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Two Abbots in Politics: Wala of Corbie and Bernard of Clairvaux

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Henry Mayr-Harting
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ABBOTS in politics were surely a medieval commonplace, one might be tempted to say: what have these two egregious examples, Wala of Corbie (826–34, ob. 836) and Bernard of Clairvaux (1115–53), to say to us which countless others could not also say? If my two were not unique, however, they were comparative rarities, in that they became involved in politics (if that is the right word), not because of their feudal obligations, nor because they sought to propagate monastic reform on the basis of the observance of their own monastery, nor again because they associated the glory of their own house with a particular cause or royal line, but avowedly for the sake of moral principle, incurring enmities in the process, and, cloistered monks as they were, acting to some extent against the interests and wishes of their own flocks. The monk-bishop was a common enough figure, and the greatest men of this type, pre-eminently Augustine of Hippo and Pope Gregory the Great, have given us profound thoughts about how contemplation could and should be kept alive amidst the cares of the active and pastoral life. But neither Wala nor Bernard became a bishop, and paradoxically the latter's widespread and non-institutionalised influence might have been diminished had he done so. As one of Bernard's biographers felicitously but ingenuously put it in recounting that the saint had actually refused many bishoprics, ‘from under the bushel of his humility he gave a greater light to the church than others raised to the chandeliers’.

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Research Article
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Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 40 , December 1990 , pp. 217 - 237
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Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1990

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References

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17 Dümmler, 35. Hildemar (Mittermüller, 536) comments mainly on the duties of the novice-master when dealing with RB 58.

18 Dümmler, 37.

19 Dümmler, 46. The principal point of Warnefrid (and Hildemar), also derived from RB, in connection with clothes was that they should be neither too cheap nor too expensive, and this was taken over in the legislation of Benedict of Aniane, see Schroll, A. M., Benedictine Monasticism as reflected in the Warnefrid-Hildemar Commentaries on the Rule (Columbia, NY, 1941), 46Google Scholar, and the Capitulary of 816, in Corpus Consuetud. Monast. (as in note 49 below), 436. There is nothing in Hildemar on the contest of humility (Mittermüller, 99–107).

20 Dümmler, 53–4.

21 E.g. in Dümmler, abstinentia, 26, I.12; lenitas, 53, I.25; aequalitas vitae, 34, 1.17; gravitas, 36, I.16, 49, I.27, 54, I.28; taciturnitas (in effect), 34–5; modestia vitae, 54, 1.8.

22 For Hildemar, see Mittermüller and Schroll, as in notes 15 and 19 above; for Smaragdus's commentary, PL 102, cols. 689–932.

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25 Vita Sancti Adalhardi, cc. 32–34, PL 120, cols. 1525–27, esp. col. 1527A.

26 Dümmler, 76. For the relations of Corbie and Corvey, seeEpitaphium, i, 12, Dümmler, 41, and Weinrich, 39–43.

27 Dümmler, 81–2. This is a perfect example of the different purposes and thus approach of Pascasius and Hildemar (see note 15 above). Apart from etymology and stressing the occasions of sin outside the enclosure, Hildemar has nothing to say on involvement in affairs but concentrates on the practical question of how large the enclosure should ideally be, Mittermüller, 183.

28 Dümmler, 7, 11.

29 Dümmler, 79: considerabat rotas et volubilitates quibus vertitur saeculum.

30 Vita Hludowici Imperatoris, c.45, MGH SS II, 633: Walac h abba s iussus est ad monasterium redire Corbeiae, ibique regulariter observari.

31 Dümmler, 92.

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40 E.g.Smalley, Beryl, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1952), 173Google Scholar. For St Bernard's connections with Parisian masters, Vacandard, E., Vie de St Bernard (Paris, 1920), ii, 112–18Google Scholar.

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42 Runciman, Steven, A History of the Crusades, ii (1952), 247–88, esp. 263Google Scholar.

43 Otto of Freising and the Vita Prima are the principal sources which show this, and see Bernard's self-defence in his De Consideratione, ii, cc 1–2, Opera, iii, 410–12.

44 Opera, viii, 313–14, letter to the archbishops of East Francia and Bavaria; BSJ, no. 391, as Letter to the English People.

45 Ep. 143 (BSJ 144), Opera, vii, 342.

46 Ep. 144 (BSJ 146), Opera, vii, 345–6.

47 Cited by Morris, 259.

48 Vita Prima, ii, 27, PI 185, col. 283.

49 Semmler, J., ‘Benedictus II: una regula una consuetudo, in Benedictine Culture, 750–1050, ed. Lourdaux, W. & Verhulst, D. (Leuven, 1983), 1–49Google Scholar, citation at p. 48. Similarly, Semmler, J., ‘Zur Uberlieferung der monastischen Gesetzgebung Ludwigs des Frommens’, Deutsches Archiv, xvi (1960), 309–88Google Scholar. The principal Aniane material is edited by Semmler in Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticarum, i (Siegburg, 1963), 425–582Google Scholar. For a useful survey of the manuscript transmission of RB amongst the Carolingians, see McKitterick, Rosamond, The Prankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751–987 (1983), 119–21Google Scholar. Noble, T. FX., ‘The monastic ideal as a model for Empire: the case of Louis the Pious’, Rév. Bén. 86 (1976), 235–50Google Scholar, is of value but relates Louis to RB only in a much more general way (and principally to the abbot) than I have shown that Wala can be related in the Epitaphium.

50 Opera, iii, 255–6.

51 Ibid., 257–9.

52 Corpus Christianorum, Ser. Lat, 32 (Turnhout, 1962), iii, 15, p. 91.

53 Opera, iii, 283–91.

54 Ep. 143 (BSJ 144), Opera, vii, 343, line 17; Ep. 535 (BSJ 201), Opera, viii, 500–1.

55 On the distinction between the words amor and caritas, see Morris, 369. For lower kinds of love St Bernard would not use the word caritas, but for divine love he appears to use the words amor and caritas almost interchangeably, see, for instance, Gilson, E., The Mystical Theology of St Bernard, trans. Downes, A. H. C. (1940), 245Google Scholar.

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58 Cant, Sermo 9, Opera, i, 46.

59 Gilson, chapter 3, and p. 67.

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61 Esp. c. 6, Opera, iii, 178.

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64 Cant, Sermo 83, Opera, ii, 298, 11.19–23, and 300–1. Against what one might expect (see Morris, 374), Bernard seems to have denied the rights of the devil in human affairs, e.g. Cant, Sermo 85, cc. 3–4, Opera, ii, 309–10.

65 Vila Prima, i, cc. 51, 61. 65. 68. PL 185, cols. 256, 260, 263, 264.

66 Vita Prima, iii, c. 5, PL 185, col. 306.

67 As the famous, or notorious, passage on Cluniac art, Apologia ad Guillelmum, c. 29, shows, Opera, iii, 106, see Panofsky 25.

68 E.g. saying how dark hair on fair-skinned faces enhances their beauty and grace: et nigri capilli candidis vultibus etiam decorem augent et gratiam, Cant, Sermo 25, Opera, i, 164, 11.16–17.

69 Vita Prima, iii, 4, P L 185, col. 306A.

70 Vila Prima, i, 20, PL 185, col. 238. My translation is something of a paraphrase here.

71 Cant, Sermo 63, Opera, ii, 165.

72 Evans, Joan, Monastic Life at Cluny (Oxford, 1931), 112–14Google Scholar.

73 As at Fountains and Rievaulx (Yorks.) respectively.

74 Opera, ii, 80–81.

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76 Moralia in Job, xix, c. 45, PL 76, col. 126B.

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79 Gilson, 72, distinguishes between the ‘proper will’ and the ‘common will’, the latter being, ‘the will common to man and God’. This is a concept very close to, if not exactly the same as, Rousseau's General Will.

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81 De Consideratione, ii, cc. 16–17, Opera, iii, 424–5.

82 E.g. by Jacqueline, Bernard, Episcopal et Papauté chez Saint Bernard de Clairvaux (Saint-Lo, 1975), 205–7Google Scholar.

83 Vita Prima, iii, 2, PL 185, cols. 304–5 (there is no reason to doubt this merely because it is an hagiographical topos, which can be found in Cio Ruotger's Vita Brunonis, c. 29, for instance); De Consideratione, ii, cc. 1–2, Opera, iii, 410–12.

84 Cant, Sermo 18, Opera, i, 104.

85 For the date of the Sermons on the Song of Songs, Opera, i, xv–xvi.

86 Ep. 124 (BSJ 127): Et quod saneet vestra, Pater, exspectatur sicut pluvia in vellus, vel sera sententia; and Ep. 126 (BSJ 129), Opera, vii, 307, 310, 1. 23.

87 Otto, of Freising, , Gesta Friderici I Imperatoris, ed. Waitz, G. (MGH Script, rer. Ger. in usum scholarum, Hannover & Leipzig, 1912), i, c. 40, 59Google Scholar.

88 Although the analogy should not be pressed too far, Peter Brown has made a distinction, a propos of Late Antiquity, between articulate power, the normally vested and agreed authority in a society, exercised by its holders through well-defined articulate channels, and inarticulate or achieved power, whose holders have an ill-defined status, acquired largely through their personal skills, a distinction which helps to express the phenomenon of St Bernard: Peter Brown, ‘Sorcery, Demons, and the Rise of Christianity: from Late Antiquity into the Middle Ages’, reprinted in his book, Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine (1972), 119–46, esp. 123–9.

89 See Dümmler, 5–6.