Preface to the

What the deeply afflicted and yet patient Job holds regarding the life of man can be seen from his confessions and sermons which he made in his greatest tribulation and heart-sorrow, where he calls man now a worm, soon a maggot, likewise a rotten carcass and a garment that the moths eat, sometimes even ashes, and compares his life to a shadow. Just as the holy Bernardus also calls him a sperma fœtidum foul-smelling seed, a saccum stercorum sack of dung, and a cibum vermium food for worms.

After man comes the worm, after the worm comes stench and horror,
Thus every man is turned into this appearance.

For as far as the first name is concerned, the ancient pagans also had this way of speaking, as Palladas in his epigram. Regarding the latter, Bernardus undoubtedly looked to what the natural scientists propose: that human bodies are often said to be transformed into natural snakes in the grave, where some suggest as the cause that this happens because of the breathing of the ancient serpent that deceived and poisoned man in Paradise. Just as one has examples of this, where in opened graves many snakes were found around the bones and the yet undecayed sinews of the bodies, which have sometimes been depicted for remembrance. To this, Jesus Sirach agrees in the tenth chapter: And when a man is dead, snakes and worms eat him. Bernardus's saying has given us cause to mention this here.