Paradox and love in the thought of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), a monk who exerted unparalleled influence on 12-century Europe.

FAIN: FT-285959-22

Anna Harrison
Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles, CA 90045-2623)

Writing one chapter of a study on the role of paradoxical thinking in the treatise On Loving God by medieval theologian and reformer, Bernard of Clairvaux. 

Paradox is a close reading of one of Bernard’s most complex and widely circulated treatises to reveal an influential teaching on love with a web of paradoxes at its center. Chapter 1 is an introduction to the life of Bernard, monastic leader and pivotal player in twelfth-century western Europe. Chapter 2 is a close reading of On Loving God, moving sequentially through its several parts and attending carefully to Bernard’s notion of love as sensation, emotion, and action, in need of careful cultivation. Chapter 3 lays bare paradox as the treatise’s governing theme and intrinsic to its most fundamental claims. Chapter 4 concerns the significance of On Loving God in subsequent Christian theology and intellectual history. This is original scholarship and the first in-depth treatment of an understudied dimension of Bernard’s thought. It contributes to the place of paradox in western European thought and to the history of love. It is geared to scholars and students.