Perhaps no book was more central to medieval spirituality and
mysticism," writes Bernard McGinn, "or more problematic to
contemporary readers, than the Song of Songs. . . Lingering
Victorian attitudes towards the opposition between sex and religion
find the Song's frank erotic language embarrassing and even
distasteful." But in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries,
the Song of Songs was a favorite book of Cistercian monks. Bernard
of Clairvaux, Gilbert of Hoyland, and John of Ford, as well as
William of Saint Thierry, read it as a dialogue between Christ the
Bridegroom and the human soul, the Bride.
William of Saint Thierry began composing his commentary soon
after entering the Cistercian abbey of Signy in 1135. Having left
behind a busy life as a Benedictine abbot and author of theological
treatises, he turned to writing meditations on Scripture as the
means of listening to the voice of the Beloved. It is therefore
ironic that he broke off his commentary on the Song, never to
return to it, to alert the Church in France to the teaching of
Peter Abelard and then to compose two treatises correcting what he
deeply believed were Abelard's theological errors."
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