August 20: St. Bernard, Bees, and Bodies

I may not be the greatest fan ever of this twelfth-century Cistercian abbot and doctor ecclesiae, but two facets of devotional life related to him today made me smile.

The first is that Saint Bernard is the patron saint of bees, beekeepers, and candle-makers — all of which play an important role in Christian liturgy since the earliest centuries (more on this in another post).

Second, I remembered something Peter Phan wrote in his introduction to The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (Liturgical Press, 2005) about the twelfth-century Cistercian churches: “whose geometric proportions are so perfect that a pin dropped in the nave produces a full set of harmonic overtones.  The medieval monks who sang in those whitewashed churches may have suppressed visual stimulation, but they developed an almost lascivious capacity for acoustic stimulation.  Each time they chanted the Divine Office in such spaces, their bodies were massaged by the building’s vibrations. As the monks chanted the liturgy, their church’s acoustics paid devotional homage to their bodies.”

So, on this feast day of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, I give thanks for the reminder that Catholic liturgy needs both bees and bodies.  And may both always flourish, in God’s house (cf. Psalm 84:2-5)

Teresa Berger

Teresa Berger is Professor of Liturgical Studies at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School in New Haven, CT, USA, where she also serves as the Thomas E. Golden Jr. Professor of Catholic Theology. She holds doctorates in both theology and in liturgical studies. Recent publications include an edited volume, Full of Your Glory: Liturgy, Cosmos, Creation (2019), and a monograph titled @ Worship: Liturgical Practices in Digital Worlds (2018). Earlier publications include Gender Differences and the Making of Liturgical History (2011), Fragments of Real Presence (2005), and a video documentary, Worship in Women’s Hands (2007).

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Comments

15 responses to “August 20: St. Bernard, Bees, and Bodies”

  1. claire bangasser

    Thank you for pointing out all of the above. The bees and bee-keepers, and the fact that if the Cistercians have suppressed visual stimulation, they developed acoustic stimulation. I wonder if they knew what they were doing…
    I love the idea of a pin producing of full set of harmonic overtones… Ah to be a pin in such a church!

    Reply
    1. Teresa Berger

      I appreciate you delight in this! Yet even better than being a pin would be to be a Cistercian choir mistress in such a church 🙂

      Reply
  2. Kevin Keil

    If only more churches in the U.S. had better acoustics. Then the entire range of musical styles would be effective. As it is, in many places the room is so dead that natural sound goes nowhere. Rooms like this will not work well with choral music or chant, since both styles depend on the space to sweeten the sound with reverberation. Even contemporary styles have to be over amplified in this sort of church, and pipe organs just don’t sing. OK, I’m off my soapbox.

    Reply
  3. Tom Poelker

    It is so disappointing that good liturgical acoustic principles are so easily available and so seldom applied.

    Unfortunately, that sentence seems to be true also if one omits the word “acoustic”.

    Why is it that so many people, in so many fields, seem to focus on details without having any interest in learning the overall principles into which decisions about the details ought to fit?

    This question applies to many liturgical-hyphenated fields: architecture, acoustics, art, music [with its many sub-fields], dance, translation, elocution, and that catch-all — design. The principles of the sub-specialty seem to get more importance from proponents than the overall purpose, means, and method of liturgy as ritual, communal, nurturing, and sacramental service to Christians. Proposals are strongly defended as being permitted instead of seeking what is optimal and consistent.

    Does anyone else see an overall pattern of the past four decades of special pleading and failing to study and consider the big picture for parish liturgy?

    Reply
  4. Tom Poelker

    An anthropological question:
    [1] Why do candles help set a ritual mood?

    Candles certainly have acquired symbolic and devotional connotations, but they did not begin with these. I can not imagine candles being set out by the earliest Christians if there was sufficient natural light, especially because candles have always been expensive and used by the rich while the poor used tallow or oil lamps, right down to the introduction of electricity and paraffin candles .

    Therefore, an historical question:
    [2] When are candles first documented as something expected to be part of Christian liturgy, especially the Mass?

    Reply
    1. Dunstan Harding

      Tom, It seems the use of olive oil and nut oil burning lamps were as common at first as the use of candles–a carry over from
      Roman household and synagogue custom? I’m not sure if the
      primitive church required candles along with the oil burning lamps, or if the presence of candles in the liturgy at first is due to a large bee-keeping enterprise. The USCCB make a rigid distinction between oil lamps as intended for the
      perpetual light, but 51% beeswax candles must be used for the liturgy.
      Such a rigid distinction doesn’t seem to have existed at first and certainly doesn’t apply in the Byzantine Orthodox churches where oil lamps are sometimes used exclusively.
      We do have those who pay little attention to “Living Stones” and the directives set out there regarding candles and use olive oil lamps hanging around the altar and only oil lamps, day or night.

      Reply
  5. Teresa Berger

    Lamp-Lightening (i.e., the Lucernarium), as part of evening prayer at the turn from day to night, was practiced by early Christians (as documented since the third or fourth centuries). Christians inherited this practice not least of all from Israelite and Jewish customs (cf. Ex. 27:20-21; lamp-lighting at the beginning of shabbat). The entry of “lamps” and candles into eucharistic rites duirng the day probably has to do with another development, namely the increasing use of elements of imperial public ritual into Christian liturgy, which began with the fourth century.

    Reply
    1. Karl Liam Saur

      The oft-mentioned imperial ritual aspect has a bit of a chicken-and-egg quality to it. Because this period is also the same time when many more Christians were safe enough to gather for worship in larger public spaces, and there were developments due to that aspect as well. We can observe from history that, when small and fragmented communities are able to gather in such a way, there are quite natural shifts in how they gather together. Some things are lost, while other things are gained.

      Reply
      1. Tom Poelker

        Thanks for this valuable view of both sides of the matter.

        I have not seen attention focused before on distinguishing between what Christians now felt free to do versus what they added by imitation.

        Can you offer any examples of what came from pubic freedom rather than imperial imitation?

  6. Dunstan Harding

    We have a lucernarium at Evening Prayer, but use only olive oil lamps in candelabra–very effective. With bees becoming endangered throughout the world, it will be just a matter of time
    before mass candles composed of a minimum of 51% bees wax
    will be prohibitively expensive. Why settle for some fake candles
    filled with lamp-lighter fuel and paraffin, when you can have
    a natural light, rich in symbolism, from pure olive or nut oil?
    I do love the smell of fresh bees wax burning, but olive oil mixed with rose, violet water, or frankincense, can be a rich experience too.

    Reply
    1. Karl Liam Saur

      Right now, however, beeswax is a good way to help support the bees…..

      Reply
  7. crystal watson

    Perhaps off topic, but I recently read a novel about the gold Menorah (which used olice oil) taken to Rome after the sack of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 AD, which Wikipedia says symbolized, among other things, the buring bush.

    Reply
    1. Dunstan Harding

      Yes, and don’t forget Emperor Constantine’s gifts to St. John Lateran and St. Peter’s recorded in the “Liber Pontificalis” of oil lamps for burning not just olive oil , but nard. The latter at the time a very costly, perfumous oil or a type of incense.

      I’m thinking maybe materials which are perfectly
      natural were considered ideal for the liturgy. I might suggest to my pastor a little nard for the Lucernarium.

      Reply
  8. fred moleck

    re: Church acoustics.

    A while back the venerable Aidan Kavanagh, OSB, wrote a dictum that was espoused by church musicians and church architects:
    “Carpet bedrooms, not churches.”

    Reply
  9. Paul Martinez

    What does it even mean to say that these monks were, “paying devotional homage to their bodies”? I could be wrong, but that’s a really hedonistic and creepy way of putting it, really.

    Reply

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