If the Song of Songs can be a riddle to read, it is all the more so for preaching. On the one hand, it can be easy to teach, for its great beauty makes all students attracted to it. But, on the other hand, it can be most difficult to teach, for its great beauty can also lead to worldly distraction. It seems to me that Medieval Christians undertook to face this riddle -- and I wonder if we have something to learn from this.
The towering St. Bernard of Clairvaux certainly faced it. As one can see from his first sermon on the Song of Songs, Bernard was able to protect the Song of Songs’ beauty and refinement by clearly placing it in the whole of Solomonic literature. If one understands this part of Scripture in its unity, Bernard implies, the Song of Songs is no longer troubling. If one is prepared by Ecclesiastes, which turns one away from concupiscence, and the Proverbs, which turns one toward good conduct, there is no danger that a premature reading of the Song of Songs leads one astray. Most strikingly, Bernard also shows that the Song of Songs is not without the solid support of the other two “loaves” of Solomon is not an accident, but a design of the “artistry of the Spirit” that matches the order of personal experience with the order of wisdom. Every novice has the experience of bad and good conduct ready at hand, and knows the thanksgiving and joy that attends the conversion from bad to good, so that the two introductory “loaves” of Solomon are readily understandable. But the Song of Songs, on the other hand, is perplexing so that no one without the necessary preparation could understand it. This means that only the most hard-headed prejudice and presumption would claim to have understood the Song of Songs without a spiritual elevation. In other words, the Song of Songs will reveal itself only to those who have first seen Scripture as a whole and have meditated at length on it, and because of this, it cannot lead astray.
Of course, this way of Bernard’s of facing the riddle of the Song of Songs was done in the rarefied setting of monastic life. One might think, therefore, that his solution could not be widely available. But, against this thought, it seems to me that Guido of Monte Rochon’s Handbook for Curates bespeaks a similar, if modified, solution meant for the general believer.
In Guido of Monte Rochon’s Handbook for Curates the Song of Songs is alluded to only once. Only at the very end of the Handbook for Curates, in fact in its very last section before the author takes his leave, and only after laying out the sacraments, the author finally discusses the “gifts of the blessed,” or what is promised to those who maintain the commandments discussed before. It is in this context that Guido finally deems it worthy to bring in the Song of Songs. Like Bernard, Guido stresses the union with God described in the Song of Songs, as in the line “I held him and would not let him go,” and that this union is the last and most perfect gift of the blessed. What this seems to me to imply is that Guido, in the context of regular parishes, again like Bernard, recognizes that progress in faith is not only necessary, but led to by faith itself in order to appreciate the height and sublimity of the Song of Songs, which cannot but originally be an object of the greatest perplexity until and spiritual conversion and practice is maintained.
What these and many other readings in this course have led me to believe is that Medieval Christianity, expansive in every sense, presented believers with an integrity and comprehensiveness of vision in comparison with which our splintered civilization pales. We tend to specialize and get hung up where they saw whole vistas. That the Medieval Christians had a solution for the difficulties of the Song of Songs that worked by seeing it as a culmination of a whole preparation seems to me one of several important confirmations of this phenomenon.
If we read the Song of Songs without prejudice today, perhaps we can take in this lesson. I would suggest that our perplexity before the Song of Songs is not really different from the perplexity that Bernard of Clairvaux and Guido of Monte Rochon already had an answer for: one fails to see that the beauty of the Song of Songs lies in its being both a seeking an end of what is sought. It does not just rest at the end, but puts love, which is the active love of God, at the end. It imitates this, as Bernard notes, by using novel, striking, and intimate language that spurs us to appreciate the veil of its figurations. In this way it prefigures Jesus as both “the way” and “the truth and the life.” One cannot, therefore, separate the Song of Songs from its place in the comprehensive whole of faith, for this would be to treat it as an end before the way, as if it did not itself, even from the darkness of night, call for an ever-renewed seeking and seeing!
By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth
- LB
You would benefit greatly, I think, from our conversations in class! You raise questions here about how Bernard and Guido read the Song of Songs which flow nicely from their texts, but we have been putting the texts in a fuller context that needs considering here. What did you make of Bernard's concerns about experience and who has access to the understanding of the Song? It is true that he sets up his monastic brothers as the ones best able to understand the text, but he excludes even himself from being able to talk about the experience of the kiss. Think, too, about what it means to desire the kiss—we have talked extensively about the desire to see God, but here Bernard takes that desire further to wanting the kiss of the mouth! How is Bernard's description of the kiss affected, for example, by the image of Christ in Majesty which we have been talking about? We also talked in class about the way Guido presents the "basics," and the effect of starting with the Creed as compared with the Ten Commadments in thinking about what it means to be Christian. Mysticism or behavior? Belief or petition? There is much to unpack here!
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