| Paper 630-a | The Role of St Bernard's Thought in 12th- and 13th-Century Italian Literature
(Language: English)
Duilio Caocci, Dipartimento di Filologia, Letteratura, Linguistica, UniversitĂ di Cagliari
Index terms: Language and Literature - Italian, Monasticism, Religious Life, Sermons and Preaching |
|---|
| Paper 630-b | St Bernard's Preaching in Early Cistercian Exempla: Narrative and Spirituality
(Language: English)
Stefano Mula, Department of Italian, Middlebury College, Vermont
Index terms: Literacy and Orality, Monasticism, Religious Life, Sermons and Preaching |
|---|
| Abstract | The session aims at highlighting the diffusion of Cistercian spirituality in literary works, both in Latin and in the vernacular languages such as Italian and French.
Paper -a:
Before triumphantly appearing at the highest point of Dante's experience (in the third Canticle of the Divine Comedy), St Bernard - as many studies established - was already present in the European imagination as a 'special' magister. Cesare Segre has shown how important Bernard's Parabolae have been for early French and Italian allegorical and didactic narrative. My paper aims to investigate the great opposition (or contiguity, if we prefer) scientia-sapientia in Bono Giamboni's and Dante's works, in connection with the 12th-century debate involving St Bernard. Our thesis is that the allegorical-didactic subgenre proceeds by an ideology which - by postulating a pragmatic learning which improves men and makes them worthy of further improvements - wants to legitimate human experience and even the error as a first step towards salvation.
Paper -b:
St Bernard has an important presence in the early Cistercian exempla collections. The saint is depicted in his various roles as a miracle-worker, as an abbot, as a preacher, and he is the protagonist of many exempla in works such as the Liber visionum et miraculorum Clarevallensium by Herbert of Torres. Some articles (in particular by Jacques Berlioz) have already studied the image of Bernard in 13th-century exempla, but what is still missing is an analysis of Bernard's thought as transmitted in narrative texts. This paper aims at identifying and studying how, after his death, Bernard's spiritual message was disseminated inside the order not only through his polished treatises, but also through the power of narrative.
|
|---|
