Religions Reviewed

The twelfth-century transition in the literary form of sermon exempla was more than a simple shift from instruction to diversion. In the context of a sort of contemplative elite, exempla began to shed us-versus-them polarities, and to pay greater attention to internal states and the experiential life of the soul. And these developments were part of a larger cultural shift in views of the human person. 

Bynum also notes the importance of preaching as an instrument by which models could reform groups.  And truly, the exempla of Liber de Miraculis are nothing other than models—shared through preaching—which Cistercian monks could impress on their memories. The role of Bernard in these models was a critical one. To understand it, return again to the idea of the cultural and geographic frontiers occupied by the Cistercian reform, and the similarity of that position to the ancient church when the cult of the saints first developed. In his paper on “The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity,” Peter Brown stresses “[t]he idea of the holy man as Christ made accessible,” not as a concept, but as a human being tied to the believer by “the intimacy and resilience of bonds of invisible friendship.”  We can see in Herbert’s exempla, as well as in the Vita Prima and the saint’s own writings, not only the mental acuity and spiritual profundity of Bernard of Clairvaux, but the strong bonds of friendship which made him live on in the memories of those he knew, and so many others whom he would never meet.