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The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard
In the half century since its first publication in English, this small book has become a classic of medieval theology. Directing his attention to 'perhaps the most neglected aspect' of Cistercian mysticism, the great French medievalist and philosopher Etienne Gilson directs attention to 'that part of Bernard's] theology on which his mysticism rests', his 'systematics'.Cistercian Publications brings this important book back into print in celebration of the nine-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Saint Bernard, hoping that new generations of scholars will find it food for thought and further research.
296 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
About the author
Étienne Gilson
230 books168 followersÉtienne Henri Gilson was born into a Roman Catholic family in Paris on 13 June 1884. He was educated at a number of Roman Catholic schools in Paris before attending lycée Henri IV in 1902, where he studied philosophy. Two years later he enrolled at the Sorbonne, graduating in 1907 after having studied under many fine scholars, including Lucien Lévy Bruhl, Henri Bergson and Emile Durkheim.
Gilson taught in a number of high schools after his graduation and worked on a doctoral thesis on Descartes, which he successfully completed (Sorbonne) in 1913. On the strength of advice from his teacher, Lévy Bruhl, he began to study medieval philosophy in great depth, coming to see Descartes as having strong connections with medieval philosophy, although often finding more merit in the medieval works he saw as connected than in Descartes himself. He was later to be highly esteemed for his work in medieval philosophy and has been described as something of a saviour to the field.
From 1913 to 1914 Gilson taught at the University of Lille. His academic career was postponed during the First World War while he took up military service. During his time in the army he served as second lieutenant in a machine-gun regiment and was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery upon relief from his duties. After the war, he returned to academic life at Lille and (also) Strasbourg, and in 1921 he took up an appointment at the Sorbonne teaching the history of medieval philosophy. He remained at the Sorbonne for eleven years prior to becoming Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the College de France in 1932. During his Sorbonne years and throughout his continuing career Gilson had the opportunity to travel extensively to North America, where he became highly influential as a historian and medievalist, demonstrating a number of previously undetermined important differences among the period’s greatest figures.
Gilson’s Gifford Lectures, delivered at Aberdeen in 1931 and 1932, titled ‘The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy’, were published in his native language (L’espirit de la philosophie medieval, 1932) before being translated into English in 1936. Gilson believed that a defining feature of medieval philosophy was that it operated within a framework endorsing a conviction to the existence of God, with a complete acceptance that Christian revelation enabled the refinement of meticulous reason. In this regard he described medieval philosophy as particularly ‘Christian’ philosophy.
Gilson married in 1908 and the union produced three children, two daughters and one son. Sadly, his wife died of leukaemia in late 1949. In 1951 he relinquished his chair at the College de France in order to attend to responsibilities he had at the Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto, Canada, an institute he had been invited to establish in 1929. Gilson died 19 September 1978 at the age of ninety-four.
Gilson taught in a number of high schools after his graduation and worked on a doctoral thesis on Descartes, which he successfully completed (Sorbonne) in 1913. On the strength of advice from his teacher, Lévy Bruhl, he began to study medieval philosophy in great depth, coming to see Descartes as having strong connections with medieval philosophy, although often finding more merit in the medieval works he saw as connected than in Descartes himself. He was later to be highly esteemed for his work in medieval philosophy and has been described as something of a saviour to the field.
From 1913 to 1914 Gilson taught at the University of Lille. His academic career was postponed during the First World War while he took up military service. During his time in the army he served as second lieutenant in a machine-gun regiment and was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery upon relief from his duties. After the war, he returned to academic life at Lille and (also) Strasbourg, and in 1921 he took up an appointment at the Sorbonne teaching the history of medieval philosophy. He remained at the Sorbonne for eleven years prior to becoming Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the College de France in 1932. During his Sorbonne years and throughout his continuing career Gilson had the opportunity to travel extensively to North America, where he became highly influential as a historian and medievalist, demonstrating a number of previously undetermined important differences among the period’s greatest figures.
Gilson’s Gifford Lectures, delivered at Aberdeen in 1931 and 1932, titled ‘The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy’, were published in his native language (L’espirit de la philosophie medieval, 1932) before being translated into English in 1936. Gilson believed that a defining feature of medieval philosophy was that it operated within a framework endorsing a conviction to the existence of God, with a complete acceptance that Christian revelation enabled the refinement of meticulous reason. In this regard he described medieval philosophy as particularly ‘Christian’ philosophy.
Gilson married in 1908 and the union produced three children, two daughters and one son. Sadly, his wife died of leukaemia in late 1949. In 1951 he relinquished his chair at the College de France in order to attend to responsibilities he had at the Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto, Canada, an institute he had been invited to establish in 1929. Gilson died 19 September 1978 at the age of ninety-four.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 9, 2025
A fascinating read. St. Bernard introduced me to the notion of degrees of perfection in the Christian life with his On Loving God; I first heard it on LibriVox right after my conversion, and took the time to reread it again a few months ago. Etienne Gilson is quickly becoming my go-to man to explicate the medieval greats. It was a surprise to know he mentored Jean Leclerq, who contributed the preface and wrote one of my favorite reads this year.
The topic comes down to Love. The twelfth century was fascinated by it, even in the secular world (think courtly love like Troyes and Arthurian knights), but the major monastic movements all tackled it as well. The Carthusians, the Benedictines (especially the Cistercians), the Victorines all wrote extensively on this love, and without realizing it, I’ve read representatives from all three of those groups over the last year, but only now do I think I know why.
This is a pre-scholastic era, an era of the anti-dialetical, an age that expresses itself in poetry because reason simply cannot circumscribe the topics handled. But that does not make it an anti-intellectual pursuit. Cicero’s On Friendship provides the jumping off point: to be friends is to desire the good of the other, with this other bearing some likeness to ourselves. That raises a startling question: can we become friends with God? How do we bear a likeness to the Infinite Good? Do we even have the intellectual capacity to create such a friendship?
No, but it doesn’t matter in an important sense. We do not know God by reason; we know God by love. Deus caritas est. We can love far better than we can know, and it is through this medium, perfected by the grace Love Himself grants us, that we can come to know God.
And that is how you end up with a phrase like “mystical theology”, a science of what cannot be known rationally.
But we are not God and in our current state, we are not even friends of God. An apparent contraction seems to arise between the love of self and the love of God. But it truly is only apparent, a result of the Fall and of sin. We bear the Image of God, which is indestructible; even in Hell we would still be spiritual, intellectual beings, which bears that Image. But only in the state of grace do we bear His Likeness. The Image is part of our nature which we cannot change; the Likeness comes down to our will, which is up to us. A soul that knows its own greatness but forgets the source of the greatness is a truly terrible sight. Too intelligent not to know its own worth, too pitifully small to be a God in his own right, such a man is doomed to misery. His very pride gets in the way; he makes himself the standard of all things, but he makes such a poor standard if for no other reason than his own ignorance of most things.
To be humbled, to see one’s own errors, to see one’s own sins…only those who have been blessed to see their own littleness can see what a grace this is. “Then shall we be glad for the days of our humiliation, for the years when we saw misfortune” as the Psalmist says.
From here, and only from here, with a contrite heart and with the help of the Sacrament of Confession, can we begin to live and to love.
To be humbled is to be made like Christ; the grace of compassion should follow. There is no other human being we should not have compassion on, for we are all in that misery of sin, of being our own pathetic gods. The worst evil anyone can do is to themselves. Christ Himself often rescued people by compassion, but this was not a compassion of the world. It was not sickness or poverty or shame He rescued us from, but sin. And it is by compassion that we, His followers, can reach those in sin.
From here, Gilson examines St. Bernard’s theory of our ascent to God. It is “a mad audacity to aspire to the divine union.” Our reason would actually hold us back, and so it is our affectus, our burning desire, that will push us to loving God. I love this. The bean counting Christianity has no place here. It is a Christianity that strives to become like Christ, and the more it does so, the more God sees Himself in the soul of the beloved. In this way, self love and love of God are not contradictory terms, but rather the only terms. Though St. Bernard and the monastics didn’t reference him much, this reminds of Pseudo-Dionysius. God is capital L Love, capital G Good, capital L Life, capital B Being. To not have God is to not have those things in yourself. To have God is to have them, even in a concentration camp. Nothing matters to the soul but to love God, and God in turn is ardent in His desire to love what He sees in the soul, namely Himself. There is none of the “covering up a pile of rottenness with a blanket and lying to Himself” that Luther and many Protestants would have. Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis: et omnes iniquitates meas dele. Cor mundum crea in me, Deus: et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis.
Can this really be done? Can we really be friends with the Divine? Yes. Our nature holds His Image, and if our will opts to hold His Likeness, to ardently desire God, to make Him the all in all, then we bear enough likeness to Him to possess that relationship. We do not become God, we remain creatures, but our total devotion of Love binds us to Him and Him to us.
What a beautiful way of seeing our world; it neither whitewashes its horrors nor plunges us into despair. The world simply stops being the standard, replaced by a being defined as Love itself whose nature is to be Three Persons in love with each other, but who created us to share that love yet still further. The very definition of ecstasy.
The topic comes down to Love. The twelfth century was fascinated by it, even in the secular world (think courtly love like Troyes and Arthurian knights), but the major monastic movements all tackled it as well. The Carthusians, the Benedictines (especially the Cistercians), the Victorines all wrote extensively on this love, and without realizing it, I’ve read representatives from all three of those groups over the last year, but only now do I think I know why.
This is a pre-scholastic era, an era of the anti-dialetical, an age that expresses itself in poetry because reason simply cannot circumscribe the topics handled. But that does not make it an anti-intellectual pursuit. Cicero’s On Friendship provides the jumping off point: to be friends is to desire the good of the other, with this other bearing some likeness to ourselves. That raises a startling question: can we become friends with God? How do we bear a likeness to the Infinite Good? Do we even have the intellectual capacity to create such a friendship?
No, but it doesn’t matter in an important sense. We do not know God by reason; we know God by love. Deus caritas est. We can love far better than we can know, and it is through this medium, perfected by the grace Love Himself grants us, that we can come to know God.
And that is how you end up with a phrase like “mystical theology”, a science of what cannot be known rationally.
But we are not God and in our current state, we are not even friends of God. An apparent contraction seems to arise between the love of self and the love of God. But it truly is only apparent, a result of the Fall and of sin. We bear the Image of God, which is indestructible; even in Hell we would still be spiritual, intellectual beings, which bears that Image. But only in the state of grace do we bear His Likeness. The Image is part of our nature which we cannot change; the Likeness comes down to our will, which is up to us. A soul that knows its own greatness but forgets the source of the greatness is a truly terrible sight. Too intelligent not to know its own worth, too pitifully small to be a God in his own right, such a man is doomed to misery. His very pride gets in the way; he makes himself the standard of all things, but he makes such a poor standard if for no other reason than his own ignorance of most things.
To be humbled, to see one’s own errors, to see one’s own sins…only those who have been blessed to see their own littleness can see what a grace this is. “Then shall we be glad for the days of our humiliation, for the years when we saw misfortune” as the Psalmist says.
From here, and only from here, with a contrite heart and with the help of the Sacrament of Confession, can we begin to live and to love.
To be humbled is to be made like Christ; the grace of compassion should follow. There is no other human being we should not have compassion on, for we are all in that misery of sin, of being our own pathetic gods. The worst evil anyone can do is to themselves. Christ Himself often rescued people by compassion, but this was not a compassion of the world. It was not sickness or poverty or shame He rescued us from, but sin. And it is by compassion that we, His followers, can reach those in sin.
From here, Gilson examines St. Bernard’s theory of our ascent to God. It is “a mad audacity to aspire to the divine union.” Our reason would actually hold us back, and so it is our affectus, our burning desire, that will push us to loving God. I love this. The bean counting Christianity has no place here. It is a Christianity that strives to become like Christ, and the more it does so, the more God sees Himself in the soul of the beloved. In this way, self love and love of God are not contradictory terms, but rather the only terms. Though St. Bernard and the monastics didn’t reference him much, this reminds of Pseudo-Dionysius. God is capital L Love, capital G Good, capital L Life, capital B Being. To not have God is to not have those things in yourself. To have God is to have them, even in a concentration camp. Nothing matters to the soul but to love God, and God in turn is ardent in His desire to love what He sees in the soul, namely Himself. There is none of the “covering up a pile of rottenness with a blanket and lying to Himself” that Luther and many Protestants would have. Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis: et omnes iniquitates meas dele. Cor mundum crea in me, Deus: et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis.
Can this really be done? Can we really be friends with the Divine? Yes. Our nature holds His Image, and if our will opts to hold His Likeness, to ardently desire God, to make Him the all in all, then we bear enough likeness to Him to possess that relationship. We do not become God, we remain creatures, but our total devotion of Love binds us to Him and Him to us.
What a beautiful way of seeing our world; it neither whitewashes its horrors nor plunges us into despair. The world simply stops being the standard, replaced by a being defined as Love itself whose nature is to be Three Persons in love with each other, but who created us to share that love yet still further. The very definition of ecstasy.
May 20, 2023
Etienne Gilson’s “The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard,” is a dense and assiduous monograph that is very rewarding. Bernard's mysticism continues to inform Catholic theologians today, particularly those within the Cistercian Order. Bernard, a staunch advocate of asceticism, was instrumental in sowing the seeds of faith that led to the formation of monastic communities throughout Europe. This influence led Alexander III to institute a variety of reforms, and in 1174, canonize him. To his contemporaries, Bernard’s eloquence was, in some measure, a distraction from his argumentation. Hence, the "Mellifluous Doctor" is difficult to assess, particularly in translation. Fortunately, for the reader, M.Gilson’s French is more than equal to the task of rendering Bernard’s Latin intelligible.
Contemporary scholars generally associate mysticism with a form of consciousness involving an apparent encounter or union with an ultimate order of reality. For Bernard, this union is tantamount to the bond of creature and Being borne through the presence of charity.
As Gilson’s Bernard relates:
“For in a certain manner to lose thyself, as though thou wert not… pertains to the life of heaven and not to the life of human affection. And if, any mortal is occasionally admitted to this, in passing, as I have said, and only for a moment, then straightaway the wicked world begins to envy him, the evil of the day disturbs, this body of death becomes a burden, the necessity of flesh provokes, the weakness of corruption does not endure it, and, what is more insistent than these, fraternal charity recalls.”
Bernard stands as one of those teachers we will never meet. His life and thought are of consequence yesterday, today, and tomorrow. In his lifetime, he inspired monarchs across Europe. Marcia Chhristoff Reina, the Milanese-American novelist has captured his import by noting that Frederick II, Hohenstauffen was transformed, at least in part, by the specter of Bernard. “His ascetic Christianity, influenced by St. Bernard of Clairvaux—”the very Church of Christ broken into bloom”—whom Dante chose as the final guide to the throne of God, contrasted sharply with the high-flying self-aggrandizement of his secular life..” Gilson has conveyed a portrait of Bernard’s theology that will long be the standard. A book to be perused closely.
Contemporary scholars generally associate mysticism with a form of consciousness involving an apparent encounter or union with an ultimate order of reality. For Bernard, this union is tantamount to the bond of creature and Being borne through the presence of charity.
As Gilson’s Bernard relates:
“For in a certain manner to lose thyself, as though thou wert not… pertains to the life of heaven and not to the life of human affection. And if, any mortal is occasionally admitted to this, in passing, as I have said, and only for a moment, then straightaway the wicked world begins to envy him, the evil of the day disturbs, this body of death becomes a burden, the necessity of flesh provokes, the weakness of corruption does not endure it, and, what is more insistent than these, fraternal charity recalls.”
Bernard stands as one of those teachers we will never meet. His life and thought are of consequence yesterday, today, and tomorrow. In his lifetime, he inspired monarchs across Europe. Marcia Chhristoff Reina, the Milanese-American novelist has captured his import by noting that Frederick II, Hohenstauffen was transformed, at least in part, by the specter of Bernard. “His ascetic Christianity, influenced by St. Bernard of Clairvaux—”the very Church of Christ broken into bloom”—whom Dante chose as the final guide to the throne of God, contrasted sharply with the high-flying self-aggrandizement of his secular life..” Gilson has conveyed a portrait of Bernard’s theology that will long be the standard. A book to be perused closely.
August 3, 2017
I thought this was going to have some of his actual writings and discussion of them. It turned out to be more like a summary of some aspects of St. Bernard's thoughts but did not reference back clearly for me to know.
September 2, 2024
Between Gilson's prose and Downes' translation, clarity of writing is left to be desired—but as a monograph, it's no less rich, focused and at times beautiful.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews