Bernard of Clairvaux Quotes on Knowledge
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), the Cistercian abbot whose Sermons on the Song of Songs and On Loving God gave twelfth-century monastic spirituality its most influential theological articulation, defended an explicitly contemplative and affective conception of religious knowledge against the rising dialectical theology of the cathedral schools. Bernard's celebrated controversies with Peter Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers are inseparable from the underlying epistemological disagreement: knowledge of God is not the conclusion of a syllogism but the love (caritas) by which the soul is conformed to the object it knows, and the categories of the new dialecticians are charged with subjecting the divine to the conditions of the creature.
Quotes
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Attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux:
“Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God.”
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“Experto crede: aliquid amplius invenies in silvis, quam in libris. Ligna et lapides docebunt te, quod a magistris audire non possis.”
Believe me, you will find more lessons in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters. | Epistola CVI, sect. 2; translation from Edward Churton The Early English Church ( 1841) p. 324 -
“Believe me, you will find more lessons in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters.”
Experto crede: aliquid amplius invenies in silvis, quam in libris. Ligna et lapides docebunt te, quod a magistris audire non possis. -
“Epistola CVI, sect. 2; translation from Edward Churton The Early English Church ( 1841) p. 324”
Experto crede: aliquid amplius invenies in silvis, quam in libris. Ligna et lapides docebunt te, quod a magistris audire non possis. -
“Liberavi animam meam.”
I have freed my soul. | Letter to Abbot Suger , Epistles no. 371 (c. 1147) -
“Bestia illa de Apocalypsi, cui datum est os loquens blasphemias, et bellum gerere cum sanctis (Apoc. XIII, 5-7), Petri cathedram occupat, tanquam leo paratus ad praedam.”
That beast of the Apocalypse, to whom is given a mouth speaking blasphemies, and to make war with the saints, is sitting on the throne of Peter, like a lion ready for his prey. | To Magister Geoffrey of Loretto (afterwards Archbishop of Bordeaux), Letter 37 ( c . 1131), in Some Letters of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux (1904), Dr. Samuel John Eales, trans., John Hodges, London, p. 139. | That b -
“That beast" to which Bernard refers is antipope Peter Leonis .”
Bestia illa de Apocalypsi, cui datum est os loquens blasphemias, et bellum gerere cum sanctis (Apoc. XIII, 5-7), Petri cathedram occupat, tanquam leo paratus ad praedam. -
“Then you have some people who wish to know for the sake of knowing, and that is scandalous curiosity.”
Sermons on the Song of Songs(1135–1153) -
“To learn in order to know is scandalous curiosity.”
Sermons on the Song of Songs(1135–1153)