinking gender as woman-as-fertile-soil: ‘The man is the sower who sows his seed in the woman and in the earth — which is conceived of as feminine.’ (p. 42). This interpretation of gender and procreation has been explored by anthropologist Delaney, The Seed and the Soil. 115  In the last decades, studies of the socioeconomic behaviour of the Cistercians have become numerous. For a particularly interesting analysis, sensitive to the interconnection between economic and exegetical practices, see Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 67–96 with references, p.  282 n.  3. Recent research has modified earlier notions of Cistercian ‘frontiersmen’, replacing it with depictions of ‘entrepreneurs’ who accumulated and organized 112 

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Cistercian foundations were frequently depicted as sterile wildernesses, tacitly implying transformation into fruitful and blooming land at the hands of the monks, and resonating with Deuteronomy’s promise of a ‘land where oil and honey flow forth’ (Dt 11. 9) which is to replace the ‘place of horror and vast solitude’ (Dt 32. 10).116 This metaphorical condition, although rarely expressing the reality of the monasteries’ physical locations did, however, reflect certain idiosyncratic aspects of Cistercian practice: their vast and systematic accumulation of land, their statute (often not followed) that their new foundations should take place on uncultivated soil, their practice of cultivating the land themselves (by the labour of monks, lay brothers, and hired help but never by serfs), and their insistence that their income be derived from their own labour force and their own estates.117 In this connection, one may also recall the spealready-productive land. On this see Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, p. 68, and Bouchard, Holy Entrepreneurs. 116  Exordium parvum describes Cîteaux as ‘inhabited only by wild beasts, and unaccustomed to the approach of men because of the tangle of trees and thorns’; Exordium cistercii and William of St Thierry’s Prima Vita call Clairvaux ‘a place of horror and vast solitude’, see Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, p. 69. The Cistercian abbot Guerric of Igny, contemporary and friend of Bernard, makes an analogy between desert and garden as metonymic sites for the monastery, cited in Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 94–95, Sermones per annum: In nativitate sancti Ioannis Baptistae 4, col. 173CD: ‘pinguescent speciosa deserti, et florebit solitudo […]. Tunc erit desertum quasi deliciae paradisi, et solitudo quasi hortus Domini’ (the beautiful places of the desert will become fertile, and the solitude will bloom […]. Then the desert will be like a paradise of delights and the solitude like a garden of the Lord). On the Cistercian order’s spread and growth, see also Berman, The Cistercian Evolution, pp. 2, 54, 95–97, 100–04, 106–08, underscoring a process of incoporation rather than colonization; over against Lekai’s traditional account, ‘Ideals and Reality in Early Cistercian Life and Legislation’. For a recent discussion of Cistercian self-representation in this regard, see Bruun and Jamroziac, ‘Introduction’. 117  Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp.  71–82, describes in detail the efforts of Cistercian monasteries to detach land from seigneural and feudal obligations in order to obtain full agricultural control over the land themselves. In contrast to previous monastic practices of accumulation and ownership of land, twelfth-century Cistercian monasteries (particularly Cîteaux, Clairvaux, Pontigny, and La Ferté) acquired arable land (whether by sale or by donation) after which it was no longer accessible to the laity or subject to manorial exploitation: it was separated and marked off from the lands around it (pp. 71–72). Suggesting that Clairvaux probably was no ‘easy neighbour’, Newman notes that the aggression with which the monks accumulated land and their jealousy in guarding both it and its isolation probably contributed to later criticism of Cistercian greed (pp. 79–81). Interestingly, Walter Map, one of their late twelfth-century critics, holds that the monks transformed inhabited lands into places of solitude, thus reversing the Cistercians’ self-image of bringing growth to the wilderness. Map writes that because Cistercians could not govern parishes they razed villages and threw

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cific significance of hydro-technology for Cistercian settlements. Cistercian engineers developed new technologies for watermills, providing supplies of water both for remote monasteries and for farming.118 A considerable factor in the order’s success, the Cistercians’ concern with agriculture and water technology is reflected in their pervasive use of imagery of water, fruitfulness, and cultivation. Images of cultivation and fruitfulness, provided by both Testaments, were frequently exploited by medieval exegetes, not only by Cistercians.119 Indeed, some scholars have noted a connection between twelfth-century imagery of natural growth and a presumed new confidence in the possibility of rebirth and renewal both in an individual and in an institutional sense.120 Yet the Cistercians, as suggested, had particular grounds to emphasize imagery of cultivation. The Sermons on the Song of Songs abound with images of fruits and flowers, images of abundance and profusion, and, particularly, images of irrigation and water — imagery which reasonably evokes agricultural accomplishments. The recurring images of canal, reservoir, fountain, well-springs, and outpouring also partake in this agricultural interpretation of fertility and fecundation. I am suggesting that these images, analogously to the breast metaphor and lactation, evoke, as noted, a subtext of sacramental themes, especially of baptism and the Eucharist. On another level, notions of fecund and female wetness are related tropologically both to hermeneutical activity (fetching water, cooking, cleaning, providing to drink) and to compunction (tears, weeping).121 Finally, in view of the present discussion, images of germination, growth, fertility, and fecundation, while still related to sacramental-ecclesiological and tropological themes, evoke a third level as well, namely, the Cistercian monastery. Sermon 51, where Bernard germinates his brothers with his ‘seed’, is immersed in both aquatic and horticultural imagery. Bernard’s description of down altars to bring land under their ploughs. (De nugis curialium 1.25, cited in Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, p. 81). 118  On Cistercians as innovative engineers of hydropower and agricultural technology, see Lienhard, The Engines of our Ingenuity, pp. 23–24. 119  On metaphors of vegetation in exegesis of the Song of Songs, see Minet-Mahy, ‘Étude des métaphores végétales’. 120  For example, Constable, ‘Renewal and Reform in Religious Life’. But see Jaeger, ‘Pessimism in the Twelfth-Century “Renaissance”’. For more references, see Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, p. 294 n. 102. 121  On wetness and sacramental themes, see esp. Scc 9.9–10 above, Section 2.4; on wetness and femaleness, see discussions above, Sections 3.4 and 4.3.

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the spiritual development of his monks reads very much like a description of a Cistercian settlement — transformed from salvage wilderness to blooming farmland. Explaining why he does not feel regret at interrupting his contemplative pleasures (Rachel’s embraces), the abbot — like a proud gardener who beholds his ‘flowers and fruits’ — points to the effect his ‘admonitions’ (meis monitis) and his ‘sermons’ or ‘speech’ (sermonis) has had on his monks’ spiritual growth. Blending his role as exegete-preacher into imagery of irrigation, growth, and harvest, he establishes a direct connection between cultivation of monks’ souls and cultivation of land: Those who had deserted the fountain of wisdom, having dug for themselves wells of self-will that cannot hold water and who were weighed down in consequence by every injunction, murmured in dryness of heart because they possessed no moisture of devotion […]; [but now] they are allowed to bloom again in works of obedience, by the dew of the word and the abundant rain that God provides as inheritance.122

Dried up, desiccated, moistureless, monks who abandon themselves to ‘selfwill’ (propriae voluntatis) are unable to produce ‘works of obedience’, referred to in the same passage as fruits and flowers, until they are fertilized by the wetness (‘dew of the word’ and ‘abundant rain’) provided by exegesis. Implied by both the sacramental and the hermeneutical subtext, Bernard administers fertilizing words to his monks so they might ‘bloom again’ (refloruisse), thus reverting desert into lush garden. Closing the sequence with his self-description as germinator, Bernard refers to his act of insemination as ‘a growth in the harvest of your righteousness’.123 122  Scc 51.3, OSB, v.2, p.  200: ‘et qui, deserto fonte sapientiae, foderant sibi propriae voluntatis cisternas, non valentes aquas continere, proptereaque, ad omne inuiunctum gravati, corde arido murmurabant, nullum in se habentes devotionis humorem […] cum de rore verbi, et pluvia voluntaria, quam segregavit Deus hereditati suae, refloruisse probantur in opera oboedientiae’. 123  Scc 51.3, OSB, v.2, p. 200: ‘augeri incrementa frugum iustitiae vestrae’. See also Scc 51.4, OSB, v.2, pp. 200–02, where Bernard underscores hermeneutical plurivocality by allusion to the versatility and fertility of water: ‘Cur enim hoc displiceat in sensibus Scripturarum, quod in usibus rerum assidue experimur? In quantos, verbi causa, sola aqua nostrorum assumitur corporum usus? Ita unus quilibet divinus sermo non erit ab re, si diversos pariat intellectus, diversis animarum necessitatibus et usibus accommodandos’ (Why should it be displeasing to find [diverse] senses in Scripture when we constantly experience that things have [diverse] uses? For instance, how many uses does water have for our bodies? Thus one single divine word is not distant from the reality of things when it gives birth to diverse significations, adapting to diverse

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Fertility is thus related to agricultural images and envisioned in terms of spiritual transformation and hermeneutical growth. As usual, biblical reverberations intertextually elaborate on Bernard’s imagery. The image of hermeneutical fertility resonates with the parable of sower (Mt 13. 1–9, 18–23), while Bernard’s germinating monks echo Paul’s image of the Corinthians as ‘God’s agriculture’ (i Cor 3. 9). Notions of Bernard as gardener of the monks and of Clairvaux engages even in some form of imitatio Dei, invoking Old Testament themes of God as gardener planting his seed, especially Is 61. 11, which also gives scriptural basis for Bernard’s terms semen suum and germinare.124 Evoking the garden of paradise, metonymical associations between cloister, fruitfulness, and garden allow also for creational and eschatological, and not just hermeneutical, reverberations. By the eschatological promise of transformation and future exaltation, Bernard subsumes the monks into the blooming fertility of Christ’s ‘body of splendour’, as in Sermon 47, where the blossoming lily is an encompassing image for Christ and the monks.125 However, Bernard’s most significant subtext in images of fecundation and germination is not eschatological but hermeneutical. Bernard’s strong hermeneutical emphasis on imagery of fertility marks his concern with his role as abbot and preacher for his monks. At the same time the hermeneutical emphasis on fecundation also works to establish a connection between erotic imagery and maternal imagery. For it is quite clear in Sermon 51 that impregnation is achieved by ‘words’ (verbi), ‘admonitions’ (monitis), and ‘speech’ (sermonis). Elsewhere, too, words fecundate, as they are, concurrently, also objects of desire and penetration.126 If conception is envisioned as a hermeneutical act, then this act of fecundation and germination signalizes what Wim Verbaal has spoken of as a descent of the Word into the soul, reproducing (‘re-incarnating’) the Word in the reader/listener.127 In this way, the image necessities and uses for souls). Probably due to a mistake, this phrase is missing from the English translation, Song, iii, 44. 124  Is 61. 11: ‘Sicut enim terra profert germen suum et sicut hortus semen suum germinat sic Dominus Deus germinabit iustitiam et laudem coram universis gentibus’ (my italics) (For as the earth brings forth her bud, and as the garden causes her seed to shoot forth: so shall the Lord God make justice to spring forth, and praise before all the nations). On God as gardener, see also Gen 2. 8: ‘Plantaverat autem Dominus Deus paradisum’; cf. Dt 11. 10–12 and Is 5. 7. 125  Scc 47.7: ‘germinabimus et nos sicut lilium, et florebimus in aeternum ante Dominum’; see above, Section 3.3. 126  See Scc 29 above, Section 5.4; see also below, Section 6.4. 127  Verbaal, ‘Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons for the Liturgical Year’, p. 57.

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of Bernard who fertilizes the metonymically interrelated monks and monastic fields conjoins themes of nutrition and growth with themes of fruition in a hermeneutical vision which encompasses both the usefulness and the desirability of the scriptural text. Related to the fecundation scene in Sermon 51 is, as mentioned, an aspect regarding dislocations in characters and genders, which begs the question: Who is performing which role and which gender? Usually, Bernard assumes either (or both) the maternal role or the erotic role by assuming the part of bride (or encouraging the monks to do so), like in the first sermon cycle, where he imagines himself bride — appropriating first the kiss and next the lactating breasts.128 Here, however, he is constructing another pattern, adopting the exegetical role of Jacob while simultaneously creating parallel notions of inseminating exegete and inseminating bridegroom-Word.129 Exchanging Rachel’s unfruitful embraces for (Lia’s) fertility and, next, applying fertility to the monks, Bernard asserts his maleness vis-à-vis two competing feminized objects. Rather than assuming a feminine role while representing himself as desiring subject, he assumes a masculine role which complements the feminized positions of fecundity (use – Lia) on one hand and erotic pleasure (fruition – Rachel) on the other. Yet, in this particular passage, the feminized figures do not operate on the same level of meaning. Contrasting erotic and reproductive functions, Bernard skips from a figurative to a literal realm to represent the two poles of tension: from the allegorical figure of Rachel to the physical and literal figure(s) of the monks, addressed as ‘you’ throughout the passage (vestrum, vobis, vestrorum, in vobis), who take the place of Lia. Assigned the fecundity of Lia, the monks are not merely aligned with a female character in the text. Bernard’s strategy of rhetorically appropriating femaleness (in this case, for his monks) works also to confuse the boundaries of the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’, the realms of the physical and the fantastic, of the literal and the allegorical, which, more than just providing a sense of realism, has the effect of underscoring the inauthenticity and the subordination of the physical world of Clairvaux in relation to the spiritual dimension. Eminently queer, the effect of transporting the act of fecundation-conception from a sublimated and figurative realm — the bride’s realm, the biblical sisters’ realm — and into the Clairvaux chapter house results in a further disintegration of the already compromised distinction between symbol and reality, bride and self, monks and girls. 128 

See Scc 3.5–6 above, Section 2.3 (the kiss), and Scc 9.7 above, Section 2.4 (the breasts). On the inseminating bridegroom, see Scc 9.4–6 above, Section 6.2, and Scc 29.8 above, Section 5.4. 129 

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A similar hermeneutical gliding, but without images of fertility and fecundation, appears in Bernard’s depiction of his relation to his brother Gerard in Sermon 26.130 The reconfiguration of the two brothers involves yet again the biblical sisters, especially Mary and Martha. Here it is in order to note, more­ over, that the sisters did have a male counterpart, an alternative exegetical model which surely must have been familiar to Bernard from Augustine’s commentary to John: the apostles Peter (active life) and John (contemplative life).131 Yet the abbot does not refer to this male alternative in the Sermons, even in passing — apparently choosing exclusively female figures to personify the active and the contemplative life. However, I propose that Bernard does indeed construct a male counterpart to the biblical sisters, namely, himself and Gerard. During the lament for his brother, Bernard mourns his loss, representing Gerard as an embodiment of caritas, with no thought for himself, always humble and obliging. No one worked as hard as he, no one received less, Bernard sobs.132 Referring his dying brother’s last words, Bernard transfers attention to his own role in Gerard’s life: ‘O God, he said,’ says Bernard, ‘you know that in as far as it was possible for me I have sought quietude [quietem], the freedom [vacare] to be with you.’133 Then Bernard — dubbing Gerard — lets it be understood what hindered his contemplative rest: ‘But fear of you, the will of the brethren, the necessity to oblige, and, above all, the love for my abbot who is also my brother has kept me busy.’134 Addressing his dead brother, Bernard

130 

On Scc 26, see also above Section 5.4. Augustine, Tractatus in Joannem 124.5, col. 1974: ‘Duas itaque vitas sibi divinitus prae­ dicatas et commendatas novit Ecclesia, quarum est una in fide, altera in specie; una in tempore peregrinationis, altera in aeternitate mansionis; una in labore, altera in requie; una in via, altera in patria; una in opere actionis, altera in mercede contemplationis […]. Ista [activa] significata est per apostolum Petrum, illa [contemplativa] per Joannem’ (‘The Church discerns two lives which are divinely ordained and commended. One is in faith, the other in vision; one on pilgrimage, the other in the mansion of eternity; one in labour, the other in rest; one spent wandering, the other in the homeland; one in activity, the other in the reward of contemplation […]. The apostle Peter signifies the former [active], John signifies the latter [contemplative]’; modifying a translation in Butler, Western Mysticism, pp. 157–58). 132  Scc 26.6, OSB, v.1, p.  370: ‘Siquidem plus omnibus laborabat, et minus omnibus accipiebat.’ 133  Scc 26.6, OSB, v.1, p. 370: ‘Deus, inquit, tu scis, quod quantum in me fuit, semper optavi quietem mihi intendere, tibi vacare.’ 134  Scc 26.6, OSB, v.1, p. 370: ‘Sed implicitum tenuit timor tuus, voluntas fratrum, et studium oboediendi, super omnia abbatis pariter et fratris germana dilectio.’ 131 

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depicts him as devoting himself to the active life so he, Bernard, might enjoy the contemplative life: How often did you not set me free from worldly conversations, with your friendly and winning speech, so I could return to my beloved silence? The Lord gave him erudite speech, so he knew to keep a conversation. This way he satisfied both brethren and visitors with his prudent replies and with the grace given to him from above, so that when Gerard spoke to them first, hardly anyone needed to see me afterwards. Indeed, he hastened to meet visitors to prevent them from abruptly intrude on my rest [meum otium]. […] I thank you, my brother, for any fruit which might come from my dedication to the Lord! If I have progressed, if I have helped others progress [si profeci, si profui], I owe it all to you. You were busy, and I seated myself in leisure [feriatus sedebam] because of your service, so I could dedicate myself more completely to the divine and to preparing more useful doctrine for my sons.135

The terminology here is steeped in references to the opposition of activity and contemplation. Gerard protected Bernard’s ‘beloved silence’ (amico silentio) by taking care of ‘worldly conversations’ (sermonibus saeculi); Gerard avoided disturbance of Bernard’s ‘rest’ (otium) by heeding off visitors; Gerard busied himself with the affairs of the cloister (intricabaris, beneficio) so that Bernard could ‘seat’ himself ‘in leisure’ (feriatus sedebam mihi). As seen before, the two concepts are interwoven. Bernard’s ‘dedication to’ or ‘study of ’ the Lord (Domino studiorum), makes him able to produce ‘fruits’ (fructu meorum). Also the terms profeci/profui, the former indicating individual progress and the latter usefulness, hint at the same conjunction of the active-contemplative dyad: if Bernard makes progress, he will share his progress with his little ones. His intense contemplative studies, in fact, are linked to his ability to procure ‘more useful doctrine for his sons’. But a principal division is set. Gerard provides service to people/the world (like Martha), while Bernard is in service to the Lord (like Mary). 135 

Scc 26.6, OSB, v.1, p.  370: ‘Nonne in lingua tua illa placabili et potenti meam a sermonibus saeculi frequentissime vindicabas, amico reddebas silentio? Dominus dederat illi linguam eruditam, ut sciret quando deberet proferre sermonem. Ita denique in prudentia responsorum suorum, et in gratia data sibi desuper, et domesticis satisfaciebat et exteris, ut paene me nemo requireret, cui prior forte Girardus occurrisset. Occurrebat autem adventantibus, opponens se, ne subito meum otium incursarent. […] Gratias tibi, frater, de omni fructu meorum, si quis est, in Domino studiorum! Tibi debeo si profeci, si profui. Tu intricabaris, et ego tuo beneficio feriatus sedebam mihi, aut certe divinis obsequiis sanctius occupabar, aut doctrinae filiorum utilius intendebam.’

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So what are the implications of Bernard instating himself and his brother as a masculinized version of a feminine exegetical paradigm? I believe it is because it allows him a sense of literalness in his exegesis. As we have seen on other occasions in the Sermons, Bernard’s treatment entails a rhetorical strategy of engaging the exegetical exposition in a tangible and immediate level. Thus, he turns the Clairvaux brothers — the labouring Gerard and the reposing Bernard — into an embodiment of the biblical sisters. Bernard’s transferral of one his central exegetical paradigms, whereby the active-contemplative dyad is demoted from a heavenly and sublimated realm and re-enacted in the corporeal realm of the Cistercian monastery and its inhabitants, has the hermeneutical effect of implementing an aspect of literalism or realism in his imagery — a kind of ‘inverted’ realism, alluded to by M. B. Pranger, where the ordinary takes precedence over the extraordinary only to establish the priority of spiritual reality over worldly reality by subsuming the latter under the former.136 Performing and reciting his exegesis rather than merely reporting it, Bernard and the audience partake in the bridging of heavenly and earthly reality, thence witnessing, as suggested by Verbaal, how the distance between time and eternity, for a short moment, is spanned.137

6.4 Penetration and the Feminized Text: Performing Hermeneutics II In the Sermons there is a tendency, which further contributes to the indeterminacy of gender, to depict hermeneutical agency in masculine terms while representing the text as feminized.138 For instance, in Sermon 16, we find a suggestive image of the exegete as a hunter. As Bernard excuses himself with his audience on account of one of his numerous and prolonged digressions, he summons up a topography of dense woodland, full of unforeseen obstacles and opportunities, where he and his brethren must wander through: ‘that shad136 

Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of Monastic Thought, p.  149: ‘what religiously speaking, might be first — such as the concept of God, man, or biblical persons — is not necessarily so in a monastic context. In a Cistercian environment, for example, the linguistic, “figural” context may precede, evoke and be the carrier of further religious content. It is, ultimately, the priority of the figura containing the different personifications of the human and the divine which enables the author to locate his dramatis personae’. See also above, Section 5.5. 137  Verbaal, ‘Timeless Time’, p. 240. 138  But see above, Section 4.3, for representations of hermeneutics as feminine activity. On female letter and male spirit, see above, Section 5.3; on the implications of gendered hermeneutics, see below, Section 6.6.

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owy wood where allegories lurk unseen’.139 Representing the allegorical level of hermeneutics, the forest is unpredictable and almost impenetrable: ‘From a distance the eye might see tree tops and mountain peaks, but the vastness of the valleys beneath and the density of the thickets obstruct the gaze.’140 At this point, Bernard reveals why the monks are wandering about in the forest in the first place: they are hunters. Having come upon their prey (a particularly tricky bible verse, ii Kgs 4. 35), they must chase it down before they might return to where they were before, Bernard says, for it is ‘no doubt food for the soul’.141 Conjoining notions of hermeneutical nutrition and hermeneutical pursuit, he depicts himself and the monks as hermeneutical ‘hunters’ (venatores m.) and Scripture first as ‘woodland’ (silva f.), then as ‘beast’ (bestia f.): ‘Hunters and hounds sometimes abandon the beast [bestia] they have raised, and pursue another one which they unexpectedly meet.’142 This little parable on hermeneutics — or allegory of allegory — amplifies on the figures of the hunter and the hunted by its gender allusions. The masculine figure of hunter (the exegete and his audience) is contrasted by the figure of bestia, which, like Scriptura itself, is grammatically feminine. Bernard’s self-representation as hermeneutical hunter, contrasted by his feminized ‘prey’, resonates with assumptions in medieval hermeneutics which link femaleness to the letter (in contrast to male spirit).143 In Sermon 1 we noted a similar subtext of hermeneutical pursuit, where Bernard positioned himself as masculinized hermeneutical agency in relation to the feminized Scriptura.144 But, in that ser139 

Scc 16.1, OSB, v.1, p. 206: ‘silvamque istam umbrosam, latebrosamque allegoriarum pertransire’. 140  Scc 16.1, OSB, v.1, p.  208: ‘Ictus oculi eminus summitates ramorum et montium cacumina pervolabat; sed vallium subter iacens vastitas, et densitas dumetorum frustrabatur obtutus.’ 141  Scc 16.1, OSB, v.1, p. 208: ‘Et nunc, quandoquidem incidimus, non pigeat nos paululum immorari, consequenter ad id quod praetermittimus postea reversuros: siquidem animarum cibus nihilominus est iste.’ 142  Scc 16.1, OSB, v.1, p. 208: ‘Canibus quoque ac venatoribus plerumque contingit a bestia, quam agressi erant, desistere, et sequi aliam, quae inopinantibus forte occurrerit.’ 143  In a different passage, Bernard evokes a related image of a feminized ‘beast’, where incarnate God is envisioned as a female roe dear, and where the sex of the roe (sexus in caprea), states Bernard, signalizes his weakness (infirmitatem) and approachability. Scc 73.4, OSB, v.2, pp. 478–80. The letter of the text and the flesh of Christ are both, significantly, imagined as feminized. 144  See above, Section 2.3.

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mon, the implications of hermeneutical pursuit involved also notions of erotic seduction. Allusions to hermeneutical desire throughout the Sermons work to establish, I suggested, a concept of the text — referred to as illa and ea (‘she’, ‘her’) — as an object of erotic pleasure and attraction: an ‘enticing face’ (blanda facies) which ‘affects and allures him’ (afficit et allicit). Scripture’s enticing faces, analogously to her many interpretations, produces in the (male) exegete and his audience a desire for the text.145 In Sermon 32 there is another account of an erotic encounter implying female text and a male exegete. Here, gender distinctions between the lovers are not just blurred but rather reinverted as Bernard envisions a feminized bridegroom in clinch with an explicitly male human partner: If anyone of us, like the holy prophet, finds that it is good to adhere to God [Ps 72. 28], or, to speak more clearly, if anyone among us is such a man of desire [desiderii vir] that he yearns [cupiat] to dissolve [dissolvi] and be with Christ, yearns vehemently, with an ardent thirst [ardenter sitiat], ceaselessly striving: indeed, he [is] shall receive the Word in the form of bridegroom at the time of his visit. At such an hour he will find himself embraced in the arms of wisdom [sapientiae], and he will feel the sweetness of saintly love flowing [infundi] into him. So his heart’s desire will be given to him, even as a pilgrim in the body, even if only in part [ex parte tamen] and only for a while, a little while [tempus modicum].146

Yet again we find the metaphor of the embrace indicating contemplative excessus, and yet again the restraint imposed on anagogic realization (while still ‘a pilgrim in the body’) is represented by the Pauline ‘in part’ (ex parte tamen) and the Johannine ‘little while’ (tempus modicum), indicating, respectively, a qualitative and a temporal limitation on the fullness of bliss.147 But here, the metaphor of the embrace, rather than evoking notions of seclusion and rest, alludes to a more physical interaction: a transition of fluids, a ‘sweet’ (suavitatem) wetness which ‘flows’ (infundi) into the human lover, even, it seems, ‘dissolving’ or ‘liquefying’ (dissolvi) him. Correspondingly, godly desire (desi145 

Compare Shanzer, ‘Latent Narrative Patterns’, p. 53. Scc 32.2: OSB, v.1, pp. 470–72: ‘Ergo si cui nostrum cum sancto Propheta adhaerere Deo bonum est [Psal. LXXII, 28], et, ut loquar manifestius, si quis in nobis est ita desiderii vir, ut cupiat dissolvi et cum Christo esse, cupiat autem vehementer, ardenter sitiat, assidue meditetur: is profecto non secus quam in forma sponsi suscipiet Verbum in tempore visitationis, hora videlicet qua se astringi intus quibusdam brachiis sapientiae atque inde sibi infundi senserit sancti suavitatem amoris. Siquidem desiderium cordis eius tribuetur ei, etsi adhuc peregrinanti in corpore, ex parte tamen, idque ad tempus et tempus modicum.’ 147  Cf. Scc 38.5 above, Section 4.4 (ex parte); and Scc 74.4 above, Section 4.5 (modicum). 146 

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derii, cupiat, desiderium cordis), is depicted in the passage as an ‘ardent thirst’ (ardenter sitiat).148 The main point here, however, is the gendering of the characters in the passage. In this passionate embrace, the ‘man of desire’ (desiderii vir) is not just explicitly male (is, ‘he’) but quite clearly also a monk (quis in nobis, ‘one of us’). Nowhere in the passage do we find the familiar reference to sponsa or anima. Instead, the monk finds himself locked in the arms of a divine partner who is doubly identified, and doubly gendered: both bridegroom and the feminine principle of sapientia. Sapientia, appearing as Christ’s female alter ego, emphasizes the malleability of the gendering of the Word and, above all, permits Bernard to maintain the masculinity of the monk in the erotic encounter with Christ without compromising heterosexual complementarity. However, the more familiar gendering of male divinity and female humanity is restored in the following section, where the lovers reappear as sponsus Verbum and sponsa anima (Scc 32.3). The image of Christ-Wisdom who appears as feminized bridegroom to embrace the explicitly masculine monk is striking because it points to the rhetorical possibility of a gendering which seems all but ignored in the Sermons. Yet as we turn our attention to the theme of feminized text, we shall see that, for all its elusiveness, the theme quietly reverberates throughout, rendering gender particularly evasive and unstable. As a manifestation of Wisdom or Sapientia, Scriptura is grammatically and imagistically female: a seductive figure which doubles for beautiful Rachel as object for desirous embrace. Yet even here gender proves indeterminate, for if desire for the text is a hermeneutical desire, it is ultimately a desire for Christ — the embodied Word (and vice versa: desire for Christ is always already a hermeneutical desire). Desire for the scriptural text and desire for Christ therefore overlap. Indeed, the figures of Christ and Scriptura overlap — and not just because Scripture is a manifestation of Sapientia, which is a manifestation of Christ. It overlaps because, in medieval devotion, the corpus of Christ and the corpus of Scripture are identical: hermeneutically, the suffering flesh of Christ is Scripture, is text.149 The previous chapter discussed the merging together of Christ’s body and the text, as objects of desire and as objects of hermeneutical examination — a 148 

On sitiens connected with (feminine) lack, see above, Section 4.5; on thirst and hunger as Eucharistic desire, see below, Section 6.5. 149  See Newman, ‘Crucified by the Virtues’, who employs the perspective of Christ’s body as parchment in analysing the physical nature of the imitatio Christi on the part of illiterate Cistercian lay brothers.

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theme which also, I argued, merged themes of pleasure and pain. This perspective sheds light on a recurring theme in the Sermons, namely penetration. The theme occurs, significantly, most often in a hermeneutical context, and often also involves the saintly body as the site of penetration. Drawing on Hebrews 4. 12, Bernard evokes notions of an act of penetration performed by God, or rather by the ‘word of God’ (sermo Dei).150 However, the parallelism between ‘words’ (sermo or verbum) and ‘the Word’ (Verbum), sometimes allocates the role of penetrator explicitly to the Word, that is, Christ the bridegroom, who penetrates the bride ‘without a sound, without speaking’ but by entering directly inside her to ‘caress her affections [affectibus]’.151 The bridegroom is also envisioned as penetrating Bernard-bride.152 In Sermon 29, moreover, we noted the desire on the part of the devotional-hermeneutical subject (shifting from Virgin Mary to nos to ego) to be pierced and penetrated by arrows and swords, representing, concurrently, words and the Word.153 As in these examples, imagery implying the mutual desire for intimacy or union between bride and bridegroom allows for the image of penetration to be tinged by sexual allusions. Images of penetration, however, do not necessarily carry erotic overtones, as will be clear shortly, but they certainly carry hermeneutical references. Words penetrate, we note: Might words also be penetrated? ‘Penetrating’ (penetrare) indicates the excessus, the ‘going beyond’, of contemplation. More specifically, penetrating is the hermeneutical act of moving from the letter (or literal level) to the spirit (or spiritual levels) of the text and, concurrently, from the realm of the world and body to the ‘heavens’ (caelis); to the ‘innermost secrets’ (intima, arcana sapientiae); to the ‘sublime’ and ‘perfect’ (sublimiora, perfectiora); and to the ‘fullness of brightness’ and 150 

Hebr 4. 12: ‘sermo Dei vivus et efficax, et penetrabilior omni gladio ancipiti, pertingens usque ad divisionem animae ac spiritus, compagum auoque ac medullarum, et discretor cogitationum’ (the word of God is living and effectual, and more piercing than any two edged sword; and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts). Bernard alludes quite frequently to this verse: there are explicit references in Scc 2.2, 3.2, 29.8, 45.7, 59.9, 74.6. 151  Scc 31.6, OSB, v.1, p. 464: ‘Verbum nempe est, non sonans, sed penetrans; non loquax, sed efficax; non obstrepens auribus, sed affectibus blandiens’ (It is the Word, who penetrates without sound, who is effective though not spoken, who caresses the affections without sounding in the ears). 152  Scc 74.6, OSB, v.2, p. 494: ‘intrans ad me aliquoties Verbum sponsus […] non voce, non specie, non incessu. Nullis denique suis motibus compertum est mihi, nullis meis sensibus illapsum penetralibus meis’. For translation and discussion, see above, Section 4.5. 153  See Scc 29.8 above, Section 5.4.

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‘splendour’ (plenitudinis luminis, claritas).154 Penetrating means entering into spiritual understanding, highlighting the particularly hermeneutical nature of Bernard’s interpretation of contemplation (union, raptus, vision, excess, presence). It implies, moreover, penetrating the Word, penetrating Christ the bridegroom. In Sermon 7, Bernard is back in the allegorical woodland, explaining to his audience that just as the ‘hind’ (cervus m.) is able to penetrate the ‘dark woods’ (nemorum opaca f.) with agile leaps, so ‘contemplative excess’ (speculantis excessus) implies penetrating the outwardness of the letter.155 Emphasizing hermeneutical aspects, contemplation is conjoined with notions of penetrating the text (‘dark woods’). Likewise aligning penetrare and mystical raptus, Bernard refers to Paul’s raptus into the third heaven, envisioning him as ‘penetrating heaven’ (Scc 25.5). Angels ‘penetrate deeply’ (intima penetrare), Bernard states, because they have superior understanding (Scc 5.4). But also the contemplative who, like the angels, ‘has laid aside the body’ easily both ‘soars to the heights and penetrates to the innermost depths’.156 Intertextually drawing on a passage from Ecclesiasticus (‘the prayer of the humble man shall penetrate the clouds’), Bernard sometimes relates hermeneutical penetration to prayer, equating prayer and contemplation as analogously ‘exceeding’ (excedere), ‘thrusting and penetrating’ (pulsare et penetrare), like he sometimes speaks of saintly desire which ‘touches’ and ‘penetrates’ heaven.157 154 

Penetrare caelos: Scc 25.5 (OSB, v.1, p. 352), 35.3 (OSB, v.1, p. 514), 49.3 (OSB, v.2, p. 176), 54.8 (OSB, v.2, p. 240), 62.2 (OSB, v.2, p. 330); penetrare intima: Scc 5.4 (OSB, v.1, p. 70), 52.6 (OSB, v.2, p. 214); penetrare arcana: Scc 62.6 (OSB, v.2, p. 336); penetrare sublimia: Scc 9.3 (OSB, v.1, p. 112), 32.8 (OSB, v.2, p. 478); penetrare plenitudinem luminis, irrumpere claritatis abyssos: Scc 38.5 (OSB, v.2, p. 60). 155  Scc 7.6, OSB, v.1, p.  94: ‘cervus […] qui nimirum agilitatis suae saltibus exprimit speculantis excessus, sed et opaca penetrare nemorum, ut ille sensuum, consuevit’ (the hind […] who with agile leaps penetrates the dark woods expresses contemplative excess, just as [the contemplative exceeds] the level of the senses). 156  Scc 52.6, OSB, v.2, p. 214: ‘sanctae animae exutae corporibus, simul et qui cum Deo sunt angeli […] facile et petunt summa, et intima penetrant’ (saintly souls who have laid aside their bodies, just like the angels who are in the presence of God […], soar to the heights and penetrate to the innermost depths). 157  Ecclus 35.21: ‘oratio humiliantis se nubes penetrabit’ (the prayer of the humble man penetrates the clouds); Scc 54.8, OSB, v.2, p. 240: ‘illum in contemplatione frequenter excedere, hunc pulsare et penetrare caelos orationum instantia’ (one who frequently exceeds in contemplation, another who thrusts and penetrates with insistent prayers); Scc 49.3, OSB, v.2, p. 176: ‘caeli ianuam tangas sancti desiderii manu, et praesentatus choris sanctorum, tua

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The theme of penetration of Christ emerges in Sermon 14, where Christ the bridegroom-Word is daringly penetrated by the Church-bride who expropriates the place of her rival, the Synagogue, to ‘enjoy’ (fruitur) his ‘embraces’ (amplexibus).158 Here the theme of penetration definitely merges with interrelated themes in the Sermons. The passage conjoins the erotic-contemplative themes of frui, the embrace, and penetration while emphasizing hermeneutics. Indeed, this passage is considered in the previous chapter precisely from the point of view of a hermeneutical tension between letter and spirit: the bride’s ability to thrust into the depths of the Word sanctioned by the ‘death of the letter’ at the ‘death of the Word’ (occidentis litterae in morte Verbi), which opens onto spiritual understanding. In Sermons 61 and 62 the theme is amplified. Bernard dwells on the verse from Song 2. 14, ‘my dove is in the clefts of the rock, in the crannies of the wall’, which he reads as the bridegroom’s ‘words of love’ (amatoria loqui) to his dove, the bride (Scc 61.2). Evoking the Song’s image of ‘clefts’ (foramina), identified as the ‘wounds’ (vulnera) of Christ’s perforated body, the references to penetration become many, as shall presently be seen.159 ‘There is no lack of openings, from where [mercy] overflows’, affirms Bernard, and envisions himself sucking the orifices in the body of Christ-bridegroom-Word: ‘They pierced his hands and feet, and they perforated his side with the lance, and though these fissures I can suck honey from the rock, and oil from hard stone: I can taste and see that penetrante devotione — siquidem oratio iusti penetrat caelos’ (you may touch the door of heaven with the hand of saintly desire, and present yourself to the choirs of heaven with your penetrating devotion — just like the prayer of the just penetrates heaven). 158  Scc 14.4, quoted above, see Section 5.3; cf. Scc 73.2, below Section 6.5. The dismissal of the ‘old’ bride (i.e., the Synagogue) and the replacement with the ‘new’ bride (Church) is most firmly stated in Scc 67.11, OSB, v.2, p. 408: ‘O fatuam sponsam Synagogam, quae contemnens Dei iustitiam, id est gratiam sponsi sui, et suam volens constituere, iustitiae Dei non est subiecta. Ob hoc misera repudiata est, et iam non est sponsa, sed Ecclesia’ (O that foolish bride, the Synagogue, who disregarded the justice of God, that is, the grace of her bridegroom, and who wished to replace it with her own, did not subject herself to the justice of God. Because of this, she is wretched and dismissed, and now it is the Church and not she who is the bride). 159  Scc 61.3, OSB, v.2, p. 218: ‘Alius hunc locum ita exposuit, foramina petrae vulnera Christi interpretans. Recte omnino; nam petra Christus’ (Another [writer] glosses this passage differently, interpreting the clefts in the rock as the wounds of Christ. And quite rightly so, for Christ is the rock). According to Song, iii, 142, Bernard’s reference is Gregory the Great (Expositio in Cantica canticorum 2.15, col. 499D), while OSB, v.2, pp. 318–19 point to the fifth-century Apponius (Commentarius in cant. 4.39–44), transmitted by Bede (In Cantica canticorum 2.495–507). On Scc 61, see also above, Section 5.5.

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the Lord is sweet.’160 Among the ‘instruments’ which can penetrate and enter Christ’s body is the exegete’s own gaze. Bernard not merely sucks, he even stares intently into the wounds of Christ (videam […] videam), finding that the nail (clavus) which penetrated (penetrans) him has become a key (clavis) to open him (reserans).161 Representing Christ’s wounds as keyholes by which to open and enter his body, the body of Christ is rendered legible; it becomes text. Saintly souls enter the divine body by the wounds and, curling up inside, are safe, like marmots (herinaciis, i.e., small furry rodents) who make hide-outs in the rock.162 Also Bernard seems to desire to enter into the rock, enter into Christ (cf. i Cor 10. 4). Evoking subtexts of desert asceticism or hermit caves, he declares: ‘I shall leave the cities and dwell in the rock.’163 Again aligning monasticism and martyrdom, he next envisions bloody and martyred saints who, like monks, squeeze into openings in the rock (Scc 61.6–8). As he shifts his attention from the ‘rock’ to the ‘wall’ (cf. Song 2. 14), the abbot imagines eager and devout souls carving out ‘crannies in the wall’ (cavernis maceriae), representing the ‘community of saints’ (sanctorum communionem). Figuring the lofty heights of saintly perfection as consisting of a ‘soft material’ (materiae mollioris), which ‘yields to the soul’s desire, yields to contemplation, yields to frequent prayer’, he again invokes Ecclesiasticus: ‘For the prayer of the just man penetrates the heavens.’164 As he returns to the image of the ‘clefts of the rock’, metonymically defined as perforations in the hermeneutical body of Christ, he next describes the holy soul hollowing out a pathway into the Word itself, like a little marmot. ‘Who might be capable of this?’ Bernard queries, and cites John, who ‘plunged

160  Scc 61.4, OSB, v.2, p. 320: ‘Nec desunt foramina, per quae effluant. Foderunt manus eius et pedes, latusque lancea foraverunt, et per has rimas licet mihi sugere mel de petra, oleumque de saxo durissimo, id est gustare et videre quoniam suavis est Dominus.’ 161  Scc 61.4, OSB, v.2, p. 320: ‘At clavis reserans, clavus penetrans factus est mihi, ut videam voluntatem Domini. Quidni videam per foramen? Clamat clavus, clamat vulnus’ (But the nail that pierced him has become for me a keyhole for seeing God’s will. Why should I not gaze through the cleft? The nail cries out, the wound cries out). 162  Scc 61.3, OSB, v.2, p. 318: ‘Petra refugium herinaciis [Psal. CIII, 18]. Et revera ubi tuta firmaque infirmis requies, nisi in vulneribus Salvatoris?’ (The rock is a refuge for marmots. And really where is there safe rest for the weak if not in the wounds of Christ?) 163  Scc 61.6, OSB, v.2, p. 322: ‘relinquam civitates, et habitabo in petra’. 164  Scc 62.2, OSB, v.2, p. 330: ‘Cedit nempe in modum materiae mollioris pia maceries desiderio animae, cedit purae contemplationi, cedit crebrae orationi. Denique oratio iusti penetrat caelos [Eccli. XXXV, 21].’

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himself into the depths of the Word, and extracted from [the Word’s] breast sacred marrow from the innermost recesses of wisdom [sapientia]?’165 At this point the gender-destabilizing identification between Christ and his female alter ego Sapientia re-emerges, blending in with the imagery of perforating and penetrating the divine body. The text reverberates with references to sapientia and the connoted verb, sapere (Scc 62.3–4). Indeed, the figure of bridegroom or Christ is increasingly feminized also by the constant reference to him as the ‘Rock’ (Petra), grammatically feminine. ‘Let us confidently excavate the Rock for hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge [Col 2. 3]. And if you still have doubts,’ exclaims Bernard, ‘then listen to the Rock herself: Whoever acts in me shall not sin [Ecclus 24. 30].’166 The figures of Rock-Christ and Sapientia are here definitively blended together by the biblical citation, where the speaker, the Rock, is Sapientia herself. Immersed in a terminology reminiscent of contemplative raptus and excessus (excessum rapi, raptum, contemplator, rapiuntur), the feminine reverberation in the following passages is further suggested by the pronouns (in illam […] in eam) in descriptions of being rapt into the feminized rock-wisdom. Based on the ability to excavate, penetrate, and plunge into the heavenlydivine-spiritual realm, or, more specifically, into the divine body of the Word or Sapientia, Bernard begins to conjure up notions of hierarchies. Not everyone in the Church is able to perforate the rock, only the more perfect might ‘dare to thrust into and penetrate hidden wisdom’ (rimari ac penetrare arcana sapientiae), that is, elusive Sapientia.167 Those, however, who are ‘unable, or presume that they are unable, to excavate the rock, must make cavities in the wall, and be content to gaze at the glory of the saints’.168 If even this is too difficult, they may find a ‘hollow in the ground where they might hide’ (fossa ostenditur humus ubi lateat). ‘Weak and sluggish souls’ (infirmae […] et inerti animae) may nestle there, until they recover and progress so they might, by ‘strength and 165  Scc 62.3, OSB, v.2, p. 332: ‘Nonne tibi videtur ipsis se Verbi penetralibus immersisse; et de abditis pectoris eius quamdam intimae sapientiae sacrosanctam eruisse medullam?’ 166  Scc 62.4, OSB, v.2, p.  334: ‘secure fodiamus in Petra, in qua thesauri absconditi sapientiae et scientiae sunt (Coloss. II, 3). Si adhuc dubitas, audi ipsam Petram: Qui operantur, inquit, in me, non peccabunt (Eccli. XXIV, 30).’ 167  Scc 62.6, OSB, v.2, p. 336: ‘non ex omni interim parte adhuc ad petram forandam accedere Ecclesia potest […] in perfectis quidem, qui rimari ac penetrare arcana sapientiae […] audent.’ 168  Scc 62.6, OSB, v.2, p. 338: ‘qui in petra per semetipsos fodere aut non sufficiunt, aut non praesumunt, in maceria fodiant, contenti vel gloriam sanctorum mente intueri.’

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purity of mind’ (animi […] vigore et puritate), enter into the inward being of the Word.169 It seems as if a touch of maleness is required, as well. As we have found on other occasions in the Sermons, the transition from weakness to strength is accompanied by a grammatical transition from feminine (animae f.) to masculine reference (animi m.).170 It seems that everyone, in some way, penetrates something, but only the more perfect (manly?) are able to penetrate the divine body of Sapientia-Christ herself. Presently Bernard stops pursuing notions of (gender) hierarchy and instead introduces a disturbing prospect of others who might try to ‘pervade’ (pervadens) the divine body — ‘intruders’ (irruptores) forcing their way inside (irruunt).171 A subtext of exegetical contestation and challenge over the possession of Christ’s (scriptural and ecclesiastical) body emerges, represented by unholy intruders. The context for the abbot’s indictment is likely to be found in the pending verse from the Song of Songs (2. 15: ‘catch for us the little foxes that destroy the vines’) which is treated in Sermons 63 to 66.172 An image of heretical teaching, Bernard uses the ‘little foxes’ to launch accusations against the heretics in Rhineland, who claimed to constitute the true body of Christ.173 Imagery of penetrating the divine body carries not only hierarchical implications but also notions of illicit assault, even rape, representing heresy and violation of Church. 169  Scc 62.6, OSB, v.2, p. 338: ‘Infirmae adhuc et inerti animae […] ossa ostenditur humus ubi lateat, donecconvalescat et proficiat, ut possit et ipsa per se cavare sibi foramina in petra, per quae intret ad interiora Verbi, animi utique vigore et puritate’ (Weak and sluggish souls are shown a hollow in the ground where they might hide until they recover and progress so they might, by strength and purity of mind, enter into the interior of the Word). 170  On animus and anima, see above, Section 5.4; cf. Scc 12.8: ‘de muliere in virum, et virum perfectum’, above, Section 5.2; and Scc 14.5: from ‘proxima’ to ‘novus homo’, above, Section 4.2. 171  Scc 62.4, OSB, v.2, pp. 334–36: ‘dignanter levans hominem, non hominis temeritas insolenter Dei alta pervadens […] irruptores dici reor, non qui scilicet rapiuntur in eam, sed qui irruunt’ (when [God] deigns to lift up someone, [it is] not like the brashness of a man insolently pervading the high things of God […] these intruders are not those who are rapt up but those who invade). 172  This may be seen in light of Bernard’s rhetorical technique, whereby he launches a theme by small hints, then gradually and slowly letting it develop and direct the exegesis; as noted by Pranger, ‘The Concept of Death’, p. 88. 173  Scc 66.8, OSB, v.2, p. 384: ‘Non ignoro, quod se et solos corpus Christi esse glorientur’. Cf. Eberwin of Steinfeld, Epistola 472 ad Bernardum, col. 677D: ‘Dicunt apud se tantum Ecclesiam esse, eo quod ipsi soli vestigiis Christi inhaereant; et apostolicae vitae veri sectatores permaneant’ (They say among themselves that they alone are the Church, that only they follow

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In Sermon 35, unlike other sermons considered here, penetrating the divine is depicted as a lost ability. The bride has found disapproval with the bridegroom, and she is told to ‘go forth’ (Song 1. 7). His dismissal is portrayed as implementing a fall from spiritualness to fleshliness, from peace to unrest, resonant of the expulsion from paradise.174 Thus she is no longer able to ‘penetrate heaven’, clearly indicating her displacement. She can no longer ‘wander about in lofty abodes’, or ‘greet the fathers, the apostles, the prophets’, nor can she ‘admire the triumphal processions of the martyrs’ and ‘the beauty of the angel choirs’.175 In Sermon 9, Bernard again addresses the difficulty, if not impossibility, of penetration, this time relating it to the shortcomings and despair of the monks: Many of you are, as I recall, accustomed to complain to me in our private conversations about a certain languor [languore] and dryness [arentis] of the soul, a sluggishness and dullness of the mind which deters them from penetrating the heights and depths of God.176

Here, it seems, languor — a softness and frigidity which, I argued, is connected with femaleness — invalidates penetration. One wonders about the relationship between penetrable sites and femaleness and, conversely, between masculinity and penetration.177 Is the text penetrable because it is feminized? Is Christ? Indeed, one may ask: Is the bride, a mulier, at all capable of penetration? in the footsteps of Christ, and that they remain the true followers of the apostolic life). On Scc 65–66 in connection with negative maternal imagery, see above, Section 3.2. 174  Scc 35.1, OSB, v.1, pp. 512–14: ‘de spiritu ad carnem, de bonis animi ad saecularia desideria, de interna requie mentis ad mundi strepitum […] quam si se de paradiso’ (from the spirit to the flesh, from the good of the soul to worldly desires, from inner peace of mind to the clatter of the world […] as if driven out of paradise). 175  Scc 35.3, OSB, v.1, p.  514: ‘penetrare devotione caelos et mente supernas circuire mansiones, salutare patres atque apostolos et choros prophetarum, martyrumque admirari triumphos, ac stupere pulcherrimos ordines angelorum’. 176  Scc 9.3, OSB, v.1, p. 112: ‘Plurimque vestrum mihi quoque, ut memini, in privatis confessionibus suis conqueri solent super huiuscemodi animi arentis languore atque hebetudine stolidae mentis, quod Dei scilicet alta atque subtilia penetrare nequirent’. 177  In Foucauldian scholarship reconstructions of premodern sexualities centring on discussions of (homosexual) acts versus identities, often adopt penetration as discursive marker, associating the penetrator with masculinity (or a masculine role) and, relatedly, the penetrated with femininity (or a feminine role). See Halperin, ‘Forgetting Foucault’; and Rambuss, Closet Devotions, pp. 19–32, 36, 38–39, who, highlighting homoerotic aspects of devotional lyrics, warns against assuming that all penetrable sites are feminine. He also suggests that the scholarly themes of the ‘feminization of Christ’ or ‘maternal Christ’ has the effect of ‘rerouting the homoerotic vectors of devotion to Christ along heterosexual circuits’ (p. 146 n. 37).

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In the discussion of Sermon 38, we noted that the bride aspired to direct vision of heaven and of God, portrayed in terms of penetration. 178 Furthermore, we recall that there was no penetration — the bride was not able to. She was denied fulfilment of her desire because she had not yet achieved the perfection and godlikeness reserved for the next life. Significantly, in the same passage, femaleness was implicitly identified as ‘that part’ (ex parte) which is unfinished, corruptible, partial — the part which shall pass away with the eschatological promise of perfection. Considering the emphasis in this sermon on the designation ‘woman’ as marker of the bride’s imperfection, femaleness suggests an inability to penetrate, to pierce and perforate and thrust into the heavens, the divine, the splendour and fullness of light, into the body of Christ-Sapientia-Petra. In Sermon 32 penetration is, in effect, squarely aligned with maleness. A few passages after the erotic meeting between Sapientia and the masculinized monk, Bernard proffers a vision of spiritual virility where the ‘mighty bridegroom’ comes to ‘mighty spirits’, to perform ‘mighty deeds’ with them.179 In this passage full of rhetoric of virility, the ability to penetrate, seize, and attain that which is most secret, most sublime, most perfect is related to the ‘nobility’ (magnanimores), the ‘courage’ (audere maiora) and ‘might’ (magnitudine) of ‘restless and probing men’ (inquieti prorsus et curiosi).180 However, the penetrability of femaleness, or, relatedly, the incapacity of femaleness to penetrate, must not necessarily or primarily be understood in erotic or sexual terms. Notions of the penetrability of femaleness are implicit in medieval physiological theories of gender, where female is represented as porous, spongy, and soft, while male is dry, hard, and vigorous.181 The process towards hermeneutical perfection is envisioned as requiring some kind of maleness or virility, analogously to the requirement of spiritualness in order to read spiritually. The body, too, seems to represent a hindrance for full penetration: the angels do so, notably, without the aid of bodies, and the contemplative, likewise, ‘lays his body aside’. Again, the discursive marker 178 

Scc 38.5: ‘penetrare in plenitudinem luminis, irrumpere claritatis abyssos’, see above, Section 4.4. 179  Scc 32.9, OSB, v.1, p. 480: ‘magnis spiritibus magnus occurret sponsus, et magnificabit facere cum eis.’ 180  Scc 32.8, OSB, v.1, p. 478: ‘de maiori spiritus libertate et puritate conscientiae mag­ nanimores facti, consueverunt audere maiora, inquieti prorsus et curiosi secretiora penetrare, et apprehendere sublimiora, et tentare perfectiora […] pro fidei magnitudine digni invenitur’. 181  See above, Section 1.5.

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of femaleness seems to encounter ascetic-contemplative ideals of superseding fleshliness and the body, thereby engaging gender hierarchy with hermeneutical hierarchy, as we shall turn to shortly. However, it should also be noted that underlying notions of masculinized bride — which complements the feminized bridegroom — sometimes seem to permit penetration, most notably in Sermon 14, where Ecclesia-bride does indeed penetrate Christ, and where, instead, it is the ex-bride, the Synagogue, who is rejected and impotent.

6.5 The Hermeneutical Banquet: Nutrition and Fruition In the hermeneutical transition from letter to spirit and from outer to inner, Christ, as we have seen, is the catalyst — the site of penetration. Penetrating the Word suggests recovering paradise, reverting the fall: returning to the condition of perfect and immediate spiritual understanding. This transition is desirable — indeed, it is the very focal point of all desire, the ultimate contemplative and eschatological goal — but not fully realizable in this life, in this body, in this condition of displacement, unlikeness, and femaleness. The loss of hermeneutical access is confirmed by the act of exegesis itself. Rather than abandoning himself to the embraces and the kisses of the bridegroom, Bernard must perform the hermeneutical duties of motherhood, nurturing and lactating his monks: that is, preaching and preparing sermons. Analogously to the bereavement of widowhood and analogously to blackness, motherhood awaits anagogic promotion into the ecstatic and defeminized role of white, virginal bride. Yet the monk’s position is not completely bleak, for he does have access to Scripture, the body of Christ. It is here restitution and ascent begins. In Sermon 73, as in Sermon 14, Bernard opposes Jewish and Christian hermeneutics, contrasting them in terms of the ‘letter’ (litterae), that is, the ‘portion of the Jews’,182 and the ‘spirit’ (spiritus) hidden deep inside the ‘bosom’ or ‘womb’ (gremio) of Scripture:183

182 

Scc 73.1, OSB, v.2, p. 476: ‘Hic litterae tenor, et haec Iudaeorum portio.’ The term gremium, here connected with spiritus, has connotations both to womb and, more generally to an ‘inner’ part of the anatomy, e.g., bosom, or more figuratively to the inner parts of something. I have found no English word which transmits this ambiguity of meaning. Gremium is employed in the Vulgate, e.g., Gen 48. 12, with paternal references (or appropriated maternal references). In medieval Latin gremium ecclesiae was also associated with the inner structures of the church building, i.e., schola cantorum or central nave. See Johanssen, Nygaard, and Schreiner, Latinsk-Norsk Ordbok, p. 284. 183 

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And I, instead, will examine for myself, as I have received it from the Lord, spirit and life in the depths of the womb [gremio] of sacred writing: this is my portion, for I believe in Christ. How can I extract [eruam] the sweet and salvific spiritual feast [epulum] from the barren and insipid letter, like grain from the ear, a nut from its shell, the marrow from the bone? I will have nothing to do with the letter; it tastes of flesh [gustata carnem sapit], and swallowing it brings death! But what is hidden in the letter, is of the holy Spirit.184

Bernard returns to the hermeneutical oppositions of letter and flesh versus spirit, previously figured as ‘in books’ (in codicibus) versus ‘in hearts’ (in cordibus).185 The outward letter veiling the spirit within is initially written off as ‘barren’ (sterili) and ‘insipid’ (insipida) — the latter indicating both ‘foolishness’ (insipiens, cf. ii Cor 12. 6, 11) and ‘tastelessness’ (insipiditas). At the closing of the passage, however, the letter — or rather, the inability to transcend or penetrate the letter — is more dramatically associated with death. Bernard’s repeated emphasis on the opposition between Synagoga and Ecclesia, or Jewish literalism versus Christian transcendence, signalizes the tension that Bernard instates between the literal level and the spiritual levels in medieval hermeneutics (tropology, allegory, and anagogy).186 Here one must consider two factors. Firstly, that the hermeneutical frame of reference is, no matter how far the abbot digresses from the biblical verse he is expounding, the Song of Songs — a book shared with the Jewish tradition. Secondly, from a monastic-ascetic point of view, the hermeneutical threat posed by the Song’s literal level of meaning, the letter which ‘brings death’ and 184 

Scc 73.2, OSB, v.2, p. 476: ‘Ego vero, quemadmodum accepi a Domino, in profundo sacri eloquii gremio spiritum mihi scrutabor et vitam: et pars mea haec, qui in Christum credo. Quidni eruam dulce ac salutare epulum spiritus de sterili et insipida littera, tamquam granum de palea, de testa nucleum, de osse medullam? Nihil mihi et litterae huic, quae gustata carnem sapit, glutita mortem affert! Sed enim quod in ea tectum est, de Spiritu sancto est.’ 185  Scc 14.8, see above, Section 5.3. Cf. the opposition in Scc 25.5–7, ‘face’ versus ‘heart’; see Table 10. 186  Damrosch, ‘Non alia sed aliter’, draws attention to Scc 30.5, where Bernard constructs oppositions which seem related to the tensions we are discussing between Jewish and Christian hermeneutics. In this section Bernard contrasts sponsa and Moses as the old and the new dispensation. Scc 30.5, OSB, v.1, p. 442: ‘Sed non sicut gratia, ita et lex. Quam dissimili vultu ad omnem conscientiam se offerunt suavitas huius, et illius austeritas. Quis sane ex aequo respiciat condemnantem et consolantem, reposcentem et ignoscentem, plectentem et amplectentem?’ (But the law is not like grace. How differently they present themselves to the conscience, one sweet and another austere. Who can see them as equals, one who condemns and one who counsels, one who reproaches and one who pardons, one who punishes and one who embraces?)

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which ‘tastes of flesh’, is, quite literally, more acute than in exegesis of other biblical texts; if read on a literal level, the Song is simply scandalous. Of course, Bernard is blatantly incorrect in his characterization of Jewish hermeneutics as univocally literal (a fact he surely was aware of himself ).187 The Song of Songs was allegorized already in the rabbinic age — if it ever had been subject to a literal interpretation in Jewish readings.188 But the opposition brings out his point. Bernard implies that just like Jews who read only literally, people who live according to the flesh are lost. Like Asiedu observed, the Song of Songs, in order to enter into ascetic discourse, requires sublimation both textually and morally:189 a twofold and interrelated hermeneutical process whereby the literal or historical sense as well as the corporeal and erotic implications are transformed and superseded. However, one might also consider this notion the other way around. Just like Christians presuppose Jewish texts, salvation presupposes the body — or a body — for its turn towards spiritual ascent. Again our focus is shifted toward that salvific and desirable flesh, the body of Christ. Excavating into the body of Scripture, that is, the body of Christ, Bernard presents this body not only as edible but, as noted previously, containing anatomical depths (in profundo […] gremio) into which the exegete must enter and extract ‘what lies hidden’ (quod […] tectum est). Bernard imagines himself as entering into this body, even banqueting on it. Again conflating Eucharist and text, he refers to ‘sacred scriptures’ (sacri eloquii) as epulum, which indicates a ceremonious or sacrificial feast.190 Notions of a hermeneutical feast or banquet are confirmed by the stress on food and eating. There are images of nuts and grain and marrowbone, and references to ‘tasting’ (gustata) and ‘swallowing’ (glutita) as well as the verb sapere/sapit, which hides a double significance, both ‘to taste’ and ‘to know’. Thus when Bernard rejects the letter, stating that ‘it tastes of flesh’ (gustata carnem sapit), he also suggests that it knows only flesh. 187  In medieval hermenutics, Jewish readings were generally regarded as not illuminated by the Holy Spirit. Moreover, in typological understanding, the events of the Old Testament took on sense only if viewed in light of Christ and the New Testament. In this sense, Christ himself is the spirit of the text. On the relation between Jewish and Christian exegesis, and St Victor as a meeting-point between them, in eleventh- and twelfth-century France, see Grossman, ‘The School of Literal Jewish Exegesis in Northern France’, pp. 323, 328, who underscores a Jewish school of literal interpretation in this period; cf. Leclercq, Monks and Love, p. 30. 188  See above, Section 1.2. 189  Asiedu, ‘The Song of Songs and the Ascent of the Soul’, p. 312. 190  Bernard uses also epulas for describing Gerard’s heavenly banquet; Scc 27.1, see above, Section 5.4.

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In this sense, feasting merely on the letter, like the Jews, means to be enslaved, hermeneutically and morally, to a life of flesh. It means to remain at — instead of progressing from — the corporeal level and thus to be subject to death, like eating non-nutritional foodstuff. Established already in the very first sermon, the conjunction of Scriptura and Verbum is densely figured in the image of the bread that is contemporaneously the Song of Songs and the Eucharist.191 This ‘splendid and delicious bread’, administered by abbot Bernard to his monks, is both the bleeding flesh of the Eucharist and the very object of his exegesis — as well as their shared object of desire. Breaking this bread for his hungering flock (Scc 1.4), Bernard launches his exegesis of the Song. As he commences, he instantly proposes the image of eroticized pursuit of seductive Scriptura (Scc 1.5), an image which in this perspective carries an immediate reference to the body of Christ, the incarnate Word. But if Christ’s flesh is object of hermeneutical desire and fruition, it is also object of hermeneutical nourishment and nutrition. Bridging nutrition and fruition — in other words, bridging feeding imagery and erotic imagery — Christ provides a hermeneutical site where images of sensual pleasure, desire, and fruition and images of nourishment, nutrition, and food converge and overlap. Conjoining hermeneutical and Eucharistic themes, the image of banquet and bread in Sermon 1 prepares for the prevalent imagery of milk, breasts, and lactation — all associated with nutrition and feeding.192 The theme echoes throughout the sermons in recurring references to Christ as ‘food’ (cibum) which cures and nourishes, which is both medicine and nutrition (Scc 14.6 and Scc 15.5–7); in representations of hermeneutical appetite (Scc 15.8) and exegesis as food for souls (Scc 16.1); and, not least, in the frequent allusions to ‘sweetness’ (dulcis, dulcedo, suavis, suavitas) and ‘taste’ (gustare, sapere).193 The 191 

See Scc 1.1 above, Section 2.2. The seminal study of the significance of food in medieval devotional texts is Bynum’s Holy Feast and Holy Fast. She argues that food was of particular concern to woman devotees and writers. Given its place in society’s division of labour it was a symbolic sphere in which women might exercise control. Hence, she argues, women’s imitation of Christ’s humanity tended to concentrate on practices related to food, i.e., physical fasting on the one hand and Eucharistic feasting or ‘feasting’ on pus and filth from the sick on the other. It is interesting to note the significance of food in Bernard’s Sermons, nuancing, perhaps, Bynum’s claim that food imagery was an ‘overwhelming concern’ primarily to woman, ‘more important to woman than to men’ and ‘not central’ to male spirituality (Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, pp. 93–94). 193  I have found 183 occurrences of of suavis or suavitas in the Sermons, 44 for dulcis and dulcedo. The occurrences increase when lactation is expounded (in Sermon 9, for instance, there 192 

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under­lying assumption is — as Augustine had underscored in his Sermon 145, speaking of Christ as a ‘granary’ (horrei) — that with the Incarnation, Christ became food for man.194 In this perspective, the recurrent references to thirst and hunger in the Sermons clearly carry a reference to the Eucharist, emphasizing appetitus directed at the body of Christ. At Bernard’s spiritual banquet, however, the monks not only feed on Christ, they are also fed upon: My penance is his food, my salvation is his food, I myself am his food. Does he not eat ashes as if they were bread? And I, who am a sinner, am ashes to be eaten by him. I am eaten as I am reproved, I am swallowed as I am instructed, I am cooked as I am changed, I am digested as I am transformed, I am assimilated as I am conformed. Do not wonder at this: he eats us, and he is eaten by us so we are more tightly bound to him. Otherwise, we would not be perfectly united with him. For if I eat but am not eaten, then I have him in me but I am not in him. And if I am eaten but I do not eat, then he has me in him but he is not yet in me, nor will there be perfect union in either case. But he eats me that he may have me in himself, and in turn he is eaten by me that he may be in me, and the bond between us will be firm and the union complete, for I am in him, and likewise he is in me.195 are seven occurrences for dulcis or dulcedo alone) and in a context of contemplation or mystical excess, but generally sweetness is mentioned in all sermons. 194  Augustine, Classis prima De Scripturis: Sermo cxlv 5, col. 794: ‘Jam vide dulcedinem, gusta, sapiat tibi: audi Psalmum, Gustate et videte quoniam suavis est Dominus [Psal. XXXIII, 9]. Factus est tibi suavis, quia liberavit te. Amarus tibi fuisti, cum praesumeres in te. Bibe dulcedinem, accipe pignus tanti horrei’ (See, now, and taste and feel how he is sweet to you, hear the Psalm: Taste and see how sweet is the Lord [Ps 33. 9]. He became sweet to you because he freed you. You were bitter to yourself when you believed in yourself. Drink the sweetness, accept the abundance of the granary). Bernard sharpens the image, asserting that Christ even became food for ‘beasts’, for man has transformed himself into beast; see Scc 35.5, OSB, v.1, p. 518: ‘Ergo cibus hominis mutavit se in pabulum pecoris, homine mutato in pecus. […] Cognosce, pecus, quem non cognovisti homo; adora in stabulo quem fugiebas in paradiso […] comede fenum quem panem, et panem angelicum fastidisti’ (Therefore he who is food to man changed himself into fodder for beasts, because man had changed into a beast. […] Acknowledge, o beast, he whom you did not acknowledge when you were a man, adore in the stable him from whom you fled in paradise […] eat grass as bread, since you were repulsed by the bread of angels). 195  Scc 71.5, OSB, v.2, pp. 448–50: ‘Cibus eius paenitentia mea, cibus eius salus mea, cibus eius ego ipse. Annon cinerem tamquam panem manducat? Ego autem quia peccator sum, cinis sum, ut manducer ab eo. Mandor cum arguor, glutior cum instituor, decoquor cum immutor, digeror cum transformor, unior cum conformor. Nolite mirari hoc: manducat nos, et manducatur a nobis, quo arctius illi astringamur. Non sane alias perfecte unimur illi. Nam si manduco et non manducor, videbitur in me esse ille, sed nondum in illo ego. Quod si manducor quidem, nec manduco, me in se habere ille, sed non etiam in me esse videbitur; nec erit perfecta

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Clearly, the leading subtext of the passage is the Eucharistic feast. Bernard even mentions ‘bread’ (panem) (cf. Ps 101. 10). But here, Bernard’s eating of the Lord is complemented by the Lord’s eating of Bernard. Again a reciprocal movement of reflection, imitation, and mimesis constitutes the central aspect of union with the divine and joins with the exegete’s familiar rhetorical technique of reversals and inversion. Keywords indicating contemplative and eschatological fruition are present in the terms transformor and conformor,196 which become directly associated with alimentary preparation and digestive processes — eating, swallowing, cooking, and digesting — in a string of poignant alliteration: Mandor cum arguor, glutior cum instituor, decoquor cum immutor, digeror cum transformor, unior cum conformor (I am eaten as I am reproved, I am swallowed as I am instructed, I am cooked as I am changed, I am digested as I am transformed, I am assimilated as I am conformed). The verb declinations emphasize the individuated aspect (‘I’ am transformed, ‘I’ am conformed) as well as the reflexivity, or passivity, of the human subject (in the passive verb forms). The process points towards a final absorption: union. Emphasis of union in imagery so steeped with notions of feeding on the Lord points to the restorative dimension of the Eucharist.197 Indeed, the passage is very affirmative in its language of union: ‘I am assimilated’ (unior), ‘tightly bound to him’ (illi astringamur), ‘perfectly united to him’ (perfecte unimur illi), ‘perfect union’ (perfecta unitio), ‘firm bond and complete union’ (firma connexio et complexio integra). Yet before the exegete falls into dubious notions of deification, that is, annihilation of the human essence into the divine, he meticulously establishes that the unity between the divine and the human is not one of consubstantiality, differentiating between the unum, the oneness of essence between Father and Son, and the unus, the oneness of wills, which applies to God and the soul (Scc 71.7–10).198 For the present concerns, the principal aspect of the theme of Christ/ Scripture as nurturance in the context of Bernard’s exegesis of the Song of Songs lies in the intersections of nutrition and fruition. The theme of hermeneutical feeding opens up to recognition of the sensual pleasures of the text, not only unitio in uno quovis horum. Sed enim manducet me, ut habeat me in se; et a me vicissim manducetur, ut sit in me, eritque perinde firma connexio et complexio integra, cum ego in eo, et in me nihilominus ille erit.’ 196  On these terms, see above, Section 6.1. 197  Astell emphasizes the Eucharist as restorative in medieval writing in Eating Beauty. 198  On this point, see discussion in McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 214–15.

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its nutritive aspects. Hitherto, we have considered feeding primarily from the point of view of maternal imagery, particularly lactation. But in Sermon 71 it becomes clear that food is related also to contemplative themes of divine union and is not limited to themes of activity and spiritual teaching or authority. Indeed, feeding imagery in a context of contemplation may be distinguished from maternal imagery: the former envisions one who is fed, the latter one who feeds. The mother feeds, as does Christ — underscoring, as discussed, duty and even self-sacrifice. The fed, that is, the recipient of food (milk or blood or bread as the case may be), on the other hand, is in a position of enjoyment, but certainly not usefulness or duty. Being fed, then, is spiritual pleasure. As Bernard hinted at in Sermon 9, the bridegroom’s milk is not just nutritive, it is delicious, too (suavitatis, dulcedo, dulcedinis).199 Rachel Fulton has recently pointed out that the metaphor ‘sweetness’ applied to Christ is full of entailments. First of all, there is the Eucharist bread, which was prepared to taste especially sweet, baked with the whitest and purest flour or wheat.200 Then there were medieval physiological theories, according to which sugars or sugary foods were considered medicine: particularly white and sweet foodstuffs like milk and almonds, both associated with the figure of Christ, respectively with lactation and the sidewound.201 Fulton writes: [T]hat which is sweet will nourish and heal precisely because it is sweet; that is warm and moist and, therefore, perfectly tempered to our human complexion. This is also, of course, why the Lord tastes sweet, at least insofar as he became incarnate. In becoming human, in taking on the physical composition of our flesh, he became sweet to our taste.202

In Sermon 50, discussed in the context of Bernard’s taxonomy of love, the third level of love — ‘affective love’ (affectualis) — is presented in terms of appetite, taste, and sweetness. It is ‘abundant and sweet’ (pinguis et suavis), filling the mind with a ‘mighty abundance of the sweetness of the Lord’ (pinguescens […] dulcedinis Domini) by which the contemplative is ‘sweetly refreshed by that 199 

Scc 9.5–6 above, Section 6.2. Fulton, ‘“Taste and see that the Lord is sweet”’, p.  182. On sweetness, suavitas, in relation to the act of redemption, see also Posset, Pater Bernhardus, p. 251. 201  On the almond associated with Christ’s sidewound, see Fulton, ‘“Taste and see that the Lord is sweet”’, p. 184. Although, as Fulton herself dryly observes (n. 43), recent commentators have preferred to read the almond-shaped wound as a vaginal slit. The almond, or mandorla, was also commonly used in medieval representations of Christ in glory. 202  Fulton, ‘“Taste and see that the Lord is sweet”’, p. 200. 200 

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sweet love’ (dulci illo amore suaviter reficit).203 Bernard repeats ‘sweet’ three times in the short passage (suavis est […] suavis est […] suaviter). And, still in the same passage, he uses another term meaning ‘sweet’ (dulcis) three more times (dulcis […] dulci amore […] dulcedinis). Imagery of taste abounds. Saintly love is not just ‘sweet’ but also ‘salty’ and tasty — ‘seasoned with the salt of wisdom’ (sale sapientiae condita). An indication of the subtext in Bernard’s imagery emerges with the verb sapere and the mention of sapientia. When he imagines fruition, echoing Ps 33. 9, as ‘tasting and knowing’ (gustat et sapit) that the Lord is ‘sweet’ (suavis), he alters the biblical phrase, exchanging the Psalm’s ‘seeing’ (videte) for ‘tasting’ (sapit), revealing an interplay of meaning. Bernard’s phrase gustat et sapit may be translated ‘tastes and knows’ or ‘savours and tastes’ because of the double meaning of sapere (‘tasting/knowing’). Privileging not sight and vision but taste, Bernard breaks with the Platonic-Christian tradition which usually favoured imagery of seeing to express fruition of God at the highest contemplative level, as in the classical mystical ‘vision of God’.204 Most importantly, however, ‘to taste’ (sapere) that the Lord is sweet indicates, in Bernard’s text, to have knowledge, indeed direct ‘experience’ of God’s wisdom — and thus to be restored to spiritual and epistemological health.205 Adding to this subtext of concurrently tasting and experiencing the divine, Sapientia asserts herself in the current passage in the form of ‘salt’ (sale sapientiae) along with the verb sapit. At the sermon’s end, Bernard’s final evocation is directed at her, and here she appears as the very the ordering principle of love: ‘O Wisdom, reaching mightily from end to end in establishing and control203 

Scc 50.4, OSB, v.2, pp. 188–90: ‘Longe vero tertia ab utraque distat, quae et gustat, et sapit quoniam suavis est Dominus [Psal. XXXIII, 9], primam eliminans, secundam remunerans. Nam prima quidem dulcis, sed turpis; secunda sicca, sed fortis; ultima pinguis, et suavis est. Igitur per secundam opera fiunt, et in ipsa caritas sedet, non illa affectualis, quae sale sapientiae condita pinguescens magnam menti importat multitudinem dulcedinis Domini; sed quaedam potius actualis, quae etsi nondum dulci illo amore suaviter reficit, amore tamen amoris ipsius vehementer accendit.’ For translation and discussion, see above, Section 2.1. 204  But see Scc 38 above, Section 4.4, for vision as leading anagogic theme and Scc 28.5, where he refers to sight as the superior sense; cf. Div 10.1–4, cols 567B–569B, where Bernard connects different forms of love to the bodily senses: touch corresponds to amor pius (towards one’s father), taste to amor jucundus (towards one’s equal), smell to amor justus (towards all humans), hearing to amor violentus (towards enemies), and sight to amor devotus (towards God). 205  Compare the CF translation in Song, iii, 33, which translates sapit as ‘experiences’. On the theme of taste in Bernard’s writing, see discussion in Fulton, ‘“Taste and see that the Lord is sweet”’, pp. 191–92.

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ling all things, and arranging everything sweetly in beatifying and ordering the affections [affectibus]!’206 Sapientia’s presence functions not only to establish the role of divine wisdom and knowledge/experience in hermeneutical and contemplative excessus, but also to establish notions of spiritual appetite and notions of the very palatability of divine fruition. Sapientia — who by very definition is sweet as well as wise — nourishes and delights, heals and pleases, like her alter ego Christ the bridegroom, like sugary medicine: ‘O Wisdom, sweetly powerful and powerfully sweet,’ Bernard exclaims in another passage, ‘with what skill of healing in wine and oil you restore my soul to health! You are powerful for me and you are sweet to me.’207 At the opening of Sermon 50, the association between divine wisdom and taste, food, and sweetness is extended to his own role as exegete. In other words, if Christ-Scriptura-Sapientia is the foodstuff, Bernard presents himself as a waiter, even a cook. Explaining that he still has more to add concerning the verse at hand (Song 2. 4) than he had covered in the prior sermon, he commences by offering the monks some spare delicacies from last evening’s feast: I have still to set before you some leftovers from yesterday’s banquet [convivii] which I have collected to prevent them from spoiling. For they will spoil if I serve them to no one, and if I wish to keep them for myself, I myself shall be spoiled. I shall not cheat you out of them, then, for I know well your gluttony [ingluviem], especially because they are served on a plate of love [ferculo caritatis], as sweet as they are delicate, as tasty as they are small.208

In this image of feeding his monks with ‘leftovers’ from their hermeneutical banquet the preceding day (de fragmentis hesterni convivii), Bernard resumes the strategy of inversion, replacing sensual desire with spiritual desire. Referring to the monks’ ‘gluttony’ (ingluviem), he again establishes a symmetry between perverted desire directed downwards to physical and corporeal objects, and primeval desire directed upwards to God. Like with the kisses and embraces, sensual enjoyment of culinary delights represents a relocation of desire. A cen206 

Scc 50.8, OSB, v.2, p. 194: ‘O Sapientia, quae attingis a fine usque ad finem fortiter in instituendis et continendis rebus, et disponis omnia suaviter in beandis et ordinandis affectibus!’ 207  Scc 16.15, OSB, v.1, p. 222: ‘O Sapientia! Quanta arte medendi in vino et oleo animae meae sanitatem restauras, fortiter suavis, et suaviter fortis! Fortis pro me, et suavis mihi.’ 208  Scc 50.1, OSB, v.2, p. 186: ‘Habeo enim quod adhuc vobis apponam de fragmentis hesterni convivii, quae mihi collegeram ne perirent. Peribunt autem, si nulli apposuero: nam si ego voluero habere solus, ipse peribo. Nolo proinde vestram illis, quam bene novi, fraudare ingluviem, praesertim cum sint de ferculo caritatis, eo dulcia quo subtilia, eo sapida quo minuta.’

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tral aspect of twelfth-century Cistercian asceticism was the monks’ austere diet, consisting mainly of barley bread with some cereals or vegetables.209 Producing divine appetite in his salivating monks, Bernard gives them, in effect, that which they have renounced. The delicacies of his exegetical kitchen provide a focal point for hermeneutical desire, as if to tempt and tease the taste-buds of his audience into tasting the sweetness of his — the honey-mouthed doctor’s — words and so entice their appetite towards ‘the sweetness of the Lord’. Knowing his audience, the abbot also knows not to let them overindulge. Thus, closing one of the sermons, he says: But it is better to conserve this [topic] for another sermon, that we might be hungry and not repulsed when we take our places at such a delicious banquet to which we are invited by the Church’s bridegroom, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.210

Imagining Bernard and the monks in the naked chapter house reading aloud the Sermons on the Song of Songs, with its wordplays, its assonances and alliteration, its rhythm and euphony, one might, if ever so vaguely, recapture the aesthetical notions inherent in the connection between appetite and fruition, between sapientia and sapor. Christ is ‘honey in my mouth, melody in my ear’ (Scc 15.6: mel in ore, in aure melos), enthuses the doctor melifluus, melodiously reproducing honey-dripping sweetness in his own text. Steeped in Bernard’s sensuous, even sensual language, the text invites the audience to feast on words. In this way, the listeners or the readers are led into Eucharistic participation by the abbot. Staged as performing audience, they participate in his interpretation of a hermeneutical and salvific corpus which bridges text and flesh, letter and spirit, nutrition and fruition.

6.6 Gender Hierarchy, Hermeneutical Hierarchy With the theme of the banquet, we are back at the opening scene of the Sermons on the Song of Songs where the staging of the hermeneutical feast began, and where our reading of the bride began. More specifically, we are back to the intertext of eros, the Platonic banquet of love. As has been well estab209 

On the frugal Cistercian diet and a discussion of their related health problems, especially Bernard’s, see Burton and Kerr, The Cistercians in the Middle Ages, pp. 110–16. 210  Scc 15.8, OSB, v.1, p. 204: ‘Sed melius hoc alii servamus sermoni, quo famelici et non fastidiosi ad tam bonas epulas accedamus, invitante nos sponso Ecclesiae, Domino nostro Iesu Christo, qui est super omnia Deus benedictus in saecula. Amen.’

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lished, the imagery of eros had a decisive impact on early and patristic exegesis. Through the influence of Origen and the Alexandrians, of Gregory of Nyssa and the Cappadocians, of Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory the Great, and other Latins, eros was reinterpreted in a context of Christian spirituality and asceticism. Commentaries on the Song of Songs played a decisive if not exclusive role in this hermeneutical process, whereby eros and its connected images were transmitted to the Latin medieval tradition, and reconceived and absorbed into monasticism and the spirituality of the High Middle Ages, including the intellectual environment of the Cistercians.211 In Plato’s Symposium a mysterious Mantinean woman apparently appropriates Socrates’ role as the teacher of love — or is it the other way around? Why is Diotima a woman? asked David Halperin. Arguing from the requirements of a male pederast philosophic enterprise to lay claim to the discursive potentialities of femaleness, particularly reciprocality and procreation, Halperin analyses the figure of Diotima as a means for Plato to represent, precisely, ‘the reciprocal and (pro)creative erotics of (male) philosophical discourse’.212 Halperin’s influential answer to his question of why Diotima is a woman is, simply, that Diotima is not a woman. That is, her femaleness is not referential but figural; she is, he writes, ‘a necessary female absence — occupied by a male signifier’.213 Reformulating Halperin’s question, Elizabeth Clark and Virginia Burrus have applied similar arguments to Gregory of Nyssa’s dialogue on Macrina (known in Latin as Dialogus de anima et resurrectione). Like Diotima is a trope for Socrates, Clark states, Macrina is a trope for Gregory: ‘He is, in contemporary parlance, “writing like a woman.” Gregory has appropriated woman’s voice.’214 As one of several Christian take-offs on Plato’s Symposium and as an influential patristic text, Gregory’s story of Macrina brings us, perhaps, closer to Bernard’s bride. In Burrus’s reading of Macrina there are contours of the present reading of the bride’s discursive functions for Bernard and his all-male audience:

211 

On monastic exegesis of the Song of Songs and the eros motif, see Turner, Eros and Allegory. On the influence of Plato in the twelfth century, see Chenu, ‘The Platonisms of the Twelfth Century’, pp. 49–98. Gilson has coined the celebrated phrase concerning twelfthcentury Platonism: ‘Platon lui-même n’est nulle part, mais le Platonisme est partout’ (cited from Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, p. 108). 212  Halperin, ‘Why Is Diotima a Woman?’, p. 297. 213  Halperin, ‘Why Is Diotima a Woman?’, pp. 295, 297. 214  Clark, ‘The Lady Vanishes’, p. 27, and Burrus, ‘Begotten, Not Made’, pp. 112–13.

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Macrina then, not unlike Diotima, is the reflection of a masculine erotics — initially displaced or masked via its feminized representation — that is marked by both a sublimated and maternalized fecundity and a radical transcendentalization of erotic passion via its transformation into agapic love. To adapt (and appropriate) Halperin’s words: Macrina is a woman because Gregory’s philosophy must borrow her femininity in order to seem to leave nothing out and thus to ensure the success of its own procreative enterprise, namely, the continual reproduction of its universalizing discourse.215

I suggest that something similar applies to the figure of the bride in Bernard’s Sermons on the Song of Songs. Like Diotima in Halperin’s reading, like Macrina in Clark’s and Burrus’s reading, the bride is a trope for Bernard because he must borrow her femininity for discursive purposes: in order to be virginal lover and spiritual mother. This may all seem very obvious, insofar as the bride, unlike Diotima and Macrina, is not represented as an actual or ‘real’ person but is precisely a trope — a tropological figure for the soul. Bernard is not playing hide-and-seek with his audience, like Halperin’s Plato or Burrus’s Gregory. Performing the bride, ‘he’ becomes ‘she’, but unlike Macrina, who is a mask for Gregory, and Diotima, who is a mask for Plato’s Socrates, Bernard is not content to mask himself as bride, so much as let the gender blending shine through. His own identity in the text is emphasized by the recurring appearance of his monastic ‘I’ (ego) — ‘he’ is ‘she’ but also ‘he’. And alongside the simultaneousness of male and female ascriptions, Bernard hints at a prospective reversal, the final eschatological transposition which presupposes erasure of femaleness. ‘Writing like a woman’, Bernard partakes in the descent of humility and lowliness by assuming femaleness, but he also envisions himself (as ‘her’self ) to partake in the transformation into vir perfectus. For Bernard — while appropriating the virgin’s erotic fruition, the mother’s fecundity, the widow’s tears and chastity, the repentance and humility of the anointing woman, the servitude and lowliness of the spinning woman or the woman at the well — also lays claim to the potentiality of femaleness to mimetically perform the salvific process of spiritual conformity and transformation, to perform the letter subsumed into spirit, the word into Word. In other words, the abbot borrows femininity in order to figure himself in a processual state of both descending and ascending, displaying the humility of female fleshliness and the exaltation of male spiritualness, by which the totality of Christomimesis may be represented. 215 

Burrus, ‘Begotten, Not Made’, p. 120.

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The bride, then, is ‘good to think with’,216 as she is also good to do things with. The aspect of performance emphasizes that Bernard may both affirm and deny identification with her, slipping in and out of the role in the same text, indeed the same passage, allowing for distance and assimilation at the same time. Performing female roles, Bernard obtains a mode to represent the liminality of reversal which, seen in relation to his interpretation of the hermeneutical and eschatological process towards perfection, requires a symbol which can express the violent suspense and tensions (whether simultaneous or inverted) inherent in the ecstatic movement of transformation towards conformity. As argued, Bernard’s sense of drama and struggle, with its climaxes and escalations, tinges his representation of the saintly soul’s processual leaps of perfection, from the literal and corporeal level to the spiritual and anagogic level, as it likewise tinges his self-representation. Notions of liminality and dramatic suspense in the Sermons draw on the narrative of the Song of Songs itself (absence-presence-suspense-consummation) and, also, on the drama inherent in dialectics of eros (oneness-otherness-desireexcess). Possibly, it also replays the dramatic breaking-points of trials and triumphs in hagiography, where sharply defined shifts (from pagan to Christian, from refutation to faith, from sinfulness to saintliness) were being renegotiated in twelfth-century monasticism to express conversio as entry into cloister (from worldly to spiritual, from rich to poor, from powerful to meek).217 But, as Pranger well argued, monastic conversion in Bernard’s vision is an ongoing process — suspended between joy and desolation, time and eternity, Christ and the noonday devil.218 Ongoing gender reversal stages precisely this monastic narrative of conversion: a conversion which is not significant as a linear and delineated narration but rather as a repetitive and prolonged condition, reflecting a state of transformation and liminality which in the monastery has become a timeless and therefore continuous state.

216 

Recalling the celebrated dictum of Claude Lévy-Strauss that women are used to ‘think with’, i.e., as a hermeneutical tool; cf. references in Clark, ‘The Lady Vanishes’, p. 27; Brown, The Body and Society, p. 153; and Bloch, Medieval Misogyny, p. 90. 217  See Bouchard, ‘Every Valley Shall Be Exalted’, pp. 76–93, who notes that in the twelfth century, when the earlier practice of child oblates was diminishing in favour of adult converts, especially in the new orders such as the Cistercian, stories of radical and abrupt change, focalized on conversio as entry into cloister, were an increasing concern. 218  Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity pp. 3–5; see also above Section 4.5.

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Bynum first pointed out the importance of the male who assumes a female role in the economy of gendered devotional language.219 While underscoring descent as interpretative key to gender reversals from male to female, she did not explicitly consider how the feminized male also absorbs the potentiality of ascent in her discussion. She does approach this notion, however, in her critique of Victor Turner’s formalist theory of liminality, suggesting that women are always liminal to men within the framework of a medieval text by a male author.220 Applying this perspective, the bride — herself a liminal character, situated between virginity and maternity — is a trope for the liminality involved in Bernard’s tensions between deformation, reformation, and transformation. The male bride is black but beautiful, here and now in terms of a coincidentia oppositorum, but with the promise of erasure of blackness then. S/he is beautiful among women, manly among the feminine, spiritual among the fleshly but also fleshly among spiritual beings (God, angels, the blissful). S/he is female in part, male in part, a heavenly citizen in part, worldly in part — until ‘that part’ (ex parte) passes away with the arrival of the ‘perfect’ (perfectum). Here gender is being negotiated in ambivalent and complex ways. Entering into the descent of humility and lowliness, that is, self-feminization, the monk aspires to the ascent of passing from fleshliness and worldliness into a spiritualness configured as a transcendentalized male (or masculinized transcendence), that is, becoming male. Precisely because maleness as a gendered model of spiritual transformation was, paradoxically, unobtainable to males, male agency required femaleness to discursively ensure participation in a scheme of spiritual growth as well as participation in a ‘continual reproduction’ of liminal status. In this perspective, too, we may ascertain and emphasize the double movement of gender which has been observed throughout the present study of Bernard’s text. On the one hand, there is appropriation of femaleness on the part of Bernard and his all-male audience. Often this is achieved by grammatical slippage; often the process of appropriation involves other idealized males with which the Cistercians identify (biblical males, particularly Paul and Moses). On other occasions Bernard involves himself and his monks more directly in female identification. According to his rhetorical requirements, Bernard assumes the femaleness of various (usually biblical) figures, sometimes 219 

Bynum, ‘“And Woman His Humanity”’, pp. 268–69, 273. Bynum, ‘Women’s Stories, Women’s Symbols’, pp. 32–33. See also Newman, ‘Real Men and Imaginary Women’, p. 1204, where she notes a ‘double transformation’ where Cistercian males not only identified with ‘the weakness of women but also with the virility of extraordinary woman who overcame weakness to progress toward the divine’. 220 

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performing the bride, other times performing the little girls or the anointing woman. On the other hand, this tendency towards appropriation of femaleness is accompanied by another, less obvious and seemingly opposite movement, namely, the defeminization of the bride, when the language and the imagery of the virago blends with that of the bride. In the hermeneutical movement from letter to spirit, Bernard breaks the pattern of feminization, applying instead masculine self-representation. The dual movement of appropriation of femaleness and defeminization produces gender ambivalence and gender slippage in the Sermons. In the present chapter there have been numerous examples of hermeneutical agency represented in terms of maleness, like inseminator, penetrator, and hunter. Yet, in the Sermons, this inclination towards masculinized representation is an undercurrent, disappearing and reappearing, but never dominant if compared to feminized representations. What might be said about this seemingly haphazard gendering of hermeneutical and exegetical activity? I suggest that when Bernard envisions a direct and immediate relationship with the text, he seems to favour masculine terms. In other words, when he is penetrating the text, when he is hunting or pursuing the text for its inner and hidden treasures — that is, when he is engaging in contemplation, when he is a spiritual man reading spiritually — hermeneutical agency is generally associated with maleness. Conversely, when envisioning a relationship between the exegete or preacher and his audience, that is, when teaching, preaching, and instructing his monks and readers — that is, performing the active duty of fraternal love — exegesis is more typically represented as a female activity and associated either with maternal imagery or with female roles which evoke themes of service and humility.221 In this respect, the gendering of hermeneutical and exegetical activities as either masculine or feminine corresponds loosely to constructions of contrasting aspects of the bride, that is, the humble mother-bride and the exalted virgin-bride. If we consider the virgin discursively inscribed as unsexed, reverted into a degendered (but masculinized) state of androgyny, then only the mother and the inferior female roles negotiate the humility associated with femaleness and descending. Therefore, although exegesis can be, and is, represented as feminine activity in Bernard’s text, this reflects monastic concerns for humility, poverty, and active love. When, on the other hand, Bernard considers hermeneutical investigation without any immediate monastic concerns, he 221 

See Chapter 4, but note the important exception of Bernard as male inseminator of his monks; Scc 51.3, discussed above, Section 6.3.

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tends — as argued — to represent it in masculine terms. Thus, when exaltation or spiritual insight is emphasized, there is a tendency to defeminize the bride or defeminize Bernard’s self-representation, whereas emphasizing humility, and especially the paradox of simultaneous humility-superiority, implies emphasizing femaleness.222 Does this mean that Bernard posits femaleness (blackness, abjectness) simply as a reflection of alienation from God, an entrapment in the flesh and the world? Many scholars seem to think so. I disagree. R. Howard Bloch, in one of the most original readings of gender and hermeneutics in recent years, assumes a strong dualism between body and soul in medieval texts, an interpretation which leads him to analogously assume a strong dualism between male and female and between literal and allegorical reading too.223 Supported by a chain of dualistic interpretations — body and soul, female corporeality (letter/body) and male spiritualness — Bloch argues that femaleness functioned, paradoxically, as trope both for the physical and for the figural, both for literal and for allegorical meaning. As a figure of the figural — ‘the outgrowth of Adam’s flank, his latus’ — Eve, or woman, sustains Bloch, ‘retains the status of translatio, of translation, transfer, metaphor, trope. She is side-issue’.224 Bloch uses this insight to analyse courtly poetics (and on a larger scope, the ‘invention’ of romantic love), but for our concerns Bloch illustrates a binary understanding which extends dualism to gender and hermeneutics alike. I believe Bloch is right to see a deep connection between body-soul, malefemale, and literalness-spiritualness. In fact, this has been the main argument 222 

See discussion of Scc 27 above Section 5.4. Bloch, Medieval Misogyny, p. 38, invoking Philo of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, Methodius, and Tertullian. On dualism, see p. 37: ‘My claim is that we cannot separate the concept of woman as it was formed in the early centuries of Christianity from a metaphysics that abhorred embodiment; and that woman’s superveniant nature is, according to such a mode of thought, indistinguishable from the acute suspicion of embodied signs — of representations’ (my italics). 224  Bloch, Medieval Misogyny, p.  38. Reading patristic commentators as identifying ‘a loss of literalness, and consequently the necessity of interpretation, with the creation of Eve, or with the appearance of gender difference’, Bloch affirms that ‘[t]he origin of commentary is assimilated to the origin of woman’. Hermeneutically, the result is, according to Bloch, a kind of ‘slippage’ in the relation between the literal and the figural at the moment when this opposition becomes gendered: ‘the figural is capable of pointing in the direction of truth as long as it remains outside of any specific sexual context; the moment it is elided to the side of the feminine, however, the figural is divested of its capacity to transcend material signs. It slips to the side of mere physicality — the figure as ornament or decoration.’ 223 

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in the present chapter. Yet I hold that the assumption of medieval dualism fails to take into account the intrinsic interrelation and complementarity between body and soul in medieval perceptions, and the ways that the body itself was conceived in salvational and eschatological terms, both as metonym for the Church — Christ’s own body — and as vehicle for the Resurrection.225 Furthermore, I would object that the relation between literal meaning and spiritual meaning within the hermeneutical formulas — both the fourfold and the threefold — was not treated nor perceived in terms of paradox in medieval exegesis but rather in terms of plurality and multivocality of meaning.226 Emphasizing the split between virgin and whore, much like Bloch emphasizes the spilt between ‘bride of Christ’ and ‘devil’s gateway’, Ulrike Wiethaus’s dualistic readings of Bernard’s texts are, I find, similarly overstated. Her assumption is that while feminizing the masculine seems to be a ‘gesture of reconciliation with women’, Bernard still keeps ‘intact the original dichotomy between the “good” man-made virgin and the “bad” women/mothers/lovers of flesh and blood’.227 Such polarization rests on an interpretation of the masculine (or the masculinized virgin) and the feminine which aligns gender difference with dualities of ‘good’ and ‘bad’: a representation misleadingly simplistic in terms of what we have seen of Bernard’s deployment of gender in the Sermons. At first glance, Thomas Laqueur’s model may appear more useful. Emphasizing a non-dichotomous continuum between male and female, he substitutes bipolarity with the more resonant categories of perfection and imperfection. Yet his reconstruction proves no more satisfactory for ascertaining gender in Bernard’s work, primarily for two reasons. Firstly, his model undermines a way to positively discern between male and female, which, if applied to the image of male bride, would dissolve the vital twofold dynamism in this gender symbolism. After all, as has been made clear, Bernard is not merely appropriating a notion of female imperfection, or ‘lack’, but even positive attributions (in 225 

Bynum’s work has challenged the previously common conception that medievals hated their bodies and all aspects of physicality. Following Bynum, Kelly, Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity, p. 2, terms dualism ‘an imposition’. See also Barbara Newman’s critique of Bloch’s reading of misogyny as monolithic discourse in medieval writing, in God and the Goddesses, pp. 304–17. 226  See the classic studies, Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, trans. by Sebanc and Macierowski, and Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. 227  Wiethaus, ‘Christian Piety and the Legacy of Medieval Masculinity’, p. 57; see likewise Jantzen’s harshly monolithic representation of misogyny in Power, Gender, and Christian Mysticism.

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the sense of existing in fact) such as breasts (capacity for nurturance and lactation) and womb (birthing and female fruitfulness). Secondly, while Laqueur’s theory may account for the imagery of virago and vir perfectus — with its inherent teleology and gender hierarchy, which also, as argued, is absorbed into the bridal imagery — it cannot envision a movement from male to female except as deteriorative. I have argued that Bernard’s exegesis, like most medieval exegesis, in general displays a prevalently hierarchical, rather than dichotomous, understanding of the relations male-female, body-soul, and letter-spirit.228 This means that I do not perceive of them as organized in mutually excluding opposition (pace Bloch and Wiethaus) but rather in complementary and sometimes even oxymoronic relations, yet all the same bearing clear and separate qualities (pace Laqueur). I read gender in the Sermons non-dualistically not primarily because of the fluid and malleable gender constructions, so much as because of the discursive impulses which tend towards hierarchization and universalization rather than dualism. Engaging the hierarchy of gender with the hierarchy of hermeneutics, Bernard’s text opens not only for an association between femaleness and the physical letter — as also David Damrosch and Wiethaus point out — but for absorbing the lower into the higher. The inferior (female, fleshly) is subsumed into the superior (male, spiritual) sense, while the latter presupposes and fulfils the former in the same way that the physical letter is incorporated into the hidden meaning of the spirit: like a ‘cup of cheap material filled with something precious’,229 like the transformation of the black and maternal body into the radiant, white, and virginal body of the resurrection. When spirit-male and female-letter-body are conceived of in hierarchical rather than dualistic terms, then the discursive impetus towards oneness (likeness, conformity, reflection, imitation) can be seen to undercut all differentiation, envisioning femaleness/ letter/body ideally ordered under and into maleness/spirit to be appropriated and transformed — thus transforming also the latter. Here speaks the powerful voice of the discourse of oneness when combined with gender discourse. The bride performed by Bernard articulates a specular femininity which functions as ‘necessary source for [the male subject’s] own transcendence’.230 Here, instead of the contours of the virago that every once in a while emerge from 228 

On this, see esp. above, Sections 5.3 and 6.2. Scc 74.2, see above, Section 4.5. 230  Burrus, ‘Begotten, Not Made’, p. 122. 229 

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the analyses of the bride, another (and all the same related) figure appears: the androgyne, an idealized masculine form which perfectly assimilated inferior, feminine elements. In this reading, unification and universalization in discourse implies reappropriation rather than exclusion of that which apparently is rejected: ‘a necessary female absence’, somewhat like the torn veil of the insipid letter, to be occupied by a male signifier.231 The male bride is a feminized man mimetically performing a divinized man, because becoming male — a transcendentalized male (or masculinized transcendence) — presupposes a double movement of appropriation and negation of femaleness.

231 

The ‘torn veil’, scisso velo, cf. Scc 14.4, see above, Section 5.3; the ‘insipid letter’, insipida littera, cf. Scc 73.2 above, Section 6.4; a ‘necessary female absence’, cf. Halperin, ‘Why Is Diotima a Woman?’, p. 295.

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cholars have previously effectively established that contemplation and desire in the Sermons on the Song of Songs are deeply informed, indeed structured, by configurations of hermeneutics.1 This book argues that they are also structured by configurations of gender. In the Sermons gender hierarchy and hermeneutical hierarchy sustain and reflect each other. The hermeneutical and ascetic process of transformation moves from femininity to masculinity as the excessus of anagogic reading promotes the feminized monk — the male bride — from the feminine realm of corporeality or literalness and from the motherhood and humility of tropological reading. Corresponding to the transition from letter to spirit, from fleshly to spiritual understanding, this process of transformation is ultimately envisioned as transformation into the Christlike idealized male who is beyond gender — who absorbs all gender — yet is still recognizable as transcendentally masculine. In this process, all dualism collapses. Flesh and spirit intersect; bridegroom and bride, male and female blur together. In this process, the monks’ — or the bride’s — gender trouble reflects and reproduces Christ’s — or the bridegroom’s — gender trouble, affirming the subtext of androgyny. This process is anagogic in the sense that it appertains primarily to eschatology, to restoration, and secondarily to rare and fleeting glimpses in contemplative excess. Yet even if temporarily suspended, it is this displaced logic, this queer identity, that Bernard is attempting to establish in his monastery, to inscribe onto the Clairvaux monks. This is the drama which unfolds on that empty stage, in that naked chapter house. 1 

Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, trans. by Sebanc and Macierowski, ii, 127–78 and McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism, pp. 158–224.

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Subordinated to this central insight into gendered imagery in the Sermons on the Song of Songs are two main lines of argument in this book. Together they reveal the multifaceted functions of femaleness in Bernard’s text. Female figures in the Sermons not only provide Bernard a tool to ‘think with’ but also allow him to establish a very complex model of devotional transformation, expressing both Christomimetic descent and Christomimetic ascent. The first line of argument regards the various female characters with which Bernard and the monks identify (Chapters 2, 3, and 4). Configurations of femaleness and female roles work to create multivocal and hierarchized layers of hermeneutical and devotional expression. In this hierarchization of femaleness, the bride stands highest: sponsa in summo stat. She represents the perfect equilibrium of contemplation and activity, descent and ascent, and ordered uti and frui love. Yet she herself is pluriform and hierarchized. She is virgin, representing ecstatic bliss and ecstatic martyrial death, creational and eschatological restoration; she is widow, expressing the intermediary grief and displacement in the ‘land of unlikeness’; and she is mother, expressing humble, self-sacrificial spiritual leadership and authority. Awaiting eschatological promotion, the two latter figures are not involved in anagogic participation but in monastic withdrawal and celibacy and in moral obligations. Unlike previous scholarship, which has focalized primarily on themes of motherhood, I emphasize all these roles and their interaction. Furthermore, I also identify other, minor female roles which insert themselves into Bernard’s female hierarchy but on a lower level. They are, firstly, the little girls, expressing spiritual immaturity, fleshliness, worldliness, and hermeneutical displacement; secondly, the domestic female roles (the spinning woman and the woman at the well), who express exegetical service and servitude; and finally, the anointing woman, vaguely identified as the Magdalene, who represents repentance and inferiority. All the female roles performed by Bernard and the monks involve descent and humility, except for the very highest female role, the elusive and degendered virgin — whose references are primarily salvational and eschatological and with whom Bernard does not engage in direct identification. This hierarchy of female roles provides the male exegete with a performative model which gives access to ascetic and hermeneutical transformation. This hierarchy of females, moreover, represents the three levels of hermeneutical growth. The exegetical role of little girls, and also the anointing woman (or Magdalene), establish the fleshly and literal level. Expressed by the hermeneutics of unlikeness, this is a feminine condition characterized by exile and pilgrimage, and therefore also by the widow. The next level, Christomimetic descent, is expressed by humility and activity, in other words, the humble pro-

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viders: the mother-bride but also the spinning woman and the woman at the well. The highest level, expressing Christomimetic ascent, is characterized by the fruition and bliss of countererotics — represented, of course, by the virginbride. But on this level, as argued, also the virago and the androgyne emerge. As figurae of restoration and eschatology, these shady figures do, however, have an earthly counterpart, the widow — who participates in the inverted hierarchy of desire, that is, celibacy, while not yet participating in the fruition of desire. The widow-bride, then, bridges the categories of the hermeneutical hierarchy — expressing contemplative and monastic withdrawal, as well as the sufferance of earthly life in pilgrimage and exile. Most significantly, the figures of counter­ erotics and eschatological restoration — namely, the virgin, the virago, and the androgyne — are figures of dual sexuality. But rather than expressing indistinct gender identity, they represent an idealized masculine form which perfectly assimilates inferior, feminine elements. This leads to the second line of argument, related to the first, which concerns the gender economy inherent in a male assuming a female role, appropriating feminine stances and characteristics. By discerning between gender blending (simultaneous, oxymoronic) and gender crossing (successive, inverted), rhetorical and discursive complexities as to the male bride emerged, as did its relation to the virago, or virile woman. While the Cistercian devotional ideal, configuring the confluence of activity and contemplation, maternity and eroticism, descent and ascent, blackness and whiteness, femaleness and maleness, points towards a paradoxical simultaneousness of idealization and denigration, and thus gender-blending imagery, the male bride also implies, more surprisingly, a notion of gender crossing from female to male (Chapters 4, 5, and 6). Salvation is envisioned as participation in divine masculinized transcendence. Yet femaleness is neither rejected nor endorsed. It is appropriated and subsumed into maleness, and thereby transformed — identically to the relation of flesh to spirit, literal level to spiritual level in Bernard’s hermeneutics. Both hermeneutical and eschatological implications of gender indicate a hierarchization of male and female which tends towards unity by the impetus of the prevailing discourse of oneness, ultimately subsuming the lower into the higher. Thus providing an interpretative framework for ascertaining gender as structuring category in the Sermons, this conclusion leads to an unambiguous insight. Bernard’s devotional model of male bride exploits the discursive potential of femaleness to express both descent and humility, and simultaneously, by absorbing the devotional model of virago, appropriates a model of ascent whereby maleness and spiritualness is conquered from a feminized position. The male bride, in this interpretation, offers an encompassing hermeneutical

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and ascetic process of transformation into idealized maleness, into vir perfectus, which admits and even presupposes a male subject. This expression of multiform and multivalent significations of gendered meaning inherent in the figure of the male bride takes on its full meaning in the context of the homosocial organization of the monastery and, in a wider sense, the Church, because it serves an ongoing negotiation of male-male relations. By means of his exegetical performances Bernard shapes and asserts his own identity as abbot, exegete, and contemplative. By extension, he is also engaging in shaping and asserting Cistercian identity more generally. Thus performatively establishing both his own identity as well as Cistercian identity, he delineates relations not only within his own cloister but also relations within a larger framework: relations with the secular clergy, relations with other (nonCistercian) monks, and relations with the secular world. Bernard’s gendered imagery is profoundly connected with central aspects of the ecclesiastical and monastic reform movement of the twelfth century, in various ways which have been noted throughout the course of this book. In concluding, I would like to highlight this relation between bridal imagery and reform ideology, bringing the two together more explicitly and positioning the reading of Bernard’s female self-representation in the context of contestations over sanctity and authority and the restructuring of the ecclesiastical landscape in the aftermath of the Gregorian reforms. A central interconnection between Bernard’s imagery and the reform movement regards the attempt of ecclesiastic and monastic reformers at instating the celibate male as model of spiritual perfection, and the concurrent marginalization of women and married men from the hierarchy of the Church, along with more rigid distinctions between males and females in religious life. Bernard’s oft-quoted indictment in Sermon 65 against the Rhineland heretics illustrates the Gregorian ideology of gender segregation with its underlying notions of female pollution among clerics, both regular and secular: To be always with a woman without knowing her [carnally] — is this not a greater miracle than raising the dead? You cannot perform the lesser feat, do you expect me to believe you can do the greater? Every day your side touches the girl’s side at table, your bed touches hers in your room, your eyes meet her eyes in conversation, your hand touches her hand at work. Do you expect to be thought chaste?2 2 

Scc 65.4, OSB, v.2, p. 368: ‘Cum femina semper esse, et non cognoscere feminam, nonne plus est quam mortuum suscitare? Quod minus est non potes, et quod maius est vis credam tibi? Quotidie latus tuum ad latus iuvenculae est in mensa, lectus tuus ad lectum eius in camera, oculi tui ad illius oculos in colloquio, manus tuae ad manus ipsius in opere ; et continens vis putari?’

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Perhaps the very triumph of Gregorian Church reform in extricating the clergy from the conjugal bond contributed to a ‘devotional sublimation’, as testified by the proliferation of bridal imagery and the increased interest in the Song of Songs.3 Yet for the highly competitive Cistercians with their confident sense of superiority, this nuptial ‘sublimation’ could also provide a rhetorical tool of differentiation. In the process of ecclesiastical restructuring, relations between clerics and lays, between secular and regular clerics, and also between monastic orders were fraught with tensions.4 In light of this, Bernard’s female representations can be seen to negotiate these relations in a contestation between men for power, for authority, and for legitimacy: formulating and requalifying relations of authority and models of sanctity in a turbulent historical period of ecclesiastical and monastic restructuration. Establishing their ‘otherness’ in relation to the secular world, in relation to the secular clergy, even in relation to other monastic communities, Bernard and the Cistercians articulate at least three levels of differentiation related to their interpretation of the monastic and ecclesiastical reform programme.5 The figure of the bride functions precisely to explore, negotiate, and reformulate roles in relation to these three levels. Firstly, the bride as a figure of inversion differentiates between the monastery and the world. As an inverted mirror image of worldly order and worldly hierarchies, the bride turns the hierarchy of the postlapsarian world and the postlapsarian flesh on its head, reflecting instead prelapsarian and eschatological godlikeness. As a female character performed by a male, notions of otherness and worldrenunciation and, relatedly, godlikeness are reinforced and intensified in the Sermons by the implied renunciation of manhood, sharply drawing up the boundary between the secular and the monastic world. Secondly, the virgin-bride with its accompanying erotic imagery differentiates between secular clergy and monks by definitively reserving the saintly desire and saintly pleasures of celibacy for those who lead the contemplative life. The secular clergy, particularly those with high positions, like bishops, 3 

Elliott, The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell, pp.  156–57; McLaughlin, ‘The Bishop as Bridegroom’, p. 220, Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, pp. 106–11. 4  On competition between clerical males and secular males, see Miller, ‘Masculinity, Reform, and Clerical Culture’, pp. 27–28, 50; stressing competition between clerical males and religious women, see McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage’. 5  See Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, p. 123, who underscores differentiation but also unity, speaking of ‘a simultaneous exclusivity and universality’. Her overriding thesis is that the Cistercians employed their idea of caritas to develop both features.

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conclusions

stand in an ambivalent relation to the boundary between the secular world and the inverted world. The bridal figures of virgin and widow point to the dimension of contemplation, withdrawal, and recluse, marking the monks’ unlikeness from the secular clergy who are active and move among the people. Even if the secular clergy of the Gregorian reform era were celibates like the monks, Bernard does not include them fully into the erotic-contemplative realm of the bridal body. Instead, he draws a gendered line of demarcation between monks and bishops, casting the former as women and the latter as men. Positioning the secular clergy as active males over against the passive, female cloister, Bernard admits only the latter into the highest rung of the bride’s social-corporeal hierarchy. Thus countererotics delineate choir monks from the rest of the Church by indicating their privilege to enjoy contemplative delights. Thirdly, the role of mother-bride functions to differentiate Cistercians from unreformed Benedictines by the emphasis on the active life. Cistercians were generally concerned to differentiate between themselves and other religious groups; both their undyed habits and distinctive liturgy set them apart. But the most dramatic evidence of their sense of exclusiveness was the regulation which forbade non-Cistercian monks to enter their monasteries. Not even Cistercian bishops could enter because of their ‘unlikeness’ (propter dissimilitudinem); they were, like women, left on the threshold of the Cistercian world. 6 Yet again the bride provides a boundary: the prominent bridal figure of mother serves to complement and balance Bernard’s self-representation as aloof contemplative, defining him as abbot, as spiritual leader and Church authority, and as aflame with caritas. The particular Cistercian concern for the active life, for charitable actions, and for manual labour and public service distinguished them from other, particularly Cluniac, interpretations of the Benedictine rule. Maternal imagery emphatically establishes this spiritual ideal at the heart of the Cistercian reform programme and the Cistercian interpretation of the rule. Contemplative repose and enjoyment must be balanced by humble labour, service and usefulness, selfless duty and obedience, and fraternal love — symbolized by the bride’s maternity. Monks who neglect the duties of the active life, then, are not mothers and hence not brides. I argue that the Cistercian self-image of otherness — an otherness which marked their difference from the world, and concurrently their likeness to 6 

Statuta 1.27 (1134, no. 41), cited from Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, p. 127; see also p. 303 n. 18. On the theme of Cistercians distinguishing themselves from other monks, see her whole discussion, pp. 123–40, esp. pp. 126–27.

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heaven — allowed these monks to embrace femaleness. Humility constituted for the Cistercians a powerful rhetorical tool to assert themselves, not by the rhetoric of ‘extreme masculinity’, used by the secular clergy, but of extreme otherness.7 Reflecting their godlikeness, in the context of a contestation over authority and status in the Church, the Cistercians laid claim to the most radical form of spiritual authority: embodying the feminized, blackened, and abject figure of Christ himself. Yet the Christomimesis involved in voluntary self-feminization is, like voluntary poverty and voluntary abjectness, radically different from the femaleness of real women or the effeminacy of the soft Cluniacs or the dandy knights that the Cistercians repeatedly denounced. Ultimately, the Cistercian monk mimics a model of a masculinity to be acquired and conquered by everyone and which, as discussed, is also model of progress and perfection, unto participation in divine transcendence. Bernard assumes possession of the body of Christ and the metonymically associated bodies of Scripture and Church by mimetically assuming specular femaleness as well as by enacting a masculinized role vis-à-vis a feminized Scriptura-Sapientia-Christ. But at the same time as Bernard’s appropriations and performances of female roles presuppose a male exegete, they also presuppose a world without ‘real’ women. The woman-free space of Clairvaux and other Cistercian monasteries reflects the efforts of clerical reformers to control and limit the presence of women in the Church — except at the very lowest stratum, that is, among the married laity.8 The female hierarchy of the pre-reform Church — the very hierarchy that Bernard absorbs and adopts for his self-representation — namely, the virgins, the continent widows, and the matrons, was demoted to a ‘hidden and “private” sphere within monasticism as within the laity’.9 As the Gregorian reforms relegated women to the margins of the ecclesiastical structures, Bernard steps into their vacant roles, appropriating the rhetoric related to idealized femaleness established since the patristic era. In a sense the Cistercian emphasis on and reinforcement of the traditional topos of monastic flight from the world and from women is crucial to gender and self-representation in the Sermons. The bride is a trope for the male: a 7 

Compare Miller’s reading of clerical rhetoric in ‘Masculinity, Reform, and Clerical Culture’, p. 28. 8  McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage’, cf. Wiethaus, ‘Christian Piety and the Legacy of Medi­eval Masculinity’, and Newman, ‘Real Men and Imaginary Women’. 9  McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage’, p. 7.

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rhetorical signifier appropriated by a man. As such it tells us very little about Bernard’s views on women. In my view, it neither affirms (pace Ulrike Wiethaus) nor disclaims (pace Jean Leclercq) that Bernard was a misogynist.10 It does, however, testify to another aspect, namely, a prevailing female absence. Real women were hardly ‘real’ in the Cistercian monastery, except as shadowy memories of an extramural reality and secular pasts which were already mentally processed and projected onto a monastic, liturgical, and spiritual spectacle.11 The ‘woman’ in Bernard’s text is clearly a relational marker: a female figure who provides and gives access to a conglomerate of relational roles (bride, mother, virgin, widow, daughter, humble provider). ‘She’ is not an ontological or universal category, unlike the male in the gendered model of ‘becoming male’, but rather is defined and shaped as a site of multiple relational markers. In the women-free world of the Cistercian cloister, ‘she’ indicates and regulates relations and boundaries between men. One may ask: If ‘woman’ is defined exclusively in relational terms, what happens if males take over these roles? As Jo Ann McNamara points out, in freeing ecclesiastic and monastic males from women, celibacy enabled the clergy to reformulate a devotional model which drew on elements from both genders, allowing men to play all the parts. 12 Appropriating female roles and femaleness, any need for women is effectively denied.13 Devoid of implications of real women, Bernard can, and does, assert himself as female. Yet I emphasize that this is achieved as a monastic artifice, a literary fiction — and the male cloister provides the perfect framework for constructing 10  Wiethaus, ‘Christian Piety and the Legacy of Medieval Masculinity’, p. 53, speaks of Bernard’s ‘violent misogyny’ in relation to his literary constructions of femaleness. Conversely, Leclercq, Women and St Bernard of Clairvaux, trans. by Saïd, p. 17, appealed to Bernard’s use of maternal imagery, which he found to be ‘complimentary to women’, pointing out that ‘on the rare occasions when Bernard speaks negatively about women, he always applies it to men’. He argued that ‘everything [Bernard] had to say about the differences of man and woman was based, as was almost everything else, on scriptural texts and their resonances’ (p. 85), holding that Bernard’s ‘balance [in representations of females and femaleness] is to be explained by the fact that he always followed the gospel narratives; he was no more a misogynist than the Lord was’ (p. 25). 11  See Verbaal, ‘Timeless Time’, pp. 235, 239–40; Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity, p. 50; and above, Sections 5.1 and 5.5. 12  McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage’, p. 22. 13  That is, in any other sense than simple carnal reproduction, but ‘surplus’ women was a demographical problem, anyway: hence the scholarly denotation Frauenfrage, punned by McNamara in the title of her essay, ‘The Herrenfrage’, see pp. 5–6.

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just such a fiction.14 Staging a world without women is as much of a literary construction as staging a nuptial banquet in the chapter house at Clairvaux. Whatever might have been the objective of the Cistercian charter institutes, on a small scale, and the Gregorian reforms, on a larger scale, the realities for a Cistercian abbot certainly never allowed for eradication of all contacts with women. For instance, they had, by necessity, correspondence with female landowners for business purposes and donations. Even if scholarly accounts until quite recently have posited a twelfth-century ‘golden age’ when it allegedly was possible for abbots of the Cistercian movement to totally avoid contact with women, it has lately been argued that religious women were active in the order from the beginning.15 Recent research has questioned the interpretation of the early Cistercian movement as rejecting women totally from their ranks, underscoring a discrepancy between the texts, the primitive Cistercian documents which rigorously exclude women, and a reality which seemed to include relations with them. The point here, however, is not so much to discuss or demonstrate whether or not Bernard’s world really was free of real women, but rather to point out that the textual setting of the Sermons on the Song of Songs stages a world where all female roles — bride, mother, virgin, widow, little girls, anointing woman, spinning woman, woman at the well — are performed by men, for men. In Bernard’s feminized self-representation humility is power. Firstly, it reveals itself so eschatologically, when he comes who deposes the powerful and exalts the humble. Secondly, in prefiguring — here, now, below — final restoration, the elitist monks of the Cistercian order may assert their legitimacy and their position in a moral and monastic hierarchy that, although it is inverted and topsy-turvy, nevertheless promotes authority and influence over ecclesiastical, monastic, and educational matters also on earth. In light of ideological conflicts arising from the Gregorian reform process, this inverted monastic world and identity can be seen as giving rise to a rhetorically competitive and alternative hierarchy which, while it undercuts the secular world by mimicking the abjectness of jugglers and females, also sanctions Cistercian self-representation as the model of saintliness. Bernard’s self-representation, projected onto 14 

See Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity, pp. 17–38. See Berman, ‘Were There Twelfth-Century Cistercian Nuns?’ pp. 824, 832–33: ‘If we look at the origins of the Cistercian Order not according to the self-glorifying texts called exordia, which Cistercian men wrote and from which they excluded women, but from the viewpoint of local administrative records, we must argue for a slowly developing order that included nuns’ (p. 833). 15 

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the bride by means of appropriated gender characteristics, juxtaposes celibacy and heavenliness — caelebs and caelum — as ascetic markers of godlikeness. Concurrently, the male bride signalizes unlikeness to the world and its institutionalized hierarchy which both structure and are structured by relations of genealogy and gender, in other words, according to worldly eros. These relations are disrupted in the devotional-ascetic discourse of the Cistercian monastery, and replaced by another hierarchy, another way of structuring inferior and superior, submission and domination. And even while separating likeness from unlikeness, the clergy from the laity, and the pure from the impure, Bernard fashions a model of conversion: the transformation from impure to pure, from unlike to like. In drawing boundaries between saeculum and caelum — world and heaven, flesh and spirit, lowliness and sublimity — and in representing monastic transformation as a continual, ritualized state of breaching boundaries, Bernard uses the bride to both delineate and exceed categories of oppositions. Like Gregory of Nyssa and the Church fathers actively trying to secure, even hasten, eschatological reconstitution by anticipating it, he strives to overturn the order of things, making the last, first; the weak, strong; and the female, male, inscribing the inverted logic onto his own identity, his own self. Performing the bride, Bernard stages monastic transformation and transcendence: a dual-sexed bride mimicking the dual-sexed bridegroom, a male absorbing all femaleness, a celibate man ‘writing like a woman’ in a world without women.

Appendix: The Vulgate Version of Cantica canticorum 1.1 to 3.1 with English Translation

I

follow the Latin text of the Song of Songs as it is reproduced in Bernard’s sermons as far as possible. However, Bernard uses different variations of the same verse (e.g. Song 1. 3 where he shifts between the Vulgate cellaria and the non-Vulgate cubiculum and Song 2. 5 where he shifts between the Vulgate amore langueo and the Septaguinta vulnerata caritate ego sum), and he only rarely cites a whole verse verbatim. In reconstructing the first two chapters of the Song of Song, I adapt from the version given in E. Ann Matter, The Voice of My Beloved, xvi–xxxv, which is an adjustment of the critical Vulgate edition by R. Weber. The English translation follows Matter’s closely. In keeping with medieval practice, punctuation is avoided except where necessary in order to retain the sense. Lack of punctuation also contributed to interpretative flexibility as the exegetes could combine the verses with greater liberty. My translation stops at Chapter 3, Verse 1, where Bernard’s exposition stops in Sermon 86. Chapter 1 1.1 osculetur me osculo oris sui quia meliora sunt ubera tua vino

let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth for your breasts are better than wine

1.2 fragrantia unguentis optimis oleum effusum nomen tuum prop­ terea adolescentulae dilexerunt te

fragrant with the finest ointments your name is oil poured out, that is why the girls have loved you

410 Appendix

1.3 trahe me post te in odore unguentorum tuorum curremus introduxit me rex in cellaria sua exsultabimus et laetabimur in te memores uberum tuorum super vinum recti diligunt te

draw me after you, in your ointments we will run, the king led me into his cellars, we will rejoice and be glad in you remembering your breasts better than wine the righteous love you

1.4 nigra sum sed formosa filiae Ierusalem sicut tabernacula Cedar sicut pelles Salomonis

I am black but beautiful daughters of Jerusalem like the tents of Kedar like the skins of Solomon

1.5 nolite me considerare quod fusca sim quia decoloravit me sol filii matris meae pugnaverunt contra me posuerunt me custodem in vineis vineam meam non custodivi

do not look at me because I am dark for the sun has discoloured me, the sons of my mother attacked me, they have placed me as a guard in the vineyards, my vineyard I have not kept

1.6 indica mihi quem diligit anima mea ubi pascas ubi cubes in meridie ne vagari incipiam per greges sodalium tuorum

show me [him] whom my soul loves where you pasture where you rest at midday lest I begin to wander after the flocks of your companions

1.7 si ignoras te o pulchra inter mulieres egredere et abi per vestigia gregum et pasce hedos tuos iuxta tabernacula pastorum

if you do not know yourself o beautiful among women go forth and follow the tracks of the flocks and pasture your kids beside the tents of the shepherds

1.8 equitatui meo in curribus Pharaonis assimilavi te amica mea

I have likened you to the cavalry in the Pharaoh’s chariots

1.9 pulchrae sunt genae tuae sicut turturis collum tuum sicut monilia

your cheeks are fair like the turtle dove’s your neck like necklaces

1.10 muraenulas aureas faciemus tibi vermiculatas argento

we will make you chains of gold inlaid with silver

1.11 cum esset rex in accubitu suo nardus mea dedit odorem suum

while the king was on his couch my nard gave out its fragrance

1.12 fasciculus myrrhae dilectus meus mihi inter ubera mea commorabitur

my beloved is a little bundle of myrrh to me between my breasts he shall linger

The Vulgate Version of Cantica canticorum 1.1 to 3.1

411

1.13 botrus cypri dilectus meus mihi in vineis Engaddi

a cluster of cypress is my love to me in the vineyards of Engaddi

1.14 ecce tu pulchra es amica mea ecce tu pulchra oculi tui columbarum

behold you are all fair my love behold you are fair your eyes of doves

1.15 ecce tu pulcher es dilecte mi et decorus lectulus noster floridus

behold you are fair my beloved and beautiful our bed is flowery

1.16 tigna domorum nostrarum cedrina laquearia nostra cypressina

the beams of our house are of cedar our rafters are of cypress

Chapter 2 2.1 ego flos campi et lilium convallium

I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valley

2.2 sicut lilium inter spinas sic amica mea inter filias

like a lily among thorns so my love among daughters

2.3 sicut malus inter ligna silvarum sic dilectus meus inter filios sub umbra eius quem desideraveram sedi et fructus eius dulcis gutturi meo

like the apple tree among trees of the woods so is my beloved among sons, under the shadow of the one I had loved I sat and his fruit was sweet to my throat

2.4 introduxit me in cellam vinariam he led me into his wine cellar he set love ordinavit in me caritatem in order in me 2.5 fulcite me floribus stipate me malis quia amore langueo

support me with flowers surround me with apples for I languish with love

2.6 laeva eius sub capite meo et dextera eius amplexabitur me

his left arm [is] under my head and his right arm will embrace me

2.7 adiuro vos filiae Ierusalem per capreas cervosque camporum ne suscitetis neque evigilare faciatis dilectam quoadusque ipsa velit

I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem by the goats and the stags of the field neither arouse nor cause to awaken my beloved before she wishes

2.8 vox dilecti mei ecce iste venit saliens in montibus transiliens colles

the voice of my beloved, behold he comes leaping across the mountains springing across the hills

412 Appendix

2.9 similis est dilectus meus capreae hinnuloque cervorum en ipse stat post parietem nostrum respiciens per fenestras prospiciens per cancellos

my beloved is like a goat and a young stag behold he stands behind our wall looking in through the windows watching through the lattices

2.10 et dilectus meus loquitur mihi surge propera amica mea formosa mea et veni

and my beloved speaks to me, arise swiftly my love, my beautiful one and come

2.11 iam enim hiems transiit imber abiit et recessit

for now the winter has passed the rain has gone and departed

2.12 flores apparuerunt in terra tempus putationis advenit vox turturis audita est in terra nostra

flowers appear on the earth the time of pruning has come, the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land

2.13 ficus protulit grossos suos vineae florentes dederunt odorem surge amica mea sponsa mea et veni

the fig tree has put out its thick shoots the flowering vines have given off a scent, arise my love my bride and come

2.14 columba mea in foraminibus petrae in cavernis maceriae ostende mihi faciem tuam sonet vox tua in auribus meis vox enim tua dulcis et facies tua decora

my dove is in the clefts of the rock, in the crannies of the wall, show me your face let your voice sound in my ears for your voice is sweet and your face is beautiful

2.15 capite nobis vulpes parvulas quae demoliuntur vineas nam vinea nostra floruit

catch for us the little foxes that destroy the vines, for our vineyard is flowering

2.16 dilectus meus mihi et ego illi qui pascitur inter lilia

my beloved is mine and I am his, he who pastures among lilies

2.17 donec aspiret dies et inclinentur umbrae revertere similis esto dilecte mi capreae aut hinnuloque cervorum super montes Bethel

until the day breathes and the shadows lean, return my beloved, be like the goat or a young stag on the mountains of Bether

Chapter 3 3.1 in lectulo meo per noctes quaesivi quem diligit anima mea quaesivi illum et non inveni

on my bed through the nights I sought him whom my soul loves, I sought him and I did not find

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Index

Abelard see Peter Abelard acrobat see juggler/acrobat imagery Adam, biblical figure: 18, 43–44, 48–50, 235, 354–55, 394 Aelred of Rievaulx: 79 n. 41, 160, 250 agape: 68, 76, 114, 128, 149, 297 Agnes, saint: 172–73 Alexander, bishop of Lincoln: 66 allegory: 59–60, 80, 140 ecclesiological reading: 29–30, 115, 120, 151–52, 157–58, 226, 275, 297, 311, 331, 352, 368, 380; see also bride, as Church (Ecclesia) as non-literal reading: 24–26, 28, 381, 394 alliteration: 64, 146, 190, 212, 220, 231, 301, 384, 388 amare see amor Ambrose, bishop of Milan and bridal/nuptial imagery: 2, 26, 172–73, 198–200 De excessu fratris: 306 De viduis: 190 De virginibus: 198 on eros: 86, 389 on virginity: 43–44, 167 Amedeus of Lausanne: 79 n. 41 amor (amare, concupiscere, diligere): 68 n. 13, 84, 98, 248, 313–14, 330–31, 340–41 amor carnalis (carnal love): 26, 62, 77–78, 80–81, 91, 112–13, 115–16, 119, 210–12, 235–39, 255, 319–23 amor purus: 337

amor rationalis: 77–78 amor spiritualis: 77–78 amor sui: 337–42 interested/disinterested love: 139, 164, 328–29, 337–39 sponsus Amor: 330 and uniting duality: 327–42 anagogy: 29–30, 62, 77, 80, 84, 115, 149, 155, 191, 248, 251–52, 297, 299, 379–80, 391, 399–400 and beauty/splendour: 144, 288, 302, 334–36 and bedchamber imagery: 119 and defeminization: 41, 250–51, 311, 379, 399 and embrace imagery: 132, 369 and erotic imagery: 152, 166, 251–52 and gazing imagery: 255, 333–34 horizontal and vertical: 151–52, 311 and kiss imagery: 96, 101, 110–11 and love: 339–341 and virginity: 153, 155, 166, 250–51 Anderson, Luke: 155 androgyny (dual sexuality): 13, 55 n. 128 of Christ: 51–52, 311, 325, 342–50, 353–55 vs hermaphroditism: 52–53 of monks: 349, 390, 399, 408 as unification/eschatological restoration: 49–53, 207, 396–97, 399, 401 of virgin: 42–46, 48, 260, 393, 401 see also virago; male bride

434

angels: 350–51, 392 asexuality of: 43, 46 as audience: 265–66, 268, 291, 300–01 bride’s position to: 239–41, 244 as bridegroom’s sodales: 107, 205, 223–26, 344 death of: 133 n. 200, 136–37, 174 vs little girls: 220–21, 226, 348 and penetration: 245, 372, 378 virgins as: 43–44, 196–98 Annas, biblical priest: 311 anointing woman: 274–78, 280–81, 390, 400, 407; see also Mary Magdalene Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury: 159 Apolinaria, saint: 21 Aristophanes: 49 Aristotle: 18, 54, 359 ascent and descent: 14, 64, 80, 301, 310, 392 and activity and contemplation: 71, 96, 128, 155, 400–01 and Christomimesis: 68, 128, 149, 152, 255, 390, 400–01 and monastic devotion: 72, 400 and redemption: 73 asceticism: 2–3, 15, 25–26, 200, 285, 312–13 and bride: 40, 197–201 and Cistercians: 38, 66, 177, 388, 408 desert: 179, 194, 359–60, 273, 374 and gender hierarchy: 3, 13, 21–22, 40–43, 156, 205, 399, 402 and heresy: 44 and hermeneutics: 316–18, 320, 380–81 of Jerome, saint: 92–93 and martyrdom: 173–75, 267, 317–18 and virginity: 41, 43, 45, 176 Asiedu: 381 assonance: 102, 111, 212, 265, 287, 297, 301–02, 307, 313, 335, 345, 351, 388 Athens: 81 Atkinson, Clarissa: 175 audience/spectators: 268–69 Clairvaux monks as: 1–2, 6–10, 393 heavenly spectators: 265–66, 268, 300–01 see also little girls, as Clairvaux monks/ audience; performance Augustine, bishop of Hippo: 44 n. 90, 64, 297, 320 and bridal/nuptial imagery: 198–200, 353–54

INDEX Confessiones: 187, 306 Contra Faustum Manichaeum: 108–09 De civitate dei: 69–70 De doctrina christiana: 142, 234 De Genesi ad litteram: 19, 50 De trinitate: 19, 233, 282 on eros: 389 on exile: 182–83, 233–34, 244 and quadriga: 29 Tractatus in Joannem: 365 on uti and frui: 68, 73–74, 76, 142, 148–49, 183, 329 and veritas sub umbra et figura: 59 on virginity: 198, 200 on widowhood: 191, 194, 251 autoexegesis: 9, 247–61 banquet and bread imagery: 14, 81–86, 144, 381–88 Platonic banquet of love: 86, 388–89 see also Eucharist baptism: 115, 158, 331, 347, 361 battle and warfare imagery: 112–13, 134, 171–72, 259, 280–81, 316 devotional body as battlefield: 115, 304–05, 309, 311–14 monk as soldier: 39 see also bride, as warrior; crusading imagery Baudrillard, Jean: 337 beauty imagery: 140–45, 236–38, 240–41, 242, 244–46 inverted beauty: 286–304, 308–09, 325, 392 see also blackness vs whiteness bedchamber and bed imagery: 13–14, 116, 130, 135, 144, 216–17, 264 n. 5, 314 and eroticism: 126–29, 149 as martyrdom: 172–73 preparation of bed: 167 and rhetoric of humility: 124–25 Bede, saint: 29, 50 n. 111 Benedict, Rule of: 69, 72, 121–22, 148, 404 Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux as anointing woman: 276–78, 280–81, 390, 407 as bride: 3, 47, 247–61, 274, 329–30, 371, 390, 396, 405–08 De diligendo deo (On loving God): 337, 340

INDEX on effeminacy: 38–39 and Gerard (his brother), death of: 11, 306–08, 365–67 as inseminator: 358–64 as literary persona: 8 as little girl: 210–15 masculine self-representation of: 87–88, 355–70, 393, 402 as misogynist: 406 as mother: 114, 138–39, 143, 160–65, 312, 379 as mournful turtle dove: 182–88, 195 organization of Sermons: 11–12 as Paul, saint: 82, 215, 253–54 self-definition of: 63, 68 and sexuality, personal: 57–58 as spinning woman: 226–28, 261, 280–81, 390, 407 as woman at well: 228–231, 261, 280, 390, 407 Bernard, prior of Portas: 63 birth imagery: 14, 34, 145–49, 154 n. 8, 161–62, 198, 272–73, 313–14, 396 and blackness: 291 see also fecundity imagery; pregnancy/impregnation blackness vs whiteness: 15, 165, 261, 291, 305, 311, 379, 394, 401 blackness and inverted beauty: 13, 92–93, 273, 284, 286–95, 308–10, 325, 392 Christ, blackness of: 299–303, 307, 349–50, 405 Saint Paul, blackness of: 289–291, 294, 307 Blanpain, Jacques: 61, 342 Bloch, R. Howard: 295, 310, 394–96 Bouchard, Constance: 48 Brautmystik: 2 bread see banquet and bread imagery breasts imagery (lactation): 12, 14, 99, 123–25, 145, 149, 177, 396 of bridegroom (Christ): 343–49, 355 and caritas: 101, 105, 107, 114, 116, 122, 186 of Church: 157–58 and heretics: 159 and kiss imagery: 100–02, 109, 111, 364 and Paul, saint: 271–72

435

of preaching: 107, 158 and Rachel and Lia: 108–11 and spiritual diet: 107, 120–22, 220–22, 361, 382, 385 and urban schools, attack on: 103–06 and wine imagery: 102, 105–06, 108, 111–16, 347 bride as anima (soul): 1–2, 27, 29–30, 97, 130–31, 133–34, 151–52, 198–99, 203–05, 225–26, 236–39, 251, 255, 351, 356, 370, 390 as ascetic: 197–201 bridegroom, imitation of: 215, 349–50 as Church (Ecclesia): 1, 26–30, 62, 67, 151–52, 172, 203–04, 216, 226, 243, 350–51, 373, 379 as Clairvaux: 67, 129, 143, 270, 399 and death/flight of: 133–37 and duality: 67–81, 116, 148–49, 228–29, 394–96, 408; see also inversions and reversals and erotic imagery: 14–15, 26–27, 57–59, 62–63, 68–69, 73, 176–77, 197, 252, 257, 332–33, 344, 348–49, 403–04; see also countererotics and exile: 235, 241, 303, 308–09, 350, 400–01 gender of: 31, 35–36; 237–41, 311, 325, 349, 377; see also male bride; virago gender indeterminacy of: 325, 408 as intermediary: 120, 220, 223, 230 and languor: 252, 254–57, 259–60, 377 as martyr: 167–68, 172–75, 180 mother-bride and maternal imagery: 119–24, 128, 137–39, 155–57, 160, 164, 195, 197, 214, 222, 260, 401, 406–07 penetration by: 373–79 penetration of: 167, 177, 312–17 pure love of: 328–30, 334–35, 337 virgin-bride: 2, 46, 155–57, 164–70, 177, 195, 197, 222, 260, 311, 392–93, 400–01, 403–404, 406–07 as warrior: 112–13, 115, 170–72 widow-bride: 156–57, 165, 170, 175, 182–83, 187–92, 195–97, 260, 326, 401, 404, 406–07

436

see also beauty imagery; Bernard of Clairvaux, as bride; breasts imagery; embrace imagery; fecundity imagery; feminization, as degradation and dis­ placement; kiss imagery; male bride bridegroom celibate bridegroom: 46 as Christ the Word: 2, 26–27, 147, 251, 254–58, 296–97, 327, 333–35, 353–55, 369–76 female entourage of: 216–17 feminization of: 369–70, 375, 379, 399; see also breasts imagery, of bridegroom (Christ) sodales of: 107, 205, 223–26, 344 as Sponsus Amor: 330–32 Brown, Peter: 297 Bruun, Mette Birkedal: 16 Bugge, John: 37 Burrus, Virginia: 172–73, 316–17, 389–90 Butler, Judith: 5–6 Bynum, Caroline Walker: 5, 16, 36–39, 58, 139, 156, 159, 205, 209, 247, 258, 284, 299, 342, 344, 392 Cadden, Joan: 5, 54–55 Caiaphas, biblical priest: 311 Cameron, Averil: 263 canal imagery: 104–05, 284, 361 caritas: 98, 148, 303, 330–31, 344, 404 and Gerard, brother of Bernard of Clairvaux: 365 and breast imagery: 101, 105, 107, 114, 116, 122, 186 caritas actualis (active love): 69, 74–77, 145 caritas affectualis (affective love): 69, 74–77, 145, 385 caritas ordinata (ordered love): 74 Carruthers, Mary: 13 Casey, Michael: 58 Castelli, Elizabeth: 53 celibacy: 13, 46, 156 clerical/monastic: 2–3, 31, 47, 159, 177, 197, 199–201, 351–52, 355, 400, 402–04, 406, 408 and enclosed space: 126; see also virginity, as enclosed garden/fountain/space and eros: 86, 264, 408 as erotic bliss: 2, 142, 177–78, 264

INDEX and fecundity: 196–200, 326 and heretics: 159 and Gregorian reform: 47, 199–200 Song of Songs as celebration of: 26 and turtle dove imagery: 142, 165, 180, 188–89, 196–97 see also virginity cellar (cellaria) imagery: 116, 118–19, 173 Chenu, M.-D.: 60 Christ, Jesus (bridegroom): 19, 143, 243, 245, 271 anointing of feet/head of: 274–78 beauty of: 145, 288, 299–303 blackness of: 299–303, 307, 349–50, 405 carnal Christ: 78, 319–23, 381–83 and cleansing of Temple: 66 as dual-sexed (androgyne): 51–52, 311, 325, 342–50, 353–55 as Ecclesia: 347, 353–54 feminization of: 51–53, 350, 353 as food: 381–88; see also banquet and bread imagery; Eucharist humanity of: 33–34, 317–321 Incarnation of: 235, 314, 320, 343, 350, 354 and kiss imagery: 88, 94 as lily: 174–75, 363 Passion, Crucifixion, Resurrection of: 72–73, 136, 169–70, 215, 218, 264, 267, 296–97, 299–300, 317–18, 343, 346, 395 and penetration: 254, 296, 313, 314–18, 320, 325, 371–79 as protovirgin: 169–70, 172, 174 as Rock (Petra): 373–75 as Sapientia: 51–52, 293, 342, 369–70, 375–76, 378, 386–88, 405 and turtle dove imagery: 183–84 see also bridegroom, as Christ the Word; Christology; Christomimesis; imitatio Christi Christology: 25, 64, 78, 90, 285, 310 and androgyne Christ: 43, 344 and anthropomorphism: 26 and Christ as new Adam: 33–34 and inversions: 137, 263–64 see also ascent and descent Christomimesis: 267, 405 and ascent and descent: 68, 128, 149, 152, 255, 390, 400–01

INDEX and imitatio Christi: 15, 40, 73, 215, 350 and institutional reform: 66 and male–female duality: 5, 33–34, 40, 350, 390, 408 and Verbum sponsus: 333, 335 Cicero, De amicitia: 329 Clairvaux: 1–2, 6–7, 16, 81, 128–29, 143, 360 n. 117 as bride: 67, 129, 143, 270, 399 dual imagery of: 64–67 as Jerusalem: 66–67, 270, 352 Clark, Elizabeth: 38, 46, 389–90 Clement of Alexandria: 49, 51 Stromata: 18–19 Cluny: 38–39, 69, 76, 107, 129, 404–05 conception: 99–100, 119, 122, 147, 314, 358, 363–64; see also fecundity imagery concupiscere see amor conformitas: 334–36, 339 cooking see fire/cooking imagery countererotics: 15, 26, 142, 177, 200 n. 160, 401, 404 cross-dressing of female saints: 21–22 crusading imagery: 304–05, 316 Damrosch, David: 227, 297, 396 David, biblical king: 267, 274 d’Avray, David: 61 Denys the Carthusian: 31 descent see ascent and descent desiderium: 251–53 diligere see amor Diotima: 81, 389–90 dual sexuality see androgyny duality of body/flesh and soul/spirit: 78, 116, 205, 298–99, 319, 326–28, 331, 394–95 non-dualism of gender: 396–97, 399 see also amor, and uniting duality; androgyny; ascent and descent; bride, and duality; Christ, Jesus (bridegroom), as dual-sexed; Clairvaux, dual imagery of; embrace imagery, and dualities; hermaphroditism; inversions and reversals; Martha and Mary of Bethany; Rachel and Lia; uti and frui; vita activa; vita contemplativa

437

Eberwin of Steinfeld: 159 n. 25, 376 n. 173 Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard: 206 embrace imagery (amplexus; complexus): 13–14 and death/flight of bride: 133–37, 321 and dualities: 132–33, 334–35 and eroticism: 129–31, 135, 149, 212, 304, 323, 332, 369, 373, 379, 387 and Incarnation: 131 and Rachel: 144, 358–59, 362, 364 epithalamian spirituality: 37 eros: 81, 114, 149, 155, 180, 235, 252, 391 ecstatic: 68, 128 of God: 333 and Platonic banquet of love: 81 n. 45, 86, 388–89 saintly/ascetic: 86, 197, 199, 212, 251, 264, 266, 297 320, 389 see also countererotics eschatology: 25, 29–30, 62, 110, 115, 256, 390 and androgyny: 51 and beauty: 240–42, 245–46, 286, 299, 302 and Christlikeness: 393 and defeminization: 41–42, 246–47; see also anagogy, and defeminization and dualities: 64, 155, 252, 258, 395, 391, 399–401; see also inversions and reversals and embrace imagery: 132, 137, 144–45 and gazing imagery: 333–34, 336 and heavenly Jerusalem: 304 and merit/perfection: 185, 257 as restoration: 43–44, 269–70, 317, 399–401, 408 staging of: 263–324, 408 and telos of love: 339 and vir perfectus: 34 and virginity: 43–45, 174–75, 177 visio beatudinis: 245, 341 Eucharist: 33, 61, 331 and banquet imagery: 83, 160, 381–84, 388 and kiss imagery: 97 and lactation: 158, 344–45, 361 sweetness of: 385 and wine: 115, 119, 347 Eugenia, saint: 21

438

Euphrosyne, saint: 21 Eustochium: 319 Eve, biblical figure: 43–44, 48–50, 235, 310, 354–55, 394 exile: 308–09, 400–01 and blackness: 303, 308–09 and femaleness: 14, 235, 241–42, 308–09, 350, 400 hermeneutics of: 233 of soul: 131, 234 and widowhood: 16, 182–84, 193, 260, 401 fecundity imagery: 12, 81, 101, 187, 209 and cultivation: 359–63 and insemination: 358–64 of monks: 41, 99, 357–58, 361–64 of mother-bride: 16, 41, 67, 119, 122, 157, 197, 201, 203, 325–26, 355, 390 and Rachel and Lia: 107, 109–11, 127–28, 140, 357–59, 362, 364 of soul: 145–47 spiritual: 81, 111, 197–99 and virgin-mother: 47, 153, 198–99, 201 see also conception; maternal imagery; pregnancy/impregnation femina virilis see virago feminization and defeminization: 41–42, 46, 250, 260, 271, 311, 326, 379, 393–94 as degradation and displacement: 14–16, 22–24, 39, 209, 233–47, 260, 310, 326 of devotion: 32–42 and exile: 14, 235, 241–42, 308–09, 350, 400 and feminine activities: 226–33 and homoeroticism: 205–06 and idealization: 14, 16, 34, 310, 405 of men: 3–4, 206–08, 233–47, 271; see also androgyny; Bernard of Clairvaux, as bride, as mother, as spinning woman, as woman at well; Christ, Jesus (bridegroom), feminization of; inversions and reversals; little girls; male bride; Paul, saint, as mother of religious language: 37, 40 self-feminization: 15, 160–65, 226–28, 261, 276–85, 392, 405

INDEX of soul: 203–06 of text: 87–88, 367–71, 377 Ferrante, Joan: 35 fertility see fecundity imagery fire/cooking imagery: 226, 228, 230–31, 254, 256 fountain/water/well imagery: 272, 330, 361–62, 400, 407 and breasts: 114–15, 350 bride as: 228–31 bridegroom as: 331 and virginity: 168, 176 see also canal imagery Francis of Assisi, saint: 33 frui see uti and frui Fulton, Rachel: 385 Furia, widow: 194–95 Galen: 54, 55 n. 128 garden imagery (hortus): 77, 116–19, 362–63 and Christ: 168–69 as virginity: 46, 130, 168, 176, 228 gazing and vision imagery: 145, 245, 254–55, 332–34, 341 gender blending: 4, 14, 36, 43, 51–52, 57, 240, 247 n. 126, 271, 352–55, 390, 401 crossing: 4, 14, 19–21, 36, 43, 52, 240, 246, 247 n. 126, 271, 279, 291, 401 destabilization/indeterminacy/slippage: 4, 15, 41, 47, 207, 325–26, 342–49, 355, 367, 375, 393, 394 n. 224; see also androgyny; hermaphroditism dual organization of: 5, 15, 52, 56–57, 205–07, 279, 311, 325, 349, 394–97 gender theory ancient and medieval: 54–56 post-structuralist: 4 Gerard, brother of Bernard of Clairvaux: 11, 306–08, 365–67 Gilbert de la Porrée: 11 Gilbert of Hoyland, abbot of Swineshead Abbey: 11 n. 31 Gilson, Étienne: 7, 12, 268, 270, 329, 340 Gospel of Thomas: 19 Gregorian (Church) Reform: 24, 106 and boundaries between laity and church: 121, 159, 199–200, 283, 347, 402–07

INDEX and gender/celibacy: 47, 199–200, 351 n. 96, 402–07 Gregory I the Great, pope: 10, 64, 69, 74, 148, 256 on eros: 389 Expositio in Canticum canticorum: 28 Moralia in Job: 70–72 Gregory of Nyssa: 26, 44–45, 86, 389, 408 Dialogus de anima et resurrectione: 306, 389–90 Guerric of Igny: 160, 360 n. 116 Halperin, David: 389–90 Heliodorus, ascetic: 194–95 Herdt, Gilbert: 5 heresy: 11, 44, 159, 376, 402; see also Manichaean dualism hermaphroditism: 43, 52–53, 55 n. 128 hermeneutics as desire/appetite: 83–84, 88, 252, 316–21, 368, 370, 382, 387–88 fourfold formula (quadriga): 29–30, 152, 395 and gender: 87–88, 226, 228–32, 325, 249–51, 257, 260–61, 295–98, 303, 367, 393–96, 399, 401 literal vs spiritual understanding: 15, 81, 249–51, 295–98, 301–03, 322–25, 367, 371–73, 378–81, 393–96, 399, 401 of Song of Songs: 10, 24–31, 86, 90, 199, 203–04, 227, 250, 326–27, 380–82 and symbolism: 59–62 threefold formula: 14, 29–30, 77, 79–81, 84, 96, 117–19, 144, 152, 222, 297, 328, 395 see also allegory; anagogy; tropology Herod: 217–19 Hesychius of Jerusalem: 264 n. 5 Hilaria, saint: 21 Hildegard of Bingen: 52 Hippocrates: 54, 55 n. 128, 344, 345 n. 75 Holsinger, Bruce: 305–06, 316 homoeroticism: 205–06, 377 n. 177 Horace: 58 Hugh, Cistercian novice: 194, 208, 345 Hunter, David: 200 hunter imagery: 367–68, 393

439

Ida, nun: 41–42 Idung of Prüfening: 250 imago Dei: 18–19, 48, 50, 295 imitatio Christi (Dei): 15, 33, 36, 40, 181, 215, 300, 335, 363; see also Christomimesis inversions and reversals: 13, 15, 142, 184, 188, 219, 384, 408 Christ’s death, paradox of: 264, 311 eschatological: 258, 268–71, 273, 302–03, 322, 390–91 of gender: 36–37, 208, 271–86, 290–91, 391–92; see also gender, crossing; male bride; virago and language: 270–71 life and death: 133, 136–37, 162, 304–11, 315 in medieval discourse: 263–64 monastery as inverted world: 264–69, 282–85, 403 pleasure and pain: 304, 311–24 virginity and celibacy, paradox of: 264 see also beauty imagery, inverted beauty; blackness vs whiteness Irenaeus: 50 Isaac of Stella: 79 n. 41 Isidore of Sevilla, Etymologies: 345 Jacob, biblical patriarch: 108–10, 358, 364 Jerome, saint and bridal/nuptial imagery: 2, 26, 93, 194–95, 200 on desire: 318–19, 321 and gender crossing: 20–22 as hermit: 92–93, 126 on virginity/martyrdom: 43–44, 167, 173, 200 on widowhood: 2, 190, 194–95 Jerusalem: 66–67, 270, 304, 351–53 Jesus Christ see Christ, Jesus (bridegroom) Jews: 25, 296–97, 300, 380–81; see also Synagogue Joan, pope: 106 n. 132 Job, biblical figure: 272–74 John, saint, apostle: 216, 365 John Cassian: 29 John Eriugena: 339 John of the Cross: 31 John the Baptist, saint: 239

440

Johnson, Mark: 156 Judas Iscariot: 107, 275 n. 43, 311 juggler/acrobat imagery: 265–66, 268–69, 284–85, 407 Julitta, saint: 21 n. 16 Julius Cassianus: 49 Jungian psychology: 154 n. 10, 204 n. 2 Karras, Ruth Mazo: 5, 39 Kelly, Kathleen Coyne: 176 Kieckhefer, Richard: 33 kiss imagery (osculum): 7, 12, 14, 77, 116, 145, 235, 276–77, 321, 323 breasts imagery, compared to: 100–02, 111, 344, 348–49 eroticism of: 87–88, 90, 94, 96–99, 101, 149, 304, 321, 323, 332, 343–44, 348–49, 379, 387 triple pattern of: 77, 88–96, 119, 144 Knights Templar: 38, 70 Krahmer, Shawn Madison: 39, 41, 240, 247 lactation see breasts imagery Ladner, Gerhart: 60 Lakoff, George: 156 language/grammar and gender: 13, 91–94, 203–05 237–38, 271, 278, 209 n. 80, 308, 310, 392 and inversions: 265–71 of love poetry: 270 personal pronouns, use of: 8–9, 91, 93–94, 207, 209–10, 213–14, 225, 241, 243, 278, 290 n. 80, 315, 329, 357, 369, 390 mental images: 13, 62, 322–24 see also alliteration; assonance; oxymorons Laqueur, Thomas: 4–5, 32, 57, 395–96 Lazarus, biblical figure: 77, 143–44 Leclercq, Jean: 3, 9, 11–12, 58, 203–04, 268, 270, 406 Lia see Rachel and Lia light imagery: 11, 95, 242–44, 270, 293 n. 83, 308–09, 356–58, 378 liminality (of bride/femaleness): 156, 391–92 little girls (adolescentulae) vs angels: 220–21, 226, 348 and authority, spiritual and Church: 216 Clairvaux monks/audience as: 7, 14, 122, 124–25, 138, 148, 205, 210–13, 215, 221, 393, 407

INDEX fleshliness/female, representing: 205, 214, 222, 226, 235, 256, 400 and gossip: 217–18 as imitators of bride: 215–16 inferiority and hermeneutical displacement of: 16, 137–39, 209–11, 213–15, 220–22, 261, 280, 400 and lactation, receiving: 6, 119–24, 148, 220–22, 346 and ointments/oil: 213, 221, 347–48 types of: 211–12 Lubac, Henri de: 10, 30 MacKendrick, Karmen: 336 Mâcon, Council of: 48 Macrina the Younger, saint: 170, 306, 389–90 male bride: 2, 13–14, 24–31, 47, 325–26, 395–97, 399, 401–02, 408 blackness of: 392 and virago: 13–15, 24, 32, 40–43, 238–40, 247, 401 see also Bernard of Clairvaux, as bride; feminization, of men; gender, blending, crossing; inversions and reversals, of gender Manichaean dualism: 49, 50 n. 111 Mariology: 25, 64, 120, 122, 153, 263, 297, 309–10, 315; see also Mary, Virgin marriage (nuptials, wedding) clerical: 200 n. 157 free consent to: 336 and heresy: 159 sacrality of lay: 351–52 spiritual/mystical: 31, 61–62, 90, 98, 131, 146, 177, 179, 200–01, 204, 326–27, 330–31, 338, 341, 351–55, 403; see also bride, virgin-bride Martha and Mary of Bethany, biblical figures: 77, 140–45, 152, 154, 275 n. 41, 277–78, 337–38 n. 48, 356–58 Bernard of Clairvaux and his brother, compared to: 365–67 and turtle dove imagery: 177–78, 181–82 and uti and frui: 141–42, 178 martyrdom, see under asceticism; bedchamber and bed imagery; bride, as martyr; virginity

INDEX Mary, Virgin: 164, 193 as bride: 152–54, 313–14 duality of: 153–54, 270, 309–11 as mediatrix: 120, 123 penetration of: 313–15, 371 see also Mariology Mary Magdalene, saint: 19, 91–93, 275–76, 278, 301–03, 400 Mary of Bethany see Martha and Mary of Bethany masculinization of Bernard of Clairvaux’s selfrepresentation: 355–64 of females: 19–24, 33–34; see also virago and hermeneutical agency: 367–70, 378 as spiritual promotion: 17–19, 22–24, 37, 400–01 maternal imagery as agape: 68, 73 antimother: 158 and Christ: 34, 51, 53, 158, 342–47, 349 as mediatrix: 120, 123 of Moses: 271, 273–74, 282 and Mother Church (Mater Ecclesia): 115, 158, 160 nurturing image of: 67, 82, 145, 157–61, 385 and Paul, saint: 147, 159, 271–72, 274, 282, 290–91 see also Bernard of Clairvaux, as mother; birth imagery; breasts imagery; bride, mother-bride and maternal imagery; fecundity imagery; Mary, Virgin; pregnancy/impregnation; tropology, breasts imagery/maternal imagery; virginity, virgin-mother Matrona, saint: 21 Matter, Ann: 26, 205, 297, 409 Matthew, saint: 196, 280 Maximus the Confessor: 49, 51, 339 McGinn, Bernard: 10, 154, 320, 337, 340 McNamara, Jo Ann: 47, 199, 406 Meeks, Wayne: 51 Melania the Elder: 20 metaphor theory: 156 Methodius of Olympus: 86, 394 n. 223 milites Christi: 39, 170 Mohrmann, Christine: 329 Monica of Hippo, saint: 187, 306

441

Moore, Stephen: 206, 343 Morimond: 12 n. 32 Moses, biblical patriarch: 271, 273–74, 282, 392 mother see maternal imagery negotium: 140–41, 148 Newman, Barbara: 16, 35–36, 47, 175, 193, 343 Newman, Martha: 10, 16, 39, 103, 284 Noah, biblical patriarch: 239 Oger, canon of Mont-Saint-Éloi: 264–65, 301 Økland, Jorunn: 53 Olympias, saint: 21 n. 16 ‘one-sex body’: 4, 32 ordo praeposterus: 75–76, 80, 96, 128, 322 ordo salutis: 79–80 Origen of Alexandria: 23, 40, 79, 86, 320 and Song of Songs: 10, 26–30, 81, 84, 86, 151, 253, 343 on Christ as androgyne: 343 on eros: 86, 320 n. 169, 389 on Martha and Mary of Bethany/Rachel and Lia: 140 and ordo salutis (threefold division): 79, 81, 84, 96, 152, 297 Orpheus, mythical Greek figure: 49 Osbert of Clare: 41–42 otium: 140–41, 148, 357, 366 Ovid: 25 n. 29, 49 oxymorons: 64, 72–73, 125, 219, 229, 396, 401 and inversions: 270–71, 286, 301, 309–10 Palladius, Lausiac History: 20 Paul, saint: 79, 133–34, 136, 144, 212, 216, 221, 246, 266, 339, 363, 369, 372 Bernard of Clairvaux as: 215, 253–54 blackness and beauty of: 288–91, 294–95, 299, 307 as bride (and wife): 147, 215, 290–91 and flesh and spirit, division between: 82, 114, 237, 312 as fountain: 115, 228, 272 gender blending in: 51–53 as idealized male: 392

INDEX

442

and monk as soldier: 39 as mother: 147, 159, 162, 215, 271–72, 274, 282, 290–91 as turtle dove: 196 Paulinus of Nola: 20–22, 318 penetration/perforation: 219, 305, 363 and angels: 245, 372, 378 by Bernard of Clairvaux: 393 of Bernard of Clairvaux: 254, 257, 371 by bride: 245, 296–98, 325, 373–79 of bride: 167, 177, 312–16, 325 by Christ/Word: 254, 314–16, 325, 371 of Christ/Word: 296, 317–18, 320, 325, 372–79 hermeneutical: 370–79, 393 of Virgin Mary: 313–15, 371 performance/staging: 5–8, 69, 203, 241–42, 253, 267–69, 337, 402, 405–08 and female roles: 14–16, 260–61, 280–81, 350, 379, 390–91 of martyrial drama: 267, 317 see also audience Perpetua, saint: 20 Peter, saint: 19, 216, 365 Peter Abelard: 24, 58 n. 135, 103, 105, 232 Peter Comestor: 50 n. 111, 50 n. 113 Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny: 107, 293 Philip, monk of Clairvaux: 66–67 Phipps, William: 57–58 pilgrimage imagery: 182, 188, 191, 242, 244, 287–88, 299, 303–04, 369, 400–01 Plato: 18, 25 n. 29, 59, 61–62, 81, 135, 294 Symposium: 49, 86, 389–90 Timaeus: 54 Pontius Pilate: 217–19 Porphyry: 20 Pranger, M. B.: 5–7, 10, 12, 16, 259, 268–70, 367, 391 pregnancy/impregnation: 67, 99, 101, 119, 345, 358, 363; see also fecundity imagery Proba, widow: 191, 198 proximae: 212–13 Pseudo-Dionysius: 68 n. 13, 134, 221 Pythagorus: 25 n. 29 quadriga see hermeneutics, fourfold formula queer theory: 4, 204–05, 342–43, 364

Rabanus Maurus: 29 Rachel and Lia, biblical figures: 145, 152, 274, 370 and contemplation vs activity: 108–10, 127–28, 140, 144, 154, 356 and fecundity imagery: 107, 109–11, 127–28, 140, 357–59, 362, 364 and Martha and Mary of Bethany, compared to: 140, 142 reversals see inversions and reversals Rheims, council of (1148): 11 Rincón, Tomás: 61 Robert, monk of Cluny: 38 Robert of Deutz: 293 Sapientia: 36 n. 67 see also Christ, Jesus (bridegroom), as Sapientia Sarra, amma, saint: 23, 40 Satyrus, brother of Ambrose of Milan: 306 seduction: 87, 170, 322–23 of audience: 329–30 divine: 330, 335–37 erotic: 146, 369 and Scriptura: 370, 382 Simon Magus: 107 simony: 106–07 Socrates: 81, 389–90 Solomon, biblical king: 24 n. 27, 27, 84, 309 Sommerfeldt, John: 268, 341 Song of Songs, Vulgate version and translation: 409–12; see also hermeneutics, of Song of Songs Southern, R. W.: 34, 209 spectators see audience spinning woman imagery: 226–28, 261, 280–81, 390, 400–01, 407 staging see performance Stock, Brian: 324 Synagogue: 157–58, 296, 311, 373, 379–80; see also Jews Syncletia, saint: 21 n. 16 Tertullian: 46 n. 98, 394 n. 223 Thamar, biblical figure: 239 Thecla, saint: 21 n. 17, 40 Theodora of Alexandria, saint: 21 Theodora Spana, wife of Lucinius: 20 Theodore of Mopsuestia: 24 n. 27 Thomas, saint: 216

INDEX Tiresias, mythical Greek figure: 43, 53 n. 123 tropology: 10, 67, 77, 80–81, 84, 96, 101, 118–19, 144, 149, 315, 331, 355, 380, 399 and breasts imagery/maternal imagery: 101, 115, 157–58, 203, 222, 343, 361 and soul (anima): 29–30, 125, 151–55, 203, 205, 237, 297, 390 see also bride, as anima (soul), motherbride and maternal imagery turtle dove see under Bernard of Clairvaux; celibacy; vita contemplativa; widow Turner, Victor: 392 uti and frui: 329, 337 n.48 Augustine on: 73–74, 76, 142, 148–49, 183 as dual pattern for bridal imagery: 14, 64, 73–74, 76, 80, 96, 145–46, 148–49, 152, 155, 400 erotic-contemplative themes of frui: 80, 128, 146, 148–49, 373 and Martha and Mary of Bethany: 141–42, 178 maternal themes of uti: 73, 148–49, 233 Verbaal, Wim: 6, 8, 12, 16, 269, 363, 367 Vergil: 25 n. 29 vir perfectus: 33–34, 278–79, 390, 396, 402 virago (femina virilis): 22–24, 39, 53, 56, 279, 311, 396–97 and male bride: 13–15, 24, 32, 40–43, 238–40, 247, 401 and womanChrist: 34–36 Virgin Mary see Mary, Virgin virginity (virgins): 13, 41–42, 392, 395 as abstraction: 176–77 androgyny of: 42–46, 48, 260, 393, 401 as angels: 43–44, 196–97 and celibacy: 43, 176, 188, 191, 196–201, 400 and contemplation/excessus: 130, 157, 166, 303, 379, 396; see also anagogy, and virginity as enclosed garden/fountain/space: 46, 130, 157, 168, 176–77, 228–29, 321 erotics of: 130, 152, 164, 175–77, 318, 390, 400, 403–04

443

as figura of hermeneutics: 250 idealization of: 43–47, 191–92 as lily: 165–67, 170, 174 and martyrdom: 16, 41, 157, 168–75, 317, 400 and superbia: 192–93 as turtle dove: 188–89, 196 virgin-mother: 152–54, 198–99, 325, 390 and whiteness: 303, 379, 396 see also bride, virgin-bride; Mary, Virgin vision see gazing and vision imagery vita activa (active life; labor; studio): 14, 16, 66, 69–72, 76, 80–81, 109–10, 128–29, 133, 137, 152, 222, 288 blackness of: 287–88, 303 and fountain imagery: 229–30, 361 Gerard, brother of Bernard of Clairvaux, as: 365–66 masculinization of: 282–83 see also bride, mother-bride and maternal imagery; Bernard of Clairvaux, as mother; Martha and Mary of Bethany; Rachel and Lia, and contemplation vs activity; uti and frui vita contemplativa (contemplative life; quies): 14, 16, 66, 69–72, 76–77, 80, 109–10, 128, 152, 185, 222, 233, 288, 404 and eroticism; see under bedchamber and bed imagery; embrace imagery; kiss imagery feminization of: 282–83, 403–04 and turtle dove imagery: 178–82 see also Martha and Mary of Bethany; Rachel and Lia, and contemplation vs activity; uti and frui Waddell, Chrysogonus: 268, 333 warfare see battle and warfare imagery water see canal imagery; fountain/water/ well imagery Weber, R.: 409 weeping: 6, 163–64, 185–88, 249, 306–08, 361 see also Bernard of Clairvaux, and Gerard (his brother), death of, as mournful turtle dove; widow, and turtle dove imagery well imagery see fountain/water/well imagery whiteness see blackness vs whiteness

444

Whitson, Robley: 204 widow, imagery of: 2, 14, 41, 178, 182–95, 251, 380, 400–01, 405–07 and celibacy/chastity: 16, 182, 188–89, 191–92, 196, 260, 400–01 and exile: 16, 182–84, 193, 260, 401 as spiritual condition: 189–96 as turtle dove: 165, 177–83, 187–89, 195 see also bride, widow-bride Wiethaus, Ulrike: 297, 395–96, 406 William of St Thierry: 65, 79 n. 41, 238 wine imagery and breasts imagery: 102, 105–06, 108, 111–16, 347 and drunkenness: 118–19 and kiss imagery, compared to: 100–02, 105–06, 108, 111–16, 118 see also under Eucharist Xenophanes: 25 n. 29

INDEX

Europa Sacra All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field. Titles in Series Religious and Laity in Western Europe, 1000-1400: Interaction, Negotiation, and Power, ed. by Emilia Jamroziak and Janet E. Burton (2007) Anna Ysabel d’Abrera, The Tribunal of Zaragoza and Crypto-Judaism: 1484–1515 (2008) Cecilia Hewlett, Rural Communities in Renaissance Tuscany: Religious Identities and Local Loyalties (2009) Charisma and Religious Authority: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Preaching, 1200–1500, ed. by Katherine L. Jansen and Miri Rubin (2010) Communities of Learning: Networks and the Shaping of Intellectual Identity in Europe, 1100-1500, ed. by Constant J. Mews and John N. Crossley (2011) Alison Brown, Medicean and Savonarolan Florence: The Interplay of Politics, Humanism, and Religion (2012) Faith’s Boundaries: Laity and Clergy in Early Modern Confraternities, ed. by Nicholas Terpstra, Adriano Prosperi, and Stefania Pastore (2013) Late Medieval and Early Modern Ritual: Studies in Italian Urban Culture, ed. by Samuel Cohn Jr., Marcello Fantoni, Franco Franceschi, and Fabrizio Ricciardelli Thomas A. Fudge, The Memory and Motivation of Jan Hus, Medieval Priest and Martyr (2013) Clare Monagle, Orthodoxy and Controversy in Twelfth-Century Religious Discourse: Peter Lombard’s ‘Sentences’ and the Development of Theology (2013)

In Preparation Adriano Prosperi, The Giving of the Soul: The History of an Infanticide Mulieres religiosae: Shaping Female Spiritual Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, ed. by Veerle Fraeters and Imke de Gier Tomas Zahora, Nature, Virtue, and the Boundaries of Encyclopedic Knowledge: The Tropo­ logical Universe of Alexander Neckam (1157-1217) Darius von Güttner-Sporzyński, Poland, Holy War, and the Piast Monarchy, 1100 – 1230 Bruno the Carthusian and his Mortuary Roll: Studies, Text, and Translation, ed. by Hartmut Beyer, Gabriela Signori, and Sita Steckel David Rosenthal, Kings of the Street: Power, Community, and Ritual in Renaissance Florence