Liber Tertius, Caput V. Summo Pontifici incumbere curam de apostolicis decretis, et majorum institutis per totum orbem servandis.
The Whole State of the Church
Bernard calls the pope to survey the entire condition of the Church, questioning whether obedience, discipline, and apostolic decrees are truly being kept.
It remains for your consideration to direct its attention generally over the whole state of the Church: whether the common people are subject to the clerics, whether the clerics are subject to the priests, whether the priests are subject to God with the humility that is proper; whether order is preserved and discipline watches over monasteries and religious places; whether ecclesiastical censorship thrives over corrupt works and teachings; whether the vineyards flourish through the honor and holiness of priests. Whether the flowers produce the fruit of obedience in the faithful peoples; and finally, whether your own apostolic commands and institutions are observed with the care they deserve, so that nothing in the field of your Lord is found uncultivated through neglect or stolen away through fraud. You should not doubt that it can be found. I am ready — to pass over the many and countless things that lie neglected here and there — to show that some even of those things your right hand planted have been torn up. Didn't your mouth promulgate chapters subjected in the Council of Reims? Who holds them? Who held them? You are deceived if you think they are being kept.
Decrees on Clerical Dress and Order
Bernard quotes the papal statutes on clerical dress, tonsure, and the proper ordering of holy offices, along with the penalties for disobedience.
If you don't think so, you've sinned yourself—either by establishing rules that wouldn't be kept, or by looking the other way now that they aren't being kept. "We command," you said, that both bishops and clergy should offend the sight of those looking at them—whose model and example they ought to be—neither by the excess or dishonorable variety of their colors, or the cut of their clothes, nor by their tonsure; but rather, they should condemn errors by their own actions, and show a love of innocence by their way of life, just as the dignity of the clerical order demands.1 And if, after being warned by their bishops, they do not comply within forty days, they shall be deprived of their ecclesiastical benefices by the authority of those same bishops. As for bishops, if they neglect to impose the prescribed penalty—because the faults of subordinates should be attributed to no one more than to lazy and negligent overseers—they shall refrain from their episcopal office until they impose on their subject clergy the penalty established by us.2 We also decided to add this, that no one be ordained as archdeacon or dean unless he is a deacon and a priest. Archdeacons, deans, and provosts who are below the aforementioned orders, if they despise being ordained out of disobedience, shall be stripped of the honor they have received. We also forbid the aforementioned honors to be granted to adolescents, or to those who hold ranks below the sacred orders, but only to those who shine by their prudence and the merit of their life."3
The Neglect of What Was Decreed
Bernard contrasts the papal decrees with their open violation, noting that four years have passed without any penalty being enforced.
These are your words: you decreed it. What has been handed over to fulfillment? Still young men, still those below sacred orders, are promoted in the Church. As for the first chapter: luxury of garments is forbidden, but not restrained; the penalty was dictated, but least of all followed. It's now the fourth year since we heard the mandate given, and yet we have mourned no cleric deprived of benefice, no bishop suspended from office. But what followed is worthy of the bitterest grief. What is this? Impunity is the offspring of carelessness, the mother of insolence, the root of impudence, the nurse of transgressions.
The Stain on the Holy Order
Bernard urges the pope to see how the holy order is still disfigured by vanity and hypocrisy, with clergy appearing as soldiers in dress and clerics in profit but neither in truth.
And you're blessed if, with all your care, you guard against the root of all evils — negligence. But this is what you'll give your attention to. And then lift up your eyes, and see whether, as before, the discolored stain does not equally disfigure the holy Order; whether, as before, an enormous tear does not nearly lay bare the groin. People are in the habit of saying: 'What, does God care about clothing and not even more about conduct?' Yet this style of clothing is a sign of deformed minds and conduct. What does it mean that clergy want to be one thing and appear another? That is surely less chaste, and less sincere. In truth, in dress they're soldiers, in profit-seeking they're clergy, in practice they're neither.
A People Without Order
Bernard asks what order these disordered clerics belong to, warning that those who abandon every order may be assigned to everlasting horror.
For they don't fight like soldiers, and they don't preach the gospel like clerics. What order do they belong to? Although they want to be both, they abandon both and confuse both. "Each one," he says, "will rise again in his own order."✦4 But these men, in what order? Or will those who sinned without order perish without order? Or if the supremely wise God is truly believed to leave nothing disorderly from the highest heaven all the way down, I fear these men are destined to be assigned not elsewhere than where no order dwells, but everlasting horror.5 Oh, what a pitiable bride, entrusted to such attendants!6
Rivals of the Bridegroom
Bernard concludes that those who exploit sacred office for their own gain are rivals, not friends, of Christ, and points forward to the next book.
Those who are assigned to his worship don't hesitate to keep it for their own gain. They are certainly not friends of the bridegroom, but rivals. And regarding these matters that are under your care, even if they don't involve an abundance of material things—which is indeed very much the case—they certainly relate to what I have proposed. The things that are now around you will open the door for us in the fourth book.
Read the original Latin
Superest ut generaliter super universum Ecclesiae statum intendat consideratio tua: si plebes clericis, si clerici sacerdotibus, si sacerdotes Deo in ea, qua oportet, humilitate subjecti sint; si in monasteriis et religiosis locis servetur ordo, vigilet disciplina; si super prava opera et dogmata censura ecclesiastica vigeat; si floreant vineae honestate et sanctimonia sacerdotum? si flores fructus parturiant, obedientiam fidelium populorum; si demum vestra ipsorum apostolica mandata et instituta ea, qua dignum est, sollicitudine observentur, ne quid in agro Domini tui aut neglectu incultum, aut fraude subreptum inveniatur. Posse inveniri ne dubites. Mihi in promptu est (ut multa et innumera praetermittam, quae passim neglecta jacent) nonnulla etiam ex his quae plantavit dextera tua, convulsa monstrare. Nonne os tuum in Remensi concilio subjecta capitula promulgavit? Quis ea tenet? quis tenuit. Falleris si teneri putas.
Si non putas, ipse peccasti, aut statuens quae non tenerentur, aut quod non tenentur dissimulans. "Praecipimus," aisti, ut tam episcopi quam clerici, neque in superfluitate, seu inhonesta varietate colorum, aut fissura vestium, neque in tonsura, intuentium (quorum forma et exemplum esse debent) offendant aspectum; sed potius ita in suis actibus errata condemnent, et amorem innocentiae conversatione demonstrent, sicut dignitas exigit ordinis clericorum. Quod si moniti ab episcopis suis intra quadraginta dies non obtemperaverint, ecclesiasticis beneficiis eorumdem pontificum auctoritate priventur. Episcopi vero, si praefixam poenam irrogare neglexerint, quia inferiorum culpae ad nullos magis referendae sunt quam ad desides negligentesque rectores; tandiu ab officio pontificali abstineant, donec poenam a nobis constitutam clericis sibi subjectis imponant. Illud etiam duximus annectendum, ut nullus in archidiaconum vel decanum, nisi diaconus et presbyter ordinetur. Archidiaconi vero, decani et praepositi, qui infra Ordines praenominatos sunt, si inobedientes ordinari contempserint, honore suscepto priventur. Prohibemus autem ne adolescentibus, vel infra sacros Ordines constitutis, sed qui prudentia et vitae merito clarescunt, praedicti concedantur honores."
Verba tua haec: tu sanxisti. Quid effectui mancipatum? Adhuc adolescentes, adhuc qui infra sacros Ordines sunt, in Ecclesia promoventur. Quod ad primum capitulum pertinet; luxus vestium interdictus, sed non restrictus; poena dictata, sed minime secuta est. Jam quartus annus est, ex quo datum mandatum audivimus, et neminem adhuc clericorum privatum beneficio, neminem episcoporum suspensum ab officio luximus. At luctu amarissimo dignum quod secutum est. Quod hoc? Impunitas incuriae soboles, insolentiae mater, radix impudentiae, transgressionum nutrix.
Et beatus, si omni satagas cura malorum omnium primam parentem cavere incuriam. Sed ad hoc tu operam dabis. Et tunc leva oculos tuos, et vide si non aeque, ut prius, pellicula discolor sacrum Ordinem decolorat; si non aeque, ut prius, fissura enormis pene inguina nudat. Solent dicere: Num de vestibus cura est Deo et non magis de moribus? At forma haec vestium, deformitatis mentium et morum indicium est. Quid sibi vult quod clerici aliud esse, aliud videri volunt? Id quidem minus castum, minusque sincerum. Nempe habitu milites, quaestu clericos, actu neutrum exhibent.
Nam neque pugnant ut milites, neque ut clerici evangelizant. Cujus ordinis sunt? Cum utriusque esse cupiunt, utrumque deserunt, utrumque confundunt. Unusquisque, inquit, in suo ordine resurget. Isti in quo? An qui sine ordine peccaverunt, sine ordine peribunt? Aut si summe sapiens Deus veraciter creditur, a summo usque deorsum nihil inordinatum relinquere; vereor istos non alibi ordinandos, quam ubi nullus ordo, sed sempiternus horror inhabitat. O miserandam sponsam, talibus creditam paranymphis!
qui assignata cultui ejus, proprio retinere quaestui non verentur. Non amici profecto sponsi, sed aemuli sunt. Et de his satis quae sub te sunt, etsi non ad materiae copiam, quae est multa nimis; certe ad id quod proposui ego. Visenda jam quae circa te sunt, sed ad ea ostium nobis quartus liber aperiet.
Scripture echoes
- ↩1Cor.15.23 — But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; then those who belong to Christ, at his coming.
Notes
- 1 ↩The Latin 'offendant aspectum' literally means 'offend the sight'. In this rhetorical structure, the negative 'neque' governs the verb: they must not offend the eyes of onlookers.
- 2 ↩The source text reads 'tandiu', a clear typographical error for 'tamdiu' (so long / until). Translated as 'until' based on the corrected reading and the following 'donec'.
- 3 ↩The Latin 'sed' (but) creates a sharp exception: the honors are forbidden to the young/unworthy, but granted to the proven. Rendered as 'but only to those' to capture the restrictive force of the exception.
- 4 ↩Quoted scriptural echo; 'inquit' marks it as a citation, likely 1 Cor 15:23.
- 5 ↩The Latin 'a summo usque deorsum' implies the cosmic hierarchy from the highest to the lowest; rendered as 'from the highest heaven all the way down' for contemporary clarity.
- 6 ↩The rare loanword 'paranymphis' refers to bridal attendants or friends of the bridegroom; rendered as 'attendants' to fit the contemporary register while preserving the wedding metaphor for the Church.
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