The Exegete as a Lover

This chapter explores the Cistercian abbot and mystic St Bernard of Clairvaux’s (1091–1153) approach to love and desire. While paraphrasing the biblical Song of Songs , Bernard’s Sermons blend spiritual yearning with poetic expression, using personification and metaphor to convey the bride’s desire for the word, an expression of pious devotion – the soul’s longing for God – in remarkably erotic terms. These sermons, characterised by a loss of self and a profound connection to the divine, drawing from St. Paul’s concept of “foolishness” in Second Corinthians 11–12, highlight the mystical and emotional aspects of the author’s theology. Despite huge differences in genre and audience, they conspicuously mirror the amatory fervour found in contemporary secular poetry.