Bibliographia Bernardina (Vienna, 1891), which includes 2761 entries, including 120 works wrongly ascribed to Bernard.
Authorities.—The principal source for the life of St Bernard is the Vita Prima, compiled, in six books, by various contemporary writers: book i. by William, abbot of St Thierry near Reims; book ii. by Ernald, or Arnald, abbot of Bonnevalle; books iii., iv. and v. by Geoffrey (Gaufrid), monk of Clairvaux and Bernard’s secretary; book vi., on Bernard’s miracles, by Geoffrey and Philip, another monk of Clairvaux, &c. A MS. is preserved, int. al., in the library of Lambeth Palace (§ xiv. No. 163). The Vita was first published in Bernardi op. omn. by Mabillon (Paris, 1690), ii. pp. 1061 ff.; it was included in Migne, Patrolog. lat. clxxxv. pp. 225-416, which also contains the abridgments or amplifications, by later hands, of the Vita Prima, known as the Vita Secunda, Tertia and Quarta. For a critical study of these sources see G. Hüffer, Der heilige Bernhard von Clairvaux (2 vols., Münster, 1886), and E. Vacandard, Vie de Saint Bernard (2 vols., Paris, 1895).
Among the numerous modern works on St Bernard may be mentioned, besides the above, J. C. Morison, The Life and Times of St Bernard (London, 1863); G. Chevallier, Histoire de Saint Bernard (2 vols., Lille, 1888); S. J. Eales, St Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux (London, 1890, “Fathers for English Readers” series); ib. Life and Works of St Bernard (London, 1889); R. S. Storrs, Bernard of Clairvaux: the Times, the Man and His Work (New York, 1893); Comte d’Haussonville, Saint Bernard (Paris, 1906). See also the article by Vacandart in A. Vacant’s Dictionnaire de théologie (with full bibliography), and that by S. M. Deutsch in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (3rd ed.), vol. ii. (bibliography). Further works, monographs, &c., are given s. “Vita S. Bernardi” in Potthast. Bibliotheca Historica Medii Aevi (Berlin, 1896). (W. A. P.)
BERNARD OF CHARTRES (1080?–1167), surnamed Sylvestris, scholastic philosopher, described by John of Salisbury as perfectissimus inter Platonicos nostri saeculi. He and his brother Theodore were among the chief members of the school of Chartres (France), founded in the early part of the 11th century by Fulbert, the great disciple of Gerbert. This school flourished at a time when medieval thought was directed to the ancient philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and had perversely come to regard Aristotle as merely the founder of abstract logic and formal intellectualism, as opposed to Plato whose doctrine of Ideas seemed to tend in a naturalistic direction. Thus Bernard is a Platonist and yet the representative of a “return to Nature” which curiously anticipates the humanism of the early Renaissance. John of Salisbury (Metalogicus, iv. 35) attributes to him two treatises, of which one contrasts the eternity of ideas with the finite nature of things, and the other is an attempt to reconcile Plato and Aristotle. The only extant fragments of Bernard’s writings are from a treatise Megacosmus and Microcosmus (edited by C. S. Barach at Innsbruck, 1876). The source of Bernard’s inspiration was Plato’s Timaeus. He maintained that ideas are really existent and are laid up for ever in the mind of God. He further attempted to build up a symbolism of numbers with the view of elaborating the doctrine of the Trinity, and explaining the meaning of unity, plurality and likeness.
See Scholasticism; also V. Cousin, Œuvres inédites of Abelard (Paris, 1836); Hauréau, Philosophie scolastique, i. 396 foll.
BERNARD, CHARLES DE, whose full name was Pierre Marie Charles de Bernard du Grail de la Villette (1804–1850), French writer, was born at Besançon on the 25th of February 1804. After studying for the law, and then taking to journalism, he was encouraged by Balzac (whose Peau de chagrin he had reviewed) to settle in Paris and devote himself to authorship; and the result was a series of volumes of fiction, remarkable for their picture of provincial society and the Parisian bourgeoisie. The best of these are Le Nœud gordien (1838), containing among other short stories Une Aventure de magistrat, from which Sardou drew his comedy of the Pommes du voisin; Gerfaut (1838), considered his masterpiece; Les Ailes d’Icare (1840), La Peau du lion (1841) and Le Gentilhomme campagnard (1847).
His Œuvres complètes (12 vols.), which appeared after his death on the 6th of March 1850, include also his poetry and two comedies written in collaboration with “Léonce” (C. H. L. Laurençot, 1805–1862). A flattering appreciation by Armand de Pontmartin is prefixed to Un Beau-père in this collection. In W. M. Thackeray’s Paris Sketch-book (“On some fashionable French novels”) there is an admirable criticism of Bernard. See also an essay by Henry James in French Poets and Novelists (1884).
BERNARD, CLAUDE (1813–1878), French physiologist, was born on the 12th of July 1813 in the village of Saint-Julien near Villefranche. He received his early education in the Jesuit school of that town, and then proceeded to the college at Lyons, which, however, he soon left to become assistant in a druggist’s shop. His leisure hours were devoted to the composition of a vaudeville comedy, La Rose du Rhône, and the success it achieved moved him to attempt a prose drama in five acts, Arthur de Bretagne. At the age of twenty-one he went to Paris, armed with this play and an introduction to Saint-Marc Girardin, but the critic dissuaded him from adopting literature as a profession, and urged him rather to take up the study of medicine. This advice he followed, and in due course became interne at the Hôtel Dieu. In this way he was brought into contact with the great physiologist, F. Magendie, who was physician to the hospital, and whose official préparateur at the Collège de France he became in 1841. Six years afterwards he was appointed his deputy-professor at the collège, and in 1855 he succeeded him as full professor. Some time previously he had been chosen the first occupant of the newly-instituted chair of physiology at the Sorbonne. There no laboratory was provided for his use, but Louis Napoleon, after an interview with him in 1864, supplied the deficiency, at the same time building a laboratory at the natural history museum in the Jardin des Plantes, and establishing a professorship, which Bernard left the Sorbonne to accept in 1868—the year in which he was admitted a member of the Institute. He died in Paris on the 10th of February 1878 and was accorded a public funeral—an honour which had never before been bestowed by France on a man of science.
Claude Bernard’s first important work was on the functions of the pancreas gland, the juice of which he proved to be of great significance in the process of digestion; this achievement won him the prize for experimental physiology from the Academy of Sciences. A second investigation—perhaps his most famous—was on the glycogenic function of the liver; in the course of this he was led to the conclusion, which throws light on the causation of diabetes, that the liver, in addition to secreting bile, is the seat of an “internal secretion,” by which it prepares sugar at the expense of the elements of the blood passing through it. A third research resulted in the discovery of the vaso-motor system. While engaged, about 1851, in examining the effects produced in the temperature of various parts of the body by section of the nerve or nerves belonging to them, he noticed that division of the cervical sympathetic gave rise to more active circulation and more forcible pulsation of the arteries in certain parts of the head, and a few months afterwards he observed that electrical excitation of the upper portion of the divided nerve had the contrary effect. In this way he established the existence of vaso-motor nerves—both vaso-dilatator and vaso-constrictor. The study of the physiological action of poisons was also a favourite one with him, his attention being devoted in particular to curare and carbon monoxide gas. The earliest announcements of his results, the most striking of which were obtained in the ten years from about 1850 to 1860, were generally made in the recognized scientific publications; but the full exposition of his views, and even the statement of some of the original facts, can only be found in his published lectures. The various series of these Leçons fill seventeen octavo volumes. He also published Introduction à la médecine expérimentale (1865), and Physiologie générale (1872).
An English Life of Bernard, by Sir Michael Foster, was published in London in 1899.
BERNARD, JACQUES (1658–1718), French theologian and publicist, was born at Nions in Dauphiné on the 1st of September 1658. Having studied at Geneva, he returned to France in 1679, and was chosen minister of Venterol in Dauphiné, whence he afterwards removed to the church of Vinsobres. As he continued to preach the reformed doctrines in opposition to the royal ordinance, he was obliged to leave the country and retired to Holland, where he was well received and appointed one of the pensionary ministers of Gouda. In July 1686 he commenced his Histoire abrégée de l’Europe, which he continued monthly till
