One of the most controversial aspects
of Bernard’s Mariology was his position on the question of the Immaculate
Conception—Mary’s freedom from original sin from the first moment of her
existence. In a letter to the canons of Lyon regarding their institution of a
fear honoring Mary’s conception, Bernard expresses reservations: “What is being
sanctified cannot be holy before it exists, since it needs sanctification in
order to become holy. Perhaps, then, there was holiness in her conception
itself, so that she was conceived already holy? But reason does not admit this.
For how could that be sanctity without the sanctifying Spirit, or the
cooperation of the Holy Spirit with sin? Or how could sin not be present where concupiscence
was not absent?” (Epistola 174 ad canonicos Lugdunenses, 7)
This passage, often cited as
evidence that Bernard opposed the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception,
requires careful interpretation. Bernard’s concerns appear to be primarily with
the timing of Mary’s sanctification rather than with the fact of her freedom
from sin. He questions how Mary would have been preserved from original sin at
the moment of her conception, given the understanding that sanctification
requires the presence of the sanctifying Spirit which he believed was not
possible in the context of conception as it ordinarily occurs. However, Bernard
clearly affirms Mary’s sanctification in the womb before her birth, placing her
alongside figures like Jeremiah and John the Baptist who were sanctified before
birth according to Scripture.
It is important to note that
Bernard’s objections to the feast of Mary’s conception were raised at a time
when the theological understanding of this mystery was still developing. The
precise formulation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception that would
eventually be defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854—that Mary was preserved from original
sin from the first moment of her existence by a singular grace and privilege of
God, in view of the merits of Christ—was not yet available to Bernard. His concerns
were thus directed at a particular understanding of Mary’s conception current
in his day, not at the doctrine as it would later be defined. (Owen Mitchell, The
Doctors of the Church and the Virgin Mary: From Saint Ambrose to Saint Thérèse
of Lisieux [Colloquium, 2025], 82-83)
