Catholic Encyclopedia: Bernard of Cluny
Bernard of Cluny (or of Morlaix), a Benedictine monk of the first half of the twelfth
century, poet, satirist, and hymn-writer, author of the famous verses "On the Contempt
of the World". His parentage, native land, and education are hidden in obscurity. The
sixteenth-century writer John Pits (Scriptores Angliae, Saec. XII) says that he was of
English birth. He is frequently called <Morlanensis>, which title most writers have
interpreted to mean that he was a native of Morlaix in Brittany, though some credit him
to Murlas near Puy in Béarn. A writer in the "Journal of Theological Studies"
(1907), VIII, 354-359 contends that he belonged to the family of the Seigneurs of
Montpellier in Languedoc, and was born at Murles, a possession of that distinguished
family; also that he was at first a monk of St. Sauveur d'Aniane, whence he entered
Cluny under Abbot Pons (1109-22). It is certain that he was a monk at Cluny in the
time of Peter the Venerable (1122-56), for his famous poem is dedicated to that abbot. It
may have been written about 1140. He left some sermons and is said to be the author
of certain monastic regulations known as the "Consuetudines Cluniacenses", also of a
dialogue (Colloquium) on the Trinity. The "De Contemptu Mundi" contains about
3,000 verses, and is for the most part a very bitter satire against the moral disorders of
the monastic poet's time. He spares no one; priests, nuns, bishops, monks, and even
Rome itself are mercilessly scourged for their shortcomings. For this reason it was first
printed by Matthias Flaccus as one of his <testes veritatis>, or witnesses of the deep-
seated corruption of the medieval Church (Varia poemata de corrupto ecclesiae statu,
Basle, 1557), and was often reprinted by Protestants in the course of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. This Christian Juvenal does not proceed in an orderly
manner against the vices and follies of his age. It has been well said that he seems to
eddy about two main points: the transitory character of all material pleasures and the
permanency of spiritual joys. Bernard of Cluny is indeed a lyrical writer, swept from
one theme to another by the intense force of ascetic meditation and by the majestic
power of his own verse, in which there lingers yet a certain fierce intoxication of poetic
wrath. His highly wrought pictures of heaven and hell were probable known to Dante;
the roasting cold, the freezing fire, the devouring worm, the fiery floods, and again the
glorious idyl of the Golden Age and the splendours of the Heavenly Kingdom are
couched in a diction that rises at times to the height of Dante's genius. The enormity of
sin, the charm of virtue, the torture of an evil conscience, the sweetness of a God-
fearing life alternate with heaven and hell as the themes of his majestic dithyramb. Nor
does he dwell in generalities; he returns again and again to the wickedness of woman
(one of the fiercest arraignments of the sex), the evils of wine, money, learning, perjury,
soothsaying, etc.; this master of an elegant, forceful, and abundant Latinity cannot find
words strong enough to convey his prophetic rage at the moral apostasy of his
generation, in almost none of whom does he find spiritual soundness. Youthful and
simoniacal bishops, oppressive agents of ecclesiastical corporations, the officers of the
Curia, papal legates, and the pope himself are treated with no less severity than in
Dante or in the sculptures of medieval cathedrals. Only those who do not know the
utter frankness of certain medieval moralists could borrow scandal from his verses. It
may be added that in medieval times "the more pious the chronicler the blacker his
colours". The early half of the twelfth century saw the appearance of several new
factors of secularism unknown to an earlier and more simply religious time: the
increase of commerce and industry resultant from the Crusades, the growing
independence of medieval cities, the secularization of Benedictine life, the development
of pageantry and luxury in a hitherto rude feudal world, the reaction from the terrible
conflict of State and Church in the latter half of the eleventh century. The song of the
Cluniac is a great cry of pain wrung from a deeply religious and even mystical soul at
the first dawning consciousness of a new order of human ideals and aspirations. The
turbid and irregular flow of his denunciation is halted occasionally in a dramatic way
by glimpses of a Divine order of things, either in the faraway past or in the near future.
The poet-preacher is also a prophet; Antichrist, he says, is born in Spain; Elijah has
come to life again in the Orient. The last days are at hand, and it behoves the true
Christian to awake and be ready for the dissolution of an order now grown intolerable,
in which religion itself is henceforth represented by cant and hypocrisy. The metre
of this poem is no less unique than its diction; it is a dactylic hexameter in three
sections, devoid of caesura, with tailed rhymes and a feminine leonine rhyme between
the two first sections; the verses are technically known as <leonini cristati trilices
dactylici>, and are so difficult to construct in great numbers that the writer claims
Divine inspiration (the impulse and inflow of the Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding)
as the chief agency in the execution of so long an effort of this kind. It is, indeed, a
solemn and stately verse, rich and sonorous, not meant, however, to be read at one
sitting, at the risk of surfeiting the appetite. Bernard of Cluny is an erudite writer, and
his poem leaves an excellent impression of the Latin culture of the Benedictine
monasteries of France and England in the first half of the twelfth century. The modern
interest of English-speaking circles in this semi-obscure poet centres in the lovely
hymns of exceptional piety, warmth, and delicacy of sentiment dispersed through his
lurid satire; one of them, "Jerusalem the Golden", has become particularly famous.
THOMAS J. SHAHAN
Transcribed by Janet Grayson
Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).
This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an effort aimed at placing the
entire Catholic Encyclopedia on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
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