Eulogium sponsi de sponsa: Canons, Monks, and the Song of Songs

EULOGIUM SPONSI DE SPONSA: CANONS, MONKS, AND THE SONG OF SONGS* l]HE SONG OF SONGS, eight short chapters of love yrics found in the collection of wisdom literature atributed to Solomon, is the most enigmatic and problematic book of the Bible. It is also one of the most frequently commented upon books of the canon. Whether this is because of or in spite of its enigmatic nature depends on one's perspective: the Song of Songs tells no sacred history, gives no clear prophetic or theological revelation, and does not mention God. Yet for thousands of years, Jews and Christians alike have preserved it in the canon of scripture, and used it in liturgy. Exegetes saw it as an admirable vehicle for allegory, and so the Song of Songs exerted an enormous influence on Jewish and Christian spirituality and mysticism. Perhaps enthusiasm for the book was at its peak in the Christian Middle Ages: at least seventy Latin commentaries on the text survive from the seventh to the fourteenth centuries .1 These are allegorical expositions in the tradition of the first great Christian exegete, Origen of Alexandria.2 *A version of this paper was presented at Yale University in April, 1983. My revisions have been guided by the discussion which followed. A grant from the American Philosophical Society allowed me to examine important manuscripts in Paris. 1 F. Ohly, Hoheliedsstudien (Wiesbaden, 1958) and H. Riedlinger, Di11 Makellosigkeit der Kirche in den Lateinischen Hoheliedkommentaren des Mittelalters are two comprehensive studies of Christian Song of Songs interpretation . Riedlinger's is a more specialized account of the ecclesiological interpretations. 2 Origen's commentary on the Song of Songs, extant only to 2: 15, and his two homilies on the Song of Songs 1: 1 to 2: 14, survive in the Latin transla· tions of Jerome and Rufinus. See the text in CGS 33, Origenes Werke, 8, ed. W. Baehrens (Leipzig, 1925), and R. P. Lawson, trans., Origen: The Song of Songs Commentary and Homilies, Ancient Christian Writers 26 (New York, 1956). 551 55~ E. ANN MATTER Origen understood the love songs to be between Christ and the church or between God and the individual soul. Later exegetes elaborated on both the ecclesiological and the mystical readings of the Song of Songs, and less frequently interpreted it as the love between God and the Virgin Mary. Medieval Christian commentary on the Song of Songs was dominated by authors in some form of religious life, with monks of the Benedictine and Cistercian orders predominating, and members of various orders of canons close behind. It is hardly surprising that such a tradition flourished in the spiritual and intellectual climate of twelfth-century Europe. The evangelical fervor of this century was characteristically expressed in symbolic language; the Song of Songs provided a familiar and emotionally powerful vocabulary for these expressions .3 It was in the twelfth century that Bernard of Clairvaux wrote the famous series of 86 homilies on the Song of Songs 1: I to 3: 3 for the spiritual edification of his monastery.4 The Song of Songs was also extremely influential in the flowering twelfth-century cult of the Virgin Mary.5 But most twelfth-century treatments of the text, like the Eulogiurn sponsi de sponsa, the subject of this essay, take as their subject the drama of love between a demanding but forgiving deity and the errant human soul. The Eulogium sponsi de sponsa is associated with the a M. D. Chenu, La theologie aux douzieme sieole (Paris, 1976) pays spe· cial attention to the mentality of twelfth-century symbolism, and to the evangelical fervor of the period, pp. 223-398. 4 J. Leclercq, H. Rochais, C. Talbot, ed., Sanoti Bernardi Opera, I, II, (Rome, 1957, 1958). See also Leclercq's introductory essay "Were the Sermons on the Song of Songs Delivered in Chapter?" in Bernard of Olairvaum, On the Song of Songs II, Cistercian Fathers Series (Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1976) pp. vii-xxx. 5 The ancient mariological tradition of Song of Songs interpretation was primarily liturgical, centering on a few verses used for the Feasts of the Nativity and Assumption of the Virgin Mary, cf. J. A. Aldama, Maria en la Patristioa...