Five Books on Consideration: Advice to a Pope

Always a vigorous champion of papal reforms, Bernard of Clairvaux toward the end of his life saw one of his own monks raised to the papal throne as Eugene III. While acting as the new Pope's political and spiritual counsellor, the Great Cistercian abbot was tireless in advancing Eugene's policies and in defending his authority and prestige. Both as a monk and as a strategist, Bernard realized that political astuteness needs the complement of sober and honest reflection. In Five Books on Consideration he defines 'consideration' for the Pope by examining the practical and the theological demands of the papal office. In Book One he scrutinizes an overcrowded papal schedule and exhorts his former pupil to insure for himself the leisure without which reflection is impossible. In Book Two he demands of Eugene a relentless knowledge of himself and his motives. In Book Three he exposes the abuses of the institutional church and the shortcomings of many of its leaders. In Book Four the French abbot warns the monk-pope to be wary of the intrigues of Rome and its citizens. In Book Five he sets the Church within the celestial hierarchy, treating the theological nature of the papal office and he demands that Eugene in all his actions and decisions take as his goal the knowledge of God. Five Books on Consideration is both a treatise on the politics of theocracy and a paternal admonition to a spiritual son whose very soul, Bernard believed, was imperiled by his high office.