20th August ~ St Bernard of Clairvaux

“Adieu, my little Nivard! You will have all the estates and lands to yourself.” The boy answered, “What! you then take Heaven, and leave me only the earth. The division is too unequal.”

ST BERNARD, ABBOT OF CLAIRVAUX, DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH (A.D. 1153)

ST BERNARD was the third son of Tescelin Sorrel, a Burgundian noble, and Aleth, who was daughter of Bernard, lord of Montbard. He was born in 1090 at Fontaines, a castle near Dijon, a lordship belonging to his father. His parents had seven children, namely, Bd Guy, Bd Gerard, St Bernard, Bd Humbeline, Andrew, Bartholomew and Bd Nivard. They were all well educated, and learned Latin and verse-making before the sons were applied to military exercise and feats of arms; but Bernard was sent to Châtillon on the Seine, to pursue a complete course of studies in a college of secular canons. He even then loved to be alone, largely at first because of shyness; his progress in learning was far greater than could be expected from one of his age; and he was soon alert to listen to what God by His holy inspirations spoke to his heart. One Christmas-eve, while waiting with his mother to set out for Matins, he fell asleep and seemed to see the infant Jesus newly born in the stable at Bethlehem; from that day he ever had a most tender devotion towards that great mystery of love and mercy, the manhood of Christ. When he was seventeen his mother died. Bernard was greatly attached to Aleth and her loss was a heavy blow; he was in danger of becoming morbidly despondent, till he was roused out of his brooding and inertia by his lively sister Humbeline.

Bernard made his appearance in the world with all the advantages and talents which can make it attractive to a young man, or which could make him loved by it. His personal attractiveness and wit, his affability and sweetness of temper, endeared him to everybody; in these very advantages lay his chief danger, and for a time there was serious risk of his becoming lukewarm and indifferent. But he began to think of forsaking the world and the pursuit of letters, which greatly attracted him, and of going to Cîteaux, where only a few years before SS. Robert, Alberic and Stephen Harding had established the first monastery of that strict interpretation of the Benedictine rule, called after it “Cistercian”. He wavered for some time in his mind, and one day in great anxiety he went into a church by the road and prayed that God would direct him to discover and follow His will. He arose steadily fixed in the resolution of following the severe Cistercian life. His friends endeavoured to dissuade him from it; but he not only remained firm—he enlisted four of his brothers as well, and an uncle. Hugh of Mâcon (who afterward founded the monastery of Pontigny, and died bishop of Auxerre), an intimate friend, wept bitterly at the thought of separation, but by two interviews was induced to become his companion. Nor were these the only ones who, with apparently no previous thought of the religious life, suddenly decided to leave the world for the austere life of Cîteaux. Bernard induced in all thirty-one men to follow him—he who himself had been uncertain of his call only a few weeks before. It is a happening unparalleled in Christian history. Bernard’s eloquent appeals were irresistible; mothers feared for their sons, wives for their husbands, lest they came under the sway of that compelling voice and look. They assembled at Châtillon, and the day appointed for their meeting Bernard and his brothers went to Fontaines to take farewell of their father and beg his blessing. They left Nivard, the youngest brother, to be a comfort to him in his old age. Going out they saw him at play with other children, and Guy said to him, “Adieu, my little Nivard! You will have all the estates and lands to yourself.” The boy answered, “What! you then take Heaven, and leave me only the earth. The division is too unequal.” They went away; but soon after Nivard followed them, so that of the whole family there only remained in the world the old father and his daughter, Humbeline.

The company arrived at Cîteaux about Easter in 1112 and the abbot, the English St Stephen, who had not had a novice for several years, received them with open arms. St Bernard was then twenty-two years old. He entered this house with the desire to die to the remembrance of men, to live hidden and be forgotten, that he might be occupied only with God. After three years the abbot, seeing the great progress which Bernard had made and his extraordinary abilities, ordered him to go with twelve monks to found a new house in the diocese of Langres in Champagne. They walked in procession, singing psalms, with their new abbot at their head, and settled in a place called the Valley of Wormwood, surrounded by a forest. These thirteen monks grubbed up a sufficient area and, with the assistance of the bishop and the people of the country, built themselves a house. This young colony lived in the greatest poverty and of grinding hardship. The land was barren; their bread was of coarse barley; boiled beech leaves were sometimes served up instead of vegetables. Bernard at first was so severe in his discipline, coming down upon the smallest distractions and least transgressions of his brethren, whether in confession or in chapter, that although his monks behaved with the utmost humility and obedience they began to be discouraged, which made the abbot sensible of his fault. He condemned himself for it to a long silence. At length he resumed his preaching, and provided that meals should be more regular, though the food was still of the coarsest. The reputation of the house and of the holiness of its abbot soon became so great that the number of monks had risen to a hundred and thirty; and the name of the valley was changed to Clairvaux, because it was situated right in the eye of the sun. Bernard’s aged father Tescelin and the young Nivard followed him in 1117, and received the habit at his hands. The first four daughter-houses of Cîteaux became each a mother-house to others, and Clairvaux had the most numerous offspring, including Rievaulx and, in a sense, Fountains in England.

In 1121 Bernard wrought his first miracle, restoring, while he sang Mass, power of speech to a certain lord that he might confess his sins before he died, three days after, having made restitution for numerous acts of injustice. It is related that other sick persons were cured instantaneously by his making the sign of the cross upon them; and we are also told that the church of Foigny was infested with flies till, by Bernard saying he “excommunicated” them, they all died. The contemporary diction of the flies of Foigny became a proverb in France. The weakness of William of Saint-Thierry (he gives a most unpleasant account of unsuitable food), Bernard’s stomach (which was aggravated by insufficient and unwholesome diet), and in consideration of his ill-health the general chapter dispensed him from work in the fields and ordered him to undertake extra preaching instead. This led to his writing a treatise on the Degrees of Humility and Pride, the first of his published works. It includes a study of character which, says the Abbé Vacandard, “the most expert psychologist would not disavow”.

Notwithstanding St Bernard’s love of retirement, obedience and the Church’s needs frequently drew him from his cell. Like several other great saints who have had in a supreme degree the gift of contemplation and wished only to live alone with God in the retirement of a monastery, he had for years on end to be absorbed in the Father’s business in active and public, even political, affairs. In 1137 he wrote that his life was “over-run in all quarters with anxieties, suspicions, cares, and there is scarcely an hour that is left free from the crowd of discordant applicants, from the trouble and care of business. I have no power to stop their coming and cannot refuse to see them, and they do not leave me even the time to pray.” So great was the reputation of his character and powers that princes desired to have their differences determined by him and bishops regarded his decisions with the greatest respect, referring to him important affairs of their churches. The popes looked upon him also as the greatest support of the Holy See, and all people had a profound respect and veneration for his person and opinion. It was said of him that he was “the oracle of Christendom”. For Bernard was not only a great monastic founder, theologian and preacher, he was also a reformer and “crusader”: he never refused what presented itself to him as a challenge, whether it came from the abbey of Cluny or from an antipope, from the philosopher Abelard or the call to the Second Crusade. And he was a hard hitter; to an ecclesiastic in Languedoc he wrote: “You may imagine that what belongs to the Church belongs to you who serve the altar. But you are mistaken; for though it be reasonable that one who gives himself wholly to God should live by the altar, yet whether it be money or other possessions you ought not to appropriate them for yourself, lest you sin either by luxury or by pride. Whatever goes beyond bare nourishment and simple plain clothing is sacrilege and theft.”

After the disputed papal election of 1130 the cause of Pope Innocent II took St Bernard up and down France, Germany and Italy. On one of his returns to Clairvaux he took with him a new postulant, a canon of Pisa, Peter Bernard Paganelli, who was to become a beatified pope as Eugenius III; for the present he was put to stoke the fire in the monastery calefactory. After the general acknowledgement of Innocent II Bernard was present at the tenth general council in Rome, the second of the Lateran, and it was at this period that he first met St Malachy of Armagh; the ensuing friendship between the two lasted until Malachy’s death in Bernard’s arms nine years later. All this time Bernard had continued diligently to preach to his monks whenever he was able, notably those famous discourses on the Song of Songs. In 1140 he preached for the first time in a public pulpit, primarily to the students of Paris. They are the two most powerful and trenchant of his discourses preserved to us, in which he says much of “things hellish and horrible”; they effected some good and a number of conversions among the students, who were at first superior to their fervent “evangelicalism”. But no sooner was the trouble of the papal schism over than he was involved in the controversy with Abelard. If St Bernard was the most eloquent and influential man of his age, the next was the brilliant and unhappy Peter Abelard, who was, moreover, of far wider learning. The two were bound to come into collision, for they represented two currents of thought which, not necessarily opposed, were not yet properly fused: on the one hand, the weight of traditional authority and “faith not as an opinion but a certitude”; on the other, the new rationalism and exaltation of human reason. St Bernard himself has since been grievously criticized for his unrelenting pursuit of Abelard: but it seemed to him he had detected in Abelard vanity and arrogance masquerading as science, and rationalism masquerading as the use of reason, and his ability and learning made him the more dangerous. St Bernard wrote to the pope: “Peter Abelard is trying to make void the merit of Christian faith, when he deems himself able by human reason to comprehend God entirely … the man is great in his own eyes.”

Probably about the beginning of the year 1142 the first Cistercian foundation was made in Ireland, from Clairvaux, where St Malachy had put some young Irishmen with St Bernard to be trained. The abbey was called Mellifont, in county Louth, and within ten years of its foundation six daughter-houses had been planted out. At the same time Bernard was busied in the affair of the disputed succession to the see of York, set out in the account of St William of York (June 8), in the course of which Pope Innocent II died. His third successor, within eighteen months, was the Cistercian abbot of Tre Fontane, that Peter Bernard of Pisa to whom reference has been made, known to history as Bd Eugenius III. St Bernard wrote a charming letter of encouragement to his former subject, addressed: “To his most dearly loved father and master, Eugenius, by the grace of God Sovereign Pontiff, Bernard, styled Abbot of Clairvaux, presents his humble service.” But Eugenius was also rather frightened, for Eugenius was shy and retiring, not accustomed to public life; and so he wrote also to the college of cardinals, a letter beginning: “May God forgive you what you have done. You have put back upon the living a man who was dead and buried. You have again surrounded the man who was withdrawn and freed from cares and crowds. You have placed the last first, and behold! the last state of that man is more perilous than the first.” Later he wrote for Pope Eugenius’s guidance the longest and most important of his treatises, De consideratione, impressing upon him the various duties of his office, and strongly recommending him always to reserve time for self-examination and daily contemplation, applying himself to this still more than to business. He proves to him that “consideration” serves to form and to employ in the heart all virtues. He reminds the pope that he is in danger of falling, by the multiplicity of affairs, into a forgetfulness of God and hardness of heart: the thought of which made the saint tremble for him, and tell him that his heart was already hardened and made insensible if he did not continually tremble for himself; for if the Pope falls, the whole Church of God is involved.

In the meantime the Albigensian heresy and its social and moral implications had been making alarming progress in the south of France. St Bernard had already been called on to deal with a similar sect in Cologne, and in 1145 the papal legate, Cardinal Alberic, asked him to go to Languedoc. Bernard was ill and weak and hardly able to make the journey, but he obeyed, preaching on the way. Geoffrey, the saint’s secretary, accompanied him, and relates many miracles to which he was an eye-witness. He tells us that at Sarlat in Périgord, Bernard, blessing with the sign of the cross some loaves of bread which were brought, said, “By this shall you know the truth of our doctrine, and the falsehood of that which is taught by the heretics, if such as are sick among you recover their health by eating of these loaves”. The bishop of Chartres, who stood by, being fearful of the result, said, “That is, if they eat with a right faith, they shall be cured”. But the abbot replied, “I say not so; but assuredly they that taste shall be cured, that you may know by this that we are sent by authority derived from God, and preach His truth”. And a number of sick persons were cured by eating that bread. Bernard preached against the heresy throughout Languedoc; its supporters were stubborn and violent, especially at Toulouse and Albi, but in a very short time he had restored the country to orthodoxy and returned to Clairvaux. But he left too soon, the restoration was more apparent than real, and twenty-five years later Albigensianism had a stronger hold than ever. Then came St Dominic.

On Christmas-day, 1144, the Seljuk Turks had captured Edessa, centre of one of the four principalities of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, and appeals for help were at once sent to Europe, for the whole position was in danger. Pope Eugenius commissioned St Bernard to preach a crusade. He began at Vézelay on Palm Sunday 1146, when Queen Eleanor and many nobles were the first to take the cross, and were followed by such large numbers of people, moved by the monk’s burning words, that the supply of badges was exhausted and he had to tear strips off his habit to make others. When he had roused France, he wrote letters to the rulers and peoples of western and central Europe, and then went in person into Germany. First he had to deal with a half-crazy monk, called Rudolf, who in his name was inciting the people to massacre the Jews, and then made a triumphant journey through the Rhineland, confirming his appeals by an amazing succession of miracles, vouched for by his companions. The Emperor Conrad III took the cross from him, and set out with an army in the May of 1147, followed by Louis of France. But this, the second, crusade was a miserable failure; Conrad’s forces were cut to pieces in Asia Minor, and Louis did not get beyond laying siege to Damascus. Its failure was in no small measure due to the crusaders themselves; they had been animated by no other motive than the prospect of plunder, were lawless, and committed every kind of disorder in their march. To those who were led by motives of sincere penance and religion, these afflictions were trials for the exercise of their virtue, but the ascetical exercise was dearly bought. This unfortunate expedition raised a storm against St Bernard, because he had seemed to promise success. His answer was that he confided in the divine mercy for a blessing on an enterprise undertaken for the honour of the divine name, but that the sins of the army were the cause of its misfortunes; further, who could judge the extent of its they cannot understand?”

Early in the year 1153 St Bernard entered on his last illness. He had long dwelt “The saints,” said he, “were moved to pray for death out of a desire of seeing Christ; but I am forced hence by scandals and evil. I confess myself overcome by the violence of the storm for want of courage.” For a time he mended a little in the spring, and was called on for the last time to leave Clairvaux to succour his neighbour. The inhabitants of Metz having been attacked by the duke of Lorraine, they were vehemently bent on revenge. To prevent the shedding of more blood the archbishop of Trier went to Clairvaux, and implored Bernard to journey to Metz in order to reconcile the parties that were at variance. At this call of charity he forgot his infirmity and made his way into Lorraine, where he prevailed on both sides to lay aside their arms and accept a treaty which he drew up. Back at Clairvaux, his illness returned with more grievous symptoms. When he received the last sacraments and his spiritual children assembled about him in tears, he comforted and encouraged them, saying that the unprofitable servant ought not to occupy a place uselessly, that the barren tree ought to be rooted up. His love for them inclined him to remain till they should be gathered with him to God; but his desire to enjoy Christ made him long for death. “I am straitened between two,” he cried, “and what to choose I know not. I leave it to the Lord; let Him decide.” And God took him to Himself, on August 20, 1153; he was sixty-three years old, had been abbot for thirty-eight, and sixty-eight monasteries had been founded from Clairvaux. — Bernard may indeed be counted among the founders of the Cistercian Order, who brought it out of obscurity into the centre of western Christendom. He was canonized in 1174, and in 1830 formally declared a doctor of the Church: Doctor mellifluus, the Honey-sweet Doctor, as he is now universally called.

St Bernard “carried the twelfth century on his shoulders, and he did not carry it without suffering”; he was during his life the oracle of the Church, the light of prelates, and the reformer of discipline; since his death he continues to comfort and instruct by his writings. The great French lay scholar of the seventeenth century, Henry Valois, did not hesitate to say they are the most useful for piety among all the works of the fathers of the Church, though he is the youngest of them in time, and Sixtus of Siena, the converted Jew, said, “His discourse is everywhere sweet and ardent: it so delights and warms that from his tongue honey and milk seem to flow in his words, and a fire of burning love to glow from his breast”. To Erasmus he was “cheerful, pleasant, and vehement in moving the passions”, and in another place, “He is Christianly learned, holily eloquent, and devoutly cheerful”. From Pope Innocent II to Cardinal Manning, from Luther to Frederic Harrison, Catholics and Protestants of eminence have recognized the sanctity of St Bernard and the greatness of his writings, in which he is equally sweet and vigorous; his charity appears in his reproaches, he reproves to correct, never to insult. He had so meditated on the Holy Scriptures that in almost every sentence he borrows something from their language, and diffuses the marrow of the sacred text with which his own heart was filled. He was well read in the writings of the fathers of the Church, especially SS. Ambrose and Augustine, and often takes his thoughts from their writings and by a new turn makes them his own. Though he lived after St Anselm, the first of the scholastics, and though his contemporaries are ranked in that class, yet he treats theological subjects after the manner of the ancients. On this account, and for the great excellence of his writings, he is himself reckoned among the fathers. And though he is the last among them in time, he is one of the greatest to those who desire to study and to improve their hearts in sincere religion.