Bernard-of-Clairvaux
Short answer: Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) was a Cistercian abbot and preacher whose eighty-six sermons on the Song of Solomon treated the book as an allegory of the soul's loving pursuit of Christ. He read lines like Song of Solomon 1:2-4 as the bride's longing for the bridegroom, and he pressed that longing into the daily life of prayer, obedience, and monastic community. Bernard is not Scripture, and some of his readings go beyond what the text warrants. But his instinct that the Song is about love for Christ, and that such love must be fed by the whole Bible, remains a useful corrective to both cold doctrine and ungrounded mysticism. As 1 Corinthians 3:6-7 says, "I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the increase."
Who Bernard of Clairvaux Was
Bernard was born near Dijon in 1090 and entered the monastery of Citeaux in 1112 or 1113, bringing companions with him. Citeaux was a small, strict reforming house, and within a few years Bernard was sent to found a daughter monastery at Clairvaux, where he served as abbot for the rest of his life. The Cistercian movement he helped lead sought simplicity, manual labor, and undistracted prayer, a deliberate reaction against the wealth and complexity of older Benedictine houses.
Bernard's influence spread far beyond his cloister. He wrote treatises, preached widely, corresponded with popes and kings, and became one of the most consulted churchmen of his century. He was canonized in 1174 and later named a Doctor of the Church. Yet he insisted that his authority was pastoral rather than academic. He was not a university theologian in the manner of his near-contemporary Peter Abelard, whom he opposed sharply on the doctrine of the atonement and the use of reason in theology.
His temperament matters for reading him. Bernard was a man of intense affections, and he wrote about love with a directness that surprises readers who expect medieval theology to be dry. That warmth is both the strength and the risk of his biblical interpretation. He could move readers toward Christ, and he could also let personal devotion run ahead of what the biblical author actually wrote.
His Eighty-Six Sermons on the Song of Solomon
Bernard began preaching on the Song of Solomon around 1135 and continued until his death, producing eighty-six sermons. He never finished the book; the sermons halt partway through the third chapter. This is worth noticing, because it shows that his project was not a commentary in the modern sense. It was an extended exercise in meditative reading, moving slowly through the text and stopping wherever a phrase opened into prayer.
The opening verses set his agenda. Song of Solomon 1:2 says, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth; for your love is better than wine." Bernard read the kiss as a figure of the intimate knowledge of Christ granted to a believing soul, and the wine as the joy of the Holy Spirit. He did not claim these meanings were the plain sense of the verse. He treated them as the spiritual sense, available to a reader who had already received the literal words and now meditated on them in prayer.
He returned often to the bride's pursuit: Song of Solomon 1:4 declares, "Take me away with you. Let's hurry." For Bernard this became a picture of the soul asking God to draw it forward, admitting that it cannot run on its own strength. The sermons are less a system than a long conversation between the abbot and the text, carried on in front of his monks.
Why He Read the Song as Love for Christ
Bernard inherited an interpretive tradition that read the Song of Solomon as an allegory of divine love. Jewish readers had long applied it to God and Israel; Christian readers, following the pattern of Ephesians 5:25-27 and Revelation 19:7-9, applied it to Christ and the church, and sometimes to Christ and the individual soul. Bernard worked mostly with the second application, the soul as bride, though he assumed the corporate reading as well.
His rationale was devotional rather than linguistic. He argued that a book so full of desire must have been given to teach desire, and that desire must have an object worthy of it. If the Song is merely human romance, he thought, it cannot bear the weight the church has placed on it. If it is about Christ, then it trains the affections toward their proper end. He would have agreed with Psalm 42:1-2, "As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, God."
Modern readers should note that Bernard was not alone and not uncontested. Some medieval interpreters preferred the plain sense of the poem as a celebration of married love, and many modern scholars read it primarily as Hebrew love poetry with little allegorical intent. Bernard's reading is a historic option, not the only faithful one.
Love, Humility, and the Stages of Ascent
Bernard's most famous theological contribution is his teaching on the love of God, laid out in his treatise On Loving God and woven through the sermons. He described stages in which love begins with self-love, moves to loving God for the sake of one's own benefit, advances to loving God for God's own sake, and only rarely reaches a state in which the soul loves itself only for God's sake. He was careful to say the highest stage is rarely and briefly attained.
Humility was the necessary companion. Bernard preached that no one may claim to love God while despising the neighbor or ignoring the plain commandments. The mystical ascent was not an escape from ordinary obedience. He pressed this against monks who wanted contemplative heights without the daily grind of correction, work, and community life, and against clergy whose learning had not made them humble.
Readers who have been shaped by later devotion may find these stages familiar. They resemble teaching found in writers such as Augustine and, much later, in Protestant devotional works. Bernard's version is distinctive in its confidence that love, not merely intellectual assent, is the goal of theology, and that the Song of Solomon is the school where that love is trained.
How Bernard Handled the Plain Sense of Scripture
Bernard did not despise the literal meaning. He insisted on beginning there and moving outward. His practice was to take the words at face value first, then ask what spiritual truth they served, and finally to apply that truth to the hearer's actual condition. This three-step movement, common in medieval monastic reading, is often called the spiritual or allegorical sense. It was not a licence to say anything; it was governed by the rule of faith and by the rest of Scripture.
At its best, this method produces passages of genuine pastoral power. Bernard would take a line about the bride's absent bridegroom and speak to a monk who felt abandoned in prayer, using the text to name the experience and then redirect it to hope. At its weakest, the method can turn any object in the poem into a symbol with little constraint from the author's intention. He interpreted the foxes of Song of Solomon 2:15 as heresies and the wall as the discipline of the church, readings that later expositors have not generally followed.
His practice is worth comparing to 2 Corinthians 11:3, which warns that minds can be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. Bernard's answer would have been that true spiritual reading returns to Christ and does not wander into speculation. Whether his own allegories always stayed within that boundary is a fair question, and honest readers should admit the line is not always easy to draw.
His Wider Ministry and Controversies
Bernard was not only a contemplative. He was drawn into the politics of his age, sometimes reluctantly and sometimes aggressively. He advised popes, mediated disputes, and promoted the Second Crusade in 1146. That crusade failed, and Bernard was widely blamed for it, though he had preached it with the assumption that it would be a defensive and penitential undertaking. The episode is a reminder that even great devotional writers can be badly wrong about practical matters.
He also engaged in controversy against Peter Abelard, whom he accused of rationalizing the faith and of teaching in ways that endangered simple believers. Bernard's methods in that dispute have been criticized as harsh, and the line between defending orthodoxy and silencing a rival is genuinely difficult to assess at this distance. He was also involved in the condemnation of the theologian Gilbert of Poitiers, again with mixed results.
The point for a Bible teacher is not to whitewash Bernard nor to dismiss him. He was a fallible man who wrote better about love than he sometimes practiced in public conflict. That is not unusual in church history, and it is a warning against treating any teacher as an authority equal to Scripture.
What Bernard Gets Right for Readers Today
Three things are worth taking from Bernard. First, the affections matter. A Christian who knows the right doctrines but never desires Christ has missed something the Bible treats as central. That is the plain burden of Psalm 42:1-2, and Bernard preached it without embarrassment. Second, slow reading repays effort. His method of lingering over a verse, praying it, and applying it to the self is a useful counterweight to the quick scan that modern devotional reading often becomes.
Third, use the whole Bible. Bernard's sermons are saturated with Paul, the Gospels, the Psalms, and the prophets, not just the Song. When he allegorized, he checked his reading against the wider canon. Readers who only dabble in the Song, without the Gospels and Epistles, will produce an unbalanced devotion. As 1 Corinthians 3:6-7 says, "I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the increase," and growth is God's work through the whole counsel of Scripture.
Finally, Bernard models humility about his own interpretation. He often admits uncertainty, offers a reading as one possibility, and moves on. That is a posture modern teachers could imitate more often, especially on a book as difficult as the Song of Solomon.
Biblical fidelity check
Song of Solomon 1:2-4 is a poem of longing and delight. It does not name Christ, does not identify the bride, and does not announce an allegorical code. What the passage establishes is that the bride desires the bridegroom, that his love is valued above wine, and that she asks to be drawn after him. It does not establish that the song is primarily about the individual soul, nor that every image has a hidden spiritual counterpart. Those are interpretive decisions, made by later readers, including Bernard, on the basis of the whole canon.
A common misreading is to treat Bernard's allegory as the only devout option, or conversely to treat it as a distortion that no serious Christian should use. Both go too far. The New Testament does use bridal imagery for Christ and his people, as in Revelation 19:7-9, so a Christ-centered reading of the Song is not arbitrary. But Bernard's particular applications, such as identifying individual objects with specific church controversies, are his own and carry no authority. Faithful Christians differ here, and the differences should be stated rather than smoothed over.
Other passages that speak to Song of Solomon 1:2-4
Themes of longing, love, and union with Christ run through the whole Bible. For a canonical overview, see Song of Solomon Bible Study: Seeing Jesus in Song of Solomon. For the immediate context of the verses Bernard preached, see Song of Solomon 1: Love, Longing, and Beauty. The next chapter's imagery of spring and invitation is treated in Song of Solomon 2: Love's Springtime and Invitation. And the search for the beloved in the city is examined in Seeking and Finding Love in Song of Solomon 3.
Frequently asked questions
Was Bernard of Clairvaux a mystic or a theologian?
Both, though he resisted the label of academic theologian. He wrote doctrinal treatises, engaged in controversy, and advised popes, yet his most lasting work is devotional. His sermons on the Song of Solomon combine careful reading, prayer, and pastoral application. He insisted that theology without love is empty, and that love without sound doctrine drifts. Modern readers may find him closer to a pastor-theologian than to a university professor.
Should I read the Song of Solomon allegorically like Bernard did?
You may read it that way, but you are not required to. The text itself does not announce an allegory, and many faithful interpreters read it as Hebrew love poetry that also illustrates covenant love. Bernard's Christ-centered reading has deep roots in church history and is not arbitrary given the New Testament's bridal imagery. The key is to let the plain sense stand and to avoid treating any allegory as the only valid meaning.
What is the most important lesson from Bernard's sermons?
Probably that desire for God is not a lesser form of devotion but a biblical one. Bernard took Psalm 42:1-2 seriously and built his whole approach on the soul's longing for its Maker. He also insisted that such longing must be shaped by the whole Bible, not by private feelings. His sermons are best read as an invitation to slow, prayerful reading rather than as a code to be copied.
