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Flirting with the forbidden?
(2020)
In an oft-quoted section of his Apology, written in 1125 at the request of his friend William of St Thierry, Bernard of Clairvaux mounts a strenous attack on Cluniae excesses in food, clothing, and buildings, ridiculing his rival order's large churches and their sumptuous paintings that catch the worshipper's eye and, as Bernard laments, dry up his devotion. Fiant haec ad honorem Dei - 'You might say', Bernard concedes, if only as a rhetorical gesture, 'these things are all to the honour of God; nevertheless, just as the pagan poet Persius inquired of his fellow pagans, I as a monk ask my fellow monks: "Tell me, oh pontiffs (as he said), what is gold doing in the sanctuary?" I say (folowwing the meaning, not the meter): "Tell me, poor men, if you really are poor: what is gold doing in the sanctuary?" - in sancto quid facit aurum?'