The World after the Schism: One Thing after Another, 1140–1145

This chapter studies how, in the years that followed the final departure of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux from Italy, he encountered what might be called “one damn thing after another,” the chaos that makes up the very stuff of history and human life. Probably during Lent of 1139, he faced his first challenge. His friend and later biographer, William of Saint-Thierry, sent him a brief treatise attacking the theology of Peter Abelard. Sometime between May of 1139 and June of 1140, Bernard composed a fairly lengthy treatise attacking what he considered to be the heresies of Abelard, concerning the doctrines of the Trinity and the Redemption. He addressed it to no less a person than Pope Innocent II, the very man from whom he temporarily had broken off contact because of Innocent's refusal to reinstate Cardinal Peter of Pisa. The Abelard affair thus forced Bernard to get back in touch with Rome and abandon the solitude he must have sought at Clairvaux after the death of his brother Gerard.

Business as Usual in Preparing for Death

This chapter shows how the last years of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, from 1150 until his death on 20 August 1153, were spent in a flurry of activities that provide little indication that he was a dying man. Indeed, he was still involving himself in matters outside the Cistercian Order, so his commitment hardly reflects the situation of someone in the process of dying. Bernard seems to have suffered from some kind of gastric disturbance, perhaps a result of his ascetic way of life. It is something of a wonder that a man who for years had experienced stomach cramps and could hardly consume food or drink, could continue to be active for such a long time. Bernard refused to make any concessions to his own weakness and went ahead with his concerns, dictating one letter after another. One can assume that for the most part he had to remain at Clairvaux during these years, except for a final excursion that brought him to the city of Metz in what today is the north of France. Bernard was tireless, willing, perhaps obsessed with responding to requests for help from other churchman.

A Saint’s Origins

This chapter traces the origins of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. The site of Bernard's birth is a hill on the outskirts of Dijon, the capital of Burgundy. He was the third of seven children born to Tescelin Sorus and Aleth of Montbard. Bernard's father and brothers took their place in the world in order to serve secular lords, especially the Duke of Burgundy. Later in life, Bernard seems to have shown no aversion to the military persuasion. He helped invent a way of life that combined monasticism and knighthood. Praying at night and fighting during the day became, thanks to Bernard, a commendable religious vocation. Bernard's attachment to knights, in the hope of their becoming monks, is also shown in a story about how some young knights found their way to Clairvaux. Meanwhile, the story of Bernard's participation in the mystery of Christ's birth indicates that as a child he took part with great intensity in the liturgical year and made Christian symbols an integral part of his life.

Toward Reformation of Church and Monastery

This chapter reflects on how Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was born in the aftermath of the first medieval reformation of the Church and grew up in a world where royal, ducal, and other secular figures had to respect the prerogatives of the Church. His actions in defending what he found to be ecclesiastical interests reflect his attachment to this reformation, even though he by no means was extreme or radical in his view of how Christian society should function. Like other church figures, he took it for granted that there would be a great amount of cooperation between ecclesiastical and secular powers. They could strengthen each other, and only in extraordinary situations was it necessary for churchmen to distance themselves from kings and other lay authorities. In 1129, Bernard joined with other Cistercian abbots, including his father abbot, Stephen Harding, and addressed King Louis VI of France concerning a quarrel between the king and the bishop of Paris, Stephen of Senlis. This is a classic case of the old regime, where king and churchmen supported each other, in the face of a new world where the Church reformed itself and kept secular authority at a distance.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who almost defies characterization. Monk, abbot, adviser of kings and popes, author of some of the finest Latin prose to emerge from the Middle Ages, he was a man of many talents. At first glance he can seem abrasive, overconfident, and almost arrogant. But as this book shows, he is a point of departure for European culture in its search for faith, meaning, and community. Any history of Western Europe in the twelfth century has to include Bernard and his almost frenetic activities. Bernard deserves reevaluation as a person and participant in the history of Christian life and spirituality. His inner life and external actions illuminate his own time and provide a context for ours. In addition to his sophisticated theology, his moving sermons, and his influence among kings and popes, Bernard can plausibly be considered the first European. Through his vision and talent for inspiring people to work together, he helped build Christianity's first continent-wide monastic order, the Cistercians, whose monasteries extended from Ireland to Sicily and Norway.

Healing a Divided Church, 1130–1135

This chapter describes how in the first years of the 1130s, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux became a European figure, involving himself in the ecclesiastical and secular politics of his time and influencing them to a greater or lesser degree. He dedicated himself to solving the perilous situation in which there were two popes at the same time in the Western Church. By 1138, he had been to Italy a number of times and had traversed what today is France. These journeys must have been grueling for an individual with gastric problems and with a firm commitment to the prayer life of the monastery. At the same time as Bernard missed the daily office, he was separated from the brothers he loved in Clairvaux, both his brothers in the flesh and his spiritual brethren, who looked to him for spiritual guidance and inspiration.

Preaching a Crusade and Leaving Miracles Behind, 1146–1150

This chapter illustrates how Saint Bernard of Clairvaux accepted an invitation to preach what in his age was called a pilgrimage (peregrinatio), while we use the term “crusade.” The idea was that the knights of France, Burgundy, Champagne, and elsewhere should band together and embark on an armed pilgrimage to make Jerusalem and other holy places safe from the encroachment of the Saracens. Bernard's decision to support the crusade cannot be explained in terms of his Cistercian background. But in supporting the creation of a “new militia,” as he called it, the Knights Templar, Bernard had already more than fifteen years earlier thrown his support behind a unique kind of soldier monasticism. Now after the fall of Edessa in 1144, Bernard decided to support not only monk-knights but also knights of all kinds and to inspire them by his preaching to take the cross and go to the Holy Land, now in danger of being taken again by non-Christians. The chapter provides a sense of Bernard's impact on his surroundings outside of monastic circles. At the same time, it considers the letters Bernard wrote that show how he looked upon his commitment to crusade.

A Time of Hope and Change

This chapter discusses how the world into which Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was born in 1090 was full of hope and promise. The search for intimacy would come to characterize Bernard's life and helps explain why he joined a monastery. At the same time, however, he benefited from other factors in creating his life. A few decades before Bernard was born, the Western Church had experienced the upheaval of what many history books call the Gregorian Reform. This movement can be called the first medieval reformation, for it brought about a genuine reformation or restructuring of the Christian Church. Bernard came to the monastery as an adult, and the new monasticism that he joined insisted on individual choice. In this sense, Bernard and his contemporaries would discover the meaning of Christianity as manifested in the words of Jesus, emphasizing the consent that comes from the heart instead of the gesture's symbolic assent.

Bernard of Clairvaux

This intimate portrait of one of the Middle Ages' most consequential men, delves into the life of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux to offer a refreshing interpretation that finds within this grand historical figure a deeply spiritual human being who longed for the reflective quietude of the monastery even as he helped shape the destiny of a church and a continent. Heresy and crusade, politics and papacies, theology and disputation shaped this astonishing man's life, and this book presents it all. Following Bernard from his birth in 1090 to his death in 1153 at the abbey he had founded four decades earlier, the book reveals a life teeming with momentous events and spiritual contemplation, from Bernard's central roles in the first great medieval reformation of the Church and the Second Crusade, which he came to regret, to the crafting of his books, sermons, and letters. We see what brought Bernard to monastic life and how he founded Clairvaux Abbey, established a network of Cistercian monasteries across Europe, and helped his brethren monks and abbots in heresy trials, affairs of state, and the papal schism of the 1130s. By re-evaluating Bernard's life and legacy through his own words and those of the people closest to him, the book reveals how this often-challenging saint saw himself and conveyed his convictions to others. Above all, the biography depicts Saint Bernard of Clairvaux as a man guided by Christian revelation and open to the achievements of the human spirit.