THE LIFE OF ST BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX.*

A CHAPTER OUT OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

SAINT BERNARD of Clairvaux,-his name carries us back to the depths of the middle ages. We connect it, in our associations, with Scholastic Theology and Mystical Religion; with activity almost unbounded in the affairs of the Church. Austere monks, admiring women, and long ranks of crusaders, come up in our fancy when his name is mentioned. St Bernard was a great man in his time, and his day outlasted several centuries; for after his death. he made a mark on the ages as they passed over his tomb, and the Church long bore the impress of his gigantic spirit. A man who oftener than once scorned to be archbishop; who dictated to kings, and wrote a manual for the "infallible head of the Church;" who projected a crusade, uttered prophecies, and worked miracles, even after his death, so his biographers affirm,—such a man was St Bernard in his day. Such is he now, by force of tradition, in the minds of many a true Catholic. It has been said that he honoured the year when he became immortal, "and went to receive in heaven the reward of his illustrious virtue and glorious fatigues."+ He was called in his own age, and after it, "the firm pillar of the Church," the "fellow-citizen of the angels," the second interpreter

* De Melliflui devotique doctoris sācti Bernardi Abbatis clarevallensis cisterciēsis ordinis opus preclaru suos cōpletes, sermones de tempore; de sanctis; et super cantica canticarum. Aliosque plures ejus sermones, et sentētias nusq. hactenus impressas. Ejusdem insuper epistolas ceteraque universa ejus opuscula. Domini quoque Gilleberti Abbatis Do. Hoilādia in Anglice prelibati ordinis super cantica sermones. Omnia sm. seriem hic a sequēti pagella annotatam collocata vigilanter et accurate super vetustissima clarevallis examplaria apprime correcta. Johan Petit.

Venudantur Parisiis in vice divi Jacobi sub Lilio aureo a Johanne Parvo. (Paris, 1513, one vol. fol.)-[From the Christian Examiner for March, 1841.] + Muratori, Annali d' Italia, etc. Tom. VI. p. 403, seq.

of the Holy Ghost, and the second child of the most holy mother of God.* "The salutiferous honey of moral instruction fell from his lips and flowed everywhere," says a learned Jesuit, writing many hundred years after his death.+ "The Bossuet of the twelfth century," his word shook the Church, and made two great empires rock to their foundation.

Yet this man is forgotten in less than eight centuries from his birth. His books, no man reads them; or only those scholars "who have folios in their library," and graze with delight amid the frowzy pastures of old time, where the herbage is thick, and matted together with ages of neglect. The Saint is no longer appealed to in controversies; his works are not reprinted, except in ponderous collections of the Fathers, which the herd of scholars stare at and pass by, in quest of new things, wondering at the barbarism that could write, and the stupidity that can still read, such works. But Bernard is eclipsed only because brighter lights have gone into the sky. We are struck with the wealth of thought there is in the world, when we read, on the pages of the nations, those names which Genius and Virtue have consecrated and forbid to die. But the world's richness seems still greater, when men, like this mighty Bernard, are not deemed worth remembering. But if he is thus quickly forgot, who of modern great men can stand? What existing reputation shall not be blown away as chaff, before the mystic fan of time?

Saint Bernard belongs to that long list of middle-age scholars, on whom the world has passed the bitter doom of forgetfulness and night. We would gladly rescue much that it consigns to oblivion; but its decree is irreversible, and there is no higher court of appeal, save only "the pure eyes and perfect witness of all-judging Jove." The works of these men stand in old libraries, and fill goodly presses with forgotten folios. Their ribbed backs, their antiquated dress, eaten with worms and covered with dust as many generations have passed by,-dust which no antiquarian finger has disturbed, these things frighten the loose-girt student, and he turns away to read the novels of Bulwer and Scott, or laugh at the illustrations of La * Andres, dell' Origine progressi e Stato attuale di ogni Letteratura, Romo. 1817. Tom. VII. p. 219, seq. + Ibid.

Fontaine's fables. Should he open the venerable tome, the barbarism of the print; the contractions unnumbered, which defile its thousand folio pages; the uncouth phraseology; the strange subjects which it treats; the scholastic terms; the distinctions without a difference,-all these repel the modern student. The gaunt shadow of the monk, its author, seems to rise from its coffin, and staring at the literary gentleman, to say, "Why hast thou disturbed my repose, and brought me to the day once more? Break not again my mystic dream." These are the authors before whom Industry folds her hands, and gives up the task; from whom Diligence, with his frame of iron and his eye of fire, turns away, disspirited and worn down. Yet were these men lights in their day. They shed their lustre over many a land. The shadows they cast fall still on us. Mankind looked hopeful as their light arose, and saw it sink, doubting that another would ever arise and equal it.

What a different spirit pervades the men of those ages we call dark,-not dreaming that our age,-the nineteenth century itself,-shall likewise one day be called by the same name. Their spirit is not classic, and it is not modern. You come down from Plato to St Bernard, for example, and feel that you have made a descent. The high ideal of mortal life does not float before the eyes of the saint as before that great-hearted pagan. The character of these writings is unique. They have not the majestic tranquillity of the Greek literature, nor the tempestuous movement of modern works. Here worship takes the place of passion, and contemplation is preferred before action. Their ideal life would be wretchedness to an American, and Tartarus itself to a Greek, for fast and vigils are thought better than alms-deeds and daily duty. The senses are looked upon as legitimate inlets of pain, and pain only. What austerity of discipline,-to which the wars of antiquity and the commercial enterprises of our day were pastime; what watching; what fast and prayer; what visions and revelations,-the natural result of their life,-conspired to form these stout spirits.

You turn from the bustling literature of the nineteenth century to the works of Bernard, and the change of atmosphere is remarkable. You feel it in every limb. It is as

if you stepped at once from the hot plains of Ethiopia to the very summit of the Mountains of the Moon. Or better, as if you were transferred in a moment from the feverish heat of an August noon to the cool majesty of an April night, when there was frost in the air, and a rawness in the occasional gusts of wind, come from what quarter they would; when clouds of grotesque shape and threatening darkness mingled capriciously with the uncertain shining of the moon and the mysterious twinkle of the stars; when you were uncertain what weather had preceded or what would follow, but knew that a storm was not far off, it might have been, or might yet come, for all was organic and not settled. The difference between this and the spirit of Greek literature, is the difference between a forest, with its underbrush and winding paths, leading no one knows whither, a forest full of shadows and wild beasts, and a trim garden of great and beautiful trees, reared with art, planted by science, and arranged with most exquisite taste,-a garden where flowers bloomed out their fragrant life, fruits ripened on the stem, and little birds sang their summer carol, to complete the harmony of the scene.

In the days of Bernard, a saint was a popular character the great man of a kingdom. Men went in crowds to see him. Women threw garlands on him as he passed, and branches were spread in his way. Rude peasants and crowned kings begged for his blessing, though it were but a mere wave of his hand. But we have changed all that, and more wisely confer them and the like honours on men in epaulets, and dancing girls. It is nature's law to pay men in kind. It may be surprising to our readers, but it is still true, that Saint Bernard, though lean as a skeleton almost, was received with as much eclat wherever he chanced to go, as the most popular modern statesman, or electioneering orator. Nay more, men made long pilgrimages to see him; they laid the sick, that they might be healed, in the streets where he walked, or beneath the windows of the house in which he chanced to pass the night, and the sick were cured, at least his three monkish and contemporary biographers credited the miracle. Rebellious Dukes and a refractory Emperor were subservient to his will, and when at high mass he elevated the host,

the stoutest of heart fell on his knees, and forgot his rebellion, becoming like a little child. The bold deniers of the Church's authority,-bold even then, when it was dangerous to be bold,-shrunk from the grasp of this nervous athlete of the faith. Peter of Bruis, Henry of Lausanne, Gilbert of Poictiers, even Abelard himself, with his net of subtle dialectics, fine-meshed as woven wind, gave up at last to him. He uttered prophecies which time has not yet seen fit to fulfil, though the good Catholic, no doubt, hopes they will yet come to pass. In what follows, we shall rely chiefly on the lives of this great man, which were written by several of his contemporaries.

Saint Bernard was born at Fontaines, in Burgundy, not far from Dijon, in the year of our Lord 1091. His father, Trecelin, a knight of an ancient family of considerable fortune, spent most of his life in arms, taking little pains about the education of his children. This duty fell to the lot of his pious and intelligent wife, Aleth, the daughter of Count Montbart, who discharged it with most exemplary fidelity. In old times, we are told that supernatural signs preceded the birth of men predestined to eminence, and swarms of bees, or flocks of birds, or sheep with one horn in the middle of the forehead, foretold the character and prowess of the babe unborn, so that when he came into the world he had nothing to do but realize the augury. The monkish historian, Abbot William, of St Thierry,* relates similar things of Bernard. To Aleth, as to Hecuba, was foretold the character of her son, with the same clearness in both cases. Aleth, before the birth of her child, dreamed of a dog, "white all over, but somewhat reddish on the back," and in her dream the dog barked, as dogs often do. Terrified at this prodigy, she sought ghostly counsel of a certain religious man. He, remembering that King David wished "that the tongue of the dogs may be dipped in the blood of the enemy," and being "filled with the spirit of prophecy," foretold that the child about to be born should bark loud and long at the enemies of the Church. He should be an excellent preacher of the word, and his tongue should have a medicinal savour, and cure diseases of the soul. The mother was comforted by this

Vita S. Bernardi Abbati, Lib. I. c. 1-3. Prefixed to Bernard's Works.