Bernard of Clairvaux: On Consideration

Henry Frowde, M.a

Publisher to the University of Oxford

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Historical Introduction

ONLY some six years had passed since the death of Gregory VII when St. Bernard was bora (A.D. 1091), just two years before Anselm was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. The echoes of the thunders of the great reform ing Pope had scarce died away, and the memory of the uncompromising struggle between him and the Emperor Henry IV was still fresh in the minds of men. Under his direction the Church of Rome had taken enormous strides towards that absolutism and universal supremacy, both in things temporal and spiritual, which was to reach its climax under Innocent III (A.D. 1198-1216), when papal power was laps greater than ever before or ever since. It was the of the Crusades, and of the rise of the Military

R< s Orders. The intellect of Europe was beginning

to < n. The popular story of the discovery of the original manuscript of Justinian's famous Pandects, or digest of Roman law, in the ruins of Amalfi is discredited,1 but the study of civil law was vigorously pursued, and the profession was one of great honour. Canon law received no less attention. The vast materials, after twenty-four years' labour, were formed into a ' body ' by Gratian, and published at Rome about 1 140. 'The study of this code became of course obligatory upon ecclesiastical judges. It produced a new class of legal prac titioners, or canonists; of whom a great number added, like their brethren the civilians, their illustrations and commentaries

1 See Hallam, Literary History, vol. I. p. 62, A 2

for which the obscurity and discordance of many passages, more especially in Gratian's collection of canons, papal epistles, and sentences of fathers, gave ample scope. From the general analogy of the canon law to that of Justinian, the two systems became in a remarkable manner collateral and mutually intertwined, the tribunals governed by either of them borrowing their rules of decision from the other in cases where their peculiar jurisprudence is silent or of dubious interpretation.' * Pope Eugenius III was ' extremely satisfied ' with Gratian's work,2 and is said to have instituted the earliest academical degrees for distinction in that branch of learning. St. Bernard's feelings are clearly expressed in the De Consider atione.

It was a time, too, of political movement. Arnold of Brescia, a disciple of Abelard, but more famous for his political heresy, not only preached reform in the Church, but…