Lectio
Monastica:
Bernard Of
Clairvaux And Early Cistercian Theology
HIST
711W/CHRS711W/FHSP711W
at
7 - 12 January 2007 / 20 – 21 March 2007
Prof. Mark S. Burrows, instructor
“Saint Bernard’s synthesis of spiritual
and monastic theology is founded on the unity he achieved between the analysis
and experience of the love which is the heart of every human person. In a society in which troubadour poetry was
on the rise, his poetic and even lyrical style was a means he utilized in his
zeal as an apostle preaching conversion. The style is the man. . .”.
Charles
Dumont, Pathway of Peace, 63
“Monastic theology is a theology of admiration
and therefore greater than a theology of speculation. Admiration, speculation: both words describe the act of looking. But the gaze of admiration adds something to the
gaze of speculation. It does not
necessarily see any farther, but the little it does perceive is enough to fill
the whole soul of the contemplative with joy and thanksgiving.”
Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning
and the Desire for God, 226
“Solitude is not found so much by
looking outside the boundaries of your own dwelling, as by staying within. Solitude is not something you must hope for
in the future. Rather, it is a deepening
of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find
it.”
Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas,
262
COURSE INTENTIONS
This course takes the shape of a
seminar offered “in retreat,” focused on the sermons written by Bernard of
Clairvaux (1090-1153) on the Song of Songs and his classic treatise On
Loving God. Our encounter with these
early Cistercian sources, in study and prayer, takes place within the
Benedictine community at Glastonbury Abbey (
The structure of each day finds its
rhythm through participating in the liturgy of the hours (the “divine office,”
which constitutes the cycle of monastic prayer) together with lectures and
conversation guided by key questions.
The lectures, offered in the traditional style of monastic “conferences”
(i.e., a presentation generally without immediate response or discussion),
explore key themes from the readings and invite participants into personal
reflection and meditation. The days
include sustained periods of silence for this purpose. Benedict referred to this as lectio divina
(see the Rule, ch. 48), a form of attentive or
deep reading meant to stimulate insight and integration. In our world of instant access (“IM”) and
web-browsers, such “reading” introduces us to an ancient and subversive
practice of reflection.
In a sermon delivered shortly before
his death, Bernard argues that “. . .where there is love [amor],
there is no toil [labor] but a taste [sapor].” The focus of our disciplined journey is a
deepening reflection upon the nature of love, and the manner in which love
shapes those who search for God.
Experience, a central theme in Bernard’s writings, points to this
search: it is the means by which we
deepen our involvement with this love, and discover the contours of an attractive
power binding us to God and each other.
Such an understanding of experience constitutes the texture of our
theological identity, offering a spiritual framing of our life discovered in
the passion of the divine embrace. Our work in this seminar invites us to a
place of common reading, prayer, and reflection in order to explore Bernard’s
integration of mind and heart (affectus). It is this intimate journey of self-knowledge
by which we learn how it is, as Bernard puts it, that “grace restores us to ourselves.” It is also the gift that opens us toward the
“other,” and thus the path into community.
Primary sources
Benedict, The Rule, edited by
Timothy Fry, OSB (Collegeville, MN, 1983)
Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of
Songs, 4 vols., translated by K. Walsh
and I.
__________, On Loving God,
edited with commentary by Emero Stiegman
(
Required secondary texts
André Louf, The
Charles
Dumont, Pathway of Peace. Cistercian
Wisdom According to Saint Bernard
Basil Pennington,
Additional readings (on library
reserve; see also bibliography, below):
Christopher Brooke, The Age of the
Cloister
Jean Leclercq,
The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, tr. C. Misrahi
Thomas Merton, The Last of the
Fathers
__________. Contemplative Prayer
Benet Tvedten, The View from the Monastery: The Vowed Life and its Cast of Many
Characters
COURSE EXPECTATIONS
1.
Attendance. Full
attendance at all sessions is obligatory.
This includes the opening orientation on 5 January, 2007 at ANTS (2 –
8:30 p.m.), the “retreat” portion of the seminar from 7 – 12 January, 2007, and
the concluding overnight gathering on 19 – 20 March, 2007 at the abbey.
2.
Journal.
Students are expected to keep a disciplined journal during the week,
exploring both the assigned readings and experiences discovered through the
literature and in the solitude of prayer and reflection. Selections from journal entries will
establish the broad shape for the final written project.
3.
Final critical and integrative
paper. This concluding paper should take the
form of a disciplined discussion of the readings as refracted through
the “text” of one’s own understandings and practice – or what Bernard
called the “book of experience” (i.e., liber
experientiae). This paper is not
meant to be a strictly research-oriented exercise, though research is
expected. It is also not intended, in
any sense, as a primarily confessional piece of self-reflection. It is meant to reflect the student’s vigorous
dialogue with the historical materials, interpreted in light of monastic
context and practice as well as one’s own experiential frame. Normally, students will focus the paper on
one theme or question arising from the readings and experience of the retreat,
probing this theme in a manner that engages issues found in the historical
texts directly and with critical imagination.
In other words, the paper should reflect a deepening integration of theology in historical and experiential
context.
This
final paper (15 double-spaced pages, maximum; 4500 words) is due on 15 February
2007. The overnight gathering on 19 – 20 March will provide an
occasion for conversation about the insights and experiences of the retreat and
reflections culminating in the paper, as well as integrative issues of theology
and praxis that emerge from the experience of the seminar. The
course is graded for all students on the satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis.
DAILY SCHEDULE
“Let us consider how we ought to behave
in the presence of God and his angels, and let us stand to sing the psalms in
such a way that our minds are in harmony with our voices.” (Rule, ch.
19)
“Idleness is the enemy of the
soul. Therefore, the brothers should
have specified periods for labor as well as for prayerful reading [lectio
divina].” (Rule, ch. 48)
6:00 a.m.
6:30 Vigils
(monastery church)
Lectio divina (remain in church or return to
guesthouse)
7:45 Lauds
(church); breaking the “great silence”
8:15 Breakfast
(continental; Stonecrest dining room)
9:15 First
“conference” (library)
Silence observed; period for
reflection/prayer
11:00 Gathering
for focused conversation (library)
11:45 Break
Noon Eucharist
(church)
12:45 Lunch
(Stonecrest; silence, with reading)
1:30 Rest
period
3:45* Second
“conference”
4:30 Silence
observed in Stonecrest; time for journaling, prayer,
walking, etc.
5:15 Vespers
(church)
6:30 Dinner
(Stonecrest; silence, with reading)
7:45 Compline (church); the Great Silence begins
“Monks should cultivate silence at all
times, but especially at night. . .. When all have assembled, they should pray compline; and on leaving compline,
no one will be permitted to speak further.”
(Rule, ch. 42)
* N.B.:
on Wednesday afternoon, we will gather in the library promptly at 3:30
for conversation with one of the monks.
WEEKLY ITINERARY
SUNDAY
3:00 Gathering
at the
4:00 “Love
speaks everywhere. . .”: opening
reflections
[1, 79; all numbers refer
to Bernard’s Sermons on the Song of Songs]
MONDAY
Morning: Desire
[2]
Afternoon: Tears [3, 11]
TUESDAY
Morning: Embrace
[4, 12, 48, 49, 50]
Afternoon: Languor
[7, 8, 9, 10, 31,
57]
N.B.:
Talk by Brother David (choirmaster and organist): the “liturgy of the
hours” at
WEDNESDAY
Morning: The “other”
[27, 51, 52, 74]
Afternoon: Conversation with the abbot at 3:30 p.m.
THURSDAY
Morning: Presence
[71]
Afternoon: Dignity
[80, 81]
FRIDAY
Morning: Beauty
[82, 83, 84]
Closing gathering at 10:30 a.m.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR FURTHER STUDY
I. General studies of Cistercian
history and life
Bynum, Caroline Walker. “The Cistercian Conception of Community” in
Jesus as Mother.
Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle
Ages.
________. Docere Verbo et Exemplo: An Aspect of Twelfth-Century Spirituality.
1980.
Chenu, M.-D. Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth
Century: Essays on New Theological
Perspectives in the Latin West.
Edited and translated by Jerome Taylor and Lester Little.
De Waal,
Esther. The Way of Simplicity: The Cistercian Tradition.
Elder, E. Rosanne. The New
Monastery. Texts and Studies on the
Earliest Cistercians.
MI,
1998.
Lackner, Bede
K. The Eleventh-Century Background of
Citeaux.
Louf, André. The
Pennington, Basil. A
Wathen, Ambrose G. OSB. Silence.
The Meaning of Silence in the Rule of St. Benedict.
II.
Bernard of Clairvaux: Life and
Writings
Bredero, Adriaan H. Bernard of Clairvaux: Between Cult and History. Translated from the
Dutch.
Burrows, Mark S. “Foundations for an Erotic Christology: Bernard of Clairvaux on Jesus as
‘Tender
Lover.’” Anglican Theological Review
80/4 (1998): 477-94.
__________, “Hunters, Hounds, and
Allegorical Readers: The Body of the
Text and the
Text
of the Body in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons on the Song of Songs,” Studies
in
Spirituality 14 (2004; forthcoming): 1-24.
__________, “‘To Taste With the
Heart’: Allegory, Poetics, and the Deep
Scripture,”
in Interpretation 56/2 (April, 2002):
168-80.
Coleman, Janet. “Cistercian ‘Blanched’ Memory and St
Bernard: The Associative, Textual
Memory
and the Purified Past.” In Ancient
and Medieval Memories. Studies in the
Reconstruction
of the Past.
Dumont, Charles. Pathway of Peace. Cistercian Wisdom According to Saint Bernard. Spencer,
MA: Cistercian Publications, 1999.
Elder, E. Rozanne
and John Sommerfeldt.
The Chimaera of His Age: Studies on Bernard of
Clairvaux.
Evans, G. R. Bernard of Clairvaux.
__________. The Mind of St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
Gilson, Etienne. The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard.
MI,
1990.
James, Bruno S. Saint Bernard of
Clairvaux: An Essay in Biography.
Kereszty, Roch,
“Relationship Between Anthropology and Christology in St. Bernard, A
Teacher
for Our Age,” Analecta Cisterciensia
46 (1990): 271-306.
Leclercq, Jean. A Second Look at Saint Bernard.
__________. “St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the
Contemplative Community.” In
Contemplative
Community: An Interdisciplinary
Symposium. Edited M. Basil
Pennington
OCSO.
McGinn, Bernard. “Bernard of Clairvaux: ‘The Contemplative,’” in The Growth of
Mysticism:
Gregory
the Great through the 12th Century.
McGuire, Brian. The Difficult Saint: Bernard of Clairvaux and His Tradition.
1991.
Merton, Thomas. “Action and Contemplation in St. Bernard,”
“St. Bernard on Interior
Simplicity,”
in Thomas Merton on Saint Bernard.
________. The Last of the Fathers: Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and the Encyclical
Letter, Doctor
Mellifluus.
Pennington, Basil, OCSO, ed. Saint
Bernard of Clairvaux. Studies
Commemorating the Eighth
Centenary
of His Canonization.
Powicke, F. M., ed. The Letters of St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
Pranger, M. B. Pranger. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of
Monastic Thought: Broken Dreams.
Scholl, Edith, Editor. In the School of Love. An Anthology of Early Cistercian Texts.
MI,
2000.
Sommerfeldt, John, Editor. Bernardus
Magister:
Papers Presented at the Nonacentenary
Celebration
of
the Birth of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.
1992.
________. The Spiritual Teachings of Bernard of
Clairvaux.
Walker,
Recorded
in the Vita Prima Bernardi.