638 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
complete and placid composure of soul under the influence of love for Christ and the pure contemplation of spiritual things. "God," said St. Bernard, "is more easily sought and found by prayer than by disputation." "God is known," said both Bernard and Hugo of St. Victor, "so far as He is loved." Dante placed Bernard still higher than Thomas Aquinas, the master of scholastic thought, and was led by him through prayer to the beatific vision of the Holy Trinity with which his Divine Comedy closes.1
Augustine furnished the chief materials for the mys,tics of the Middle Ages as he did for the scholastics. It was he who said, " Thou hast made us for thyself and the heart is restless till it rests in Thee." For Aristotle, the mystics substituted Dionysius the Areopagite, the Christian Neo- Platonist, whose works were made accessible in Latin by Scotus Erigena.2 The mystical element was strong in the greatest of the Schoolmen, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura.
The Middle Ages took Rachel and Leah, Mary and Martha as the representatives of the contemplative and the active life, the conventual and the secular life, and also of the mystic and scholastic methods. Through the entire two periods of seven years, says Peter Damiani,3 Jacob was serv ing for Rachel. Every convert must endure the fight of temptation, but all look forward to repose and rest in the joy of supreme contemplation ; that is, as it were, the em braces of the beautiful Rachel. These two periods stand for the Old and New Testament, the law and the grace of the Gospel. He who keeps the commandments of both at last comes into the embraces of Rachel long desired.
Richard of St. Victor devotes a whole treatise to the com parison between Rachel and Leah. Leah was the more
1 Paradiso, XXXI. 130, XXXIII. 49, etc. Dr. Philip Schaff said, Lit. and Poetry, p. 232, "Bernard defended orthodox mysticism and the theology of the heart against speculative rationalism and the theology of the intellect in contrast with Peter Abselard."
2 "The medueval mystics were steeped in Dionysius." Inge, p. 110,
3 Deperf. monachi, VIII. ; Migne, 145. 303,
§ 104. ST. BERNARD AS A MYSTIC. 639
fertile, Rachel the more comely. Leah represented the discipline of virtue, Rachel the doctrine of truth. Rachel stands for meditation, contemplation, spiritual apprehension, and insight ; Leah for weeping, lamentation, repining, and grief. Rachel died in giving birth to Benjamin. So reason, after the pangs of ratiocination, dies in giving birth to reli gious devotion and ardor.1
This comparison was taken from Augustine, who said that Rachel stands for the joyous apprehension of the truth and, for that reason, was said to have a good face and beautiful form.2 St. Bernard spoke of the fellowship of the active and contemplative life as two members of the same family, dwell ing together as did Mary and Martha.3
The scholastic theology was developed in connection with the school and the university, the mystic in connection with the convent. Clairvaux and St. Victor near Paris were the hearth-stones of mysticism. Within cloistral precincts were written the passionate hymns of the Middle Ages, and the eucharistic hymns of Thomas Aquinas are the utterances of the mystic and not of the Schoolman.
The leading mystical divines of this period were Bernard, Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, and Rupert of Deutz. Mystical in their whole tendency were also Joachim of Flore, Hildegard and Elizabeth of Schonau, who belong in a class by themselves.
§ 104. St. Bernard as a Mystic.
For literature, see § 65, also, RITSCHL : Lesefruchte aus d. hi. Bernard, in Studien u. Kritiken, 1879, pp. 317-335. — J. RIBS (Rom. Cath.) : D. geistliche Leben nach der Lehre d. hi. Bernard, Freib., 1906, p. 327.
The works of Bernard which present his mystical theology are the Degrees of Humility and Pride, a sermon addressed to the clergy, entitled Conversion, the treatise on Loving Cf-od, his Sermons on the Canticles, and his hymns. The author's intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures is shown
1 De preparat. ad contemplationem sive Benjamin minor, I. 73 ; Migne, 196. 52.
2 C. Fans. Man., XXII. 52, » Sermo in Cant., 51, 2. See De consid., 1. 1.