SG Rindahl: SCRIPTURE AND MARIOLOGY IN BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX
SG Rindahl esc.academia.edu
Bernard’s use of scripture in his devotion to Mary provides a thoroughly biblical understanding of Mary and through his homilies provides encouragement toward meditation and contemplation which is in the manner of lectio divina. Although Bernard does
The essential problem for the study of Bernard’s Apologia ad Guillelmum (1125), the most important document pertaining to the medieval attitude toward art, has been that scholars have felt it does not specifically name one monastery or monastic order as a subject of the criticisms contained in it. Although Bernard–one of the most influential men of his time–quite clearly and repeatedly addressed his admonitions to William of Saint-Thierry’s “order,” scholars have known that William was a friend of Bernard and therefore have believed that this address must have been a front for an indirect attack upon someone else. At the same time they have assumed that the Apologia was aimed at Cluny in particular. Undoubtedly from the earliest times a major factor in this conception has been the similarity of Bernard’s Letter 1 and the Apologia. Yet crucial distinctions between the two have not been noticed. These are that Bernard never hesitated to repeatedly mention Cluny by name in Letter 1, and that there is no criticism of the art of Cluny in the same letter. The problem of clarity of address was solved by prefixing to the Apologia, on inconclusive evidence, a certain letter of Bernard’s. This letter, in recounting an earlier one of William’s, did mention the Cluniacs. However, when the text proper was quoted either extensively or without the aid of the spurious preface, later scholars felt that it was necessary to interpolate the word “Cluniac,” as Bernard did not sufficiently use that word to accommodate their conception of the treatise. As a result, attention focused on Cluny as the major, or even sole, recipient of the Apologia. Many scholars have thought that if it were Cluny that Bernard had complained about in his treatise, it must also be Cluny that he had described in his chapters on art. Therefore theApologia was substituted for historical evidence in their reconstruction of the art program of that abbey. The use of Bernard’s denunciation of the worst aspects of excessive art as a catalogue of the artworks as they were believed to have existed at Cluny in 1125 has led to an image of Cluny as bent on a program of excessive art. This image was compounded by a somewhat misleading comparison with Cîteaux when Cîteaux was at its financially most impoverished level. Such a polarization of the two most visible representatives of contemporary monasticism has contributed to a rather limited understanding of the monastic controversy in the early twelfth century. The inflexibility of this view has also had as a consequence the impression that excessive ornamentation was somehow distinctively Cluniac, and to be consistently found throughout the Cluniac Congregation. As to an analysis of what Bernard actually said about art, scholars have tended to concentrate their attention on two main aspects of Apologia 28-29: Bernard’s censure of art as a spiritual distraction and his recognition of the utility of a secular religious art. The first point has, in the most thorough work, received a certain amount of recognition. But although Bernard’s comments on secular religious art were only made in passing, they have been dealt with by some as a major tenet of the Apologia. In short, these authors have fixed on to what may be termed the artistically positive aspects of the Apologia, rather than on to the more prominent negative criticisms of art. The same inclination is seen in efforts to explain the impetus behind Apologia 28-29. The premium set on medieval religious art by nineteenth-century Church enthusiasts compelled them to denounce Bernard’s criticism of art as personally motivated, rather than on monastic or social grounds. The approaches to Bernard’s personal attitude toward art have been varied and contradictory, with some authors suggesting that Bernard’s rejection of art indicated a revulsion, and to others a very strong attraction. In the end, this has detracted from seeing any more historically or politically based impetus to Bernard’s actions, which scholarship has only just begun to look at. Possibly because of the emphasis on personal stimulus, no direct connection has been made between the Apologia and the discontinuation of heavily ornamented manuscripts within the Cistercian Order. In any event, Bernard’s relation to Cistercian art and legislation on art has not been put into proper perspective. While a very few authors have noted similarities between his views and those of earlier Church fathers, Bernard’s position within a non-iconoclastic movement against religious art in his own time has been largely neglected. Ultimately, there has been no thorough analysis of the Apologia with the exception of Vacandard’s ground breaking effort. The tendency has been to isolate various passages ofApologia 28-29, rather than to coherently analyze the whole, especially in relation to the rest of the Apologia, Bernard’s other writings, the artistic evidence of Cluny and Cîteaux, and the political conditions of both Cîteaux and monasticism in general. The literature has established a rather inflexible and restricted view of the Apologia. But at the same time, questions have at least been raised on most major issues which, when developed, will lead to a more significant understanding of the part played by Bernard’s treatise in the controversy over monastic art in the twelfth century.