Bernardo di Chiaravalle frasi celebri
III.4
Liber ad milites templi. De laude novae militiae
III.6
Liber ad milites templi. De laude novae militiae
[…]
cap. XV
De diligendo Deo
Frasi sulla vita di Bernardo di Chiaravalle
XI.19
Liber ad milites templi. De laude novae militiae
Origine: Citato in Erich Auerbach, Mimesis, Giulio Einaudi Editore, Torino, 1956, p. 166.
XI.28
Liber ad milites templi. De laude novae militiae
Bernardo di Chiaravalle Frasi e Citazioni
Origine: Citato in André Louf, Tradizioni esicastiche d'oriente ed occidente, in Atti del IX Convegno ecumenico internazionale di spiritualità ortodossa, traduzione di Laura Marino, Qiqajon, 2001
da De contemplando Deo, IX, 20
Origine: Citato in Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, Della consolazione divina, La Letteratura Religiosa, p. 58, Fratelli Fabbri Editori, Milano 1965.
De diligendo Deo
“Dammi continuamente da soffrire perché tu sia sempre accanto a me.”
Origine: Citato in Aldo Capitini, La compresenza dei morti e dei viventi, Il Saggiatore, Milano, 1966, p. 93.
da Sermones super Cantica Canticorum, LXXXIV
II.3
Liber ad milites templi. De laude novae militiae
Bernardo di Chiaravalle: Frasi in inglese
“What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve.”
Vulgo dicitur: Quod non videt oculus, cor non dolet.
In Festo Omnium Sanctorum, Sermo 5, sect. 5; translation from Scottish Notes and Queries, 1st series, vol. 7, p. 59
Contesto: It is commonly said: What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve.
On Grace & Free Choice, chap 14.(de Gratia Et Libero Arbitrio), Daniel O'Donovan, trans., Introduction, Bernard McGinn, Cistercian Publications, 1988, p. 37. https://books.google.com/books?id=ODcqAAAAYAAJ&q=%22not+as+if+grace+did+one+half+of+the+work+and+free+choice+the+other%22&dq=%22not+as+if+grace+did+one+half+of+the+work+and+free+choice+the+other%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjT7I76jK_TAhUFNiYKHZrCB3gQ6AEIODAE (Note: Fr. Harry J. McSorley, C.S.P. Commenting on this teaching of Bernard, states: "We are indebted to Bernard of Clairvaux … for the clarification that grace and free will are not related as partial causes - which would be a false synergism - but as total causes of the act of justification, each on its own proper plane. Bernard maintains the Catholic-Augustinian tradition by insisting that man's natural freedom (liberum arbitrium) remains even after the fall. It is a wretched, but nonetheless integral free will. This natural freedom of the will, possessed by the just and sinners alike, enables us to will, but not to will what is good. It is grace alone that gives us good will." Luther, Right or Wrong, (1969), Newman Press / Augsburg Publishing House, p. 133 https://books.google.com/books?id=KaRAAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA133&dq=%22for+the+clarification+that+grace+and+free+will+are+not+related+as+partial+causes%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjX5fjGjK_TAhUKRSYKHdmfBCsQ6AEIIjAA#v=onepage&q=%22for%20the%20clarification%20that%20grace%20and%20free%20will%20are%20not%20related%20as%20partial%20causes%22&f=false
Contesto: It’s not as if grace did one half of the work and free choice the other; each does the whole work, in its own peculiar contribution. Grace does the whole work, and so does free choice – with this one qualification: That whereas the whole is done in free choice, so is the whole done of grace.
These New Heretics, Sermon 66 on The Song of Songs. http://www.pathsoflove.com/bernard/songofsongs/sermon66.html
Contesto: Look at those detractors. Look at those dogs. They ridicule us for baptizing infants, praying for the dead, and asking the prayers of the saints. They lose no time in cutting Christ off from all kinds of people to both sexes, young and old, living and dead. They put infants outside the sphere of grace because they are too young to receive it, and those who are full grown because they find difficulty in preserving chastity. They deprive the dead of the help of the living, and rob the living of the prayers of the saints because they have died. God forbid! The Lord will not forsake his people who are as the sands of the sea, nor will he who redeemed all be content with a few, and those heretics....
“To learn in order to know is scandalous curiosity.”
Sunt qui scire volunt tantum, ut sciant, et turpis curiositas est.
Translation from Etienne Gilson, The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard
Then you have some people who wish to know for the sake of knowing, and that is scandalous curiosity. (Translation from J. Van Herwaarden, Between Saint James and Erasmus: Studies in Late-Medieval Religious Life)
Sermones in Cantica XXXVI, Migne PL 183, col. 968-969
These New Heretics, Sermon 66 on The Song of Songs. http://www.pathsoflove.com/bernard/songofsongs/sermon66.html
Contesto: Look at those detractors. Look at those dogs. They ridicule us for baptizing infants, praying for the dead, and asking the prayers of the saints. They lose no time in cutting Christ off from all kinds of people to both sexes, young and old, living and dead. They put infants outside the sphere of grace because they are too young to receive it, and those who are full grown because they find difficulty in preserving chastity. They deprive the dead of the help of the living, and rob the living of the prayers of the saints because they have died. God forbid! The Lord will not forsake his people who are as the sands of the sea, nor will he who redeemed all be content with a few, and those heretics....
“My Beloved, look on me;
Turn me wholly unto Thee;
"Be thou whole," say openly:
"I forgive thee all."”
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 398
Contesto: Prostrate, see Thy cross I grasp,
And Thy pierced feet I clasp;
Gracious Jesus, spurn me not;
On me, with compassion fraught,
Let Thy glances fall.
Thy cross of agony,
My Beloved, look on me;
Turn me wholly unto Thee;
"Be thou whole," say openly:
"I forgive thee all."
“Human reason is snatching everything to itself, leaving nothing for faith.”
Reported in Walter Nigg, The Heretics: Heresy Through the Ages (1962) (who cites Adolph Hausrath 1895 as a source)
Contesto: The faith of simplicity is mocked, the secrets of Christ profaned, questions on the highest things are impertinently asked, the Fathers scorned because they were disposed to conciliate rather than solve such problems. Human reason is snatching everything to itself, leaving nothing for faith. It falls upon things which are beyond it... desecrates sacred things more than clarifies them. It does not unlock mysteries and symbols, but tears them asunder; it makes nought of everything to which it cannot gain access and disdains to believe all such things.
Contesto: I would count him blessed and holy to whom such rapture has been vouchsafed in this mortal life, for even an instant to lose thyself,
as if thou wert emptied and lost and swallowed up in God, is no human love; it is celestial.
But if sometimes a poor mortal feels that heavenly joy for a rapturous moment, then this wretched life envies his happiness,
the malice of daily trifles disturbs him, this body of death weighs him down, the needs of the flesh are imperative,
the weakness of corruption fails him, and above all brotherly love calls him back to duty.
Alas! that voice summons him to re-enter his own round of existence; and he must ever cry out lamentably,
‘O Lord, I am oppressed: undertake for me’ (Isa. 38.14); and again, ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’ (Rom. 7.24)
From, On Loving of God, Paul Halsall trans., Ch. 10
Contesto: Seeing that the Scripture saith, God has made all for His own glory (Isa. 43.7), surely His creatures ought to conform themselves, as much as they can, to His will. In Him should all our affections center, so that in all things we should seek only to do His will, not to please ourselves. And real happiness will come, not in gratifying our desires or in gaining transient pleasures, but in accomplishing God’s will for us: even as we pray every day: ‘Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt. 6.10). O chaste and holy love! O sweet and gracious affection! O pure and cleansed purpose, thoroughly washed and purged from any admixture of selfishness, and sweetened by contact with the divine will! To reach this state is to become deified. As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the color and savor of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red-hot, becomes like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be illuminated as to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God. For how could God be all in all, if anything merely human remained in man? The substance will endure, but in another beauty, a higher power, a greater glory. When will that be? Who will see, who possess it? ‘When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?’ (Ps. 42.2). ‘My heart hath talked of Thee, Seek ye My face: Thy face, Lord, will I seek’ (Ps. 27.8). Lord, thinkest Thou that I, even I shall see Thy holy temple?
From, On Loving of God, Paul Halsall trans., Ch. 3
“The true measure of loving God is to love Him without measure.”
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 395
“Believe me, you will find more lessons in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters.”
Experto crede: aliquid amplius invenies in silvis, quam in libris. Ligna et lapides docebunt te, quod a magistris audire non possis.
Epistola CVI, sect. 2; translation from Edward Churton The Early English Church ([1840] 1841) p. 324
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 88
“Who loves me, loves my dog.”
Qui me amat, amat et canem meam.
In Festo Sancti Michaelis, Sermo 1, sect. 3; translation from Richard Chevenix Trench, Archbishop of Dublin On the Lessons in Proverbs ([1853] 1856) p. 148
Bernard quotes this as being a proverb in common use.
“One cannot now say, the priest is as the people, for the truth is that the people are not so bad as the priest.”
Non est jam dicere, "Ut populus, sic sacerdos"; quia nec si populus, ut sacerdos.
In Conversione S. Pauli, Sermon 1, sect. 3; translation by James Spedding, in The Works of Francis Bacon (1860) vol. 12, p. 134
Ut populus, sic sacerdos is a quotation from Isaiah 24:2.
From, On Loving of God, Paul Halsall trans., Ch. 11
Bernard to Pope Eugene III, letter 240:1, A.D. 1146, concerning the election of a certain unworthy bishop at the Church of Rodez (see letter 328). In The Life and works of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, John Mabillon, Samuel J. Eales, Volume 2, p. 705
“That beast of the Apocalypse, to whom is given a mouth speaking blasphemies, and to make war with the saints, is sitting on the throne of Peter, like a lion ready for his prey.”
Bestia illa de Apocalypsi, cui datum est os loquens blasphemias, et bellum gerere cum sanctis (Apoc. XIII, 5-7), Petri cathedram occupat, tanquam leo paratus ad praedam.
To Magister Geoffrey of Loretto (afterwards Archbishop of Bordeaux), Letter 37 ( c. 1131), in Some Letters of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux (1904), Dr. Samuel John Eales, trans., John Hodges, London, p. 139. http://books.google.com/books?id=BmTZAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA139&dq=%22That+beast+of+the+Apocalypse+%28Apoc.+xiii.+5-7%29%22&lr=&ei=H1-gS9e4PJTaMcmenNIH&cd=1#v=onepage&q=%22That%20beast%20of%20the%20Apocalypse%20%28Apoc.%20xiii.%205-7%29%22&f=false
"That beast" to which Bernard refers is antipope Peter Leonis.
see 1 Pt 2:18
Bernard of Clairvaux on the Life of the Mind, John R. Sommerfeldt, Newman Press (2004) ISBN 0809142031 ISBN 9780809142033, p. 67
As quoted in Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad? : Understanding the Differences between Christianity and Islam (2002) by Timothy George, p. 49
Bernard of Clairvaux on the Life of the Mind, John R. Sommerfeldt, Newman Press (2004) ISBN 0809142031 ISBN 9780809142033, p. 67
“He that will teach himself in school, becomes a scholar to a fool.”
Qui se sibi magistrum constituit, stulto se discipulum subdit.
Epistola LXXXVII, sect. 7; translation from Notes and Queries, 3rd series, vol. 11, p. 192
“I, for one, shall speak about those obstinate Greeks, who are with us and against us, united in faith and divided in peace, though in truth their faith may stray from the straight path.”
Ego addo et de pertinacia Græcorum, qui nobiscum sunt, et nobiscum non sunt, juncti fide, pace divisi, quanquam et in fide ipsa claudicaverint a semitis rectis.
De Consideratione http://www.binetti.ru/bernardus/10.shtml (1149-1152), lib. III (1152), c. I; Book of Considerations, part III, ch. I
"Greeks" refers to the (Eastern) Orthodox Church.
