St. Bernard Of Clairvaux: On Love
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Photo: The Maestà is a fresco by Simone Martini. It takes up the whole north wall of the Sala del Mappamondo or Sala del Consiglio in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. It dates to 1315 and is considered as one of the artist's masterpieces and one of the most important examples of 14th-century Italian art.
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The reason for loving God is God Himself.
(St. Bernard Of Clairvaux)
(St. Bernard Of Clairvaux)
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Recommended Reading:
'Bernard Of Clairvaux: On Loving God'
By Robert Walton OSB (Translator), Emero Stiegman (Introduction)
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Description:
Saint Bernard's On Loving God is one of his most delightful, and most widely read, works. It stands in the tradition of the Fathers of the Church, but it carries patristic teaching into the Middle Ages and into the cloister. Its famous affirmation that God is to be loved without limit, sine modo, is taken directly from the letters of Saint Augustine. While the tract is not an example of scholastic theology, it shows a typically twelfth-century love of logic and an unexpectedly precise use of terminology. In his analystic commentary, Emero Stiegman not only introduces readers to the abbot of Clairvaux's thought, but carefully analyses his language, his logic and his theology. In doing so, he demonstrates the vital importance of reading medieval authors on their own terms, without superimposing on them categories favored by later generations, even our own.
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) stands among the rare handful of men and women gifted with true insight into the unseen, supernatural world. Known throughout the medieval church as a "spiritual doctor," he was given both a spectacular vision of angels and the wisdom to understand their purposes among men.
Emero Stiegman, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, has studied the theology of Saint Bernard and his contemporaries for many years and has contributed a number of learned articles in both theology and aesthetics, including his insightful Analytic Commentary on Bernard's treatise On Loving God.
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