82 A Fresh Look at William of Saint -Thierry’s Excerpts from the Book of Blessed Ambrose on the Song of Songs Mark DelCogliano Like many monks of his era, William of Saint-Thierry had a passionate interest in the Song of Songs. He left us no fewer than four works that deal with this biblical book. 1 Perhaps the earliest is the so-called Brief Commentary, which is thought to be a reworked version of notes made of conversations on the biblical book that William and Bernard had while convalescing in the infirmary at Clairvaux sometime after 1118. 2 During his tenure as abbot of Saint-Thierry (1121–35), William composed two florilegia of patristic interpretations of the Song, one drawn from the works of Ambrose of Milan (Cant Amb) and the other from the works of Gregory the Great (Cant Greg). 3 His own commentary on the Song of Songs was written in his earliest years as a Cistercian monk at Signy (1135– 1 William, Expositio super Cantica canticorum (Cant), Brevis commentatio (Brev com); Excerpta de libris beati Ambrosii super Cantica canticorum (Cant Amb); Excerpta ex libris beati Gregorii super Cantica canticorum (Cant Greg), ed. Paul Verdeyen, et al., CCCM 87 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 205–384, 385–444. 2 See William, Vita Bern 1.32–34 (CCCM 89B:58–60; PL 185:246B–247D; William, Bernard of Clairvaux: Early Biographies, Vol. I by William of St. Thierry, [trans. Martinus Cawley] [Lafayette, OR: Abbey of Our Lady of Guadalupe, 1990] , 44). 3 On the date of the florilegia, see William, Brev com (CCCM 87:387) and Paul Verdeyen, Introduction to Expositio super Epistolam ad Romanos, CCCM 86 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989), xxvii.