[536] "Within a few days," says Jocelin in his version of the story! See AA.SS. l.c.
[537] After leaving York Malachy no doubt followed approximately the line of the Roman road known as Erming Street to London and Canterbury. Thanks to the preservation of the Itinerary of Archbishop Sigeric on his journey from Rome to Canterbury in 990 (Stubbs, Memorials of St. Dunstan (R.S.), pp. 391-395), to our knowledge of the routes of travellers contemporary with Malachy, and to the rare mention in the Life of places through which he passed, we can follow him almost step by step from Canterbury to Rome and back. He probably sailed from Dover, and landed on the French coast at or near Wissant. Thence he went by Arras, Rheims, Châlons-sur-Marne, Bar-sur-Aube, Lausanne, Martigny, and over the Great St. Bernard to Ivrea. Then he followed the beaten tract through Vercelli, Pavia, Piacenza, Pontremoli, Lucca and Viterbo to Rome. On the whole journey, from Bangor to Rome and back, the company traversed about 3000 miles on land, besides crossing the sea four times. Allowing for stoppages at Rome, Clairvaux and elsewhere, and for a weekly rest on Sunday, Malachy must have been absent from Ireland about nine months. For details see R.I.A. xxxv. 238 ff. The marginal dates are based on that investigation, and are to be regarded merely as approximations.
[538] Ps. cxix. 14.
[539] Gen. xxxiii. 10, etc.
[540] Pref. § 2.
[541] Malachy probably "turned aside" from the main road at Bar-sur-Aube, from which Clairvaux is distant eight miles. A few words may be said about this famous monastery and its first abbot. Bernard, the son of a nobleman named Tescelin and his saintly wife Aleth, whose memory exercised a powerful influence on the lives of her children, was born at Fontaines, a mile or two from Dijon, in 1090. In Oct. 1111 he persuaded his brothers and many of his friends to embrace the religious life. Early in the following year the whole band, thirty in number, entered the austere and now declining community which had been established in 1098 at Citeaux, twelve miles from Dijon. Their arrival was the beginning of the prosperity of the great Cistercian Order. In 1115 Bernard was sent out, with some brothers, by the abbot, Stephen Harding, to found a daughter house on the river Aube, in a valley which had once been known, from its desolation, as the Valley of Wormwood. After incredible hardships a monastery was built, and the place was so transformed by the labours of the monks that henceforth it deserved its newer name of Clara Vallis, or Clairvaux. The community rapidly increased in numbers; and in 1133, in spite of the opposition of the abbot when the proposal was first made, the building of a large monastery on a different site was begun. It was probably far advanced when Malachy arrived in 1140 (Vacandard, i. 413, 423). It was just completed when he came again in 1148 (see p. 143, n. 5). St. Bernard died on August 20, 1153. At this time he was the most powerful ecclesiastic in Europe, not excepting his nominee Pope Innocent II. (see p. 72, n. 3). Doubtless the main purpose of Malachy's visit to Clairvaux was to secure St. Bernard's support of the petition which he was about to present to the Pope. For further information about St. Bernard the reader may consult V.P., Vacandard, J. Cotter Morison, The Life and Times of St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux (1868), and Richard S. Storrs, Bernard of Clairvaux, the Times, the Man, and his Work (1892).
[542] Yporia. Its ancient name was Eporedia. From it there are two routes across the Alps, by the Great St. Bernard and the Little St. Bernard respectively.
[543] Luke vii. 2.
[544] On the death of Pope Honorius II. (February 14, 1130) two Popes were elected by different groups of cardinals, Innocent II. and Anacletus II. St. Bernard espoused the cause of the former, and by his untiring efforts almost all the sovereigns of Europe were enlisted on his side (see Vacandard, chaps. x.-xiii., xviii.; Storrs, pp. 523-540; Morison, pp. 149-165, 209-213). But the schism lasted for eight years. At length Anacletus died (January 7, 1138), and the surrender of his successor, Victor IV., on May 29, 1138 (Ep. 317), left Innocent in undisputed occupation of the papal chair. The news of the pacification was not announced in Scotland till the end of September (Richard of Hexham, 170). It probably reached Ireland a little later. It must have been after he was assured of the end of the schism that Malachy proposed his journey to Rome, i.e. at the end of 1138 or in 1139.
[545] Quo uenerat.