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St Bernard of Clairvaux and Jerusalem*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

Peter Raedts
Peter Raedts*
Affiliation:
University of Leiden
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Extract

Although Jesus wept while mourning the inevitable destruction of the city (Luke 19. 41), and St Paul taught the Christians of Galaria to look for it not on earth, but in heaven (cf. Gal. 4.25-6), the Christian imagination has always been haunted by the city of Jerusalem. As early as the second century Melito of Sardis travelled to Jerusalem to see for himself ‘the place where these things were preached and done’. And as soon as Christianity became a licensed religion under the protection of the Emperor, Christians from all parts of the Empire began to flock to Jerusalem to see for themselves the holy sites ubi steterunt pedes eius, where once his feet stood (Ps. 132. 7) Churches were built to mark all the places mentioned in the Gospels, monasteries were founded to receive the pilgrims, and stories began to circulate about the spectacular conversions which happened to pilgrims while visiting the Holy Places, such as that of St Mary of Egypt who turned from a nymphomaniac into a desert mother on the very doorstep of the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Quite soon earnest Church Fathers like St Jerome and St Gregory of Nyssa, both of them pilgrims to Jerusalem, had to issue dire warnings that true Christianity was a matter of the heart and not of geography, and that a trip to Palestine might perhaps be helpful but certainly not necessary in order to find Christ.

Type
Part II: Death and Salvation
Information
Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 10: Prophecy and Eschatology , 1994 , pp. 169 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1994 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Mrs Erna van Wijngaarden-Raben, who helped me to collect and evaluate the passages from St Bernard’s works used in this article.

References

1 Eusebius of Caesarea, Historia Ecclesiastica, iv. z6. 14, cited in Hunt, E. D., Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire AD 312–460 (Oxford, 1984), p. 3Google Scholar.

2 On the origin and use of this expression see Robert Wilken, L., The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought (Newhaven/London, 1992), pp. 97–8, 147Google Scholar.

3 Sophronius of Jerusalem, Vita S. Mariae Aegyptiae, iii. 22–3 (PG 87.3713).

4 St Jerome, Tractatus de Ps. xcv: ‘By the Cross I mean not the wood but the Passion. That cross is in Britain, in India, in the whole world…. Happy is he who carries in his own heart the cross, the resurrection, the place of the nativity of Christ and of his Ascension’, as cited in Hunt, Holy Land Pilgrimage, p. 92; St Gregory advised Christians to ‘make a pilgrimage, but out of your bodies to the Lord, and not from Cappadocia to Palestine’, cited in J. Prawer, ‘Jerusalem in the Christian and Jewish perspectives of the Early Middle Ages’, Gli Ebrei nell’alto Medioevo, Settimane dì studio del centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo 26 (Spoleto, 1980), pp. 745–50, 772.

5 For a thorough discussion of Christian views on the Holy Land up to the capture of Jerusalem by the Muslims (638) see Wilken, , Land Called Holy, esp. pp. 82–100, 108–25, 143–92Google Scholar. 216–46 where Wilken argues that Christians, despite all warnings to keep their eye on their spiritual destination, became ever more attached to the Holy Land and the Holy Places as time went on.

6 Erdmann, K. D., Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens (Stuttgart, 1935), pp. 279–82Google Scholar; Mähl, S., ‘Jerusalem in mittelalterlicher Sicht’, Welt als Geschiclite, 22 (1962), pp. 11—26Google Scholar; Prawer, , ‘Jerusalem’, p. 745Google Scholar.

7 Guibcrt of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos (RHC Occ, 4), pp. 138–9.

8 Constable, G., ‘Monachisme et pèlerinage au Moyen Age’, Revue Historique, 258 (1977), pp. 19—20Google Scholar.

9 Epistolae (= Ep), ccl. 4., ed. J. Leclercq and H. Rocháis, 5. Bernardi Opera (= SBO) 8 (Rome, 1977, P.147: ‘Clamat ad vos mea monstruosa vita, mea aerumnosa conscientia. Ego enim quaedam Chimaera mei saeculi, nec clericum gero nec laicum. Nam monachi iamdudum exui conversationem, non habitum.’

10 Michaela Diers, Bernhard von Clairvaux; Elitäre F;örmmigkeit una hegnadetes Wirken., Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, ns 34 (Münster, 1991).

11 Diers, Bernhard, p. 11; Sermones super Cantica Canlicorum (= SC), xxvii, SBO I (Rome, 1957), p. 185; quotation from De consideratione ad Eugenium Papam, iii, SBO 3 (Rome, 1963), p. 445.

12 SC, xxvii, SBO 1, p. 186; 5. de diversis (= Div), xix, SBO 6. 1 (Rome, 1970), pp. 162–3.

13 SC.xxix. SBO 1, p. 207; 5. in Quadragesima, v, SBO 4 (Rome, 1966), p. 373.

14 SC, lxxviii, SBO 2 (Rome, 1958), p. 267; S. in adventu Domini, i, SBO 4, p. 164.

15 S. in dedkatione ecciesiae, ii, SBO 5 (Rome, 1968), p. 378.

16 SC, xxvii, SBO 1, p. 184.

17 Apologia ad Guillelmum abbatem (= Apo), SBO 3, p. 101: ‘Cur adhuc vivo videre ad id devenisse Ordinem nostrum [i.e. monachorum], Ordinem scilicet qui primus fuit in Ecclesia, immo a quo coepit Ecclesia, quo nullus in terra similior angelicis ordinibus, nullus vicinior ei quae in caelis est Jerusalem mater nostra, sive ob decorem castitatis, sive propter caritatis ardorem, cuius apostoli institutores, cuius hi, quos Paulus tarn saepe sanctos appellat, inchoatores exsisterunt.’

18 Sc, lv, SBO 2, p. 112.

19 SC, lv, SBO 2, pp. 112–13.

20 Ep, Ixiv, SBO 7 (Rome, 1974), pp. 157–8.

21 SC, lxxvi, SBO 2, p. 258.

22 SC.xxvii, SBO, 1, p. 184.

23 Sententiae, iii, SBO 6. 2 (Rome, 1972), pp. 140–1: ‘Vita confert mcritum; locus non facit bea turn.’

24 Div, xxii, SBO 6. 1, p. 170.

25 Ep, ccclix, SBO 8, pp. 304–5.

26 Diers, Bernhard, pp. 349–69.

27 Ibid., pp. 368, 397–8.

28 Div, xix, SBO 6. 1, pp. 164–5.

29 Quotation from 5. in Nativitate B.M.V., SBO 5, p. 284; also Div, xxii, SBO 6. 1, p. 176; S. in festo S. Miclwelis (= Mich), i, SBO 5, pp. 294 and 296.

30 Mich, i, SBO i, p. 294.

31 Lewis, C. S., The Allegory of Love (Oxford, 1936; repr. 1973), p. 45Google Scholar.

32 SC.xxvii, SBO 1, pp. 18s-6.

33 S. in Septuagesima, i, SBO 4, pp. 34.6-7.

34 Homiliae super Missus est, iv, SBO 4, pp. 46–7.

35 Hugh of St Victor, De sacramentos christianaefidei, 1.ix.2: ‘Habet autcm omnis aqua ex naturali qualitate similitudinem quamdam cum gratia Spiritus Sancti’, as cited in Lewis, Allegory, p. 46. The next sentence is even more relevant to Hugh’s views: ‘Et ex hac quidem ingenita qualitate omnis aqua spiritalem gratiam repraesentare habuit, priusquam etiam illam ex superaddita institutione significava’ (PL, 176. 318). See also van Zwieten, J., ‘The Place and Significance of Literal Exegesis in Hugh of St Victor’ (thesis, Amsterdam, 1992), pp. 30–4Google Scholar.

36 SC, lix, SBO 2, p. 137.

37 SC, xxv, SBO 1, p. 168.

38 SC, xxx, SBO 1, p. 213.

39 S. in vigilia Nativitatis Domini (= NatV), ii, SBO 4, p. 203.

40 SC.ii, SBO 1, p. 13.

41 NatV, vi, SBO 4, pp. 243–4: ‘Et tu quidem, impia Synagoga, hune nobis filium peperisti, officio quodam niatris, sed non niatris affectu…. Undique cnim egrediuntur filiae Sion, ut videant regem Salomonem in diademate quo coronasti cum. Relinquens marrem adliaerer uxori suae, ut sint duo in came una, et civitate pulsus atque exaltatus a terra, omnia trahit ad se.’

42 Apo, SBO 3, pp. 104–5.

43 Ep, ccclxiii and cccclviii, SBO 8, pp. 312 and 435.

44 Liber ad milites Templi de laude novae mililiae (= Tpl) ii-iii, SBO 3, pp. 216–17; Ep, ccclxiii, SBO 8, pp. 314–15.

45 Ep, cccxciii, SBO 8, p. 365.

46 Tpl, iii, SBO 3, pp. 218–19: ‘Videsnc quam crebra veterani attestatione nova approbatur militia?’

47 Tpl, iii, SBO 3, p. 219: ‘Dummodo sane spiritualibus non praeiudicet sensibili littcralis inter pretano, quominus scilicet speremus in aeternum, quidquid huic tempori significando ex Proplietarum vocibus usurpamus, ne per id quod cernitur evancscat quod creditur, et spei copias imminuat penuria rei, praesentium attestano sit evacuatio futurorum. Alioquin terrenae civitatis temporalis gloria non destruit caelestia bona, sed astruit, si tamen istam minime dubitamus illius tenere figuram, quae in caelis est mater nostra.’

48 Tpl, vii, SBO 3, pp. 225–6.

49 See also Cardini, F., ‘Bernardo e le crociate’, Bernardo Cistercense, Atti del XXVI Convegno storico intemazionale, Centro di studi sulla spiritualità medievale dell’università degli studi di Perugia, Accademia Tuderrina (Spoleto, 1990), pp. 191–2Google Scholar.

50 Ep, ccclxiii, SBO 8, pp. 312–13: ‘Ecce nunc tempus acceptabile, ecce nunc dies copiosae saluris. Commota est siquidem et contremuit terra, quia cepit Deus caeli perdere terram suam. … Miseratur enim populum suum Deus, et lapsis graviter providet remedium salutare.’ I cannot accept the thesis of H. D. Kahl, ‘Crusade Eschatology as seen by St. Bernard in the years 1146 to 1148’, Gervers, M., ed., The Second Crusade and the Cistercians (New York, 1992), pp. 36–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, that St Bernard’s preaching of the crusade may have had apocalyptic over tones, as it is largely based on the assumption that crusading in general was an apocalyptic enterprise, which l doubt.