A highly esteemed conversation partner drew my attention to the essay ‘“Þis louely blinde werk”: Contemplation in The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Treatises’ by René Tixier, in Pollard and Boening’s Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England, for which many thanks. I plan to spend time here re-working this a bit, not because it needs it my help, but because I don’t personally have access to a research library (as many others may not) from which to borrow it; and because I want to complete some of the connections at which Tixier hints.
The Cloud-author (elsewhere in his works) presents two verses of the Vulgate Canticum Canticorum, the Song of Songs, to ground his teaching. Erotic as they are, their import is appeal to a necessary asceticism. They are:
- Dilectus meus mihi et ego illi, “My lover is mine and I am his”. [Cant. 2:16; the original verse adds qui pascitur inter lilia, “he browses among the lilies”, consistent with the image of the lover as a gazelle]
- Vulnerasti cor meum soror mea, amica mea, sponsa mea, vulnerasti cor meum in vno oculorum tuorum, “You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes”. [Cant. 4:9; the original verse adds et in uno crine colli tui, “with one jewel of your necklace” — which, unlike the bit about the lilies, seems potentially significant, does it not?]
The connection to asceticism is simply in understanding oneself as engaging in a prolonged effort of self-purification leading to the soul in love with the divine receiving Christ her Bridegroom.
Bernard of Clairvaux was among many who wrote mystical commentaries on the Song of Songs in the Middle Ages, and his insights are both beautiful and pertinent here. Concerning the first of these verses, Dilectus meus mihi et ego illi, “My lover is mine and I am his”, Bernard first reminds the reader that these are the first words spoken by the bride, and that she begins with love. This is meant to devastate certain pretenses and preoccupations:
The spirit is filled with dread even while it is stirred; the canker of pride swollen by learning is miraculously healed. But if anyone who imagines that he has a smattering of knowledge indulges in too close an inquiry, he will find his intellectual powers overcome and his whole mind reduced to subjection. How humbled he will be at her words, constrained to say: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is mighty and I cannot attain to it.”
(What amazes me personally is that Bernard’s critique of learning seamlessly recapitulates so much of sacred history [as I have tried to capture by embedding the links to the verses he implicitly invokes]. His is a massive erudition internalized and made one with his person, and simultaneously a demonstration of the vital alternative to the “canker of pride swollen by learning” that he critiques. It is a marvel.)
That the Cloud-author espouses the primacy of love over intellect is not in doubt. In the final pages of his Book of Priue Counseling we see it expressed this way:
Late hem fast awhile, I preie þee, from here kyndely delite in here kunnnyng; for, as it is wel seide, a man kyndely desireþ for to kunne; but certes he may not taast of goostly felyng in God bot only by grace, haue he neuer so moche kunnyng of clergie ne of kynde.
Note that the word felyng has recurred here — a word much commented on in this site. Its use here is significant: our concern in particular is to be with a goostly felyng in God, which is, furthermore, subject to taast. The text continues:
& þerfore, I preie þee, seche more after felyng þen after kunning; for kunnyng oft-times discyuiþ wiþ pride, bot meek louely felyng may not begile. Scientia inflat, karitas edificat. In knowyng is trauaile, in feling is rest.
How interesting that a caution against learning should dip without irony into a Latin phrase, Scientia inflat, karitas edificat. This of course if from 1 Corinthians 8:1, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up”, already invoked above by St. Bernard. And with this, one circle closes.
This verse appears to have been much beloved of the English wayfarers of the time of the Cloud-author, invoked equally by Walter Hilton in The Scale of Perfection, Book I, as follows:
Of this knowynge seyde Seynt Poul thus: Sciencia inflat, caritas autem edificat. Knowynge aloone bolneth up the hert into pride, but medle it with charité and thanne turneth it to edificacion. This knowynge aloone is but water, unsavery and cold; and therfore yif thei wold mekeli offre it up to oure Lord and praye Hym of His grace, He schulde with His blissinge turne the water into wyn as He dide for the praier of His moder at the feest of Architriclyn. That is for to seie, He schulde turne the unsavery knowynge into wisdoom and the colde naked resoun into goosteli light and brennynge bi the gift of the Holi Goost.
I have elsewhere proposed on this site that the Cloud-author’s cautions about book-learning do not constitute an anti-intellectualism, and Hilton’s words here are a marvelous demonstration of how caution and learning can co-exist, transformed as water into wine. And recall as well that the Cloud-author does not propose that learning be renounced, but rather that we fast from it awhile.
[continued...]
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Dilectus meus mihi et ego illi, I: Introduction
A highly esteemed conversation partner drew my attention to the essay ‘“Þis louely blinde werk”: Contemplation in The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Treatises’ by René Tixier, in Pollard and Boening’s Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England, for which many thanks. I plan to spend time here re-working this a bit, not because it needs it my help, but because I don’t personally have access to a research library (as many others may not) from which to borrow it; and because I want to complete some of the connections at which Tixier hints.
The Cloud-author (elsewhere in his works) presents two verses of the Vulgate Canticum Canticorum, the Song of Songs, to ground his teaching. Erotic as they are, their import is appeal to a necessary asceticism. They are:
The connection to asceticism is simply in understanding oneself as engaging in a prolonged effort of self-purification leading to the soul in love with the divine receiving Christ her Bridegroom.
Bernard of Clairvaux was among many who wrote mystical commentaries on the Song of Songs in the Middle Ages, and his insights are both beautiful and pertinent here. Concerning the first of these verses, Dilectus meus mihi et ego illi, “My lover is mine and I am his”, Bernard first reminds the reader that these are the first words spoken by the bride, and that she begins with love. This is meant to devastate certain pretenses and preoccupations:
(What amazes me personally is that Bernard’s critique of learning seamlessly recapitulates so much of sacred history [as I have tried to capture by embedding the links to the verses he implicitly invokes]. His is a massive erudition internalized and made one with his person, and simultaneously a demonstration of the vital alternative to the “canker of pride swollen by learning” that he critiques. It is a marvel.)
That the Cloud-author espouses the primacy of love over intellect is not in doubt. In the final pages of his Book of Priue Counseling we see it expressed this way:
Note that the word felyng has recurred here — a word much commented on in this site. Its use here is significant: our concern in particular is to be with a goostly felyng in God, which is, furthermore, subject to taast. The text continues:
How interesting that a caution against learning should dip without irony into a Latin phrase, Scientia inflat, karitas edificat. This of course if from 1 Corinthians 8:1, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up”, already invoked above by St. Bernard. And with this, one circle closes.
This verse appears to have been much beloved of the English wayfarers of the time of the Cloud-author, invoked equally by Walter Hilton in The Scale of Perfection, Book I, as follows:
I have elsewhere proposed on this site that the Cloud-author’s cautions about book-learning do not constitute an anti-intellectualism, and Hilton’s words here are a marvelous demonstration of how caution and learning can co-exist, transformed as water into wine. And recall as well that the Cloud-author does not propose that learning be renounced, but rather that we fast from it awhile.
[continued...]
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