St. Bernard of Clairvaux

“ St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in his ‘Life of Maelmogue or Malachy, Primate of Armagh’ (1134–7) , refers in severe terms to the usage ‘whereby the holy see [Armagh] came to be obtained by hereditary succession,’ and adds, ‘there had already been before the time of Celsus (d. 1129) eight individuals who were married and without orders, yet men of education.’ One of these must have been Dubhdalethe, but St. Bernard was in error in viewing the influence of the hereditary principle at Armagh as unusual. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The amount of manual labour [Pg 17] prevented the Cistercians from becoming a learned order, though they did produce a few men distinguished in literature; they were excellent farmers and horticulturists, and are said in early times to have almost monopolised the wool trade of the kingdom. They changed the colour of the Benedictine habit, wearing a white gown and hood over a white cassock; when they went beyond the walls of the monastery they also wore a black cloak. St. Bernard of Clairvaux is the great saint of the order. ”

“ These he had never neglected, even while immersed in religious politics. By advice and example he greatly reformed the discipline of monastic life. He continually preached in his own convent; and, either personally or through agents, is said to have founded upward of sixty monasteries in alliance with Clairvaux. Among them the Hospice of Mount St. Bernard, in Switzerland, has distinguished itself by loving deeds worthy of its founder. Bernard was an eminent theologian, both in theory and practice, and many of his works are extant. ”

“ Between 1130 and 1145 no less than ninety-three monasteries in connexion with Clairvaux were either founded or affiliated from other rules, three being established in England and one in Ireland. In 1145 a Cistercian monk, once a member of the community of Clairvaux—another Bernard, abbot of Aquae Silviae near Rome, was elected pope as Eugenius III. This was a triumph for the order; to the world it was a triumph for Bernard, who complained that all who had suits to press at Rome applied to him, as though he himself had mounted the chair of St Peter (Ep. 239) . ”

“ Who else but one enamored of meditation would have set his cloister atop of his monastery under the open sky, or have opened on that courtyard of peace a monks’ refectory, where, in a flooded stillness of light, the brethren could sit pondering as they listened to one of their number reading from the stone lectern the book which is the spirit of Bernard of Clairvaux incarnate: “Give all for all; seek nothing; call for nothing back. Thou shalt be free in heart and the darkness shall not overwhelm thee.” ”

“ BERNARD, ST., Abbot of Clairvaux, was born of a noble family in Burgundy, in 1091. At the age of 23 he entered the recently founded monastery of Citeaux, accompanied by his brothers and 20 of his companions. His ability and piety led to his being chosen Abbot, an office he filled till his death. ”

“ Three years later, in 1115, the Abbot, Stephen Harding, entrusted him with the headship of the new monastery, to be founded in the domains of the Count of Troyes. Bernard set forth with twelve companions, came to Clara Vallis on the river Aube, and placed his convent in that austere solitude.
Great were the attractions of Clairvaux (Clara Vallis) under Bernard’s vigorous and loving rule. Its monks increased so rapidly and so constantly that during its founder’s life sixty-five bands were sent forth to rear new convents. ”

“ Bernard had at an early age converted his brothers and made monks of them; but he had a sister, Humbeline, who showed no enthusiasm for a nunnery. She married a man of rank and affluence, and did her part in the gay world. One day she thought she would like to go and visit her brothers in the monastery, and with great pomp and retinue she drove to the gates of Clairvaux and asked to see Bernard. But he, “detesting and execrating her as a net of the devil to catch souls,” refused to go out and meet her. ”

“ Perhaps there never was a man who had greater influence than Bernard; for, although he did not rise to be anything more than Abbot of Clairvaux, and refused all higher offices, he was able, by the power of his speech, and by the fame of his saintliness, to turn kings and princes, popes and emperors, and even whole assemblies of men, in any way that he pleased. When two popes had been chosen in opposition to each other, Bernard was able to draw all the chief princes of Christendom into siding with that [Pg 213] pope whose cause he had taken up ”

“ But the example of Bernard and his companions had a great effect, and so many others were thus led to enter the order, that the mother-monastery was far too small to hold them. Bernard was chosen to be head of one of the swarms which went forth from Citeaux. The name of his new monastery was Clairvaux, which means The Bright Valley. When he and his party first settled there, they had to bear terrible hardships. They suffered from cold and from want of clothing. ”

“ Bernard and his monks. Shortly after the Irish saint fell sick to the great sorrow of the community, but Malachy consoled them, and told them that there was no chance of his recovery for it was God’s will that he should die at Clairvaux. Feeling his strength failing he caused all the brethren to be summoned to his bedside. At once they came—St. Bernard at their head. “With longing I have longed,” said the dying man, “to eat this pasch with you”—that is the holy Viaticum—“before I die, and I thank my God that my longing has been gratified.” ”

“ Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, whose influence was then all-powerful in the Christian world, and who was nephew of the envoy Andreas. [Pg 193] Shortly afterwards Hugh de Payens himself arrived in Europe with five others of the brethren.
Nothing could be more advantageous to the new order than the favour and countenance of the illustrious Abbot of Clairvaux, who had been for some time past an admirer of its objects and deeds. ”

“ Here Bernard's uncompromising self-mortification, and his love of, and communion with, Nature, showed themselves as the chief characteristics of his noble spirit. "Believe me," he said to a pupil, "you will find something far greater in the woods than you will in books; stones and trees will teach you that which you will never learn from masters." The arrival of Bernard and his companions was a turning-point in the history of Citeaux; and the monastery had to send out two colonies, to La Ferté and Pontigny, and in 1115 a third, under Bernard himself, to Clairvaux. ”

“ Bernard and the letters addressed by the pope to all Christendom, drew to this assembly a great number of nobles, knights, prelates, and men of all conditions. On the Palm-Sunday, after having invoked the Holy Ghost, all who had come to hear the abbot of Clairvaux repaired to the side of a hill just without the gates of the city. A large tribune was erected, in which the king in his royal robes, and St. Bernard in the humble costume of a cenobite, were saluted by the acclamations of an immense multitude. ”

“ In the Middle Ages, convents were little patronized until by some miracle they had proved themselves worthy of hire; their early years were often passed in poverty, and Clairvaux was no exception to the rule, for the brethren suffered privations which nearly caused revolt. In the midst of his difficulties, Bernard's brother Gérard, who was cellarer, came to him to complain that the fraternity were without the barest necessities of life. ”

“ The prioress, whose tongue was usually stopped by the dam of silence, and whose reservoir was over-full, rose and exclaimed with the loquacity of a raised sluice,—
"I have on my right hand Benedict, and on my left Bernard. Who is Bernard? The first abbot of Clairvaux. Fontaines in Burgundy is a blessed spot for having witnessed his birth. His father's name was Técelin, his mother's Alèthe; he began with Citeaux to end with Clairvaux; he was ordained abbot by William de Champeaux, Bishop of Châlons sur Saône; he had seven hundred novices, and founded one hundred and sixty monasteries ”

“ It seemed to him, however, that one could not go on doing these things with sufficient security without the authority of the Apostolic See; and for that reason he determined to set out for Rome, and most of all because the metropolitan see still lacked, and from the beginning had lacked, the use of the pall, which is the fullness of honour.507 And it seemed good in his eyes508 that the church for which he had laboured so much509 should acquire, by his zeal and labour, that privilege which hitherto it had not had. ”

“ But Bernard’s eloquence and miracles made many converts, and Toulouse and Albi were quickly restored to orthodoxy. After inviting Henry to a disputation, which he refused to attend, St Bernard returned to Clairvaux. Soon afterwards the heresiarch was arrested, brought before the bishop of Toulouse, and probably imprisoned for life. In a letter to the people of Toulouse, undoubtedly written at the end of 1146, St Bernard calls upon them to extirpate the last remnants of the heresy. ”

“ Richard was chosen abbot, and he and his monks built themselves huts round a great elm, and applied themselves to labour of various kinds. When the winter was over they sent a messenger to St. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, asking to be received into the Cistercian order. He sent them a monk from Clairvaux to instruct them in the rule, and wrote a letter to Richard warmly approving what had been done, and expressing a wish that he could visit the convent. ”

“ A bishop is himself subject to authority. His immediate superior is the archbishop. An archbishop has a sphere of immediate jurisdiction, like any other bishop, but he also rules a number of subject bishops. Of these there must be at least three; but an archbishop is not permitted to have more than twenty subject bishops—an important point, as we shall see. Above the archbishop is the primate. It is the special privilege of the primate to ordain and crown the king. ”

“ When Malachy was made bishop of Down, immediately according to his custom he was at pains to take to himself from his sons, for his comfort, a convent of regular clerics.501 And lo, again he girds himself, [Pg 64] as though a new recruit of Christ, for the spiritual conflict; again he puts on the weapons that are mighty through God,502 the humility of holy poverty, the rigour of monastic discipline, the quietness of contemplation, continuance in prayer. But all these things for a long time he was able to maintain rather in will than in deed. For all men came to him ”

“ The head of each parish is a priest, the head of each monastery is an abbot, who is himself a priest. The bishop has a pontifical church, in which is his see (sedes) , and of which he is the head. From it he governs the inferior churches. A bishop can perform all the offices of a [Pg xxxii] priest, but he has seven functions peculiar to himself: to confirm, to bless, to absolve, to hold synods, to dedicate churches and altars, to consecrate the ornaments of churches, to ordain abbots and abbesses and the secular clergy. Gilbert's diagram represented the bishop as ruling two churches ”

“ In the meanwhile the complainants secured a more formidable champion in the person of Bernard of Clairvaux. An unprejudiced contemporary, himself certainly no heretic, has passed a remarkable judgement upon the saint in connexion with his action in this affair. The aforesaid abbat, says the biographer of Frederick Barbarossa, bishop Otto of Freising, was from the fervour of his Christian religion as jealous as, from his habitual meekness, he was in some measure credulous ”

“ There was at last one Church in Ireland, which embraced within it not only the Celtic parts of the island, but all the Danish dioceses as well. And the whole Church was ruled by the bishops. The Reformation may not have been complete in every detail—there was indeed much left for the Anglo-Normans to do—but the Synod of Kells had set the crown on the work of the Irish reformers. And this consummation was mainly due to the wisdom and the untiring zeal of St. Malachy of Armagh. ”

“ Is he rightly to be esteemed highest who, falling from the highest rank can scarce cleave to the lowest, that he be not engulfed in the abyss? Yet how rare is even such a man among the clergy! Whom, likewise, do you give me who is content with necessaries, who despises superfluities? Yet the law has been enjoined beforehand by the Apostles on the successors of the Apostles, Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content.114 Where is this rule? We see it in books, but not in men. ”

“ Luke xvii. 16, 18.—This was probably Gilla Aedha Ua Muidhin, who attended the Synod of Kells in 1152 as bishop of Cork (Keating, iii. 317) , and died in 1172 (A.U.) . Since he attained "a good old age" there is no reason why he should not have been consecrated as early as 1140 or 1141. He had been a monk of Errew in Lough Con, co. Mayo (A.T. 1172) , and was therefore "a stranger," i.e. not a native of Munster. He is called a "poor man," no doubt, for the same reason as Malachy himself (§ 24) , because he had embraced the life of voluntary poverty. ”