Sämtliche Werke: lateinisch/deutsch, VI by Bernhard von Clairvaux (review)

book reviews777 asks his readers to depend excessively on his research which is clearly limited in both intensity and scope. But sometimes he is clearly wrong. For example, Bishop Miguel ofTarazona was not French but Aragonese, and Bishop Pedro of Librana may well not have been Bearnese despite Lacarra's assertions to that effect (p. 225). Bishop Miguel was, in fact, the brother of the Aragonese noble Fortún Aznárez. Moreover, Fortún did not disappear as lord of Tarazona after 1 126 (p. 126) but was tenant in 1 132 and was so as late as 1 149.These may be particulars, but they do bear on one major argument of Stalls regarding the extent , and indirectly the motivation, ofAlfonso Fs employment of French nobles and churchmen in his new conquest. Again a wider frame of reference might have deterred the author from too hastily accepting the ability of anyAragonese noble to field a force ofthree hundred knights (p. 139). Such a force required royal resources as even his own footnotes suggest. Or again, it is perhaps unwise to depend too much on a copy of a charter of confirmation by Alfonso VII in 1 134 to estabUsh the priviledges of the barons and infanzons of the middle Ebro (p. 276).The diplomatic ofthat document is strange by Leonese standards, and its language and orthography strongly suggest the thirteenth rather than the twelfth century. In brief, this book wUl be useful, but it is seriously flawed, and caution is indicated . It is a pity that it was rushed into publication without further work.The basic conception has great promise. Bernard F. Reilly Villanova University Sämtliche Werke: lateinisch/deutsch, VI. By Bernhard von Clairvaux. Edited by Gerhard B.Winkler. (Innsbruck:TyroUa-Verlag. 1995. Pp. 711. 980 öS; 138,DM .) Bernard's sermons 39 to 86 on the Song ofSongs are translated into German in this hefty volume.The German is faced by the Latin, reproduced photomechanically from volume 2 of the critical edition by Jean Leclercq et al. (Sancti Bernardi opera [Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1958]).The errors in that edition , remarkably few in number and usuaUy obvious typos, are listed and corrected on pages 697-699 of this volume. The translators, Hildegard Brem and Kassian Lauterer (both Austrian Cistercians ), are to be commended for the accuracy and clarity oftheir work.Their accompUshment is enhanced by the remarkable fashion in which they have captured the spirit of Bernard's lofty and complex style. That style is discussed in some detaU in ProfessorWinkler's introduction (pp. 31-43). He sees Bernard employing the various classical styUstic levels in a manner appropriate to the content of the sermons:"elevated" style (stilus sublimis) for his doctrinal statements, "artistic" (stilus subtilis) more often for his moral 778book reviews teachings, "usual" or "customary" (stilus moderatus) when conveying an apparently reaUstic description of everyday monastic Ufe. In the last, Winkler observes, Bernard is seen as a close observer of human nature as weU as employing an art of characterization worthy of an epic poet. Winkler comes down convincingly on the side of those who see aU these sermons as Bernard's own, despite the stylistic anomaUes present in the last two (85-86), which have led some to see these as from the hands of Bernard's secretaries . I agree with Winkler. But I disagree when Winkler describes Bernard's Weltanschauung as "Neo-Platonic-Augustinian." Bernard is surelyAugustinian in his theology of grace, but his anthropology is poles apart from Augustine's. There is no hint of Neo-Platonism in Bernard's epistemology or metaphysics. On page 37,Winkler declares:"It is widely known that Bernard was not a theologian who thought or wrote in a systematic manner." One who has read Bernard's treatises De gratia et libero arbitrio or De diligendo Deo might well disagree. Even in the case of the Song sermons,Winkler himseU discovers a pattern (pp. 39-41). The first series of sermons (1-38), he says, concerns "dogmatic " theology, the second (39-86) "moral" theology. I suspect Winkler is as uncomfortable as I with this categorization, since he acknowledges (on p. 41) that the distinction had not developed Ui...