BERNARD, SAINT (1090–1153), abbot of Clairvaux one of the most illustrious preachers and monks of the middle ages, was born at Fontaines, near Dijon, in France. His father, a knight named Tecelin, perished on crusade; and his mother Aleth, a daughter of the noble house of Mon-Bar, and a woman distinguished for her piety, died while Bernard was yet a boy. The lad was constitutionally unfitted for the career of arms, and his own disposition, as well as his mother’s early influence, directed him to the church. His desire to enter a monastery was opposed by his relations, who sent him to study at Châlons in order to qualify for high ecclesiastical preferment. Bernard’s resolution to become a monk was not, however, shaken, and when he at last definitely decided to join the community which Robert of Molesmes had founded at Citeaux in 1198, he carried with him his brothers and many of his relations and friends. The little community of reformed Benedictines, which was to produce so profound an influence on Western monachism (see Cistercians and Monasticism) and had seemed on the point of extinction for lack of novices, gained a sudden new life through this accession of some thirty young men of the best families of the neighbourhood. Others followed their example; and the community grew so rapidly that it was soon able to send off offshoots. One of these daughter monasteries, Clairvaux, was founded in 1115, in a wild valley branching from that of the Aube, on land given by Count Hugh of Troyes, and of this Bernard was appointed abbot.
By the new constitution of the Cistercians Clairvaux became the chief monastery of the five branches into which the order was divided under the supreme direction of the abbot of Citeaux. Though nominally subject to Citeaux, however, Clairvaux soon became the most important Cistercian house, owing to the fame and influence of Bernard.[1] His saintly character, his self-mortification—of so severe a character that his friend, William of Champeaux, bishop of Châlons, thought it right to remonstrate with him—and above all, his marvellous power as a preacher, soon made him famous, and drew crowds of pilgrims to Clairvaux. His miracles were noised abroad, and sick folk were brought from near and far to be healed by his touch. Before long the abbot, who had intended to devote his life to the work of his monastery, was drawn into the affairs of the great world. When in 1124 Pope Honorius II. mounted the chair of St Peter, Bernard was already reckoned among the greatest of French churchmen; he now shared in the most important ecclesiastical discussions, and papal legates sought his counsel. Thus in 1128 he was invited by Cardinal Matthew of Albano to the synod of Troyes, where he was instrumental in obtaining the recognition of the new order of Knights Templars, the rules of which he is said to have drawn up; and in the following year, at the synod of Châlons-sur-Marne, he ended the crisis arising out of certain charges brought against Henry, bishop of Verdun, by persuading the bishop to resign. The European importance of Bernard, however, began with the death of Pope Honorius II. (1130) and the disputed election that followed. In the synod convoked by Louis the Fat at Étampes in April 1130 Bernard successfully asserted the claims of Innocent II. against those of Anacletus II., and from this moment became the most influential supporter of his cause. He threw himself into the contest with characteristic ardour. While Rome itself was held by Anacletus, France, England, Spain and Germany declared for Innocent, who, though banished from Rome, was—in Bernard’s phrase—“accepted by the world.” The pope travelled from place to place, with the powerful abbot of Clairvaux at his side; he stayed at Clairvaux itself, humble still, so far as its buildings were concerned; and he went with Bernard to parley with the emperor Lothair III. at Liége.
In 1133, the year of the emperor’s first expedition to Rome, Bernard was in Italy persuading the Genoese to make peace with the men of Pisa, since the pope had need of both. He accompanied Innocent to Rome, successfully resisting the proposal to reopen negotiations with Anacletus, who held the castle of Sant’ Angelo and, with the support of Roger of Sicily, was too strong to be subdued by force. Lothair, though crowned by Innocent in St Peter’s, could do nothing to establish him in the Holy See so long as his own power was sapped by his quarrel with the house of Hohenstaufen. Again Bernard came to the rescue; in the spring of 1135 he was at Bamberg successfully persuading Frederick of Hohenstaufen to submit to the emperor. In June he was back in Italy, taking a leading part in the council of Pisa, by which Anacletus was excommunicated. In northern Italy the effect of his personality and of his preaching was immense; Milan itself, of all the Lombard cities most jealous of the imperial claims, surrendered to his eloquence, submitted to Lothair and to Innocent, and tried to force Bernard against his will into the vacant see of St Ambrose. In 1137, the year of Lothair’s last journey to Rome, Bernard was back in Italy again; at Monte Cassino, setting the affairs of the monastery in order, at Salerno, trying in vain to induce Roger of Sicily to declare against Anacletus, in Rome itself, agitating with success against the antipope. Anacletus died on the 25th of January 1138; on the 13th of March the cardinal Gregory was elected his successor, assuming the name of Victor. Bernard’s crowning triumph in the long contest was the abdication of the new antipope, the result of his personal influence. The schism of the church was healed, and the abbot of Clairvaux was free to return to the peace of his monastery.
Clairvaux itself had meanwhile (1135–1136) been transformed outwardly—in spite of the reluctance of Bernard, who preferred the rough simplicity of the original buildings—into a more suitable seat for an influence that overshadowed that of Rome itself. How great this influence was is shown by the outcome of Bernard’s contest with Abelard (q.v.). In intellectual and dialectical power the abbot was no match for the great schoolman; yet at Sens in 1141 Abelard feared to face him, and when he appealed to Rome Bernard’s word was enough to secure his condemnation.
One result of Bernard’s fame was the marvellous growth of the Cistercian order. Between 1130 and 1145 no less than ninety-three monasteries in connexion with Clairvaux were either founded or affiliated from other rules, three being established in England and one in Ireland. In 1145 a Cistercian monk, once a member of the community of Clairvaux—another Bernard, abbot of Aquae Silviae near Rome, was elected pope as Eugenius III. This was a triumph for the order; to the world it was a triumph for Bernard, who complained that all who had suits to press at Rome applied to him, as though he himself had mounted the chair of St Peter (Ep. 239).
Having healed the schism within the church, Bernard was next called upon to attack the enemy without. Languedoc especially had become a hotbed of heresy, and at this time the preaching of Henry of Lausanne (q.v.) was drawing thousands from the orthodox faith. In June 1145, at the invitation of Cardinal Alberic of Ostia, Bernard travelled in the south, and by his preaching did something to stem the flood of heresy for a while. Far more important, however, was his activity in the following year, when, in obedience to the pope’s command, he preached a crusade. The effect of his eloquence was extraordinary. At the great meeting at Vezelay, on the 21st of March, as the result of his sermon, King Louis VII. of France and his queen, Eleanor of Guienne, took the cross, together with a host of all classes, so numerous that the stock of crosses was soon exhausted; Bernard next travelled through northern France, Flanders and the Rhine provinces, everywhere rousing the wildest enthusiasm; and at Spires on Christmas day he succeeded in persuading Conrad, king of the Romans, to join the crusade.
The lamentable outcome of the movement (see Crusades) was a hard blow to Bernard, who found it difficult to understand this manifestation of the hidden counsels of God, but ascribed it to the sins of the crusaders (Ep. 288; de Consid. ii. 1). The news of the disasters to the crusading host first reached Bernard at Clairvaux, where Pope Eugenius, driven from Rome by the revolution associated with the name of Arnold of Brescia, was his guest. Bernard had in March and April 1148 accompanied the pope to the council of Reims, where he led the attack on
- ↑ The Cistercians of this branch of the order were commonly known as Bernardines.
