ABSTRACT

To find out what the Christian Church officially thinks of the Song of Songs, one might turn – on the basis of the axiom, Lex orandi, lex credenda – to the Scriptures as proclaimed in the community of believers at their Sunday assembly, particularly by those traditions that use a set cycle of readings. The introduction to the 1969 Roman Lectionary states that the readings chosen for proclamation on Sundays "present the more important biblical passages" in such a way that "the more significant passages of God's revealed word can be read to the assembly of the faithful" over a three-year period. However, the Song of Songs is conspicuous by its absence. By the Middle Ages, the Song was the book of the Bible most frequently commented upon, its most famous interpreter being the twelfth-century Cistercian abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux.