William of Saint-Thierry

French monk and theologian

• Born: c. 1085
• Birthplace: Liège, Lower Lorraine (now in France)
• Died: September 8, 1147 or 1148
• Place of death: Signy Abbey, Diocese of Reims, France

William of Saint-Thierry, whose name is forever linked with that of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, was one of the greatest of twelfth century monks, mystics, and theologians of the spiritual life. His writings on love, monastic friendship, and the Trinity were particularly influential.

Early Life

William of Saint-Thierry (san-tyehr-ee) was born in Liège of noble parentage; nothing else is known about his family. While still young, he left Liège, probably for Reims, where, it is thought, he studied between 1105 and 1115. Little is known with certainty about William’s early life and education, but his writings give evidence of a good education.

Having decided to become a Benedictine monk, William joined the abbey of Saint-Nicaise of Reims, probably in 1113. Saint-Nicaise was a monastery of good reputation, and every indication is that from the beginning William practiced the monastic life with great seriousness and commitment. The quiet of the monastic cloister allowed him time for study of the Church fathers, especially the works of Saint Augustine, Saint Ambrose, Saint Hilary of Poitiers, Boethius, and Gregory the Great. His growing reputation for learning and strictness of life led to his election in 1119 or 1120 as abbot of Saint-Thierry, northwest of Reims.

Saint-Thierry was a well-endowed monastery, and much of William’s time was taken with administration of the monastic properties. At the time he became abbot, Saint-Thierry was not as well known as the abbey of Saint-Nicaise. William’s success in temporal administration and the spiritual guidance of the community, together with the respect accorded to his writings, was soon to make it one of the preeminent monasteries in the Benedictine order.

Life’s Work

If William was not already a priest by the time he became abbot of Saint-Thierry, at some unknown time he was so ordained. During his first three years as abbot, he wrote De natura et dignitate amoris (c. 1119-1128; On the Nature and Dignity of Love, 1956). This work envisioned the monastic life as a continuation of the communal life practiced at Jerusalem by the Apostles (see Acts 2:42-47 and 4:32-35), the goal of which was unity of mind from which love flows. For William, the monastery was a school of love. His interest in the contemplative life is also evident in another work from this period, De contemplando Deo (c. 1119-1128; On Contemplating God, 1955). As it was to turn out, these earliest of his writings were, along with his last two works, Epistola ad fratres de Monte-Dei (1144; The Golden Epistle of Abbot William of St. Thierry, 1930) and Vite prima Bernardi abbatis (c. 1147; Saint Bernard of Clairvaux: The Story of His Life, 1960), to have a significant influence on later generations. Yet these earliest two works were circulated in the thirteenth century under Saint Bernard’s name.

William found the burdens of his position as abbot hard to bear. He was shy and sensitive, and commanding others did not come easily. Increasingly through the 1120’, he was troubled by the criticisms made by Saint Bernard regarding the Cluniac form of Benedictinism, the usages of which had been adopted by William’s own monastery. He had first met Bernard, who followed a stricter Cistercian reading of the Rule of Saint Benedict, in 1118. About 1125, Bernard addressed to William a pair of sharply written satirical works that created much controversy, for although on certain points Bernard was conciliatory, he persisted in many of his criticisms of the Cluniacs, hitherto the most influential monastic order, as lax and fond of luxury. Perceiving the justice of much of Bernard’s criticism, William gave his approval to the work and subsequently cited it in some of his own writings. Beyond this, he became active in reform of his order in the province of Reims.

William had made journeys to Saint Bernard’s monastery at Clairvaux for spiritual conversation, and by 1124, he told Bernard that he wished to resign his abbacy and move to Clairvaux. Bernard advised against it. For the time being, William accepted this advice and remained at Saint-Thierry, governing and writing.

In 1128, Bernard sent William a new work addressing the issues of grace and free will, asking for his criticism. In response, William composed De sacramento altaris (c. 1128; On the Sacrament of the Altar, 1970). This book on the meaning of the Eucharist is one of the first devoted solely to this subject. Probably about this time, William also began other works, for the most part dependent on his extensive knowledge of the Latin fathers, but with some use, through the Latin translation by Rufinus, of the Greek Christian writer Origen (c. 185-c. 254). Although both earlier and later Origen had fallen and was to fall under censure, in the twelfth century, he was fairly widely read, and William was to adopt themes from Origen in several treatises. It is likely that many of the works of this period, including the Meditativae orationes (c. 1128-1135; The Meditations, 1954), were only begun at Saint-Thierry and were finished after William had moved to Signy.

The idea of becoming a Cistercian had never been abandoned by William, and in 1135 he resigned his abbacy and, as a simple monk, joined the new Cistercian monastery of Signy, also in the diocese of Reims. There followed a time of trial and self-doubt. William never had been particularly robust, and it may be that the very sparse diet of the Cistercians, who subsisted for the most part on bread and vegetables, weakened him further. In addition, doubts grew that he had made the right choice. He became so ill that he almost died. He remained frail even after recovering and was thereafter exempted from the daily manual labor practiced by most Cistercians.

He returned to his writing. The Expositio super cantica canticorum (c. 1135-1138; Exposition on the Song of Songs, 1970) became a main preoccupation; in this work, William elaborated his teaching on humans as images of God and as possessing, as Augustine had taught, memory, intellect, and will. Beginning in 1138, there arose a controversy whose repercussions were felt all across Europe. Certain of Peter Abelard’ teachings had been condemned as early as 1121, but only in the mid-1130’s did some of his later writings come into William’s possession. William was outraged at what he took to be Abelard’s contempt for tradition. He immediately took the attack and called Abelard’s abuses to Bernard’s attention. By 1140, the latter had seen to it that Abelard was condemned by Rome.

Abelard might have been condemned, but the issues he raised concerning the relation of faith and reason of the role of reason in speaking of the things of God remained. Like many others, William tried his hand at addressing these issues. Two works have been preserved, Speculum fidei (1140; The Mirror of Faith, 1959) and Aenigma fidei (1144; The Enigma of Faith, 1974). These works both treat the problem of how humans know God; The Mirror of Faith is virtually an exposition of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, and The Enigma of Faith centers on the Trinity. William elsewhere attacked what he took to be a tendency of theologians such as William of Conches to undermine the unity of the Trinity, a theme taken up in The Enigma of Faith.

William gained a wide readership in the twelfth century (and even more in the thirteenth) from a work intended for hermits, The Golden Epistle. In about 1144, he had visited the recently founded Carthusian Charterhouse of Mont-Dieu, a community of hermits, also in the diocese of Reims. After William returned to Signy, his gift to the hermits was a long epistle on the eremitic life. Like other of his works, this was to suffer at the hands of later medieval editors, who reshaped what had originally been a long letter into a formal treatise on the solitary life, eventually attributed to Saint Bernard.

William felt old and tired, but he had one final work to write: Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Death intervened before he could finish, and he left the tale told only through about 1130. He died on September 8, 1147 or 1148, and was buried in his own cloister at Signy.

Significance

William of Saint-Thierry stands at the center of the twelfth century monastic impulse toward solitude, austerity, and contemplation. The movement of his life was from the less strict practices of Cluny to the more demanding life of the Cistercians, with an interest toward the end in the even more austere eremitic life of the Carthusians. Linked forever with his almost lifelong friend, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, whose life he was writing at the time of his death, William was not the public figure that Bernard was. Although very much involved in monastic reform and always attentive to the threat of heresy, for the most part William lived a quiet life of solitude, a life of meditation and writing. It is here that his importance lies.

The revival of learning occurring all across Europe in the twelfth century had many aspects. One of these was an exploration of the reliability and limits of human reason, especially in understanding the nature of God. William considered that many of the scholars of the rapidly growing cities of his day were too audacious in speaking of God and too careless in abandoning established terminology for new ideas. His own interest lay elsewhere, in mystical theology, especially in elaborating for monks the manner in which, through love, the human soul becomes receptive to salvation and to God indeed, in a certain sense becomes like God, who is Love.

At one level, William was one of the most conservative theologians of his day, siding with Saint Bernard against innovators such as Abelard and William of Conches. William of Saint-Thierry disliked the application of dialectic to theology: Better than the new Scholasticism was the prayer and contemplative theology of the church fathers, who attempted to reach God more by love and desire than by intellect and saw all understanding of God as rooted in love. In another sense, William can be said to evince a rather modern sensibility in his perception of inner peace and joy as signs of God’s grace and consolation. The main point is that, by returning to the Church fathers, William often recaptured ancient insights and expressed them in a contemplative synthesis built around access to God through love. This he offered as an alternative to the growing Scholastic attempt to turn theology into a science whose main instrument was intellect.

Bibliography

Anderson, John D. Introduction to The Enigma of Faith, translated by John D. Anderson. Vol. 3 in The Works of William of St. Thierry. Washington, D.C.: Consortium Press, 1974. This volume corrects several errors repeated in many descriptions of William’s life and downplays William’s knowledge of the Greek Church fathers.

Bell, David N. The Image and Likeness: The Augustinian Spirituality of William of St. Thierry. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1984. This is an informed, full-length study of William’s spirituality and theology. The biographical comments in the introduction are sound. Includes an extensive bibliography and indexes.

Brooke, Odo. Studies in Monastic Theology. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1980. This volume discusses William’s theology.

Déchanet, Jean Marie. William of St. Thierry: The Man and His Work. Translated by Richard Strachan. Spencer, Mass.: Cistercian Publications, 1972. This biography is sometimes uncritical and sometimes overly speculative in advancing points of view for which there is little evidence. Its final chapter, however, gives a useful survey of previous scholarship.

Evans, G. R., ed. The Medieval Theologians. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2001. Chapter 9 considers the theology of William and Bernard as part of a “medieval Renaissance.” Includes a bibliography and an index.

Gilson, Étienne. The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard. Translated by A. C. Downes. 1940. Reprint. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1990. A great work by one of the best twentieth century historians of medieval thought. Its fifth appendix, “Notes on William of St.-Thierry,” gives an excellent outline of William’s thought, clearly placing it in the Augustinian tradition.

Renevey, Denis. Language, Self and Love: Hermeneutics in the Writings of Richard Rolle and the Commentaries on the Song of Songs. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001. A critical look at commentaries on William’s Song of Songs.