Abstract

In his works, Bernard of Clairvaux, designed an impressive curriculum for a monastic "school of spiritual love ". Because of Bernard's remarkable level of slyle and doctrine, this curriculum was limited for centuries to a monastic elite audience. According to the article, however at the end of the ]4th century the anonymous English author of The Cloud of Unknowing (probably a Carthusian) rewrote this program with mystico-pedagogical talent and created a "democratized version" of this course - with the central metaphor of a "tree of love" - thus meeting the spiritual interests and needs lay-people had in that particular period