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18 treatises, Sedebitis et vos judicantes. These four quotations come together, within two pages of the Rule, and are similarly contiguous in the Sententiæ: this part of the Sententiæ is in fact the inspiration of much of this section of the Rule, although exact verbal coincidence is confined to the four passages I have quoted.

That connection exists between the two treatises is, I think, undeniable. It becomes therefore of importance to date the Sententiæ of Geoffrey of Auxerre, who was issuing Bernardine literature at intervals between 1145 and 1188. The Sententiæ must apparently fall between the years 1153 and 1179. Taking the earliest possible year, and assuming that the anchoresses were only domicellæ of Queen Maud as children for a few months before her death in 1118, it remains impossible that a work in which the anchoresses are referred to as youthful can have been written after the Sententiæ.

Of course it is possible that the Rule and the Sententiæ are both drawing upon some passage in Bernard’s sermons in which the two dicta of Bernard and the two verses from scripture come together in this way. (In that case the reference in the Rule to St. Bernard’s “sentence” must be taken as meaning simply St. Bernard’s “opinion,” and as involving no reference to the Sententiæ.)

But I know of no such passage. It is true that the text Sedebitis Judicantes is a favourite one of St. Bernard, and further that in one place he connects this text with the exclamation of the Psalmist, Vide humilitatem meam et laborem meum. This shame and suffering, he says (in the Sermon on the birthday of St. Benedict), will be rewarded by repose, signified in sitting, and