Saint Bernard

“ God was not less to Guigo; but the temperaments of the two men differed. Not beyond or out of one’s nature can one love or yearn, or even know the stress of storm.
[Pg 392]
CHAPTER XVII THE QUALITY OF LOVE IN SAINT BERNARD
Through the prodigious power of his personality, St. Bernard gave new life to monasticism, promoted the reform of the secular clergy and the suppression of heresy, ended a papal schism, set on foot the Second Crusade, and for a quarter of a century swayed Christendom as never holy man before or after him. ”

“ Perhaps no one ever lived more highly gifted with the ecstatic temperament than Saint Bernard. He had the mysterious attribute of miracles, and, in the twelfth century, the miracle was, perhaps, the highest expression of force. To work them was a personal gift, and the possessor of the faculty might, at his caprice, use his power, like the sorcerer, to aid or injure other men. ”

“ Bernard also wrote letters of consolation to parents whose sons had become monks, or letters of warning to those who sought to withdraw a monk from his good fight. In one instance, his influence had made a monk of a youth of gentle birth named Godfrey, to his parents’ grief. So Bernard writes to them:
“If God makes your son His also, what have you lost, or he? He, from rich, becomes richer, from being noble, still more illustrious, and what is more than all, from a sinner he becomes a saint. ”

“ Eleanor and her daughter Mary and her granddaughter Blanche knew as well as Saint Bernard did, or Saint Francis, what a brute the emancipated man could be; and as though they foresaw the society of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, they used every terror they could invent, as well as every tenderness they could invoke, to tame the beasts around them. Their charge was of manners, and, to teach manners, they made a school which they called their Court of Love, with a code of law to which they gave the name of "courteous love." ”

“ The prioress continued:—
“No one doubts the right of the monastery to sepulture. Only fanatics and those in error deny it. We live in times of terrible confusion. We do not know that which it is necessary to know, and we know that which we should ignore. We are ignorant and impious. In this age there exist people who do not distinguish between the very great Saint Bernard and the Saint Bernard denominated of the poor Catholics, a certain good ecclesiastic who lived in the thirteenth century. ”

“ Bernard loved violence of statement and was something of a professional pessimist, still it was true that instead of saying, like proper Christians outside of Languedoc, “I had rather be a Jew” than do such and such mean or disgraceful act, the meridional would say, “I had rather be a priest.” When St. Bernard himself, with all his prestige, came South to preach, he failed even to get a respectful hearing on one important occasion.
The atmosphere of some of these debates comes to us, with a flash of humour, in a story of St. Bernard’s preaching mission. As Lea tells it, the Saint ... ”

“ The Saint is represented as writing, when the Virgin appears to him, holding the Divine Child in her arms, and borne by numerous figures of children and angels, all painted by the master with exceeding delicacy. Beholding this appearance, St. Bernard is lost in adoring contemplation, and there is a certain inexpressible radiance of look, which is so to speak, celestial, in his countenance, and which seems, to him who considers the picture attentively, to become diffused over the whole work. ”

“ A Church which embraced, with equal sympathy, and within a hundred years, the Virgin, Saint Bernard, William of Champeaux and the School of Saint- Victor, Peter the Venerable, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Dominic, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Bonaventure, was more liberal than any modern State can afford to be. Radical contradictions the State may perhaps tolerate, though hardly, but never embrace or profess. Such elasticity long ago vanished from human thought. ”

“ Bernard having retired, with his eyes bathed in tears, Francis said to the others: "My intention is, and I direct that whoever may be appointed minister general, may so love and honor Brother Bernard as myself, and that all the provincial ministers, as well as all the brethren of this Order, may look upon him as they have done on me; in fact, I leave him to you as the half of my soul. There are few who are able to appreciate his virtue: it is so great, that Satan never ceases from tempting him, molesting him, and laying snares for him. ”

“ Bernard.
But this difficulty becomes much more serious if, as I am afraid is the case, some of these quotations come, not from St. Bernard himself, but from the Bernardine literature of the generation succeeding the saint’s death.
One of the most difficult problems will, I think, be found to lie in Part VI., “Of Penance.” “Nimeð nu god ȝeme,” says the writer of the Rule, “vor hit is almest Seint Beornardes Sentence.” This has always been explained as “it is nearly all from the Liber Sententiarum of St. ”

“ His early essays are vigorous, but lack judgement and skill; they are stiff and rhetorical, and far removed from the tender poetry of his later writings. Three years later we find Bernard credited with many miracles, narrated by William of St. Thierry, who afterwards retired to become a monk at Signy, where he wrote his record of the saint. It was then regarded as natural that a man of eminent piety should work miracles; and we ought to accept these stories, in their native crudity and simplicity, not as true, but as significant. ”

“ Ever since his great vision, the saint had put aside his pen. Still the monks implored him, reminding how blessed Bernard had done the like. The Angelical Doctor looked at them with unutterable gentleness, and said, "Get me Bernard's spirit, and I will do your bidding." Finally he yielded to154 them, and surrounding the bed on which he lay, they heard from the lips of the dying theologian, his last lecture and sermon.
Growing still weaker, S. Thomas foresaw that his hour was drawing nigh. He sent for Rainald, and with deep contrition and many sighs made a general confession. ”

“ THE MONKS OF ST. BERNARD (A.D. 952) .
The monastery of St. Bernard was founded about 962 by a famous saint of that name, at the head of a pass of the Alps, about 8,131 feet above the sea. It is a massive building and exposed to tremendous storms. The chief building accommodates eighty travellers, with stabling and storerooms. Here live a community devoted to works of benevolence, in a desolate region where seldom a week passes without a fall of snow, and which lies eight feet deep all the year round, and often more. ”

“ God glorified him by many miracles; but the greatest seems to have been the powerful example of his life. We have two pious panegyrics made upon this saint by St. Bernard, who says: [1] "Now placed in heaven, he beholds God clearly revealed to him, swallowed up in joy, but not forgetting us. It is not a land of oblivion in which Victor dwells. Heaven doth not harden or straiten hearts, but it maketh them more tender and compassionate it doth not distract minds, nor alienate them from us: it doth not diminish, but it increaseth affection and charity: it augmenteth bowels of pity. ”

“ One day, then, he came up to Bernard and asked him who he was, and what he had come to do at Bologna. "You will know who I am," replied Bernard, "if you will take the trouble to read what I now offer you." It was the Rule of Francis, of which he had a copy, and which he placed in his hand. The lawyer having read it with astonishment, said to those who accompanied him: "I own I have never seen anything so perfect or so heroic as this mode of life. Those who ill-use this man are very criminal; he ought, on the contrary, to be loaded with honors, as a special friend of God." ”

“ The Wise Man says of the knowledge of the works of God: "When a man hath done, then he shall begin," St. Augustine applies this sentence to the obscurity of the sacred writings, when he says that, the deeper they are searched, the more hidden mysteries are found in them; and it is equally applicable to Christian and religious perfection. It is an error condemned by the Church to believe that a man is capable of attaining in this life such a degree of perfection, as not to be able to increase it; but it would be a deplorable illusion to make use of the language condemned by Saint Bernard ”

“ At the third: "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up the cross, and follow Me." Then Francis, addressing himself to Bernard, said: "There is the life we must lead, the rule we must follow, you and I, and all those who shall desire to join us. Go thou and put in execution what thou hast just heard." ”

“ To Malachy, by the grace of God bishop, legate of the Apostolic See, Brother Bernard, called to be abbot of Clairvaux, if the prayer of a sinner can do anything, and if the devotion of a poor man is of any advantage.
We have done what your holiness commanded, not perhaps as it was worthy to be done, yet as well as was possible considering the time in which we live. So great evil everywhere struts about among us that it was scarcely possible to do the little that has been done. ”

“ Bernard and his two sermons on St. Malachy have been added. They are translated from Mabillon's edition,99 with some corrections. The dates of these documents are discussed below.100
[Pg lxvi] St. Bernard's numerous quotations from the Bible and other sources are printed in italics, so far as I have recognized them. The scriptural allusions are given as nearly as possible in the words of the Authorized (in the Apocryphal books the Revised) Version, though at times they do not agree with the Vulgate Latin. Where it has been found necessary to depart from their renderings, the symbol "vg." ”

“ We see in this the mode of acting of one who has the spirit of God; he hurries nothing, he has recourse to prayer, and he makes use of the ordinary practices of the Church.
The following day they did what they had proposed; after which, Francis, who had great devotion to the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity, opened three times in their honor the book of the Gospels, entreating the Almighty to confirm, by the testimony of their texts, Bernard's holy resolution. At the first opening they found the following: "If thou wilt be perfect, go sell all thou hast, and give it to the poor." ”

“ But when Bernard had ascended the white wooden stage and stood near the King and Queen, then the hushed stillness became a dead silence, and the eyes of all that multitude were fastened upon his face and form, as each could see him. For a moment every man held his breath as if an angel had come down from heaven, bringing on his lips the word of God and in his look the evidence of eternal light. He was the holy man of the world even while he lived, and neither before him nor after him, since the days of the Apostles, has any one person so stood in the eyes of all mankind. ”

“ How was it possible that when Niall had finally routed his formidable rival, who was in possession of the Staff of Jesus, another should at once step in and, apparently without any difficulty, deprive him of the fruits of his victory? The difficulty is increased if we accept the statement of St. Bernard—not contradicted by the Annals, and not easy to dispute—that Gelasius was nominated by Malachy himself, and was therefore presumably favourable to his cause. ”

“ Bernard on a somewhat similar case: "Let this passage be remarked by those who undertake to teach what they have not learnt themselves; seeking for scholars, without having had masters, they are the blind leading the blind. But justice is done them; although it is admitted that they have some talent, it is soon found that they have nothing solid, and they are treated with contempt."
The fortunate discovery that was thus made of the talents of Anthony, soon reached the ears of Francis, who ordered him to apply himself to the pulpit. ”

“ The influence which St Bernard exercised by his letters and burning words was so effectual, so irresistible, that he was soon surrounded by a company of young men, who not only changed their way of life, but bound themselves to him to follow the holy path which God had traced out for him. ”

“ And for this reason he did not come to Connor, because he had already ordained a bishop in it;496 but he betook himself to Down, separating the parishes as in the days of old.497 O pure heart! O dove-like eye!498 He handed over to the new bishop the place which seemed better organized, which was held to be more important, the place in which he himself had sat. Where are they that fight about boundaries, carrying on perpetual hostilities against one another for a single village? ”

“ An' some don't take no heed at all, But some goes up the hill to Paul, An' some to Chapel goes; Whilst some strolls down upon the kay, An' sits an' spits into the say; But all the same, they knaws the Day, An' doesn' dirt their clo'es. [Pg 23]
But whether Church be right or b'aint, Or Mittin' Houses make'ee faint, Or whether you'm a solemn saint Or jest a cheerful sinner, For sartin, not so long by noon, You'll all be playin' the same tune Wi' knife an' fork an' mebbe spoon, Asettin' down to dinner. ”