642 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
sensual or unchaste suggestion in all the extended treatment. As for the historical and literal meaning, Bernard rejects all suggestion of it as unworthy of Holy Scripture and worthy only of the Jews, who have this veil before their faces.1 The love of the Shulamite and her spouse is a figure of the love between the Church and Christ, though some times the soul, and even the Virgin Mary, is put in the place of the Shulamite. The kiss of chapter 1 : 2 is the Holy Spirit whom the second person of the Trinity reveals.2 The breasts of the bride, 4 : 5, are the goodness and longsuffering which Christ feels and dispenses, Rom. 2:4. The Canticles are a song commemorating the grace of holy affec tion and the sacrament of eternal matrimony.3 It is an epithalamial hymn; no one can hear who does not love, for the language of love is a barbarous tongue to him who does not love, even as Greek is to one who is not a Greek.4 Love needs no other stimulus but itself. Love loves only to be loved again.
Rhapsodic expressions like these welled up in exuberant abundance as Bernard spoke to his audiences at different hours of the day in the convent of Clairvaux. They are marked by no progress of thought. Aphoristic statement takes the place of logic. The same spiritual experiences find expression over and over again. But the treatment is always devout and full of unction, and proves the justice of the title, " the honey-flowing doctor," — doctor mellifluus — given to the fervid preacher.
The mysticism of St. Bernard centres in Christ. It is by contemplation of Him that the soul is filled with knowledge and ecstasy. The goal which the soul aspires to is that Christ may live in us, and our love to God become the allcontrolling affection. Christ is the pure lily of the valley whose brightness illuminates the mind. As the yellow pol-
1 Serm., LXXV. 2 ; LXIII. 1 ; LXXIII. 1, 2.
2 Serm., VIII. Migne, p. 810.
3 Dimnitus inspiratus Christi et ecclesice laudes, et sacri amoris gratiam et ceterni connubii cecinit sacramcnta, etc. Scrm., I. 8. ; Migne, p. 788.
4 ,Serm., LXXIX. 1; Migne, p. 1103.
§ 105. HUGO AND RICHARD OF ST. VICTOR. 643
len of the lily shines through the white petals, so the gold of his divinity shines through his humanity. Bethlehem and Calvary, the birth and passion of Christ, controlled the preacher's thought. Christ crucified was the sum of his philosophy.1 The name of Jesus is like oil which enlightens, nourishes, and soothes. It is light, food, and medicine. Jesus is honey in the mouth, melody in the ear, and in the heart, joy.2 Bernard was removed from the pantheistic self-deletion of Eckart and the imaginative extravagance of St. Theresa. From Madame Guyon and the Quietists of the seventeenth century, he differed in not believing in a state of pure love in the present life. Complete obedience to the law of love is impossible here unless it be in the cases of some of the martyrs.3 His practical tendencies and his common sense kept him from yielding himself to a life of self-satisfied con templation and commending it. The union with God and Christ is like the fellowship of the disciples in the primitive Church who were together with one heart and one soul, Acts 4:32. The union is not by a confusion of natures, but by a concurrence of wills.4
§ 105. Hugo and Richard of St. Victor.
LITERATURE FOR HUGO. — Works, first publ. Paris, 1518, 1525, etc. Migne, vols. 175-177.— Lives by A. HUGONIN, in Migne, 175. XV-CXXV. In Hist. Lit. de France, reprinted in Migne, 175. CXXVI. sqq. — *A. LIEBXER: Hugo von St. V. und d. theol. Eichtungen s. Zeit., Leip., 1832. — B. HAUREAU : Hugues de S. V. avec deux opuscules inedits, Paris, 1859, new ed. 1886. — A. MIGXON : Les origines de la scholastique et
1 Haec mea philosophia scire Jesum Christum et hunc crucifixum. Serm., XLIII. 4 ; Migne, p. 995.
2 Jesus mel in ore, in aure melos, in corde jubilus. Serm., XV. 6; Migne, p. 847.
3 See Vacandard, Vie de S. Bernard, II. 497, and Ries, pp. 198 sq.
4 Unitas quam facit non confusio naturarum, sed voluntatum consensio. Serm. in Cant., LXXI. 7 ; Migne, 183. 1124. Harnack, whose treatment of St. Bernard is one of the most stirring chapters in his Hist, of Doctrine, never theless says unjustly, III. 304, that Bernard's mysticism naturally led to Pantheism. In Bernard himself there is no trace of Pantheism. See Ries, pp. 190 sq.