Where in Bernard's sermon de pass does he say the man that hit Christ wore an iron glove?

[NaphtaliPress]

Both Thomas Brooks and Isaac Ambrose (who copied whom?) say that Bernard, serm. de pass. says that the hand that struck Christ (some say it was Malchus) was clothed with an iron glove. I found the possible reference, but I can't find anything like this in it. Could it be a different sermon? Wrong attribution? My Saturdays project is working on the sacramental meditations by Daniel Campbell for sending out eventually to church members every week (I'm having to type it as there is no clean online version that can ocr well) and he got this from Ambrose whom he cites often but doesn't credit in this instance.
Bernard sermon de passione.
Brooks
Ambrose
The both reference Vicentius and Ludovicus which Campbell does as well, and I'll move on to looking for those. I've found no one else who makes the attribution to Bernard that Malchus or whomever (Bernard may not name Malchus) whore an iron glove.

 

[Phil D.]

This is one of those cases where things just don't quite come together...

In searching for Latin sources, the earliest I found a reference to Bernard is from 1658 - dextera ferrea chirotheca armata - right hand armed with an iron glove. It also says it's from Ser. de Pass. but I can't find any such thing in the PL volumes for Bernard, or elsewhere.

Another source from 1739 gives a fuller rendering of, Quod alapa fuit Christo inflicta dextera, ferrea chirotheca armata - That slap was inflicted on Christ by a right hand armed with an iron glove. He gives his source as Angelo Paciuchelli tract de Pas. Dom. serm. 17 pag. 161 num 3. I can locate a discourse 17 where Paciuchelli indeed cites Bernard, but he only gives the shorter version (the pagination is different so it may be a different edition, but given the other alignments it seems that shouldn't matter). Instead, the fuller citation seems to perhaps be a partial melding of the marginal note and text from from the 1658 source...

A search of something like manu or manus ferrea chirotheca armata - a hand with an iron glove - brings up numerous hits not attributed to Bernard, so it seems it was a somewhat common notion. The earliest writing I found with something like that is supposedly from an "unpublished" sermon attributed to Augustine, entitled De Passione Domini (VI), but its authenticity is also questionable as it doesn't show up in Augustine's PL corpus. Here it says, Et quid miraris ex hoc; quia caro Christi tenerrima, quam ille crudelis percutierat, quia manus fortis erat et forte ferrea chirotheca armata. - And why do you wonder at this? For the flesh of Christ was most tender, which was struck by a cruel man, and that hand was strong, and perhaps armed with an iron glove.

I also came across some more modern references that note a tradition in some Passion plays where the person playing the soldier who slaps Christ wears an iron glove.

Edit: I was also going to mention that one source that cites Bernard gives Meditations on the Passion of our Lord, so I want that route. I even found an early English translation that I was quite hopeful might have been the source for Brooks and Ambrose - but, no joy...

It's been an interesting hour and a half...

 

[NaphtaliPress]

It's been an interesting hour and a half...

Whoa; well, I've about that much time in it also. And this was for a 'church project'; not one of my projects that make a "to do " about such things. The other two references are problematic as well. I appreciate that time you put in; I know the drive to "I can solve this" but sometimes it's just a bad source (tradition more like it of long repeated references with no actual sound source).

 

[Phil D.]

I know the drive to "I can solve this"

It was a completely voluntary pursuit, just as enjoyable for me as sitting for 90 minutes waiting for a fish to bite, or watching a basketball game, or...

 

[ReformedChristian]

Both Thomas Brooks and Isaac Ambrose (who copied whom?) say that Bernard, serm. de pass. says that the hand that struck Christ (some say it was Malchus) was clothed with an iron glove. I found the possible reference, but I can't find anything like this in it. Could it be a different sermon? Wrong attribution? My Saturdays project is working on the sacramental meditations by Daniel Campbell for sending out eventually to church members every week (I'm having to type it as there is no clean online version that can ocr well) and he got this from Ambrose whom he cites often but doesn't credit in this instance.
Bernard sermon de passione.
Brooks
Ambrose
The both reference Vicentius and Ludovicus which Campbell does as well, and I'll move on to looking for those. I've found no one else who makes the attribution to Bernard that Malchus or whomever (Bernard may not name Malchus) whore an iron glove.

Did they have Iron gloves during the time of Christ?

 

[Phil D.]

Did they have Iron gloves during the time of Christ?

Roman gladiators wore them. Virgil, Aeneid 5.404 (c. 25 BC)​

​

So he spoke and thereon threw into the ring a pair of gloves of giant weight, wherewith valiant Eryx was wont to enter contests, binding his arms with the tough hide. Amazed were the hearts of all, so vast were the seven huge oxhides, all stiff with insewn lead and iron.​

 

[Jerusalem Blade]

An equivalent might be the "brass knuckles" of today. But we have no report of the Lord's jaw being broken, or facial bones or skull fractured, so I would doubt it, especially in light of John 19:36 and Psalm 34:20. Even so, He was physically beaten before being taken to Pilate.

God, in the Person of His Son, beaten by the religious of His day!

 

[Phil D.]

Both Thomas Brooks and Isaac Ambrose (who copied whom?)

I've come across various cases of this too. For example, I found a passage concerning the baptism of the Israelites in the Red Sea where Turretin almost certainly copied a portion from Gataker without attribution. I'm not sure, though, that back then this kind of thing would have been considered plagiarism in the same sense it is today. In the case I mentioned, the Latin is somewhat different, but the subject-matter, sentiments, and even sequencing are the same.

 

[darrellmaurina]

I've come across various cases of this too. For example, I found a passage concerning the baptism of the Israelites in the Red Sea where Turretin almost certainly copied a portion from Gataker without attribution. I'm not sure, though, that back then this kind of thing would have been considered plagiarism in the same sense it is today. In the case I mentioned, the Latin is somewhat different, but the subject-matter, sentiments, and even sequencing are the same.

I think we can say with a high level of confidence that the standards for attribution and copying were vastly different from what we have today.

In fact, specific attribution, well into the 1800s, was actually DISCOURAGED when criticizing opponents who were considered to be "within the camp," with the idea being that "friendlies" shouldn't be singled out too severely. I remember reading a polemical book from the 1700s by a minister in one of the separatist Presbyterian denominations who was ministering to his flock in America -- I am no longer 100 percent certain but I think he was an Associate Presbyterian, then known as the "Seceders," one of the groups that later became the Associate Reformed Presbyterians -- and criticizing the other bodies (what today would be the RPCNA or Covenanters, the Old Side Presbyterians, and the New Side Presbyterians). He made reference to their distinctive doctrines in detail but never once mentioned the denominational name or the specific writer he was criticizing. It's likely that when he was writing, his targets and his readers would have known who he was talking about, but without footnotes or far more knowledge of back-country Pennsylvania Presbyterianism of the 1700s, I was completely unable to identify who he was criticizing.

Even in the 1900s, Machen made reference in some of his writings to a Roman Catholic speaker whose opposition to liberalism he appreciated. For three decades, I had thought Machen was referring to Fr. (later Archbishop) Fulton Sheen, a Roman Catholic apologist who was well known for attacks on liberalism and for encouraging Catholics to read conservative Protestants and their Scriptural exegesis. It's possible. But if it was Fr. Sheen, it probably would have had to be when Machen was studying or vacationing in Europe since Sheen's American work was mostly after Machen's death, and during Machen's lifetime, Sheen was mostly studying and preaching in Europe, and -- much like Machen -- was horrified by the growing damage done by liberalism to his church and wanted to keep it out of the United States. This is the sort of thing that today we can easily check using the internet, but for someone like me who lives in rural America and hasn't had access to a major theological library since leaving Calvin Seminary, it would have been very difficult to know the timeline of when Machen and Sheen could have interacted without the sort of biographical information that is today available by a few clicks of keys, but back in the 1980s and early 1990s, would have required a great deal of research in a major library.

Now imagine the problems of attributing things when every new edition of a printed book had a new set of page numbers, and people were still using hand-copied manuscripts, and only the very largest universities had anything close to a modern theological library, and even then, there were huge gaps and scholars might have to travel hundreds of miles to read a book they didn't have in their university library.

Attribution not only wasn't done; it simply wasn't possible.

And that's not even taking into account the problems of printers errors, damage to hand-copied manuscripts, and scribal errors.

The modern standards of plagiarism simply were not possible prior to the widespread use of modern printing techniques, (relatively) low-cost books, and large library collections.