BERNARD
502
BERNARD
dialogue (Colloquium) on the Trinity. The "De
Contemptu Mundi" contains about 3,000 verses,
and is for the most part a verj' bitter satire against
the moral disorders of the monastic poet's time. He
spares no one; priests, nuns, bishops, monks, and
even Rome itself are mercilessly scourged for their
shortcomings. For this reason it was first printed
by Matthias Flaccus as one of liis testes feritatis, or
witnesses of the deep-seated corruption of the
medieval Church f\ aria poemata de corrupto
ecclesi^ statu, Basle, 1557), and was often reprinted
by Protestants in the course of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Its complete Latin text is
found in Thomas Wright (Anglo-Latin Satirical
Poets of the Twelfth Centurj-, London, 1872). This
Christian Juvenal does not proceed in an orderly
manner against the vices and follies of his age. It
has been well said that he seems to eddy about two
main points: the transitorj- character of all material
pleasures and the permanency of spiritual joys.
Bernard of Cluny is indeed a IjTical wTiter, swept
from one theme to another by the intense force of
ascetic meditation and by the majestic power of
liis owti verse, in which there lingers yet a certain
fierce intoxication of poetic ^^Tath. His highly
A^TOught pictures of heaven and hell were probably
known to Dante; the roasting cold, the freezing fire,
the devoiu-ing worm, the fiery floods, and again the
glorious idji of the Ciolden Age and the splendours
of the Heavenly Ivingdom are couched in a diction
that rises at times to the height of Dante's genius.
The enormity of sin, the charm of virtue, the torture
of an evil conscience, the sweetness of a God-fearing
life alternate with hea\'en and hell as the themes
of liis majestic dithjTamb. Nor does he dwell in
generalities; he returns again and again to the
wickedness of woman (one of the fiercest arraignments
of the sex), the evils of wine, money, learning, per-
jury, soothsaj-ing, etc.; this master of an elegant,
forceful, and abundant latinity cannot find words
strong enough to convey liis prophetic rage at the
moral apostasy of his generation, in almost none of
whom does he find spiritual soundness. Youthful
and simoniacal bishops, oppressive agents of eccle-
siastical corporations, the officers of the Curia, papal
legates, and the pope liimself are treated with no
less severity than in Dante or in the sculptiu"es of
medieval cathedrals. Only those who do not know
the utter frankness of certain medieval moralists
could borrow scandal from his verses. It may be
added that in medieval times "the more pious the
■chronicler the blacker his colours. The early half
of the twelfth centurj- saw the appearance of several
new factors of secularism unknown to an earlier
and more simply religious time: the increase of
commerce and industrj- resultant from the Crusades,
the growing independence of medieval cities, the
secularization of Benedictine life, the development
of pageantry and luxurj- in a hitherto rude feudal
world, the reaction from the terrific conflict of State
and Church in the latter half of the eleventh century.
The song of the Cluniac is a great cry of pain WTimg
from a deeply religious and even mystical soul at
the first dawning consciousness of a new order of
human ideals and aspirations. The turbid and
irregular flow of his denunciation is halted occa-
sionailj- in a dramatic way by glimpses of a Divine
order of things, either in the faraway past or in
the near future. This poet -preacher is also a prophet ;
Anticlirist, he says, is born in Spain; Elijah has come
to life again in the Orient. The last days are at hand,
and it behoves the true Christian to awake and be
ready for the dissolution of an order now grown
intolerable, in which religion itself is henceforth
represented by cant and hj-pocrisy.
The metre of this poem is no less unique than its diction; it is a dactylic hexameter in three sections.
devoid of csesura, with tailed rhjines and a feminine
leonine rhyme between the two first sections; the
verses are technically known as leonini criMati
trilices dactylici, and are so difficult to construct in
great numbers that the writer claims Divine inspira-
tion (the impulse and inflow of the Spirit of Wisdom
and Understanding) as the chief agency in the execu-
tion of so long an effort of this kind. To .\rchbishop
(then Dean) Trench, who first translated about one
hundred lines (Sacred Latin Poetrj-, London. 1849,
1864). the metre seemed repulsive and awkward;
to the famous liturgiologist Dr. Neale (The Rhythm
of Bernard of Morlaix. Sth ed.. London, 1868) it
seems one of the loveliest of medieval measures".
It is, indeed, a solemn and stately verse, rich and
sonorous, not meant, however, to be read at one
sitting, at the risk of surfeiting the appetite. Bernard
of Cluny is an erudite writer, and his poem leaves
an excellent impression of the Latin culture of the
Benedictine monasteries of France and England
in the first half of the twelfth centurj- (Bishop Stubbs.
Seventeen Lectures on Medieval Historj', London.
1893). The modern interest of English-speaking
circles in this semi-obscure poet centres in the lovely
hjTnns of exceptional piety, warmth, and delicacy
of sentiment dispersed through his lurid satire; one
of them, in particular, "Jerusalem the Golden",
has been made imiversally famous in the translation
of the above-mentioned Dr. Neale, first printed in his
"Medi3?val HjTnns and Sequences" (London, 1851).
Other translations of the brief portion made known
in Enghsh by the aforesaid writers are owing to
S. G. Duflfeld (1S67) and Charles Lawrence Ford
(1898). A complete English translation (in prose)
appeared from the pen of Henry Preble, in the
".American Journal of Theology" (1906, 72—101,
2S&-30S, 495-516), with a biographical note by
Samuel Macauley Jackson.
Lf.tser. Poela- med. a-ri (17211. 412-414, 427; Morin in Rer. des quest, hist. (18S0). XL. 603-613; Owen in Eng. Hist. Rev. (1S871, II. 525; Bulletin critique (1890), XI, 297; Julh.n, Diet, of Hymnology, s. v.
Thomas J. Shah.\n.
Bernard of Compostella (1) Antiquus, a canon- ist of the early thirteenth century, a native of Com- postella in Spain. He is called Antiquus to dis- tinguish him from another, as below. He became a professor of canon law in the L'niversity of Bo- logna. Bernard compiled a collection of the decrees promulgated by Innocent III during the first ten years of his pontificate (1198-1208). This work, often called by the scholars of Bologna "Compilatio Romana", because the author took his documents from the Roman archives, was not of much practical worth, since an official or authentic collection, ex- tending to 1210, rendered Bernard's compilation superfluous. Only portions of either of these collec- tions were printed (ed. "Ant. Augustini Opera ", Lucca, 1769, IV, 600-608).— (2) JrxiOR or Moder- xrs, a canonist who lived in the middle of the thir- teenth centurj-, called Compost ellanus from the fact that he possessed an ecclesiastical benefice in Com- postella. He was known also as Brigantius from his birthplace in Galicia, Spain; later of Monte Mirato. Bernard was chaplain to Innocent IV, a noted canonist, at whose exhortation he ■nTote a work entitled "Margarita", an index of Innocent's "Apparatus ", or commentarj' on the five books of the Decretals of Oregon,- IX. The "Margarita" was published in Paris, 1516. Bernard was the first to write a commentarj' on the constitutions of Inno- cent IV (not published). A third work was entitled "Casus sen Notabilia" on the five books of Decretals, which was intended as a complete and practical commentarj', but which owing to the author's death, did not go bej'ond title sixth of the first book, con- sequentl.y not published.
