Liber Tertius, Caput Primum. Pontificis esse, non tam ut omnes suo dominio subjiciat, sed ut omnes, quantum fieri potest, ad Ecclesiae gremium perducat.
The World as Your Inheritance
Bernard opens the third book by recalling the apostolic mission to the whole world and reminds Eugene that he has inherited that vast charge as steward, not owner.
The end of the previous book sets the beginning for this one. Therefore, according to that promise, you should consider the things that are under you. What those things are, you shouldn't think I should be asked about, best of priests Eugene; perhaps you should seek more rightly what they are not. One must go out into the world to explore what does not pertain to your care. Your parents are destined not for some regions, but to subdue the world itself: 'Go into all the world,' it was said to them. They themselves, indeed, selling garments, wish to buy swords, fiery speech, and a vehement spirit, powerful arms for God. Where did the renowned victors, the sons of those shaken out, not reach? Where did the sharp arrows of the powerful not reach, along with devastating coals? Indeed, their voice has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.✦ Those words, set ablaze with the fire that the Lord sent upon the earth, pierced deeply and set everything alight.✦ The most vigorous warriors fell, but they did not yield: even in death they triumphed. Their dominion has been strengthened beyond measure: they have been established as princes over all the earth. You have succeeded them as their inheritance. So you are the heir, and the world is your inheritance.✦ But inasmuch as this portion falls to you — or will have fallen to them — that is something to be weighed with sober consideration. For I do not think it is so in every respect, but certainly to some extent (as it seems to me), a stewardship over him has been entrusted to you — not possession given over to you.
Yielding Possession to Christ
Bernard warns that the earth belongs to Christ alone by creation, redemption, and the Father's gift, and that Eugene's share is stewardship, not dominion.
If you keep seizing even this as your own, the one who says "The earth is mine, and everything in it" contradicts you.✦ You are not the one the prophet speaks of: "And all the earth shall be his possession."✦ This is Christ, who claims possession for himself — by the right of creation, by the merit of redemption, and by the Father's gift. For to whom else was it said, "Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession"?✦ Yield possession and dominion to him; you are to have charge of it. This is your part: do not reach out your hand beyond it.
The Steward, Not the Master
Through the analogies of steward and tutor, Bernard insists that presiding means serving, and he warns that the desire to dominate is the gravest spiritual danger for a bishop.
What do you say? You don't deny that you're in charge and that you forbid others to lord over them? Certainly. As if the one who presides isn't doing well when he governs with care. Isn't it true that both the estate is subject to the steward and the young master is subject to the tutor? Yet neither is that one the owner of the estate, nor is he the master of his own master. So you are in charge so that you may provide, so that you may care, so that you may attend to, so that you may serve. You are in charge so that you may be of service; you are in charge so that you may be a faithful and prudent servant, whom the Lord has appointed over his household. To what end? So that you give them food in due time — that is, that you may dispense, not dominate. Do this and don't desire to dominate, lest you, who are a man, long to lord it over people, so that no injustice gains mastery over you. But enough — and more than enough — was said above, when the question under discussion was who you are. I add, however, this as well: for I fear no poison, no sword for you more than the desire to dominate. Surely, however much credit you give yourself, if you are not greatly deceived, you think you have received nothing more than the great Apostles. Remember now the voice of that one: I am a debtor both to the wise and to the foolish.✦ And if you do not consider it as owed to you, remember this at the same time: the burdensome title of debtor is fitting for one serving, rather than for one dominating.
A Debtor to All
Recalling the Gospel servant questioned about his debt, Bernard exhorts Eugene to see himself as debtor to wise and foolish alike, and therefore to unbelievers—Jews, Greeks, and Gentiles.
A servant in the Gospel hears: "How much do you owe my lord?"✦ So if you recognize that you're not a ruler over the wise and the foolish but their debtor, you must take the greatest care for yourself and consider with all vigilance how those who lack wisdom may grow wise and those who have been foolish may come to their senses. But no kind of foolishness is, if I may put it this way, more foolish than unbelief. Therefore you are a debtor to unbelievers as well—to Jews, Greeks, and Gentiles.✦
The Scope of Pastoral Zeal
Bernard lays out the bishop's duty to bring unbelievers to faith, correct heretics and schismatics, and then probes why the Gospel's advance has been hindered.
So it's your responsibility to make every effort you can: bring unbelievers to faith, keep those who've turned to it from being turned away, bring back those who've fallen away; further, set the crooked right, call those who've been overthrown back to the truth — that those who overthrow others be defeated by unanswerable reasoning, so that they themselves may be corrected, if that's possible; or if not, that they lose the authority and power to subvert others. Nor should you entirely overlook this worst kind of foolish people. I mean heretics and schismatics: for these are both overthrown themselves and overthrows of others — dogs tearing apart, foxes dealing in deceit. There will be, I say, such people especially — whom your zeal must either correct, lest they perish, or restrain, lest they destroy others. Well then, as for the Jews, time excuses you: they have their appointed term, which cannot be anticipated. The fullness of the nations must come first.✦ But what do you say about the nations themselves? Rather, what does your own reflection answer you as you probe the question this way? Why did it seem good to the fathers to set a limit to the Gospel, to suspend the word of faith, as long as unbelief persists? By what reasoning, do we suppose, did the swiftly running word come to a halt? Who first held back this saving course? And perhaps a cause unknown to them, or necessity itself, could have stood in the way.
Why Withhold Christ?
With mounting urgency Bernard asks by what conscience the Church can fail to offer Christ to those who do not have him, since faith comes only through preaching, as the apostolic missions show.
What reason do we have for holding back? With what confidence, with what conscience, do we not even offer Christ to those who don't have him? Or do we hold back the truth of God in injustice? And indeed, the fullness of the nations must come in at some point. Are we waiting so that faith may fall upon them? To whom has it happened by chance to believe? How will they believe without someone preaching? Peter was sent to Cornelius, Philip to the eunuch, and — if we look for a more recent example — Augustine, sent by blessed Gregory, handed on the form of faith to the English.
Wounds Within the Church
Bernard turns to the Greek Church's divided faith and the creeping spread of heresy, rebuking those who value Spanish gold over the salvation of peoples and calling Eugene to heal this wound.
And about these things, you should be with yourself. I'll add that regarding the stubbornness of the Greeks—those who are with us and those who aren't—they're joined in faith but divided in peace, though they've strayed from the right paths in their faith. And also about heresy, which secretly creeps in almost everywhere; among some, it rages openly. For the little ones, the Church eagerly swallows them up both secretly and publicly. You ask where this is? Those of you who often travel to the land of the South—look, these people know and can tell you. They go and return through their midst, or pass by; but we haven't yet heard what good they've done with them. And perhaps we would have heard, unless the salvation of the people had been valued less than the gold of Spain. It's also your duty to provide a remedy for this wound.
The Ambition That Devours
Bernard laments how worldly ambition has infected the Catholic Church, breeding hatred and lawsuits, and how it invades even the bishop's palace and sacred leisure, favoring ambition over the cries of the oppressed.
But there's a kind of foolishness that has now made even the wisdom of faith itself nearly stupid. How has this same poison infected nearly the whole Catholic Church? For when each of us seeks even within the Church what is our own, it comes about that, envying one another and provoking one another, we are driven to hatred, stirred up to wrongs, armed for lawsuits, sharpened for deceit, carried toward slander, bursting into curses, oppressed by the stronger, and oppressing the weaker. How worthily and praiseworthily is the meditation of your heart set against so deadly a kind of foolishness — a foolishness that you see has laid hold of the very body of Christ, which is the multitude of believers? O ambition of those who strive, what a cross! Tormenting everyone, yet pleasing everyone — how is that possible? Nothing torments more bitterly, nothing disturbs more grievously; yet among wretched mortals nothing is more eagerly pursued than its business. Are the thresholds of the Apostles not now worn down more by ambition than by devotion? But your palace doesn't echo with his voice all day long, does it? Doesn't the entire discipline of the laws and canons labor for his profit all day long? Doesn't all of Italy gape at his spoils with insatiable greed? What is this — no, what else is it — if not something that not merely interrupts but amputates your own spiritual pursuits? How often has the restless and troubling evil brought your sacred and fruitful leisure to nothing before its time? There is one thing that the oppressed cry out to you for, and another thing that ambition, working through you, strives to control in the Church. You must not fail the oppressed, and you must not yield to ambition in the least. But how unjustly ambition is favored, while the oppressed are scorned!
Debtor to the Oppressed and the Ambitious
Bernard concludes that Eugene is debtor to both the oppressed, whom he must lift up, and the ambitious, whom he must restrain.
To both, however, you are a debtor — to the one, so you may lift them up; to the other, so you may restrain them.
Read the original Latin
Finis superioris libri huic principium ponit. Itaque juxta promissum illius consideranda quae sub te sunt. Quaenam sint illa, non est quod a me quaerendum putes, sacerdotum optime Eugeni; rectius fortasse quae non sint quaeras. Orbe exeundum ei qui forte volet explorare quae non ad tuam pertinent curam. Parentes tui destinati sunt non aliquas regiones, sed ipsum debellaturi orbem: Ite in orbem universum, dictum est illis. Ipsi vero vendentes tunicas, emere gladios, ignitum eloquium et spiritum vehementem, arma potentia Deo. Quo non pervenerunt victores inclyti, filii excussorum? Quo non sagittae potentium acutae cum carbonibus desolatoriis?
Et quidem in omnem terram exivit sonus eorum, et in fines orbis terrae verba eorum. Penetrabant et incendebant verba illa incensa igni, quem Dominus misit in terram. Occumbebant strenuissimi bellatores, sed non succumbebant: triumphabant et mortui. Nimis confortatus est principatus eorum: constituti sunt principes super omnem terram. Eis tu successisti in haereditatem. Ita tu haeres et orbis haereditas. At quatenus haec portio te contingit, aut contigerit illos, id sobria consideratione pensandum. Non enim per omnem reor modum, sed sane quodam tenus (ut mihi videtur) dispensatio tibi super illum credita est, non data possessio.
Si pergis usurpare et hanc, contradicit tibi qui dicit: Meus est orbis terrae et plenitudino ejus. Non tu ille de quo propheta: Et erit omnis terra possessio ejus. Christus hic est, qui possessionem sibi vindicat, et jure creationis, et merito redemptionis, et dono Patris. Cui enim alteri dictum est, Postula a me, et dabo tibi gentes haereditatem tuam, et possessionem tuam terminos terrae. Possessionem et dominium cede huic: tu curam illius habe. Pars tua haec: ultra ne extendas manum.
Quid, inquis? non negas praeesse et dominari vetas? Plane sic. Quasi non bene praesit, qui praeest in sollicitudine. Numquid non et villa villico et parvus dominus subjectus est paedagogo? Nec tamen villae ille, nec is sui domini dominus est. Ita et tu praesis ut provideas, ut consulas, ut procures, ut serves. Praesis ut prosis; praesis ut fidelis servus et prudens, quem constituit Dominus super familiam suam.
Ad quid? Ut des illis escam in tempore; hoc est, ut dispenses, non imperes. Hoc fac et dominari ne affectes hominum homo, ut non dominetur tui omnis injustitia. At satis superque id intimatum supra, cum, quis sis, disputaretur. Addo tamen et hoc: nam nullum tibi venenum, nullum gladium plus formido, quam libidinem dominandi. Certe ut multum tibi tribuas, si multum deceptus non es, nil te existimas plus accepisse a magnis Apostolis. Recordare nunc vocis illius: Sapientibus et insipientibus debitor sum. Et si non indebitam tibi ipsam censes, hoc quoque simul memento, debitoris molestum nomen servienti potius, quam dominanti congruere.
Servus in Evangelio audit: Quantum debes domino meo? Ergo si te agnoscis sapientibus et insipientibus non dominatorem, sed debitorem, curandum summopere tibi et tota vigilantia considerandum, quomodo et qui non sapiunt sapiant et qui desipuere resipiscant. At nullum genus insipientiae infidelitate, ut sic loquar, insipientius. Ergo et infidelibus debitor es, Judaeis, Graecis et Gentibus.
Interest proinde tua, dare operam quam possis, ut increduli convertantur ad fidem, conversi non avertantur, aversi revertantur: porro perversi ordinentur ad rectitudinem, subversi ad veritatem revocentur: subversores invictis rationibus convincantur, ut vel emendentur ipsi, si fieri potest; vel si non, perdant auctoritatem facultatemque alios subvertendi. Non omnino et ab hoc insipientium genere pessimo tibi dissimulandum. Dico autem haereticos schismaticosque: nam hi sunt subversi, et subversores; canes ad scissionem, vulpes ad fraudem. Erunt, inquam, hujusmodi maxime tuo studio aut corrigendi, ne pereant; aut ne perimant, coercendi. Esto, de Judaeis excusat te tempus: habent terminum suum qui praeveniri non poterit. Plenitudinem gentium praeire oportet. Sed de ipsis gentibus quid respondes? Imo quid tua consideratio respondet tibi percunctanti sic?
Quid visum est patribus ponere metam Evangelio, verbum suspendere fidei, donec infidelitas durat? Qua ratione, putamus, substitit velociter currens sermo? quis primus inhibuit hunc salutarem cursum? Et illis causa forte quam nescimus, aut necessitas potuit obstitisse.
Nobis quae dissimulandi ratio est? Qua fiducia, qua conscientia Christum non vel offerimus eis qui non habent? An veritatem Dei in injustitia detinemus? Et quidem quandoque perveniat gentium plenitudo necesse est. Exspectamus ut in eas incidat fides? Cui credere casu contigit? Quomodo credent sine praedicante? Petrus ad Cornelium, Philippus ad eunuchum missi sunt, et, si exemplum recentius quaeremus, Augustinus a beato Gregorio destinatus, formam fidei tradidit Anglis.
Et de his tu ita tecum. Ego addo et de pertinacia Graecorum, qui nobiscum sunt, et nobiscum non sunt, juncti fide, pace divisi, quanquam et in fide ipsa claudicaverint a semitis rectis. Et item de haeresi, quae clam pene ubique serpit; apud aliquos saevit palam. Nam parvulos Ecclesiae passim et publice deglutire festinat. Quaeris ubi sit hoc? Vestri, qui terram Austri tam saepe visitant, ecce hi sciunt et possunt dicere tibi. Eunt et redeunt per medium illorum, aut transeunt secus: sed quid boni adhuc cum illis egerint, necdum audivimus. Et forsitan audissemus, nisi prae auro Hispaniae salus populi viluisset.
Tuum est et plagae huic remedium providere.
Sed est insipientia, quae ipsam quoque jam propemodum stultam fecit sapientiam fidei. Quomodo et ipsam Catholicam pene totam hoc virus infecit? Nam dum et in ipsa quique quae nostra sunt quaerimus, fit ut invicem invidentes, invicem provocantes, exerceamur ad odia, animemur ad injurias, armemur ad lites, cavillemur ad dolos, feramur ad detractiones, prorumpamus ad maledicta, opprimamur a fortioribus, opprimamus infirmiores. Quam digne et laudabiliter occupatur meditatio cordis tui adversus tam pestilens insipientiae genus, quod corpus ipsum Christi, quae est multitudo credentium, occupasse consideras? O ambitio ambientium crux! quomodo omnes torquens, omnibus places? Nil acerbius cruciat, nil molestius inquietat; nil tamen apud miseros mortales celebrius negotiis ejus. An non limina Apostolorum plus jam ambitio, quam devotio terit?
At non vocibus ejus vestrum tota die resultat palatium? An non quaestibus ejus tota legum canonumque disciplina insudat? An non spoliis ejus omnis Italica inhiat inexplebili aviditate rapacitas? Quid ita, imo quid aliud tua ipsius spiritualia studia non saltem intercidit, sed abscidit. Quoties sancta ac fecunda tua abortiri otia fecit inquietum et inquietans malum? Aliud est quod ab oppressis appellatur ad te, aliud autem quod ambitio in Ecclesia per te regnare molitur. Nec deesse illis, nec huic aliquatenus assentire oportet. Quam vero inique fovetur illa, spernuntur illi!
utrisque tamen debitor es, illis ut erigas, istis ut reprimas.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Ps.18.5 — The cords of death encompassed me, and the torrents of utter destruction terrified me.
- ↩Jer.20.9 — And I said, 'I will not mention him, nor will I speak in his name anymore.' But it was in my heart like a burning fire, shut up in my bones, and I was weary of holding it in, and I could not.
- ↩Ps.2.8 — Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.
- ↩Ps.24.1 — A Psalm of David. The earth is the LORD's, and all that fills it; the world and all who dwell in it,
- ↩Isa.14.16-Isa.14.17 — Those who see you stare at you; they gaze intently at you: 'Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms?' Isa.14.17 — He made the world like a wilderness and tore down its cities; he did not open the house of his prisoners.
- ↩Ps.2.8 — Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.
- ↩Rom.1.14 — I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.
- ↩Luke.16.5 — And he called each one of his master's debtors and said to the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'
- ↩Rom.1.14 — I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.
- ↩Rom.11.25 — For I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be wise in your own estimation: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.
De consideratione (On Consideration) companion
Make consideration a daily appointment
Bernard told Eugene to set aside time every day. Chosen Portion holds that time for you, free.
Bernard's core prescription — a fixed daily time reserved for examining the soul — is exactly the habit Chosen Portion installs with its daily devotional portion.
- One 10-minute daily portion for self-examination and prayer
- Reflection prompts drawn from historic texts, not improvised journaling
- A visible streak that protects the daily interval Bernard insisted on