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An emphasis in modern research is placed on attempting to identify the sources behind ancient writings—to prove how much of what an author says he or she borrowed from somebody else, and to add a footnote to each identified quote giving the reference. Supposedly, the more footnotes, the more learned were the author and the person being quoted by the author. A quotation from the Lord’s Prayer must have a reference to this or that Gospel, with chapter and verse—as if it could not have come out of the memory of the Christian writer; out of the Gospel through the reader of the Gospel. This approach, however, does not apply very well to the great genius of the 12th century, St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

Though it has been possible to recognize the ideas of previous writers in his writings, it is, however, rare that Bernard quotes somebody else’s formulations, that he says that he has read this or that somewhere else. Certainly it happened that as he was writing a particular book he was at the same time reading a work of St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, or someone else. It is obvious that he has surely read in Latin the biblical commentaries of Origen. But in his writings he simply depends on the whole tradition of the Church Fathers, especially on the readings he has heard during divine services.

The most recent discovery concerning this is that he was well acquainted with the philosophical and theological works of the fifth-century thinker, Boethius, although he does not mention him by name. He certainly also read the treatise of Cicero, On Friendship, before writing his own book, On the Love of God, and he drew some ideas from it, though he interpreted them in a new way. He quotes some classical Latin writers, especially poets; but they are rather a source for his literary art and skill than for his own thoughts.

Some indications of his dependence on previous writings is the way he quotes the Scriptures according to the Latin translation given by the Rule of St. Benedict or by some other author. However, Bernard is not a professor; he scarcely gives quotations, with the exception of those from the Bible. He seems to have been a rapid reader, except when it came to reading one book: the Bible.

If Bernard can be said to have any “sources,” they are two: the Bible and his own experience. On one occasion he begins a work by saying “Today we are reading in the book of experience.” Actually he did so every day, and this experience (a word he uses frequently) is twofold: the biblical experience and his own experience interpreted in the light of the biblical one.

What did this biblical experience mean to him? First of all, it meant the experience of Jesus Christ himself. Then it meant the experience of all those who prepared the way for Christ, and of all those who after him thought about him: patriarchs, prophets, and apostles. Also, the experience of these forerunners and followers should provoke in the readers a Christian experience—a sharing in the experience of Christ.

Let us look at the first pages of the first treatise Bernard wrote. It was supposed to be On Humility. But from the very beginning, in the first lines, he quotes the Lord saying, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” When he comments upon this line he does not write on humility, but on truth; the Truth that Jesus is in himself. Immediately, he comes across the experience of Christ: how did he, Truth as he was, become the Truth for us? He had to learn out of experience what it is to live as a human being. Bernard quotes the Epistle to the Hebrews asserting that Christ “learned,” and then says what he learned: “Our Saviour has given us the example. He willed to suffer so that he might know compassion; to learn mercy he shared our misery. It is written ‘He learned obedience from the things he suffered (Hebrews 5:8), and he learned mercy in the same way; … what in his divine nature he knows from all eternity he learned in time.’ ” (On the Steps of Humility, no. 1).

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