Bernard of Chartres - Sources

Sources

Gilbert de la Porrée and William of Conches were students of his, and some information about his work comes through their writings, as well as the writings of John of Salisbury. According to John of Salisbury, Bernard composed a prose treatise De expositione Porphyrii, a metrical treatise on the same subject, a moral poem on education, and probably a fourth work in which he sought to reconcile Plato with Aristotle. Fragments of these treatises are to be found in John's Metalogicon (IV, 35) and Policraticus (VII, 3). Hauréau confounds Bernard of Chartres with Bernard Silvestris, and assigns to the former works which are to be ascribed to the latter.

The earliest attribution of the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants" is to Bernard (by John of Salisbury):

Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants, and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter. And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants.

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