CHAPTER 2 ESCHATOLOGY


The literature of complaint

An important element in the understanding of any communication is a recognition of the kind of communication it is. Take, for example, the sentence: "Peter the Hermit neglected to apply for a permit when raising his mixed brigade for the First Crusade." If we seek to discover what kinds of permit Urban II may have issued and what form of application Peter should have completed, we have failed to recognise that the sentence expresses not a historical statement but a clerihew. This element in understanding is sometimes called "literary competence" or "genre recognition."1 But the competence is not necessarily "literary" in a narrow sense, nor does the term "genre" necessarily refer to a "literary" type. Alastair Fowler says of genre:

Rightly understood, it is so far from being a mere curb upon expression that it makes the expressiveness of literary works possible. Their relation to the genres they embody is not one of passive membership but of active modulation. Such modulation communicates. And it probably has a communicative value far greater than we can ever be directly aware of.2


Bernard of Morlaix himself regarded his De contemptu mundi as satire, and he makes frequent reference to Horace and Juvenal. Through the middle ages, and indeed into Renaissance times, the term "satura" appears to have comprised three elements. In the first place, there was the concept of a dish composed of various ingredients, a medley, and hence a miscellany of humorous topics. The classical authority for that meaning derives only from the grammarians.3 The term does not seem to have been used in that sense by the classical satirists themselves, but much of Bernard's work fits that meaning quite well. Secondly, there was a mistaken confusion of "satura" with "satyra" and a consequent association of satire with obscenity and scurrility. That feature is not absent from Bernard's work. It appears in his anticlerical verses. It is even more striking in his diatribes against women.4 It is a feature, too, of Goliardic and other verse. It has no classical authority. Thirdly, there was the concept of sanative castigation. Bernard says, of De contemptu mundi, "Quia et materia est mihi viciorum reprehensio, et a viciis revocare intentio."5 That is a meaning of the term which would be recognised by Horace, Persius, Juvenal and Ennius. It is what Vergil had in mind.


Non, mihi si linguae centum sint oraque centum,
ferrea vox, omnis scelerum comprendere formas,
omnia poenarum percurrere nomina possim.6


It is also the sense foremost in Saint Jerome's mind when he speaks of his satire in terms of cautery and the surgeon's knife.7


But satire seems an inadequate genre categorisation of the poems of Bernard of Morlaix or, indeed, of twelfth-century satirical work generally. Kimon Giocarinis observes that the influence of the Latin classics on Bernard "reduces his worth and relevance as a satirist."8 Some of the qualities which we associate with satire are lacking. There is very little of the urbanity of Horace. With notable exceptions, like Bernard's Bishop of Belly9 and Walter of Chatillon's cardinal,10 the twelfth century offers none of the sharply observed detail of Juvenal. Nor is there very much of the tolerant mockery we find later in Chaucer.11 The essential difference appears to be that in satire we expect the expression of a personal viewpoint, with the wide range of idiosyncratic variations which that entails. Twelfth-century satire, by contrast, is for the most part the expression of an institutional viewpoint. There is variation in forms of expression and in degrees of literary skill, but little deviation from the viewpoint of orthodox Catholicism.


John Peter, speaking of satire, notes that "the whole field of literature under discussion consists, like the rainbow, of a series of gradations."12 At one extreme, we have simple personal attacks, or libel. Those shade off into satire. But satire shades off into complaint, and complaint into homily. In Bernard's poems there is some writing which is satirical and some which is homiletic, but most of it is complaint. It is significant that John Peter, seeking an exemplification of the emergence of complaint, finds it in Bernard's De contemptu mundi.13 Although he speaks of the "emergence" of complaint, it has a certain persistence, a stable and unchanging character, as Peter himself admits.14 It existed in the classical world. There are elements of it, for example, in Hesiod, as well as in Vergil, Horace and Ovid.15 It forms a significant part of biblical literature. "Popule meus, quid feci tibi? Aut in quo constristavi te? Responde mihi."16 It plays an important part in Islamic tradition.17

We may distinguish four classes of complaint:18

1. Complaints of corruption of classes of men (kings, soldiers, lawyers and so forth, including, of course, the clergy). This class of complaint is closely related to estates satire.

2. Complaints of particular vices and types, that is to say, groups which are not estates or trades or professions, but which are associated with some particular vice (backbiters, misers, atheists, women and so forth).

3. Complaints of specific abuses (dress, swearing, use of cosmetics). This sort of complaint is sometimes indistinguishable from the second class.

4. Complaints on general themes, such as providence, virtue and vice, the contrast between present misery and the past, and the idea of man's inner condition as the microcosmic expression of the state of the world.

Peter argues that complaint is much closer to homily than to satire and that medieval complaint literature was strongly influenced by sermons, while at the same time sermons made use of complaint literature.19 Bernard of Morlaix's criticism of the church, which he refers to as satire, is for the most part squarely in the complaint genre, though often tending towards homily. Some passages in Bernard's poems which are clearly castigation of sin directed specially towards his monastic audience are pure homily, with no element of satire.


The end of the world

Apocalyptic and eschatological literature may be subsumed under the fourth category of complaint. The end of the world and heaven and hell feature largely in Bernard's works, especially in the De contemptu mundi. Several manuscripts of the De contemptu mundi carry a gloss which constitutes an effective indicative abstract of the poem.

The author's subject is the coming of Christ to judgement, the joy of the saints, the punishment of the wicked, and so forth. The author's purpose is to persuade people to scorn the world. The poem will be beneficial if it leads people to scorn the things of this world and to seek the things of God. It has a moral application, because it deals with the formation of virtuous behaviour. The author adds weight to the beginning of his poem by calling on the authority of the Apostle John, who said, "Little children, it is the last hour." By using the words of the Apostle rather than his own, the author captures the good will of his readers. In the beginning of his poem, he frightens his readers with his account of the coming of the Judge. They are the more ready to learn from him when he describes the joys of heaven, and when he teaches other things.20

The gloss is an elaboration of Bernard's own statement about the subject of the poem in his dedication to Peter the Venerable. "In primo namque de contemptu mundi disputatum est. In duobus subjectis tam materiei quam intentionis una facies respondet; quia et materia est mihi viciorum reprehensio et a viciis revocare intentio."21 The analysis of the poem in terms of "materia" and "intentio" derives from medieval theory of rhetoric, which in turn derives from classical authority.

From one point of view, the De contemptu mundi can be regarded as an apocalyptic poem, and comparisons with the apocalyptic vision of Bernard's contemporary, Joachim of Fiore, are inevitable. But, as the gloss suggests, the De contemptu mundi is an extended meditation, not on Saint John's Apocalypse, but rather on a passage from his first letter.

Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life, which is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passeth away and the concupiscence thereof: but he that doth the will of God abideth for ever. Little children, it is the last hour: and as you have heard that the Antichrist cometh, even now there are become many Antichrists, whereby we may know that it is the last hour.22


A study of the poem in the light of that text might lead one to suppose that the structure of the De contemptu mundi was carefully planned. Such a supposition would be supported by Bernard's own statement of the "materia" and "intentio" of his poem, and by the gloss quoted above. Bernard does not follow the conventional order of contemptus mundi literature. That order is perhaps best exemplified in the De contemptu mundi sive de miseria conditionis humanae which Innocent III wrote some fifty years after Bernard's poem.23 Innocent's prose study of the theme was influential throughout the middle ages. It was well known to Chaucer, who included an abridged translation of part of it in the prologue to the Man of law's tale24 and referred to it also in The tale of Melibee25 and The legend of good women.26 Innocent intended to follow it with a complementary study of the dignity of human nature, but, if he wrote it, it seems not to have survived.27

Innocent's work, like Bernard's, is in three books. He covers much the same ground as Bernard but his arrangement of the material is quite different. The first book deals with the evils which attend human life: the discomforts of life; the brevity of life; the troubles of old age; the burden of work; the transience of human learning and achievement; poverty; servitude; the troubles of married life; the enemies of mankind; the brevity of human happiness; the nearness of death. The second book deals with sin: greed; avarice; gluttony; drunkenness; sexual sins, especially sodomy; ostentation ("ambitio"); pride; excess in dress and ornament; uncleanness of heart; the ways in which the wicked suffer when they die; individual judgement of each of us at the time of death. The third book deals with the decomposition of corpses; the bitter memories of the damned, but their inability to repent; the various pains of hell; the tortures of the damned; the fires and darkness of hell; everlasting punishment; the last judgement; the end of the world, the troubles which precede it and the signs of its coming; the power, wisdom and justice of God's judgement; and the fact that nothing can help the wicked once they are in hell.

The first book of Bernard's De contemptu mundi opens with a brief sketch of Christ coming in judgement, and proceeds immediately to a description of the joys of the blessed in heaven. It is a lengthy description, some three hundred and ninety lines, more than a third of the book, and it is a topic which Innocent does not touch upon, perhaps because he envisaged it as being appropriate for his De dignitate naturae humanae. Bernard goes on to a more detailed description of the coming of Christ in judgement, the end of the world, the selection of the good and the rejection of the wicked. There follows a description of the pains of hell (about half the length of his description of the joys of heaven); an account of the transience of human life, wealth, glory, beauty, power and pleasure; and a brief, almost perfunctory description of certain portents of the end of the world.

The second book opens with a description of the Golden Age, which is contrasted with the wickedness of latter days. That wickedness is described in general terms. Then we have an account of the sins of types of people: the clergy, the temporal rulers, soldiers, judges, merchants, farmers. Bernard devotes more than a hundred lines to the wickedness of women. He deplores early marriage and the begetting of many children. He attacks drunkenness, lust and hypocrisy. He deplores the misuse of wealth.

The third book commences with a continuation of the description of the wickedness of mankind, with castigations in general terms of various sins, including sodomy. Then it moves into a protracted and detailed attack upon the wickedness of the clergy: pope, bishops and lesser clergy, including parish priests.

George J. Engelhardt makes a distinction between the peribolic order of Innocent and the syntomic order of Bernard, which he expresses schematically thus:



Peribolic:

misery-iniquity(reasons)>doom(thesis)
    doom(reason)>conversion(thesis)



Syntomic:

conversion(thesis)>doom(reason)
    doom(thesis)>misery-iniquity(reasons).28


The choice of this order may be seen as further evidence of Bernard's classical heritage.

In this way the form tends toward an effect most aptly described with a Greek phrase used in a similar context by an ancient critic whose work was unknown to Bernard but whose technical apparatus belongs to the general tradition passed on through Latin intermediaries to medieval poets. This phrase, he taxis ataktos, or "order without order," may be used, furthermore, to describe not merely the form of Bernard's poem but a motif that pervades the fabric of its thought.29

The first line of the poem, which is also the last line of Book 1, is "Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus." That line summarises the content of the poem. Engelhardt points out that the line can be rendered "Tempora pessima sunt; ergo hora novissima est; ergo vigilemus."30 That is true, and it helps us to understand the organisation of the poem and its relation to contemptus mundi literature. But it is not clear that such a reading was at the forefront of Bernard's mind. His source for "hora novissima," as he tells us himself, is Saint John. His source for "tempora pessima" may be a passage from Micah, which, in the Vulgate, reads:

Idcirco haec dicit Dominus, Ecce ego cogito super familiam istam malum unde non auferetis colla vestra et non ambulabitis superbi, quoniam tempus pessimum est.31

"Tempus pessimum" in that passage appears to refer to the evil which the Lord will inflict, rather than to the evil men do; to the "mala poenae" rather than the "mala culpae". That may not matter, since Bernard clearly had both in mind, and Micah deals with both. But there is another reason for looking more closely at Engelhardt's interpretation.

The Vulgate phrase "hora novissima" translates the Greek eschate hora.32 It is a perfectly accurate translation, but eschatos can mean "worst" as well as "last" and frequently does in appropriate contexts. Plato, for example, has ponos to kai agon eschatos, "the worst toil and struggle"33 and eschaton kindunon, "from the worst perils."34 He also has eschate adikia, "the worst injustice."35 The last example is especially interesting, because it occurs in that part of the Republic in which Glaucon defines the perfectly just man as one who, without committing a single unjust act, must live his whole life under the imputation of being utterly unjust, and must finish up being tortured and crucified. Plato's words, like Vergil's in his Fourth Eclogue, were taken by Christians from Clement of Alexandria and Augustine onwards to prefigure Christ.36 Bernard may not have known the passage directly, but it is probable that he knew it indirectly through a Latin medium.

However that may be, it is clear that eschate hora could be rendered equally well by "tempora pessima" or by "hora novissima." Either would be an accurate translation. Bernard's "Hora novissima, tempora pessima" need not be read as referring to two different things. The second phrase can be taken as an elaboration, or even a Hebrew-style repetition of the first, rather than introducing a new topic. In fact, it may be that, in Bernard's mind there is no great difference between saying "This is the end of the world" and saying "These are very sinful times." This is not to suggest that Saint John did not expect that the world would shortly come to an end. "The Johannine teaching, whatever its origin may be, has taught us to spiritualize the New Testament expression of the doctrine of the last things. But the writer [Saint John] held firmly to the expectation of a final manifestation of the Christ at "the last day ..."37 Similarly, it is not suggested that Bernard did not expect the imminent coming of Christ. But Engelhardt's interpretation of the structure of his poem, while illuminating, may do insufficient justice to the complexity of Bernard's thinking. The literal meaning of "hora novissima" is certainly there, and is not superseded by the moral, analogical and anagogical significances. His treatment of the theme makes it clear that, analogically, he is referring to the individual judgement of each one of us, while anagogically he points to Christ as the lord and saviour, not only of us, but of all creation.38

But most important, as Bernard's own words and the gloss quoted above make clear, is the moral significance. Bernard wants to say that we must live every day as if the world were about to end and Christ about to come in judgement. From that point of view, it is unimportant whether the imminence of the end of the world is taken literally or not, and Engelhardt's schema is to that extent misleading, because it suggests that it is crucial to an understanding of the poem to see the imminence of the end of the world as a reason for repentance. In a similar way, one can misread the apocalyptic elements in Dante's Commedia. Ronald B. Herzman, referring to Dante's cryptic references to the last world emperor, the "veltro" and the imminence of judgement, points out that:

There is a danger in seeing the poem primarily from the perspective of its ideas - that of turning it into a kind of rhymed Summa, wherein the poetry exists for the sake of presenting ideas in a memorable form - for then one fails to take into account what is most distinctive about this poem as a poem. One of the most fruitful ways of looking at the poetics of the Commedia, as much recent scholarship has shown, is to see how it focuses on the continuing conversion of Dante the pilgrim ... The "ideas" in the poem, according to this approach, are no less important, but they must be understood as they are incorporated into the pilgrim's - and the reader's - continuing journey of discovery.39

Engelhardt draws attention to what he calls "dilatation" in De contemptu mundi. This is the characteristic which Archbishop Trench noted: "The poet, instead of advancing, eddies round and round his subject, recurring again and again to that which he seemed to have thoroughly treated and dismissed."40 Engelhardt relates it to the theory of syntomia and peribole.

The elaboration does not progress in syntomic fashion by discrete grades ... : rather the dilatation of any one topic may, after the peribolic method, be interrupted for the anticipation or resumption of any other.41


He explores the concept of dilatation in greater detail elsewhere, in a study of Beowulf,42 where he puts it squarely in the context of "Greco- Latin theory."43 Again, Engelhardt's analysis of the De contemptu mundi in those terms is illuminating and suggestive. It may be seen as providing some evidence for Bernard's classical heritage. On the other hand, the same kind of repetition is characteristic of Saint John's writing. Rudolf Schnackenburg, writing about Saint John's Gospel, comments:

The technique of the discourses uses a number of effects which have already been noted in the epistles: antithesis, verbal links through key words, concatenation of ideas by means of recourse to earlier ones, inclusio, whereby the thought is brought back to its starting point, parallelism and variation - on the whole, the instruments of Semitic rather than Greek rhetoric. We are reminded most strongly of the technique of 1 Jn in Jn 3:13-31, 31-36, but we can also see the same means being used in the revelation discourses of chs. 5,6,8 and 12, and in the farewell discourses. [He illustrates his point with examples, and continues:] Here too we can see clearly how the thought "circles", repeating and insisting, and at the same time moving forward, explaining and going on to a higher level.44

The technique is common in the literature of the twelfth century.45 While there is, no doubt, some influence from classical rhetoric, it seems likely that the predominant influence is Hebrew, through the medium of the Vulgate.

The De contemptu mundi of Innocent III relies heavily on quotations from Scripture throughout. The passages dealing with the end of the world consist entirely of quotations from Isaiah, Wisdom, Luke, Matthew, Paul, Malachi, John (Gospel and Apocalypse), Proverbs, Daniel and Psalms.46 Bernard's treatment is also firmly rooted in Scripture, but has no direct quotations. In some respects, his picture of the end of the world is quite similar to Innocent's.

The constellation of heaven and the highest mountains will be shaken. Thunderous sounds will be experienced from the heavens, the earth and the seas. The high mountains and the constellations of the heavens will be thrown down. The highest and the lowest, sun, sea and stars, all will be convulsed.47
But when he deals with the salvation of the blessed, Bernard has a quite different approach to the end of the world, stressing renewal rather than destruction. Christ appears not only as the avenger of sin, but as the lord and redeemer of the universe.

Then the fires of those last days will leap up higher than all the mountains. Those who have not been active in doing good will go down to the depths; those who have been merciful will go up to the heights. The unbridled flames will leap up to the sky, to the very stars. They will destroy courts, kingdoms, estates, cities and castles. They will thoroughly dry up all those elements which are now drenched in filth. Now, when all the rottenness has been burnt away, they will restore everything to shining brightness. The world will be the same, but it will be renewed. It will be the same, yet different; different in form, not in essence. There will be no poverty, no sickness, no sorrow, no madness, no strife, no food, no cooking, no lust, no ribaldry, no pride, no violence. The earth will be made new. The beauty of the world, which the abyss of sin now defiles, clutches and overwhelms, will be restored.48


When Bernard, reciting the Creed, said, "Exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum et vitam venturi saeculi," he did not mean it in a purely spiritual sense. Like all Christendom, he believed that the resurrection of Christ is a guarantee of the physical resurrection of each of us. His heaven is the earth made new, and it is inhabited by corporeal human beings, whose bodies have been made new.

The earth now bears the bones of our fathers. Then, it will become paradise. It will no longer be cultivated by the farmer, labouring with his ox, as he does now. The weather will not be as it is now. There will be no snow, no lightning clouds, no thunder, no storms. The sun will cease circling, the swift moon will stay in place, the Pole star and the other stars will no longer speed in their orbits and the tides of the sea will cease. God's right hand will make all the stars shine brightly. The stars will be twice as bright, and the sun will shine for you49 with seven times its present brightness. Good people suffer now, but then they will shine like the sun. They will have learned minds and beautiful bodies, beautiful, swift, strong, free, delightful, healthy, flourishing, and free from baneful death. We will have such bodies that the beauty of Absalom and his hair50 would seem ugly; the feet of Asahel would seem slow;51 the hands of Israel52 or Samson would seem weak. Prowess such as that of Caesar, which knows no equal, will not exist, nor will power or luxury such as that of Solomon. Moses, famous for his healthy eyes and teeth,53 would seem blind and toothless, and Methuselah would seem short lived.54



The theme of brightness derives from Matthew 13,43: "Then shall the just shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." Much of the rest of the imagery comes from the apocalyptic passages of the synoptic gospels, especially Matthew 24, and from the Apocalypse itself. The other major source for the ideas in this passage is Pope Gregory I, whom Bernard calls "Gregorius meus" and of whom he says, "He must be read again and again, with careful attention to detail."55



Yet in one important and significant way, Bernard's thinking is quite different from Saint Gregory's. Bernard's view of spiritual life is that it can be achieved only in the context of monastic seclusion. Indeed, he might almost be said to regard the two as synonymous, and to see the monastic life as the only road to salvation.



Run away from the fiery onslaught of worldly temptations. You will be secure if you submit to monastic discipline and wholeheartedly pull the wagon of the cloister.56 If you follow Dina, your deviance will lead you to ruin.57 Hold fast to monastic seclusion and reject the hurly-burly of the world, and you will be safe.58



This view of the contemplative life underlay the elaboration of the Divine Office in the Cluniac family during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, to the extent that the "opus Dei" took up most of the working hours of the monks and excluded any other work. In the twelfth century Dialogus duorum monachorum, the Cluniac maintains that the Cistercians spend most of their time working in the fields, while the Cluniacs lead the contemplative life.59 A similar point is made by Peter the Venerable in his long letter to Saint Bernard about the Cluniac-Cistercian controversy.



If work other than agricultural labour were not acceptable to God, our Lord could not have said to the Jews, "Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth unto life everlasting." If physical work were better than spiritual work, Mary would not have chosen to sit at the feet of our Lord and listen ceaselessly to his words, neglecting other tasks. Nor would our Lord have allowed her sister Martha to do the chores all by herself, or have said that Mary had "chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her."60



Saint Gregory, on the other hand, regarded preaching as the highest activity; monastic seclusion as the second; and married life as the third. Yet, in eschatological terms, they are all equal, for they will all enjoy the same life of happiness in heaven.61 Dom Cuthbert Butler points out that "what is now called a purely contemplative life, in which the works of the active life are sought to be reduced almost to a vanishing point, lay quite outside St Gregory's mental horizon: he seems to take for granted that such a life is not livable in this world."62



Saint Gregory had experience in the world as a governor of Rome, as well as experience in the monastic life. In a number of passages he makes it clear that we cannot maintain the activity of contemplation for very long, and that we need to seek relief in active work.



Please note that there are some good works in which we persevere without tiring, and there are others which wear us out, so that we continually fall away from them, and we return to them with great effort after a lapse of time. In the active life, the mind is stable, without weakness. But in the contemplative life, the mind is overcome by the burden of its frailty and it is worn out.63



When we ascend from the active life to the contemplative life, our minds are not strong enough to remain long in contemplation ... They have to return to the active life and undertake extensive activity in good works, so that when our minds are not capable of rising to the contemplation of heavenly things, we do not neglect the good works we are capable of.64



The Cluniac family reached its peak in the twelfth century and began its long, slow decline. The Cistercians to some extent better represented Saint Gregory's kind of monasticism. But his policy would seem to be best practised by the friars, especially the Dominicans. In the longer term, it was the Gregorian "mixed life"65 rather than the purely contemplative life which gained most support. Richard Rolle of Hampole, for example, was strongly influenced by Gregory.66



Bernard of Morlaix, when he deals with signs which indicate the imminent end of the world, is surprisingly brief and topical. He does not emphasise the major portents familiar from Scripture, which Innocent itemises. He mentions the Antichrist, the dragon's tail, the seventh trumpet and the fall of realms, especially Rome, but his "patentia signa" are a black, bristling, winged, fire- breathing dragon, reportedly seen by many; Siamese twins who lived in Kent;67 a Spanish magician who claimed to be born of a virgin and to be Christ; and a madman "in regionibus orientis" who claimed to be Elias.68 Bernard's portents are not apocalyptic in the traditional sense. He is, albeit in a somewhat perfunctory fashion, offering empirically verifiable evidence for the imminence of the end of the world. The fact that he sees a need to do so may be taken to illustrate a development of ways of thinking in the twelfth century which has been regarded as specially significant, both in relation to the genre of apocalypse and in relation to the concept of renaissance. E. Randolph Daniel, for example, puts it as follows:



The ancient, classical world's acceptance of oracles and auspices are [sic] indications that the early medieval mentality was a continuation of the ancient one. The Neoplatonists distinguished between the world of sense experience and the intelligible order, between the realm of matter and the realm of pure being, but not between nature and supernature as the twelfth century came to distinguish them ... The apocalyptic authors believed that they were granted the privilege of being allowed to see into the invisible world, that is, to see into the heavenly sphere itself ... The new awareness of nature as a self- contained entity fundamentally challenged these assumptions. People still believed that God had created the "natural" world, that God still operated in it, but that such operations were usually by natural means and only exceptionally by supernatural ones. So long as the ancient and early medieval mentality prevailed, the assumptions of a glimpse into heaven required no examination. In the twelfth century, such a glimpse necessitated an inquiry into how a human observer could attain such knowledge or how such a claim could be substantiated.69



That characteristic may be illustrated also by the In Apocalypsim Joannis libri septem of the Scotsman Richard, prior of the abbey of Saint Victor, and a contemporary of Bernard's. His first chapter is devoted to an analysis of kinds of perception.70 The first kind is the perception through the senses of things outside ourselves.71 The second kind is the perception of the inner significance of external things.72 The third kind is the perception of truths through images of things that are not really there.73 The fourth kind is the direct perception, without any mediation of the senses, of spiritual truths.74 Saint John's Apocalypse, he says, represents perception of the third kind. That is to say, we are not to suppose that the apocalyptic images are to be taken literally. They are meant to lead us to the spiritual truth.75 The Apocalypse cannot represent the fourth kind of perception, because such perception is in principle ineffable, it cannot be communicated. Richard's view of the nature of human knowledge appears to be very similar to that of Aristotle,76 later to be expounded by Saint Thomas Aquinas.77 There is hardly any element of the first or second kinds of perception in the Apocalypse.78 The distinction between the second and third kinds of perception is clarified by Richard's example of the second kind. It is the burning bush which Moses saw, which was really there, but which had a spiritual significance.79 The visions which Saint John saw were different. They were not really there, but they convey a spiritual meaning. A somewhat similar way of looking at the natural and the supernatural can be seen in the works of Joachim of Fiore and Otto of Freising.80



Apocalyptic writers before the twelfth century typically claimed divine inspiration, while those of the twelfth and later centuries tended to feel constrained to advance reasons. It is true that Bernard claims some degree of divine inspiration, but it should be noted that his claim relates to his metrical style rather than his message.



The Lord said to me, "Open your mouth and I will fill it." So I opened my mouth and the Lord filled it with the spirit of wisdom, so that I might speak the truth and understanding, so that I might speak clearly. I say this not arrogantly, but in all humility, because if I had not been aided and speeded by the spirit of wisdom and understanding, I would not have been able to persevere with such a long work in such a difficult metre. For this kind of metre, which uses only dactyls except for the trochee or spondee at the end of every line, and which maintains the melodiousness of the Leonine measure, is almost, not to say completely obsolete because of its difficulty. Hildebert of Lavardin, who, because of his evident wisdom, was promoted first bishop then archbishop, and Wilchard the canon of Lyon, are both distinguished poets. But it is well known that they produced very little in this metre. Hildebert, when he wrote his life of Saint Mary of Egypt in hexameters, enhanced only four verses with this metre;81 and Wilchard ran to thirty verses, more or less, in his satirical poem. I say this to make it clear that I could not have written the three books of this poem in a metre in which those men have written so very few verses, unless God had been working with me and helping me in my choice of words.82



Bernard's De contemptu mundi could not be said to present an intellectually coherent vision of the kind exemplified by Joachim and Otto. That is not surprising, for his work, despite its apocalyptic elements, is not an apocalypse, and it is certainly not an attempt at history in Otto's sense. His genre is contemptus mundi and his purpose is moral persuasion in a way that Joachim's and Otto's are not; nor, indeed, can Richard of Saint Victor, or even Saint John himself, be said to have such a direct and immediate purpose of moral persuasion as Bernard has. Saint John, in his Apocalypse, is primarily concerned to encourage the faithful in times of persecution, rather than to convert sinners, and Richard of Saint Victor is concerned to expound Saint John's teaching.



Neither Bernard's poem nor Innocent's prose represents one particular feature of the contemptus mundi genre. An example, practically contemporary with Bernard's De contemptu mundi, is the anonymous Poema morale or Moral ode, a Middle English poem which, in its earliest form, was written in about 1150. But probably the best example of this feature of the genre is the Dies irae. What both these poems have, which is completely lacking in Innocent's work and almost completely in Bernard's, is a deeply personal involvement of the writer because of his awareness of his own sin. Bernard says, "It is not on account of my deserts that I seek you [the heavenly Jerusalem], for if I got my deserts I would reap death, nor do I attempt to hide the fact that, according to my deserts I am a child of wrath"83 and, "Oh heavenly homeland, where there is no sin or strife, I, guilty as I am, long for you ardently."84 But these are mild and conventional expressions of personal sinfulness, and it is significant that they occur in the course of the description of the joys of heaven, rather than of the pains of hell. The poet of the Poema morale is more convincing.



I am older than I was, both in age and in learning. I have more experience than I had before. I ought to be a lot wiser. Too long have I been a child in word and deed. Though I am old in years, I am young in wisdom. I have led a useless life and I realise that I still do. When I think about it I am sore afraid. Nearly all I have done is idleness and childishness. Very late, I have come to realise that my only real help comes from God. Since I learned to speak, I have spoken many an idle word. Ever since I was very young, I have done things I am now ashamed of. All too often I have been guilty in word and deed.85



The Dies ire, which was adopted as a sequence for requiem masses, is among the finest of Latin hymns.86 The following verses illustrate the personal tone of the poem.



Quis sum miser tunc dicturus
Quem patronum rogaturus
Dum vix justus sit securus?


Rex tremendae majestatis
Qui salvandos salvas gratis
Salva me fons pietatis.


Recordare Jesu pie
Quod sum causa tuae viae.
Ne me perdas illa die.


Quaerens me, sedisti lassus
Redemisti crucem passus
Tantus labor non sit cassus.


Juste judex ultionis
Donum fac remissionis
Ante diem rationis.


Ingemisco tamquam reus
Culpa rubet vultus meus
Supplicanti parce, Deus.87


This is the same deeply personal tone which is found in the Poema morale. The Dies irae is not, perhaps, typical of contemptus mundi literature, but it does express in a striking way the moral purpose of the genre and it brings out the difference between the contemptus mundi and the apocalyptic genres. The only work of Bernard's (if, indeed it is his) in which we find a similarly personal repentance is the Mariale.88 At the beginning of the poem, he exhorts those who are driven by the temptations of the devil that they should call upon the Star of the Sea, for she will most certainly help.89 Later in the poem, he introduces the contemptus mundi theme, and relates it to devotion to Mary.



Oh, how wicked and lazy are those who love the world, those who neglect God and do not care to whom they sell themselves! The foolish person who is led astray by what he sees in this valley of sorrow is truly blind and like a beast. For what fruit except misery do the pleasures of this world offer? Enjoyment of them brings dire punishment to wretched sinners. Greatest judge of all things, spare me as I weep and wail, for I have gravely sinned against your commandments. When I think about the great heap of my sins, I blush and wither with shame, afraid of your face. Great anxiety and sorrow trouble my soul. I quake with dread as I think apprehensively about the end of the world. Who will be unscathed in that trial, when all that now lies hidden will be revealed to the accusing eye of the judge?90 ... Where shall I go to avoid the terrible judgement? Who is there that I can call upon to escape the anger of the judge? Oh Mary, from whom comes forth the wisdom of the most high, so that mankind, believing and obeying, might be redeemed, make the dreadful judge kind to your suppliants lest, enraged on account of our guilt, he consign us to the flames! ... Compassionate mother, rescue by your intercession this wretch whom a great burden of sins weighs down and crushes.91



Similar expressions of personal contrition appear elsewhere in the poem.92 Bernard appears to associate this tone of piety with devotion to Mary rather than with eschatological reflections. Other aspects of the Mariale are discussed in Chapter 4, p.193 ff.



This study of some aspects of Bernard's treatment of the end of the world in his De contemptu mundi suggests that the structure and style of the poem owe more to Hebrew than to classical sources. To that extent it does not exhibit characteristics which are thought to belong to the twelfth-century renaissance. On the other hand, his treatment of the theme exhibits a distinction between the natural and the supernatural which has been argued by some scholars to be an important part of that renaissance.



Closely related to apocalyptic literature is eschatological literature. Bernard's treatment of heaven and hell, death and judgement, are considered next.





Heaven and hell



Dante's visit to hell began on Good Friday, 1300. He left the earthly paradise at the top of the mountain of purgatory and began his visit to heaven five days later, on the Wednesday of Easter week. He saw heaven and hell as they were at that time, before the last judgement and the resurrection of the body. The people he saw and met and talked with were all disembodied souls.93 The great majority of visions and tours of heaven and hell are of that kind. One would perhaps expect nothing else in classical literature, where there was no clear concept of a bodily resurrection. It is, however, surprising that classical models, especially those of Homer, Cicero and Vergil, should have such a strong influence on Christian visions that nearly all medieval representations of heaven and hell are contemporaneous with the visionary's experience. They happen, as we say nowadays, in real time. It is surprising because the prime Christian model, from which a great deal of imagery is borrowed, is the Apocalypse of John, which shows heaven and hell after the last judgement.



All the visions of heaven and hell in Eileen Gardiner's sourcebook are real time visions.94 So are by far the greater number of visions discussed in the literature.95 The description of heaven and hell given by Bernard of Morlaix is of quite a different kind. Saint Augustine, commenting on Saint John's Apocalypse, says that "after the judgement has been accomplished this heaven and this earth will, of course, cease to be, when a new heaven and a new earth will come into being. For it is by a transformation of the physical universe, not by its annihilation, that the world will pass away."96 That is the situation envisaged by Bernard. "The earth will be made new. The beauty of the world, which the abyss of sin now defiles, clutches and overwhelms, will be restored."97

Some aspects of Bernard's treatment of the end of the world theme were discussed above. Here, the concentration is upon Bernard's description of heaven and hell. He begins with an account of the last judgement, after which Christ will have the ranks of temperate people (agmina sobria) on his right and the sinners on his left.98 The blessed, in their resurrected, glorified bodies, will proceed to heaven, where they will possess "pure joys, lasting joys, not passing nor perishing ones." In the joy of the beatific vision, nothing will be hidden. We will look upon each other's faces and penetrate each other's secrets and "there will be no shame" (nilque pudebit). We will also see the blackness of hell below us, but we will not be distressed by it. "Just as it delights you now to see fishes playing in the water, so you will not be unhappy at the sight of your own children, should you see them in hell." In the perfectly peaceful commonwealth of heaven, there will be halls filled with joyful voices and melodies, gardens abounding with fragrance, joys, songs and laughter. Here on earth we are exiles, but in heaven we will be citizens in our true native land. In the everlasting springtime of the new Jerusalem, under the guidance of the crucified king, who removed all offences by the cross, we will stroll and dance and sing among the flowers. The greater the sins we committed and repented, the greater will be our songs of praise for the king who redeemed us.99



Bernard proceeds to the long, lyrical description of the new Jerusalem, the heavenly country, which the translations of J.M. Neale and others introduced into English hymnaries, and which represent the best known part of Bernard's work except, perhaps, the Mariale. F.J.E. Raby considered Bernard's celebration of the golden city of Sion to be verses of much beauty, full of the elaborate mysticism so dear to the monastic mind. "Of Bernard of Morlas it can be said that no one before him, even the unknown author of the Urbs beata Hierusalem, or Hildebert in his Me receptet Syon illa, had risen to such heights in describing the longing of the pilgrim for his home."100



Your God himself is there and your unbreakable, unclimbable, solid wall of safety is golden stone. You are the beautiful bride of Christ, and you have a dowry of laurel and of gold. You receive the first kisses of your prince. You look upon his face. White lilies make a living necklace for you, his bride. The Lamb, your bridegroom, is there and you stand before him, beautiful.101



Your king is the only son of Mary, the holy son of the virgin, the author of creation and the mouth of wisdom ... [In heaven] we will look upon him, we will be content in him, we will thirst for him. To see, continually and without end, the face of God, is what gives to the blessed in heaven constant and everlasting riches.102



Bernard proceeds to an account of the judgement of the wicked and the pains of hell.



The tortures of the wicked are proportionate with their sins. There are many punishments, but the worst two are cold and fire, neither of which is milder or easier to bear than the other. The torture punishes both bodies and minds. Christ is the punisher of both. The fire here on earth is a joke, a mere shadow, compared with the fire of hell. Earthly fire is mild and like a mere picture, compared with those everlasting flames. The fires of hell are so thick and so huge that all the waves of the sea could not put them out. The cold is so intense that the fiery bulk of a volcano would turn to ice. The conviction of a sinner brings these penalties. Eyes, temples, foreheads, lips, torso, intestines, breasts, mouth, throat, genitals and legs, all are food for the flames. Those in hell weep for the sins they committed long ago. The stench is appalling, and the stinking terror is a burden. The sight of the devil is enough to turn to stone the face of the Gorgon herself. Everybody knows the vile and sinful deeds of everybody else. Sinners are prodded by worms which do not die and tortured by dragons which blaze with flames ... In hell there are torments, whips, hammers, fire and rivers of fire ... Fiery chains bind individual limbs. Chains restrict the movement of lascivious bodies and ostentatious limbs. Sinners suffer a threefold punishment. Their heads are plunged downwards, their faces are turned back to front on their bodies, and their legs and feet, all filthy with mud, are sticking up, while their head are thrust down.103



Bernard's description of hell in De contemptu mundi is similar to that in the prose treatise Instructio sacerdotis, which is ascribed to him. The Instructio sacerdotis is incomplete. Bernard says in the Proemium that it deals with the three ways in which the Son of God gives himself to us: firstly, he gave himself to us by dying for us; secondly, he gives himself to us in the Eucharist; and thirdly, he gives himself to us in the rewards of eternal life.104 The first and second ways are dealt with in six chapters each, but the third way, which is headed "Quod Christus dat se nobis in coelo," has only two brief chapters and does not deal at all with heaven, but contains a short account of the punishments of hell. It comes to an abrupt halt without any kind of peroration and without dealing with its main topic.105



The treatise is addressed to an unnamed priest who is newly ordained,106 and it is clear from the context that Bernard was himself at the time of writing a priest of some experience. If the ordination of Ordericus Vitalis represents the normal twelfth century Cluniac custom, Bernard might have been about thirty years old when he was ordained priest.107 Since he could hardly have been either a very young or a very old monk at the time of his visit to Rome, which took place about 1146, we may suppose that Instructio sacerdotis was written no earlier than the middle of the twelfth century. There is no way of knowing whether it was written before or after the De contemptu mundi.



Bernard's description of hell in the Instructio sacerdotis, like that in De contemptu mundi, is not in the form of a vision. It is simply a catalogue of punishments, with some attempt to provide support from Scriptural authorities ("ut ex auctoribus comprobari potest.")



There will be fire there that cannot be put out, and cold that cannot be borne. There will be immortal worms, intolerable stench, hammers which strike repeatedly, darkness which is so thick it can be felt. There will be no law except unremitting terror. All the sins of everybody will be made plain to everybody. There will be the sight of the devils, constantly lit by the gleam of flames and more horrible and terrifying than anything in the world. Everybody's limbs will be bound with fiery chains. I tell you, the heat there is so great that even if all the rivers108 were gathered together in to one, they would not be able to put out the fire. As Matthew says, "There, shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth,"109 because the smoke from the fire makes the eyes water and the cold makes the teeth gnash. A volcano, if it were plunged into hell, would immediately turn to ice. The wretched sinners wander about, condemned to these wretched conditions, passing from heat to cold and from cold to heat. They seek relief from different sorts of suffering in different sorts of conditions, but their suffering grows no less. As the blessed Job says, "Let him pass from the snow waters to excessive heat."110 Immortal worms are there, snakes and dragons. The sight of them is horrible, so is their hissing. They live in the flames like fishes in water. They torment the wretched sinners, penetrating and chewing especially on those members which served the needs of sin, for example the genitals of the lascivious, the palates and bellies of the gluttonous, and likewise with each of the other members. As the book of Wisdom says, "By what things a man sinneth, by that same also he is tormented."111 So also Isaias: "Their worm shall not die and their fire shall not be quenched."112 The fire gives off a strong stench that inflicts just as much pain as the heat itself. So Isaias: "Instead of a sweet smell, there shall be a stench"113 and Psalms: "Fire and brimstone and storms of winds shall be the portion of their cup."114 The psalmist calls "storms of winds" the exhalation of smoke and stench which belches from the fire with a force like a hurricane. The damned are constantly beaten with whips like hammers by demons who compel them to confess their sins. The same devils who in this life tempted sinners to sin become punishers of those same sins in hell. So Solomon: "Judgments are prepared for scorners."115 The devils laugh loudly at the wretched sinners. Because the devils failed to join the new order of angels, they cry, "Well done, well done, our eyes have seen it."116



Bernard's hell, unlike Dante's, clearly owes very little to classical sources. In the De contemptu mundi, in fact, he explicitly rejects the topography, furniture and characters of Vergil's hell, which feature so largely in Dante's Inferno.



There is no Aeacus or Rhadamanthus to judge people. There is no Cerberus, no raging, no revenge, no lamentation down there in hell. There is no ferryman with his boat, such as Vergil spoke of. What is there? Burning, darkness, torment, the death of Babylon. The constitution of hell has no place for Orpheus or for Typhoeus, bound by strong chains or for [such punishments as rolling] heavy stones or birds tearing at intestines.117



Vergil, you are mistaken when you put the fields of the blessed in hell. Despite what you say, the Elysian Fields are not there. You are the muse of poetry, the voice of learning and of the theatre, but when you speak of these things you are yourself badly deceived, and you deceive others.118



Most medieval visions of heaven and hell were influenced by the apocryphal Apocalypse of Paul.119 Dante clearly knew it and used it in the Commedia. He even refers to it explicitly when, as the pilgrim Dante, he is making excuses to Vergil, his guide, in order to avoid visiting hell.



Andovvi poi lo Vas d'elezione,
per recarne conforto a quella fede
ch'e principio a la via di salvazione.120



The Apocalypse of Paul dates from the last years of the fourth century, though it makes use of earlier material.121 It is linked to a passage in Saint Paul's second epistle to the Corinthians (12,2-4). "I know a man in Christ: above fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I know not, or out of the body, I know not: God knoweth), such a one caught up to the third heaven ... he was caught up into paradise and heard secret words which it is not granted to man to utter." The Apocalypse of Paul utters, at considerable length, these unutterable things. Like most visions of heaven and hell, it happens in real time. It purports to be Saint Paul's report of his experience, as revealed in a manuscript discovered in a house at Tarsus. It had an immense vogue, especially in the West, and exists in many manuscripts, in full and abridged forms.



Yet its influence on Bernard is minimal. Nor does Bernard appear to be much influenced by his beloved Gregory the Great. In his dialogues, Saint Gregory tells the stories of a monk called Peter, a man called Stephen and a soldier, all of whom had what we would nowadays call near death experiences, in the course of which they visited hell.122 The descriptions are brief but graphic, and the story of Stephen contains the curious incident that his death was a mistake. "When he was brought before the judge who sat there he would not allow Stephen in his presence, saying: I did not command this man, but Stephen the smith to be brought."123 Similar mistaken summonings are found in Chinese lore,124 but the suggestion of a mistaken trip to hell is hardly Christian. "Gregory here had gone too far; and despite the reverence in which he was held by the later writers [of visions of hell], they fought shy of using this awkward motif of divine error, whereas others they seized upon with alacrity."125



But Bernard appears to have used no motifs from Saint Gregory's reports of visions of hell, and his account is significantly different from other medieval accounts. His description of heaven and hell is especially different in that it is not in the form of a vision. He does not claim personal experience of himself or an acquaintance, as do most accounts. But, as his chiding of Vergil shows, he writes as though with authority. "Believe me, I am not making this up. I am giving some details and leaving out many others; I do not know them all. But what I say is certainly true."126 He writes, in fact, in somewhat the same tone as those who claim the authority of the Apocalypse of Paul, though that is clearly not his source.



Unlike the Apocalypse of Paul, the apocryphal Apocalypse of Peter appears to have been little known through the middle ages. Before the discovery in 1887 of a Greek manuscript of the eighth or ninth century in the grave of a monk at Akhmim in Upper Egypt, it had been known only from allusions in the works of the Fathers. In the first decade of the twentieth century a longer Ethiopic version came to light in the d'Abbadie manuscript collection.127 It is the earliest Christian description of heaven and hell that we have, if we except the Apocalypse of John. Citations by Clement of Alexandria (Eclogues 41 and 48) place it no later than the middle of the second century.128



Like the Apocalypse of Paul, it has a Scriptural link.



This is the story of Christ's second coming and of the resurrection of the dead, revealed to Saint Peter by Christ, who died for their sins because they did not keep the commandment of God their Creator. Peter pondered this revelation so that he might understand the mystery of the Son of God, the merciful and the lover of mercy.129



When Jesus was seated on the Mount of Olives, his disciples asked him to tell them about the end of the world. This opening scene derives from Matthew 24,3. Jesus warns the disciples against the deceiving Christs who will arise (Matthew 24,5).



"And you should learn a parable from the fig-tree. As soon as the shoot comes forth from it and the twigs are grown, the end of the world will come." [Matthew 24,32]. I, Peter, answered and said to him: "Interpret the fig-tree for me ... What then does the parable of the fig- tree mean?"130



Jesus shows to Peter "on the palm of his right hand ... the image of what will happen on the last day." Hell will open up and a general resurrection will take place. The earth will be consumed by fire and covered with darkness. Jesus will come "upon an eternal cloud of brightness."



As for the elect who have done good, they will come to me and not see death by the devouring fire. But the unrighteous, the sinners, and the hypocrites will stand in the depths of darkness that will not pass away; and their punishment is fire.131



The description of the punishments of hell follows. Some sinners hang by the limbs that sinned. Others are immersed in fiery pits and are tortured by cruel beasts. Others again have fire applied to the sinful limb. It is clear that the punishments are envisaged as taking place after the last judgement. In this respect, the Apocalypse of Peter is unlike the great majority of medieval accounts of hell, which are in real time. They describe what is actually happening at the time of the revelation.



Then Peter is given a vision of heaven.



Afterward the angels will bring my elect and righteous, who are perfect in all uprightness, and bear them in their hands and clothe them with the garment of heavenly life. They will see justice carried out on those who hated them, when Ezrael punishes them, and the torment of every one will be forever, according to his or her deeds ... Then I will give my elect and righteous the baptism and the salvation that they sought from me in the field of Acherousia that is called Elysium. They will adorn the group of the righteous with flowers, and I will go and rejoice with them. I will cause these people to enter into my everlasting kingdom and show them that eternal life on which I have made them set their hope, I myself and my Father who is in heaven.132



The scene shifts to the Transfiguration (Matthew 17; Mark 9), after which Peter is given a further glimpse of heaven.

And he showed me a great garden, open, full of fair trees and blessed fruits, and of the odor of perfumes. The fragrance of it was pleasant and came upon us. And I saw much fruit from this tree. And my Lord and God Jesus Christ said to me, "Have you seen the companies of the fathers? As is their rest, such also is the honor and the glory of those who are persecuted for the sake of my righteousness."133



The similarities between Bernard's account of heaven and hell and that of the Apocalypse of Peter are striking. Both entail the end of the world. Both deal with the world made new, not destroyed. Both envisage the resurrection of the body, and heaven and hell populated by beings who are fully human, not disembodied spirits. Both dwell upon the joys of the glorified bodies of the blessed in heaven. Both deal with the last judgement. Neither says anything about a particular judgement at the time of death. Neither says anything about Purgatory. The characteristics of heaven are similar in both accounts, although the Apocalypse of Peter is briefer and lacks Bernard's poetic account of the beatific vision.



The general imagery of the two descriptions of hell is also similar. But when it comes to details of punishments, there is considerable discrepancy. The Apocalypse of Peter goes to great lengths to itemise punishments which fit the crime, a theme which Bernard merely touches on. In the Apocalypse of Peter, blasphemers are hung up by their tongues; vain women are hung up by their hair; fornicators are hung up by their loins; murderers are cast into a pit full of venomous beasts, tormented by the souls of those they slew; women who committed abortion are plunged up to their necks in a pit, tormented by the souls of the children they aborted; slanderers gnaw their own tongues; those who bore false witness have their lips cut off; rich men and women who despised the poor are flung upon a pillar of fire, dressed in filthy rags; usurers are thrown into mire up to their knees. There are appropriate punishments also for idolaters, sodomites, lesbians, those who failed to honour their fathers and mothers, women who did not keep their virginity until marriage, slaves who did not obey their masters, those who were self-righteous, and sorcerers. Bernard's account of hell is much more restrained. He describes the punishments with less relish and he makes no attempt to match punishment to sinner, although he says that it happens.



That is an important difference between the two works. But if we consider the nature of the De contemptu mundi and the way Bernard tackled his overall theme, it becomes clear that he could not have handled the description of the punishments of hell in the way they are handled in the Apocalypse of Peter. The greater part of the De contemptu mundi is taken up with the castigation of sin. In the well-established pattern of the genre of complaint literature, Bernard deals at length with corruption of classes of men (kings, soldiers, lawyers, merchants, farmers, clergy and so forth - in effect, estates satire); with particular vices and types (rich men, misers, women, and so forth); with specific sins (adultery, sodomy, pride and so forth); and with general themes (providence, virtue and vice, the contrast between the wicked state of the present world and the Golden Age, and so forth). It would have been impossible for him to deal with individual sins in his description of the pains of hell. The plan of his work required the extensive treatment of that theme elsewhere.



Another difference is that Bernard deals with heaven first. Such a difference is not in any case very significant, given that Bernard was making imaginative use of material rather than transcribing it. But it is interesting that in the Akhmim text of the Apocalypse of Peter the description of heaven precedes that of hell.134



If we discount those particular elements of difference, the similarity between the two works would seem to be enough to suggest the influence of one on the other. Not only are they remarkably similar to each other, but they are also significantly different from most other medieval treatments of heaven and hell. It seems probable that Bernard knew the Apocalypse of Peter in some form or another. If he did, his confident air of authority ("What I say is certainly true") could be explained. His authority was no less than Saint Peter himself.



A further piece of evidence is offered by Bernard's curious accusation that Vergil put Elysium in the wrong place ("Despite what you say, the Elysian fields are not there"). Dante seems to equate Elysium with Limbo, which he puts in the first circle of hell.135 But the Apocalypse of Peter puts Elysium in some part of heaven ("Then I will give my elect and righteous the baptism and salvation that they sought from me in the field of Acherousia that is called Elysium"). Bernard's vehemence may have sprung from his conviction that Vergil was flouting the auctoritas.



A feature of Bernard's treatment of hell is the absence of Satan. There are demons and devils, but there is no colourful and concrete Devil like the Satan of the desert fathers, Gregory and Aelfric. When Bernard says "The devil [or "a devil"] binds our stony hearts and our bronze bowels,"136 the devil is little more than a metaphor for the temptations of the flesh. "The devouring serpent ... is implanted in your loins and the enemy thrives on the fires deep inside you."137 For Bernard, the sinner is wholly responsible for his or her sin, and the Devil is not needed to explain the fact of sin. Saint Thomas Aquinas took a similar view. "Manifestum est quod diabolus nullo modo potest necessitatem inducere homini ad peccandum." He argued that the only things that can cause sin directly are things that can influence the will. Three things are involved in any object influencing the will: the object, appealing to man's will through his external senses, the one who presents the object, and the one who persuades us of the object's goodness (and that could be the devil or some other man). However, none of these can cause sin directly: for the only object that can compel the will is our ultimate goal, and the devil can cause sin only by persuasion and the presentation of desirable objects.138



This somewhat abstract and negative devil was also that of Anselm and Abelard, and was in sharp contrast to that of the Cathars, for whom the Devil was the prince, even the creator, of the material world.139 Jeffrey Burton Russell argues that the fading of Lucifer in the theology of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was matched by the growth of a literature based on secular concerns such as feudalism and courtly love, and later by the growth of humanism, which attributed evil to human motivations more than to demons. Thus many of the greatest writers and works - Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Hartmann von Aue, and Chaucer; the Chanson de Roland, the Niebelungenlied, and El Cid - usually treated the Devil in a perfunctory manner or as a metaphor for the vices or evil in general.140



The metaphorical character of Bernard's Satan and Bernard's insistence that the sinner cannot shuffle off responsibility for his sin can be seen as part of the twelfth century's interest in the idea of man and nature.141 And, as was discussed above (pages 92ff), Bernard's treatment of the end of the world and of death, judgement, heaven and hell can be seen as illustrating some elements which have been associated with the humanism of the quattrocento, especially an interest in empirical enquiry, in ways of knowing and in the importance of human reason. These were, indeed, features of the twelfth century, and they were inherited and developed by the Schoolmen in the following century.

But the association with Renaissance humanism of such concepts as secularisation, and an interest in empirical enquiry, in ways of knowing and in the importance of human reason, is not without difficulty. Renaissance humanism was essentially a revival of classical learning and an imitation of the Latin and Greek classics. For the Renaissance humanists themselves, that is what humanism meant. Paul Oskar Kristellar describes it in the following terms:

The term humanista, coined at the height of the Renaissance period, was in turn derived from an older term, that is from the "humanities" or studia humanitatis. This term was apparently used in the general sense of a liberal or literary education by such ancient Roman authors as Cicero and Gelliius, and this use was resumed by the Italian scholars of the late fourteenth century. By the first half of the fifteenth century, the studia humanitatis came to stand for a clearly defined cycle of scholarly disciplines, namely grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy, and the study of each of these subjects was understood to include the reading and interpretation of its standard ancient writers in Latin and, to a lesser extent, in Greek. This meaning of the studia humanitatis remained in general use through the sixteenth century and later, and we may still find an echo of it in our use of the term "humanities." Thus Renaissance humanism was not as such a philosophical tendency or system, but rather a cultural and educational program which emphasized and developed an important but limited area of studies.142

That definition of Renaissance humanism has the advantages of being precise and of representing what the humanists themselves thought. A different treatment is found in Jacob Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.143 Wallace K. Ferguson says of Burckhardt's vision of the Renaissance that it was "in its integrated entirety, an original creation, the masterpiece of a great historical artist."144 But, despite the poetic achievement of Burckhardt's work, the term "humanism" is incoherent. It is rather like the Magic Pudding, which consists of


Onions, bunions, corns and crabs,
Whiskers, wheels and hansom cabs,
Beef and bottles, beer and bones.


It is "a Christmas steak and apple-dumpling Puddin' ... a cut-an-come-again Puddin'."145 The terms "renaissance" and "humanism" represent clusters of concepts which are often poorly defined and sometimes mutually contradictory, but are presented as if they formed an integrated whole. And the pudding is not consumed by being eaten. "The more you eats the more you gets."146 The literature of Renaissance humanism is vast, and its problems do not diminish, no matter how often they are tackled.


The characteristics of concern with man and nature, of distinction between the natural and supernatural, of interest in ways of knowing and in empirical enquiry, which were features of the twelfth century, and which are to some extent exhibited in Bernard's work, were characteristics of emerging scholasticism. They have been perceived to be antithetical to the concepts of humanism and renaissance. Erwin Panofsky, for example, maintains that "It was, in fact, the very ascendancy of scholasticism, pervading and molding all phases of cultural life, which more than any other single factor contributed to the extinction of "proto-humanistic" aspirations."147 In that view, he follows Ernst Robert Curtius.148 And Dom David Knowles makes a similar point about scholasticism. "The intellectual atmosphere of the thirteenth century which followed [the twelfth-century renaissance], though it was in some ways more rare, more bracing and more subtle, lacked much of the kindly warmth and fragrant geniality of the past."149

Apocalyptic literature and eschatological literature are related to the fourth category of complaint, that is to say, complaints on general themes, on man's plight and on his present and future condition. Estates satire is a better known category of complaint, because of its skilful exploitation by later writers, notably Chaucer. It belongs in the first category of complaint. It is well represented in the works of Bernard of Morlaix. It is considered in the next chapter.


 


1John Barton, Reading the Old Testament; method in Biblical study, London, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1984, p.8-19, 30-44.
2Alastair Fowler, Kinds of literature; an introduction to the theory of genres and modes. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982, p.20.
3Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin dictionary, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1900, p.1635.
4De contemptu mundi, 2, 445-598. There is a somewhat different treatment of women in De octo vitiis, 641-699.
5De contemptu mundi, Prologus, ad fin.
6Aeneid 6, 625-627.
7"Chirurgici spirituales, secantes vitia peccatorum, ad poenitentiam cohortantur." Letter 40, PL 22, 473-474. See also letter 117, PL 22, 953-954.8Kimon Giocarinis, "Bernard of Cluny and the antique," Classica et mediaevalia, 27(1966):345.
9De contemptu mundi, 3, 404, 415-470.
10The Oxford book of medieval Latin verse, edited by F.J.E. Raby, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1959, p.284-285.
11It is not entirely lacking. The tale of Heriger, Bishop of Mainz, is an example. (Helen Waddell, Medieval Latin lyrics, 4th ed., London, Constable, 1933, p 148-155. The Cambridge songs; a Goliard's song book of the XIth century, ed. Karl Breul, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1915, p.59- 60. Die Cambridge Lieder, ed. Karl Strecker, Berlin. Weidmannsche, 1955, p.65- 66.)
12John Peter, Complaint and satire in early English literature, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1956, p.11.
13ibid., p.39. "For here we have, as it were, a cross-section of the whole tradition, a conflation of the innumerable works in Latin that had gone before and a prelude to the English poems that are to come. It is here, in the hammering rhymes of these tireless couplets, that Complaint achieves a final independence from Satire and a status of its own."
14ibid., p.59.
15All of whom also offer an account of the Golden Age, which is frequently associated with complaint.
16Micah 6,3. The version given is from the Good Friday ceremonies. It is more plangent than the Vulgate, or even than the Authorised Version.
17Franz Rosenthal, "Sweeter than hope"; complaint and hope in medieval Islam. Leyden, Brill, 1983, passim. The Golden Age looms large in Islamic complaint also (p.18-31.)
18Peter, Complaint and satire, p.60; See also W.A. Davenport, Chaucer, complaint and narrative, Cambridge, Brewer, 1988, p.4.
19Peter, Complaint and satire, p.52-56.
20H.C. Hoskier (ed.), De contemptu mundi; a bitter satirical poem of 300 lines upon the morals of the XIIth century, by Bernard of Morval, monk of Cluny (fl.1150), London, Quaritch, 1929, p.xxxix. Not given by Wright or Preble or Pepin.
21De contemptu mundi, Prologus, ad fin.
221 John 2,15-18. Douai version.
23PL 217, 701-736. De miseria condicionis humanae, ed. Robert E. Lewis, Athens, University of Georgia Press, 1978 (Chaucer Library).
24Canterbury tales, II, 99-130.
25ibid., VII, 1568.
26G text, 415.
27"Si vero paternitas vestra suggesserit, dignitatem humanae naturae, Christo favente, describam." Migne comments "Liber de dignitate naturae humanae nondum inventus." PL 217, 701.
28George J. Engelhardt, "The De contemptu mundi of Bernardus Morvalensis. Part one: a study in commonplace," Mediaeval studies 22(1960):108- 135. See especially p.111-113. The schema is on p.112.
29ibid., p.110. The ancient critic is Longinus, Peri hupsous, 19-20.
30ibid., p.112.
31Micah 2,3.
321 John 2,18. This is the only occurrence of the phrase in the New Testament, but he eschate hemera and similar expressions occur frequently.
33Phaedrus 247b. xxx
34Gorgias 511d.
35Republic 361a.
36And even in modern times, Charles Kingsley used it in the mouth of Raphael Aben-Ezra to convince the neoplatonist Hypatia. "If as we both - and old Bishop Clemens too - as good a Platonist as we, remember - and Augustine himself, would agree, Plato, in speaking those strange words, spoke not of himself , but by the Spirit of God, why should not others have spoken by the same Spirit when they spoke the same words?" Hypatia; or, New foes with an old face, London, Ward, Lock, [n.d.], p.370. See also the discussion of C.S. Lewis in the discussion of interpretive allegory (below, p.326).
37A.E. Brooke, A critical and exegetical commentary on the Johannine epistles, Edinburgh, Clark, 1912 (International critical commentary on the Holy Scriptures), p.51, commenting on 1 John 2,18.
38That is the significance of the cosmological elements of this part of the poem, for example lines 427ff. The concept is found in Saint John's Apocalypse, but also in Saint Paul, for example Romans 8,19-22, where the whole of creation is seen to be in need of redemption.
39Ronald B. Herzman, "Dante and the Apocalypse," in The Apocalypse in the middle ages, edited by Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1992, p.402-403.
40Quoted in John Julian (ed.), A dictionary of hymnology, 2nd. ed., London, Murray, 1907, p.534.
41Engelhardt, "The De contemptu mundi, part 1", p.116.
42George J. Engelhardt, "Beowulf; a study in dilatation," Publications of the Modern Language Association of America [PMLA], 70(September 1955):825-852. Pages 825-830 deal with the concept of dilatation. The remainder is an analysis of Beowulf. The connection is interesting in relation to Bernard's possible Englishness.
43ibid., p.826.
44Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to St. John, New York, Seabury Press, 1980 (Crossroads books), v.1, p.115-117.
45A striking example occurs in a letter from Peter the Venerable to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Peter takes Cistercian objections to Cluniac practices and deals with them one by one; then he picks up various themes, especially charity, and develops them further, recurring again and again to points already dealt with. The letters of Peter the Venerable, edited, with an introduction and notes, by Giles Constable, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1967, 2v.(Harvard historical studies 78), v.1., p.52-101.
46PL 217, 742-744.
47De contemptu mundi, 1,427-430.
48ibid., 1,33-44.
49"tibi." Perhaps "ibi" was intended, but no variant reading is recorded by Hoskier.
502 Samuel 14,25-26.
51"porro Asahel cursor velocissimus fuit." 2 Samuel 2,18.
52Psalm 67,36 (Vulgate); Zecharia 8,13; but mostly, no doubt, the fight with the angel, Genesis 22-30.
53This will puzzle readers of the King James version. The Vulgate has "Moses centum et viginti annorum erat quando mortuus est. Non caligavit oculus eius nec dentes illius moti sunt." Deuteronomy 34,7.
54De contemptu mundi, 1,45-62.
55ibid., 3,317.
56"Tutus eris claustrum claustrique ferens bene plaustrum" There may be some reference here that I do not recognise; but perhaps the odd imagery was suggested by the rhyme of "plaustrum" with "claustrum.".
57Genesis 34 passim. Dina, the daughter of Jacob, was raped by Sichem (son of Hemor the Hevite) who subsequently sought to marry her. The sons of Jacob deceitfully agreed, on the condition that all the Hevites undergo circumcision. When the pain of the wound of circumcision was greatest, the sons of Jacob slaughtered all the Hevites and took captive their wives and children.
58De octo vitiis, 802-805.
59Idung of Prufening, Dialogus duorum monachorum. The only edited edition is in R.B.C. Huygens, "Le moine Idung et ses deux ouvrages: Argumentum super quatuor questionibus et Dialogus duorum monachorum," Studi medievali, 13,1 (1972):291-470. The text of the dialogue is on pp.375-470. There is an English translation: Idung of Prufening, Cistercians and Cluniacs, the case for Citeaux; a dialogue between two monks and An argument on four questions, Kalamazoo, Cistercian Publications, 1977 (Cistercian fathers, 33). See also Adriaan H. Bredero, "Le Dialogus duorum monachorum; un rebondissement de la polemique entre Cisterciens et Clunisiens," Studi medievali 22,2(1981):501-585.
60Peter the Venerable, Letters, ed. Constable, v.1, p.70-71.
61"una tamen erit omnibus beatitudinis." Homiliarum in Ezechielem prophetam libri duo, PL 76, 976-977.
62Cuthbert Butler, Western mysticism; the teaching of Augustine, Gregory and Bernard [of Clairvaux]on contemplation and the contemplative life, 3rd ed., London, Constable, 1967, p.207.
63Moralium libri sive expositio in librum B. Job, PL 75, 938.
64Hom. in Ezech., PL 76, 826.
65Butler, Western mysticism, p.207
66Nicole Marzac, Richard Rolle de Hampole (1300-1349); vie et oeuvres, suivies du Tractatus super Apocalypsim, texte critique avec traduction et commentaire, Paris, Vrin, 1968, p.95-96.
67The Biddenden maids. See p.31ff. above.
68De contemptu mundi, 1,1019-1068.
69E. Randolph Daniel, "Joachim of Fiore: patterns of history in the apocalypse", in The apocalypse in the middle ages, edited by Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1992, p.75-76. See also Charles M. Radding, A world made by men; cognition and society 400-1200, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1985, especially pp.3-33 and 153-199.
70PL 196, 686-689.
71"Visio namque prima corporalis est, quando oculos ad exteriora et visibilia aperimus, et coelum et terram, figuras et solores rerum visibilium videmus." ibid., 686b.
72"... quando species, vel actio sensui visus foris ostenditur, et intus magna mysticae significationis virtus continetur." loc.cit., b-c.
73"Tertius modus visionis non fit oculis carnis sed oculis cordis: quando videlicet animus per Spiritum sanctum illuminatus formalibus rerum visibilium similitudinibus, et imaginibus praesentatis quasi quibusdam figuris et signis ad invisibilium ducitur cognitionem." loc. cit., d.
74Quartus visionis modus est, cum spiritus humanus per internam aspirationem subtiliter ac suaviter tactus nullis mediantibus rerum visibilium figuris sive qualitatibus spiritualiter erigitur ad coelestium contemplationem." ibid., 686d - 687a.
75ibid., 687c - 688a.
76De anima, 3,7,431a16.
77Summa theologiae, 1a,84,6-8. Saint Thomas says, "sensitiva cognitio non est tota causa intellectualis cognitionis. Et ideo non est mirum si intellectualis cognitio ultra sensitivam se extendit." But he also quotes Aristotle, "nihil sine phantasmate intelligit anima", 1a, 84,7.
78"Sed constat quod duobus primis videndi modis ... eam minime viderit." PL 196, 687c.
79ibid., 686c-d. The spiritual significance is not, perhaps, exactly what we (or Moses) might expect. The burning bush represents the Incarnation and the perpetual virginity of Mary.
80Radding, A world made by men, p.201.
81"hoc metro quattuor tantum coloravit versus." Hildebert's poem, which is in the same metre as Bernard's De contemptu mundi but with a rhyme scheme like the De octo vitiis, runs, in fact, to nearly one thousand lines, in eleven cantus. There are, however, ten lines (five couplets) in cantus 8 which have end rhymes, though without internal rhymes. Possibly Bernard is referring to those. PL 171, 1321-1340.
82De contemptu mundi, Prologus, ad fin.
83De contemptu mundi, 1,339-340.
84ibid., 1,365-366.
85Richard Morris (ed.), Specimens of early English, with introductions, notes and glossarial index; Part 1, from "Old English homilies" to "King Horn, AD 1150 - AD 1300, 2nd ed., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1898, p.194-197. Morris presents the texts of the Jesus ms. and the Trinity ms. in parallel. (The text of the Jesus ms., also edited by Morris, appears in EETS 49, p.58-71.) The poem is in septenary rhymed couplets. Ich am nu elder than ich was a wintre and a lore. Ich wealde more than idude mi wit oh to be more. See also below, page 291.
86John Julian (ed.), A dictionary of hymnology, 2nd. ed., London, Murray, 1907, 2v. v.1, p,296. Julian ascribes the hymn to Thomas of Celano, an early follower of Saint Francis and his first biographer. But Joseph A. Jungmann says that it "put in an appearance at the end of the twelfth century." (The Mass of the Roman rite; its origins and development, Blackrock, Four Courts Press, 1986, (first published Vienna, Herder, 1949), v.1, p.439 and note 112).
87The Penguin book of Latin verse, introduced and edited by Frederick Brittain, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1962 (Penguin poets), p. 240-241. "What shall I, wretch that I am, say then? Whom shall I ask to be my advocate, when the righteous will barely be saved? King of dreadful majesty, who freely savest those who are to be saved, save me, thou source of compassion. Remember, merciful Jesus, that I am the cause of thine incarnation. Cast me not away on that day. When seeking me, thou didst sit down weary. Thou didst redeem me when thou hadst endured the cross. Let not such labour be in vain. Righteous judge of vengeance, grant me the gift of pardon before the day of reckoning. I groan like a guilty man. My face blushes with shame. Spare thy suppliant, O God." (Brittain's translation).
88Guido Maria Dreves (ed.), Analecta hymnica medii aevi, Leipzig, Reisland, 1886-1922, 56v., v.50, p.423-483.
89Mariale, 1,21-31.
90Quis futurus est securus
 In illo examine
 Quando patent quae nunc latent
 Arguente lumine? Mariale, 7,11.
There are echoes of the Mariale in the Dies irae, (as here and elsewhere), but none of the De contemptu mundi.
91Mariale, 7,8-24.
92Mariale, 9,119-20; 12,27-29; 13,20-21.
93Strictly speaking, there are a few exceptions, notably Jesus and Mary.
94Eileen Gardiner, Medieval visions of heaven and hell, a sourcebook, New York, Garland, 1993. Bibliographic details, with informative abstracts, are given for sixty-four visions.
95For example, Eileen Gardiner, Visions of heaven and hell before Dante, New York, Italica Press, 1989; Martha Himmelfarb, Tours of hell; an apocalyptic form in Jewish and Christian literature, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983; Kaufmann Kohler, Heaven and hell in comparative religion, with special reference to Dante's Divine comedy, New York, Macmillan, 1923; D.D.R. Owen, The vision of hell; infernal journeys in medieval French literature, New York, Barnes and Noble, 1970; Howard Rollin Patch, The other world according to descriptions in medieval literature, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1950.
96City of God, Book 20, chapter 14.
97De contemptu mundi, 1,43-44.
98ibid., 1,17 ff.
99ibid., 1,64-170.
100F.J.E. Raby, A history of Christian-Latin poetry from the beginnings to the close of the middle ages, 2nd ed., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1953, p.317.
101De contemptu mundi, 1,253-258.
102ibid., 1,323-334.
103ibid., 1,519-548. In Dante's hell, it is the Simoniacs who are upside-down in pits, with only their feet and calves sticking out. Inferno, 19, 22-30.
104PL 184, 774.
105ibid, 789-792.
106"Reverendo sacerdoti, frater Bernardus, ille servus antiquus et novus, in novitate vitae ambulare." ibid, 771.
107Ordericus Vitalis, Historia ecclesiastica, PL 188,983.
108Reading "flumina" for "flamina."
109Matthew 8,12.
110Job 24,19.
111Wisdom 11,17.
112Isaias 66,24.
113Isaias 3,24.
114Psalms (Vulgate) 10,7.
115Proverbs 19,29. The verse continues: "and striking hammers for the bodies of fools."
116Psalms (Vulgate) 24,21. The passage quoted from Instructio sacerdotis is found in PL 184, 791-792.
117De contemptu mundi, 1, 587-592.
118ibid., 643-646.
119Montague Rhodes James, The apocryphal New Testament, being the apocryphal gospels, acts, epistles and apocalypses ..., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1924, p.525-555. Schneemelcher, Wilhelm (ed.), New Testament apocrypha, v.2., Writings relating to the Apostles, apocalypses and related subjects, Cambridge, James Clarke, 1992, p.712-747.
120Inferno 2,28. The Vessel of election is Saint Paul. Corinthinans, 12,2-4 says he was caught up into heaven. Only the Apocalypse of Paul has him visiting hell.
121Rhodes, The apocryphal New Testament, p.525. Himmelfarb, Tours of hell, p.16-17. Schneemelcher, New Testament apocrypha, v.2, p.712-715.
122PL 77, 381-388.
123PL 77, 384.
124Several cases occur, for example, in the stories of The journey to the west, attributed to Wu Ch'eng-en (translated and edited by Anthony C. Yu, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980-1983, 4 v.) Indeed, divine fallibility is such that Sun Wu-k'ung was able to erase not only his own name but the names of all the monkeys from the files of the ten kings of the Underworld (v.1, p,111).
125Owen, The vision of hell, p.13.
126De contemptu mundi, 1,549-551.
127Himmelfarb, Tours of hell, p.9.
128ibid, p.8. See also James, The apocryphal New Testament, p.506, and Schneemelcher, New Testament apocrypha, p.621-624.
129Gardiner, Visions of heaven and hell before Dante, p.1. Quotations from the Apocalypse of Peter are taken from Gardiner rather than from the more scholarly but less readable texts of James or Schneemelcher.
130ibid., p.2.
131ibid., p.4.
132ibid., p.10.
133ibid., p.11.
134James, The apocryphal New Testament, p.518; Schneemelcher, New Testament apocrypha, p.623.
135Inferno 4, passim. See also Paradiso 15, 25-27, where Dante agrees with Vergil's location of Elysium.
136"Pectora saxea stringit et aerea viscera daemon." De contemptu mundi, 2,926.
137De contemptu mundi, 2, 615-616.
138Summa theologiae, 1a2ae, 80,1.
139Jeffrey Burton Russell, Lucifer; the devil in the middle ages. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1984, p.188.
140ibid., p.208.
141Marie Dominique Chenu, Nature, man and society in the twelfth century; essays on new theological perspectives in the Latin west, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1968 (First published 1957) p.1-48.
142Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance thought and its sources, edited by Michael Mooney, New York, Columbia Universty Press, 1979, p.22.
143Jacob Burckhardt, The civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, an essay, [translated by S.G.C. Middlemore, 1878], Oxford, Phaidon, 1981 (first published 1860), passim. See especially p.82-103, "The development of the individual;" p.120-124, "The humanists;" and p.171-215, "The discovery of the world and man."
144Wallace K. Ferguson, The renaissance in historical thought; five centuries of interpretation, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1948, p.178.
145Norman Lindsay, The magic pudding, being the adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and his friends Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1918, p.20-21.
146ibid., p.23.
147Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and renascences in western art, New York, Harper & Row, 1972 (Icon editions) (First published Almqvist & Wiskells, 1957) p.103.
148Ernst Robert Curtius, European literature and the Latin middle ages, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990 (Bollingen series 36) (First published 1948) p.480-484.
149David Knowles, The historian and character and other essays, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1963, p.17.