Apologia_ad_Guillelmum
Bernard of Clairvaux's Apologia ad Guillelmum was written in 1125 at the ostensible request of his friend and fellow monastic reformer, William of Saint-Thierry, and is the key document in the early twelfth century controversy over art, the greatest controversy over art to occur in the West previous to the Reformation.[1]
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Already in the Early Christian period, there was disagreement within the Church as to the appropriateness of religious art. While the use of religious art gradually came to be accepted by the mainstream, its rejection within certain limits remained a constant throughout the Middle Ages. In the twelfth century, certain elements within reform monasticism (especially the Cistercians but also others) saw the use of art by monks as inappropriate for a number of reasons. Criticism of the use of monastic art was seen as a criticism of the greatest patrons of religious art of the time, traditional Benedictine monasticism (virtually all of the greatest medieval art up until this time had been religious). Since traditional Benedictine monasticism was one of the richest and most influential segments of society—and since art was one of the great vehicles of interaction between traditional monasticism and the lay public, this interaction being an important source of wealth for monasticism—the controversy over art that arose involved far more than aesthetic questions.
The Apologia is the most articulate document we have for this controversy and one of the most important in understanding how medieval art was used and perceived. In it, Bernard takes up five major criticisms of the use of monastic art.