Saint Bernard of Clairvaux on Experience

Abstract

The paper examines the observations of St Bernard on what is now known as ‘religious experience’. Up to the time of St Bernard of Clairvaux, learning in the Church was based on the Bible and the teaching of the Church Fathers, and on learning from ‘the book of Creation’. To this, Bernard added the importance of learning from one's own experience. Examples of the vivid accounts of his own experience are given. The value of such a study, 860 years after Bernard died, is discussed, and his teaching and accounts are examined in the light of modern studies. Accounts of what is now termed ‘religious experience’, from Bernard's own writings, which have previously received little attention compared with other aspects of his life, are examined, analysed, and classified according to their characteristics. Special consideration is given to his mystical experience tending to union with God.

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