Bernard of Clairvaux

In his own words on Hosea

• Hosea 10:12

  I do not say, however, that knowledge of letters is to be despised or neglected, which adorns the soul and instructs it, and makes it able to instruct others also. But those two things ought and are expedient to come first, in which the preceding argument declared the sum of salvation to consist. And see whether he was not contemplating and teaching this order who said: Sow for yourselves unto justice, reap the hope of life; and then at last, he says, illuminate for yourselves the light of knowledge. He placed knowledge last, as a painting, which cannot stand upon an empty surface; and therefore he set those two things before it and placed them beneath it, as if he were laying something solid beneath a painting. I shall now attend to knowledge in safety, if first through the benefit of hope I shall have received security of life. You therefore have sown for yourself unto justice, if from true knowledge of yourself you have been awakened to fear God, have humbled yourself, have poured forth tears, have lavished alms, and have given yourself over to other works of piety, if you have afflicted your body with fasts and vigils, if you have wearied your breast with beatings and heaven with cries. For this indeed is to sow unto justice.

  Sermons on the Song of Songs, Sermon 37