yellow, his beard reddish with some white hairs toward the end of his life. Actually of medium stature, he looked taller."[1]
This same biography says:
"He who had set him apart, from his mother's womb, for the work of a preacher, had given him, with a weak body, a voice sufficiently strong and clear. His speech, whatever persons he spoke to for the edifying of souls, was adapted to his audience; for he knew the intelligence, the habits and occupations of each and all. To country folk he spoke as if born and bred in the country; and so to other classes, as if he had been always occupied with their business. He was learned with the erudite, and simple with the simple, and with spiritual men rich in illustrations of perfection and wisdom. He adapted himself to all, desiring to gain all for Christ."[2]
Bernard was born of noble parents at the Chateau of Fontaines, near Dijon, in the year 1090, and was educated in a church school at Chatillon on the Seine. It is an oft-told story, how, when little more than twenty years of age, he drew together a band formed of his own brothers, his uncle, and his friends, and led them to Citeaux,[3] his ardent soul unsatisfied so long as one held back. Three years later, in 1115, the Abbot, Stephen Harding, entrusted him with the headship of the new monastery, to be founded in the domains of the Count of Troyes. Bernard set forth with twelve companions, came to Clara Vallis on the river Aube, and placed his convent in that austere solitude.
Great were the attractions of Clairvaux (Clara Vallis) under Bernard's vigorous and loving rule. Its monks increased so rapidly and so constantly that during its founder's life sixty-five bands were sent forth to rear new convents. Meanwhile, Bernard's activities and influence widened, till they seemed to compass western Christendom.
- ↑ Vita prima, iii. cap. I (Migne, Pat. Lat. 185). This Vita was written by contemporaries of the saint who knew him intimately. But one must be on one's guard as to these apparently close descriptions of the saints in their vitae; for they are commonly conventionalized. This description of Bernard, excepting perhaps the colour of his hair, would have fitted Francis of Assisi.
- ↑ Vita prima, iii. 3. Bernard himself said that his aim in preaching was not so much to expound the words (of Scripture) as to move his hearers' hearts (Sermo xvi. in Cantica canticorum). That his preaching was resistless is universally attested.
- ↑ See, e.g., Vacandard, o.c. chap. i.
