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The Cistercians
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)
by M. Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O.
The Young Abbot
Bernard, the founding abbot of Clairvaux Abbey in Burgundy, was one of
the most commanding Church leaders in the first half of the twelfth century
as well as one of the greatest spiritual masters of all times and the most
powerful propagator of the Cistercian reform. He was born in Fontaines-les-Dijon
in 1090 and entered the Abbey of Citeaux in 1112, bringing thirty of his
relatives with him, including five of his brothers-- his youngest brother
and his widowed father followed later. After receiving a monastic formation
from St. Stephen
Harding, he was sent in 1115 to begin a new monastery near Aube: Clairvaux,
the Valley of Light. As a young abbot he published a series of sermons
on the Annunciation. These marked him not only as a most gifted spiritual
writer but also as the "cithara of Mary," especially noted for his development
of Mary's mediatorial role.
The Peacemaker
Bernard's spiritual writing as well as his extraordinary personal magnetism
began to attract many to Clairvaux and the other Cistercian monasteries,
leading to many new foundations. He was drawn into the controversy developing
between the new monastic movement which he preeminently represented and
the established Cluniac order, a branch of the Benedictines.
This led to one of his most controversial and most popular works, his Apologia
. Bernard's dynamism soon reached far beyond monastic circles. He was
sought as an advisor and mediator by the ruling powers of his age. More
than any other he helped to bring about the healing of the papal schism
which arose in 1130 with the election of the antipope Anacletus II. It
cost Bernard eight years of laborious travel and skillful mediation. At
the same time he labored for peace and reconciliation between England and
France and among many lesser nobles. His influence mounted when his spiritual
son was elected pope in 1145. At Eugene III's command he preached the Second
Crusade and sent vast armies on the road toward Jerusalem. In his last
years he rose from his sickbed and went into the Rhineland to defend the
Jews against a savage persecution.
The Writer
Although he suffered from constant physical debility and had to govern
a monastery that soon housed several hundred monks and was sending forth
groups regularly to begin new monasteries (he personally saw to the establishment
of sixty-five of the three hundred Cistercian monasteries founded during
his thirty-eight years as abbot), he yet found time to compose many and
varied spiritual works that still speak to us today. He laid out a solid
foundation for the spiritual life in his works on grace and free will,
humility and love. His gifts as a theologian were called upon to respond
to the dangerous teachings of the scintillating Peter Abelard, of Gilbert
de la Porree and of Arnold of Brescia. His masterpiece, his Sermons on
the Song of Songs, was begun in 1136 and was still in composition at the
time of his death. With great simplicity and poetic grace Bernard writes
of the deepest experiences of the mystical life in ways that became normative
for all succeeding writers. For Pope Eugene he wrote Five Books on Consideration,
the bedside reading of Pope John XXIII and many other pontiffs through
the centuries.
Doctor of the Church
Bernard died at Clairvaux on 20 August 1153. He was canonized by Pope Alexander
III on 18 January 1174. Pope Pius VII declared him a Doctor of the Church
in 1830.
From The Modern Catholic Encyclopedia (A Michael Glazier Book),
The Liturgical Press
(1995) 82.
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