The Honey-Sweet Doctor

The Vision of St. Bernard of Clairvaux by Juan Correa de Vivar

Recently I’ve been reading a collection of devotional works by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, whose native Burgundy and former residence at Cîteaux Abbey I had a chance to visit a few months ago with my god daughter and her family.

Bernard is not an easy abbot to like. He was a testy, opinionated, and radically mystical defender of that which he felt was holy. He attacked Peter Abelard and with him the scholasticism that would give way to the marriage of Greek rationality and Christian theology later articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas. I happen to like reason sometimes…but I have also found that it is very boring to argue against irrationality.

Conflict, necessary friction, and the intense power of fervent love through the divine femininity of his beloved Queen of Heaven characterize Bernard. He is not easy to like, but very dearly loved. This greatest of Cistercians preached for the first and second crusades, and yet he saved the lives of hundreds of Rhineland Jews during the anti-Semitic riots which came in the aftermath of those wars. He was enigmatic, full of life, zeal, foibles; in every way a reflection of anyone of us who feels strongly for better and for worse.

He’s not remembered for his nasty skirmishes with Abelard, his fascination with bees, his fabled reception of miraculous milk from the breast of the Blessed Virgin, or even his patronage of the Templar knights. That Bernard of Clairvaux is remembered to the extent that he is today can probably be blamed on the unmitigated chutzpah that seethes from his voluminous collection of devotional writings, many of which brought people closer to the source of spiritual growth. After reading some of his works, it is clear to me that this man had an exceptional inner life; a connection to the way of Christ through Our Lady that was nothing but exceptional.

As one of the most prolific medieval writers, he was given the title Mellifluous Doctor, a nickname that nicely remembers Bernard as the “honey-sweet doctor.” For over 830 years Bernard the great bee-keeper has been remembered on August 20th, the date that marks his death in 1153.