He entered the recently founded monastery of Cîteaux at the age of twenty-one, where his unusual ability was quickly recognized. Soon he was sent to found a new branch of the Order, at Clairvaux, and he remained abbot of Clairvaux, refusing all promotion, until his death.
Clairvaux, under St. Bernard, was a model monastery, famous for the asceticism and spiritual intensity of its life. Yet there were other abbots who enforced their rules as strictly, who mortified the flesh as severely, who never had anything like the influence of St. Bernard. He was not only a great monk; he was a great orator and writer, who incarnated the religious ideals and aspirations of his time. He was almost irresistible when he preached to crowds or conferred with kings and princes. His letters were nearly as powerful—clear and logical, yet ablaze with passionate conviction. As Dante saw, the central idea in St. Bernard's thought is love—the undeserved love of God for man, the frail and insufficient love of man for God—and it was because his contemporaries felt the power of this love that they were influenced by St. Bernard. Few men have ever written about their religious beliefs with so much sincerity and frankness—modern readers are almost embarrassed by these revelations of deep feelings. There was an unsympathetic side to St. Bernard—his utter certainty that he was right, his angry denunciations of those who opposed him—but this probably bothers us more than it did his contemporaries. After all, he was a saint, as everyone knew at the time, and saints have always been permitted to be a little emphatic. Moreover, St. Bernard was not vindictive. He could preach against heretics without demanding their death; he could secure the condemnation of Abelard's theological teachings without interfering with Abelard's comfortable retirement in the monastery of Cluny.
As a spiritual leader St. Bernard gave form and direction to all the religious interests of the twelfth century. He gave his own Order such prestige that hundreds of new Cistercian monasteries were founded in every part of Europe. He worked steadily for
