The School of Self-knowledge: A Symposium from Medieval Sources

Three Cistercians of the school of St. Bernard are the authors of these writings on self-knowledge as the road to true health of soul. The writing, which dates from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, is of a deeply personal, experimental and devotional character. One notices a debt here, not only to the Cistercian fathers, but to the school of St. Victor, which tended to be more speculative. The first of the authors represented, H?linand of Froidmont (1127-1212), had, in his long life, been a scholar and a troubadour, delighting the ear of Philippe Auguste of France with his songs. As a monk, he continued to write, both in Latin and French, with unimpaired verve. In his celebrated verses on death, he requests that Death should pay a visit to his friends: it is not because I love them less, but because the fear of death is a refining fear. It is a fear that reminds us that a man’s last hour plays hide and seek with him …We find a similar approach to H?linand’s in the Meditatio Piissima, the most popular of all the works which the Middle Ages attributed to St. Bernard. Finally, in the Domus Interior, one finds the doctrine of self-knowledge schematized into a method of prayer.