Bernhard of Cluny

Bernhard von Cluny (or Bernhard von Morlaix ; lat. Bernardus Cluniacensis or Bernardus Morlanensis ) was a Benedictine monk in the first half of the 12th century. He was a poet, satirist and writer of sacred songs. He is the author of the famous work, "On the Contempt of the World", mostly written in verse. The title of Umberto Eco's novel “ The Name of the Rose ” is derived from a modified quote from this work .

Life

The country of his birth and childhood is unknown. Since he is called Morlanensis (Morvalensis and Morlacensis in other manuscripts), most scribes believe that he was born in Morlaix , Brittany . Others believe this name refers to Morlaàs in Béarn in southwest France . John Pits (Scriptores Angliae, Saec. XII) writes in the 16th century that he was of English origin, which cannot be ruled out, since the epithet Morlanensis is documented in the 12th century for a person from Morley in Norfolk. It is certain that Bernhard was a Cluniac monk in the time of Petrus Venerabilis (1122–1156), because he dedicated his famous work to this abbot. It could have been written around 1140. While many historians assumed that Bernhard was a monk in Cluny himself, a sentence in the prologue of his work suggests that he actually lived in the Cluniac priory of Nogent-le-Rotrou . Bernhard writes to Abbot Petrus: “Some time ago, when you were in Nogent, you were kind enough to accept another of my little works. So now I am handing you this work. "

He is not identical to the author of the Consuetudines Cluniacenses , also known under the name "Bernhard von Cluny" , which were written around 1080-85.

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De Contemptu Mundi ("On the contempt for the world" or "On the disdain for the world") contains almost 3000 verses in three books and is for the most part a very bitter satire about the moral neglect of the time of the monk poet. He spares no one; Priests , nuns , bishops , monks and even Rome itself are mercilessly scourged for their mistakes. For this reason it was first printed by Matthias Flacius as one of his testes veritatis , or witnesses to the deep-seated corruption of the medieval church ( Varia poemata de corrupto ecclesiae statu , Basel , 1557) and was often reprinted by Protestants in the 17th and 18th centuries . This Christian juvenal does not proceed in a planned manner against the vices and follies of his time. It has been said that his thoughts revolved around two things: the fleeting nature of all worldly pleasures and the eternity of spiritual joys.

Bernhard von Cluny is a truly lyrical writer who is driven from one subject to another by the irrepressible power of ascetic meditation and the sublime size of his own verses, in which a violent surge of poetic anger can be felt to this day. Dante may have known his detailed images of heaven and hell ; the scorching cold, the freezing fire, the gnawing worm, the troubled floods, as well as the glorious idyll of the golden age and the splendor of the heavenly realm are portrayed in words that at times reach the height of Dante's genius. The enormity of sin, the magic of virtue, the agony of a guilty conscience, the comfort of a godly life alternate, like heaven and hell, the themes of his sublime dithyramb . He doesn't dwell on platitudes; again and again he comes back to the wickedness of women (one of the most fiery accusations of sex), to the evils of wine , money , book knowledge, perjury , fortune-telling , etc. This master of an elegant, powerful and abundant Latin cannot find words that are strong enough to express his holy anger at the moral unfaithfulness of his generation in which he finds almost no one who is spiritually impeccable. Young and simonist bishops, oppressive representatives of ecclesiastical communities, the officials of the curia , papal legates and the Pope himself are treated with no less severity than in the case of Dante or in the statues of medieval cathedrals.

It should be added that in the Middle Ages the rule was: "The more pious the chronicler, the blacker his colors". The first half of the 12th century saw the emergence of several new consequences of secularization unknown to an earlier and more simply religious era: the growth of trade and industry as a result of the Crusades , the increasing independence of medieval cities, the secularization of Benedictine life , the emergence of pomp and luxury in a hitherto harsh feudal world, the reaction to the appalling conflict between state and church in the second half of the 11th century. The song of the Clunianzenser is a tremendous cry of pain, uttered by a deeply religious and at the same time mystical soul in the slowly awakening awareness of a new order of human ideals and longings. The opaque and inconsistent flow of his accusation is temporarily halted dramatically by fleeting impressions of a divine order of things, either in the distant past or in the near future. The poet-preacher is also a prophet; the Antichrist , he says, was born in Spain ; Elias was risen in the Orient . The last days were at hand and it was necessary for the true Christian to wake up and be ready for the dissolution of an order that has meanwhile become unbearable, in which religion itself is now shaped by bigotry and hypocrisy.

The meter of his work is no less unique than its expression; in three sections a dactylic hexameter , without transitions, with end rhymes and a feminine Leonine rhyme between the first two sections; the verses are known by the technical term leonini cristati trilices dactylici and are so difficult to execute in large numbers that the writer claims divine inspiration as the main force (impulse and inflow of the spirit of wisdom and understanding) to accomplish such an achievement for so long. The work begins with the words:

Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt - vigilemus.
Ecce minaciter imminet arbiter individuelle supremus.
Imminet imminet ut mala terminet, æqua coronet,
Recta remuneret, anxia liberet, æthera donet.

(The last hour, the worst of all time, has come: Awake!
See the impending arrival of the Supreme Judge!
He is coming, He is coming to end the evil, to crown the just,
to reward the good, to redeem the fearful, the Open heaven.)

A truly solemn and glorious lyric, rich and sonorous, but if there is a risk of being saturated, not intended to be read in one go. Bernhard von Cluny is a well-read writer, his work leaves an excellent impression of the Latin culture of the Benedictine monasteries in France and England in the first half of the 12th century. The modern interest of English-speaking circles in this semi-obscure poet is directed towards the lovely hymns of exceptional piety, warmth, and delicacy of feeling which emanate from this lurid satire; Hora novissima became particularly famous , to the text of which the American composer Horatio Parker wrote the oratorio Urbs Sion aurea (" Jerusalem the Golden ") in 1893 .

Bernhard's most popular text to this day is the Marian hymn Omni die dic Mariae . It has not been passed down under his name, but is considered his work due to linguistic and stylistic features. Some of his other long poems have survived : De Trinitate et de fide Catholica (1402 lines), De castitate servanda (524 lines), In libros Regum (1018 lines) and De octo vitiis (1399 lines).

The name of the Rose

In his novel "The Name of the Rose", Umberto Eco varied a line by Bernhard about the fall of the ancient city of Rome (Latin: Roma ) on the transience of the rose (Latin: pink ): " Stat Roma [Eco: pink ] pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus ”/“ Ancient Rome only stands as a name, we only have bare names. ”Eco translates as follows:“ The rose of yore is only available as a name ... ”With this sentence Eco's work ends. While Bernhard is concerned with the transience of all earthly greatness, the writer in Eco's novel refers to the volatility of human existence and the inexorable disappearance of the real present into the past that can only be remembered. At the same time, Eco alludes to a theme of medieval philosophy: the question of whether linguistic terms ( universals ) have an independent reality if there are no physically existing examples of the genre they denote. The medieval philosopher Abelard used the example that the "rose" persists even if there are no roses, but only as a name; H. as a word meaning in language, not as reality.

literature

• Bernardus Morlanensis, De contemptu mundi, Une vision du monde vers 1144 - Bernard le Clunisien . Latin. Text, French translation, introduction and remarks by André Cresson. (Témoins de notre histoire) Turnhout 2009.
• The Scorn of the World: A Poem in Three Books , trans. u. ed. v. Henry Preble et al. Samuel Macauley Jackson. In: The American Journal of Theology Vol. 10.1 (1906), pp. 72-101 (Prolog and Book 1) online , Vol. 10.2 (1906), pp. 286-308 (Book 2) online , Vol 10, 3 (1906), pp. 496-516 (Book 3) online .
• Scorn for the world: Bernard of Cluny's De contemptu mundi. Latin. Text with Engl. Transl. And introduction by Ronald E. Pepin. Colleagues Press, East Lansing, Michigan, 1991.
• Katarina Halvarson (ed.): Bernardi Cluniacensis Carmina de Trinitate et de fide Catholica, De castitate servanda, In libros Regum, De octo vitiis. Stockholm, Almquist & Wiksell, 1963 (Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Studia Latina Stockholmiensia, 11).
• John Balnaves: Bernard of Morlaix. The Literatur of Complaint, the Latin Tradition and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance. Phil. Diss. Australian National University Canberra, 1997. online

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The "Work" section of this article is largely a translation by: T. Shahan: Bernard of Cluny. In: The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2 (1907). on-line

1. ↑ On the following: John Balnaves: Bernard of Morlaix. The Literatur of Complaint, the Latin Tradition and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance. Phil. Diss. Australian National University Canberra, 1997, chap. 1, section "He remains an Englishman?"
2. ↑ James Westfall Thompson: On the identity of Bernard of Cluny. In: The journal of theological studies 8 (1907), pp. 394-400 claimed that Bernhard came from a feudal family from Montpellier in Languedoc and was born in Murles , a property of this respected family; Furthermore, he was said to have been the first monk of St. Sauveur d'Aniane , from where he went to Cluny under Abbot Pontius von Melgueil (1109–1122) .
3. ↑ s. English Wikipedia: Morley, Norfolk
4. ↑ De contemptu mundi, Prologus
5. ^ De contemptu mundi , Book I, line 952
6. ↑ http://www.hoye.de/name/abel.pdf

Web links

Wikisource: Bernardus Cluniacensis  - Sources and full texts (Latin)

Wikiquote: Bernhard von Cluny  - Quotes

• Entry in the Catholic Encyclopedia , Robert Appleton Company, New York 1913.
• De Contemptu Mundi Libri Duo (thelatinlibrary.com)