BERNARD OF CHARTRES. - Philosopher, active between the end of the 11th century and the beginning of the 12th, erroneously identified for some time, owing to the similarity of his philosophical ideas and style, with Bernard of Moëlan and with Bernard Silvestris, his contemporaries. The best and most reliable information about B., Magister Scholae first at Chartres and then at Paris, comes to us from John of Salisbury, who studied theology at Paris and at Chartres, and who has preserved for us fragments of B.'s works that have been lost. B.'s works are three: a prose treatise De expositione Porphyrii, in which he set out his opinion on matter and on the idea; another treatise in verse on the same subject, of which few fragments remain; and a writing that has been lost, in which he attempted to reconcile Aristotle and Plato.
The inspiration of his thought is decidedly Platonic. He distinguishes realities, immutable and invisible, from appearances, temporal, sensible and mutable. To the former belong the three principles of things: God, idea, matter. God, creator of matter, distinguished in three equal and coeternal persons, is the "author" of the idea, which is therefore not coeternal with God, but only eternal. Proceeding with this theme, B. shows himself closer to Plato on the question of the relations between the eternal and immutable idea and the appearances of reality, temporal and mutable. B. resolves the problem by admitting a "native form," a second kind of idea which, unlike the first, which God has drawn directly from himself and keeps in himself as the immutable exemplar of things, is extracted from matter and is a copy of that exemplar; mingled as it is with matter, it constitutes bodies. According to other passages reported by disciples, it seems that this Platonism degenerates into pantheism, but the accusation in that case concerns the disciples more than B. himself.