treatises, Sedebitis et vos judicantes. These four quotations come together, within two pages of the Rule, and are similarly contiguous in the Sententiæ: this part of the Sententiæ is in fact the inspiration of much of this section of the Rule, although exact verbal coincidence is confined to the four passages I have quoted.
That connection exists between the two treatises is, I think, undeniable. It becomes therefore of importance to date the Sententiæ of Geoffrey of Auxerre, who was issuing Bernardine literature at intervals between 1145 and 1188. The Sententiæ must apparently fall between the years 1153 and 1179.[1] Taking the earliest possible year, and assuming that the anchoresses were only domicellæ of Queen Maud as children for a few months before her death in 1118, it remains impossible that a work in which the anchoresses are referred to as youthful can have been written after the Sententiæ.
Of course it is possible that the Rule and the Sententiæ are both drawing upon some passage in Bernard’s sermons in which the two dicta of Bernard and the two verses from scripture come together in this way. (In that case the reference in the Rule to St. Bernard’s “sentence” must be taken as meaning simply St. Bernard’s “opinion,” and as involving no reference to the Sententiæ.)
But I know of no such passage. It is true that the text Sedebitis Judicantes is a favourite one of St. Bernard,[2] and further that in one place he connects this text with the exclamation of the Psalmist, Vide humilitatem meam et laborem meum. This shame and suffering, he says (in the Sermon on the birthday of St. Benedict),[3] will be rewarded by repose, signified in sitting, and
- ↑ The date usually given is between 1155 and 1161, because in one manuscript Geoffrey is spoken of as Abbot of Igni, a post he can have held only in these years (Histoire littéraire de la France, xiv. 445). The argument does not seem very conclusive, for in another manuscript Cardinal Henry of Pisa, to whom the work is dedicated, is described as Romanæ Ecclesiæ subdiaconum, an office he was holding in 1148. What seems conclusive is that whilst, in dedicating the book to Henry, Geoffrey takes responsibility for the wording, he insists that the sense is Bernard’s, except in so far as his own ignorance or forgetfulness may have corrupted it. He asks for Henry’s criticism. During the life of St. Bernard, when Geoffrey as secretary and companion was in constant touch with his master, this would surely have been unreasonable; after the death of Bernard in 1153 it is natural, especially as Henry had himself been a disciple of Bernard, and monk of Clairvaux some time between 1148 and 1150. Henry became Cardinal in 11 50 and died in 1179. (Chacon, Vitæ Pontificum, i. 1047–8, Romæ, 1677.)
- ↑ It comes, for example, in the eighth sermon on qui habitat (Migne, Pat. Lat., clxxxiii. vol. 2 of St. Bernard’s Works, § 849, col. 215); again in Sermo v. pro dominica 1 Novembris, § 950; col. 354; again in the Sermones de diversis, § 1151, col. 628.
- ↑ §§ 970, 971, col. 381.
