It has been said that to relate St. Bernard’s life is to resume the history of the XII century during half its course. He ended the schism of an anti-pope; he went up and down Europe preaching unity and peace and reconciling enemies; he journeyed into Languedoc to combat, by word, the Catharist heresy; fearlessly he rebuked scandal in high places. He drew up the Rule for the Military Order of Templars. His Book of Considerations, written for Eugene III, became a manual of behavior for the papacy. His treatise on Grace and Free Will defined so perfectly the Church doctrine of Justification that almost textually it was repeated by the Council of Trent. No man ever received more overwhelming ovations than Bernard; at Toulouse they crowded to kiss his hand till his frail arms were swollen past all movement; at Albi a jeering crowd was subjugated by one sermon; in northern Italy, such was the reverence for the maker of peace between the rival cities, that Genoa chose him as a patron, and Milan placed herself under his protection. As he crossed the Alps, word passed among the mountaineers, and his way became a triumphal procession. He was worn to a shadow in the service of Christendom when Eugene III commissioned him to preach the Second Crusade, and when the expedition proved a lamentable failure, Heaven sent this strong man, who had passed unscathed through the intoxication of human glory, the severer test of human disgrace.
The figure of the greatest proselytizer since St. Paul is no vague one in history. Bernard was tall and slender, with chiseled features like polished ivory; his hair was red-blond; in his blue eyes was a flame of celestial purity. Many have testified to the serenity of his visage, the modesty of his attitude, and the almost superhuman influence he exerted on those who saw him. They say that the very sight of him preached. Apart from the numerous descriptions of him by his contemporaries, there are over four hundred of his own letters extant, letters straightforward, abrupt, ironic here and there, fearless, and warm-hearted. He swayed emperors and kings, yet retained always his personal humility. Reluctantly he tore himself from the peace of Clairvaux to direct the affairs of Europe, and eagerly he returned to the life of prayer and brotherly love. A preacher, he said, must be a man of prayer if he would convert men. He must be a reservoir kept full and overflowing, not merely a canal that can run dry.
Some to whom the spiritual life is a dead letter have called the abbot of Clairvaux unsympathetic and superhuman. Others, while admiring him, regret his brusqueness and hardy invectives. It was not a day when controversialists handled their adversaries with gloves; witness Abélard’s onslaughts on those who disagreed with him on the most abstract theological points. No doubt, in some cases, Bernard’s zeal exceeded propriety; perhaps his father had touched exactly on the defect of his qualities when he advised him to keep measure in all things. But who that appreciates this great man would tone down his splendid vehemence? His love for morality and pure doctrine was a glorious passion. He struck at the sin, not the sinner. Such censures are the anger of love.
And remark how the men whom Bernard rebuked accepted the humiliation of his public censures. When he asked the archbishop of Sens—the feudal lord, Henri le Sanglier, who began that cathedral—if he thought justice had disappeared from the rest of the world as it had from his own heart, the proud churchman set about curbing his autocratic tendencies, and died an honored pastor. No disputants ever more soundly berated each other than Abélard and Bernard, yet their reconciliation, brought about by kindly, large-minded Peter of Cluny, was frank and complete. And we have seen how Abbot Suger changed his worldly ways of life, how he reformed his monastery, and how the revenues hitherto wasted on a retinue of sixty horsemen were devoted to building the first Gothic monument in France.
St. Bernard was, without question, the most eloquent preacher of the Middle Ages, but the conversions he wrought were due as much to the purity, charity, and humility of his own life as to his unparalleled powers of persuasion. The ideal of that harsh age, despite its shortcomings, was saintliness, and when men found it incarnate in this Burgundian, they accepted him as their leader. Bernard held that it was false principles that led to social corruption, and to punish the evil act while the mental crime which led to it went unchastened, was illogical. So whenever the purity of Christian doctrine was threatened, this champion of the Cross emerged from his seclusion full armed for its defense. His vigilance was not bigotry. When a fanatical German monk preached a persecution of the Jews, the abbot of Clairvaux came to their defense: “The Just,” an old rabbi called him, “without whom not one among our people had saved his life. Honor to him who came to our succor in our hour of mortal anguish.”
In all Bernard’s writings is not one word of disloyalty to what he thought was right, not a trace of the hypocrite. If he thundered against ambition, cupidity, and that hypocrisy which moves about in dim corners, perambulante in tenebris, he knew that scandals there have been and will ever be, since even among the chosen twelve Judas betrayed, Peter denied, and Thomas doubted. He might flagellate ecclesiastic disorders as openly as Luther himself, but the pope called him the pillar of the Church and its guide. Towering above his fellow men morally, he took up his Master’s cord whips to drive the traffickers from the temple, but he left an altar in the sanctuary and a high priest at the altar, and his own life was blameless.
The choicest spirits of the age sought Bernard’s friendship. He was loved by St. Norbert, whose new Order of Prémontré spread over Europe with the same rapidity as that of Cîteaux. He had links with the mystics in St. Victor’s abbey at Paris; Hugues de St. Victor submitted cases of conscience to him; Richard de St. Victor asked of him criticism on his book on the Trinity; and the Latin hymns of Adam de St. Victor breathe the selfsame spirit as that of the Burgundian mystic. Geoffrey de Lèves, who built the tower at Chartres, traveled with him in Italy and Languedoc. Pierre de Celle, who built the choir of St. Remi, at Rheims, wrote of Bernard: “His life, his fame, his works, his writings, his miracles, his faith, his hope, his charity, his chastity, his abstinence, his words, his visage, his gestures, the attitude of his body, all, in a word, rendered homage to his sanctity. He was the well-beloved disciple of the Lord, in whose honor he built, not only one basilica, but all the basilicas of the Order of Cîteaux. If, then, thou wouldst touch the pupil of Our Lady’s eye, write against Bernard.” And the bishop of Paris, who worked on the façade of Notre Dame, the schoolman, Guillaume d’Auvergne, testified that Bernard “lived in the highest perfection,” that his “wisdom proceeded not from human instruction, but from divine inspiration.” The first great master of scholasticism, Guillaume de Champeaux, the progenitor of Paris University, was bound to Bernard in loving friendship till his death, and asked to be buried in the abbey church at Clairvaux.
Detachment from the things of the world never weakened this saint’s human affections. What cry from a stricken heart is more moving than Bernard’s lament for his brother Gerard? That elder brother was following a knight’s career when Bernard won him for God’s service in the cloister. There for twenty-five years they lived side by side. They had just returned together from Italy when Gerard suddenly died. Dry-eyed, Bernard attended the burial, and dry-eyed he went about his daily tasks. He mounted the pulpit to continue an exposition of the Canticle of Canticles which he was conducting, and all at once his grief broke forth irresistibly in one of the sublime elegies of literature, recorded by a monk of Clairvaux who heard it: “What is there in common between this Canticle of joy and me who am in bitter anguish!... I have done violence to my heart.... Grief shut in but wounds with deeper sting. It has vanquished me. What I suffer must have its way. I must pour out my trouble before you, my sons, who knew the faithful comrade I have lost and the justice of my sorrow. You knew his vigilance, his sweetness; you knew my need of him. When I was weak in body, he strengthened me; when I hesitated he spurred me on; when I grew negligent he cautioned me. My Gerard! why have you left me to stumble alone on the road we two trod together, my brother by blood but still more by religion! Ah! I would know if you still think of one whom you loved, if, in God’s presence, you can lean toward our distress? You have shed your mortal weaknesses, but surely not your human tendernesses, for charity endures, says the apostle. No! my Gerard does not forget me in eternity! It was our joy to be together, inextricably were our spirits interlinked, the same thoughts, the same emotions, the same will; one only heart, one only soul between us; with one blow, the sword has pierced my heart and his.... That I might have tranquillity he took on his own shoulders the material cares of the convent. It was his heart bore my troubles. His eyes led my steps. Now, when a need rises I turn to where I think to find him, and he is not there!... I am deprived of the best part of myself and I must not weep. My heart is torn from my bosom, and I must not suffer.... But my courage is not of stone.... I suffer, I weep, and my grief is ever before me....”
And so on it runs, this lamentation with its Hebraic note of sorrow’s passion. Impregnated through and through was Bernard with the Bible, and his speech fell naturally into its cadences. To mark the biblical references in his works would be, says the student, to fill half the pages with annotations.
There is a book of interior consolation, precious to humanity, which has preserved for us intact the spiritual teachings of this Cistercian abbot who led the XII century. Scholars say that the Imitation of Christ bears the direct impress of St. Bernard’s spirit, that it reproduced and analyzed his writings. Whoever its author, his prayer Da mihi nesciri has been answered.