1091–1153. To the scholastics of the middle ages the Song of Songs seemed an unfathomable abyss of mysticism, into whose depths they could dive as deeply as their speculative minds and fertile imaginations prompted them. St. Bernard, who was born at Fountains, in the vicinity of Dijon, in Burgundy, and died in 1153, delivered eighty-six sermons upon this book, and this prodigious number comprises the first two chapters only. In the first sermon he says, “The unction and experience can alone teach the understanding of such a Song. It is not to be heard outside, for its notes give no sound in the street; but she who sings it, she hears it and he to whom it is sung, that is the bridegroom and the bride.” He divides the Song into three parts; in the first part the bridegroom leads the bride into the garden, and in the second he conducts her into the cellar, and in the third he takes her home into his apartments. Upon the words Let him kiss me, &c. (Chap. i. 2), which he explains as referring to the incarnation of Christ, he remarks, “O happy kiss, marvellous because of amazing condescension; not that mouth is pressed upon mouth, but God is united with man.” [78] Gilbert Porretanus, the disciple of St. Bernard, continued these sermons, but only lived to deliver forty-eight, which extend to Chap. v. 10; so that the one hundred and thirty-four sermons only comprise four chapters and a half. 1270–1340. In the Commentary of the celebrated Nicolas De Lyra, a converted Jew, and a native of Lire, in Normandy, we meet more fully the Chaldee mode of interpretation as adopted by Aponius. Like the Chaldee, De Lyra takes the Song of Songs to be a historico-prophetical book, with this difference, however, that he regards Chap. ii.–vii. as describing the history of the Israelites from their Exodus from Egypt to the birth of Christ, and from Chapter vii. to the end, the origin of the Christian Church, her progress, and the peace which she attained in the days of Constantine. Upon the words, “We have a little sister,” he remarks, “This is the Church humble and abject among the worldly enemies, for so she was till the time of Constantine.” [79] 1538. The great reformer, Luther, could not reconcile his mind to believe that the Song of Songs describes the conjugal union of Christ, the bridegroom, with the bride, i.e. the Church as a whole, or with the soul of every individual believer. He therefore rejected the allegorical interpretation of the Fathers, and advanced a new theory, viz., “that the bride is the happy and peaceful State under the dominion of Solomon, and that the Song is a hymn of praise, in which Solomon thanks God for the obedience rendered unto him as a divine gift: for, where the Lord does not direct and rule there is neither obedience nor happy dominion, but where there is obedience or a happy dominion there the Lord lives and kisses and embraces his bride with his word, and that is the kisses of his mouth.” [80]