Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

Life and historical context

Bernard de Fontaine was born in 1090 at the small castle of Fontaine, just outside Dijon in Burgundy, the third of seven children in a family of the lower French nobility. His father Tescelin le Roux was a knight in the service of the Duke of Burgundy; his mother Aleth of Montbard was a woman of intense Catholic piety who personally instructed her children in the faith and oversaw their early formation. Aleth died in 1107 when Bernard was seventeen, and her death was a decisive event in his vocation. By 1112 Bernard had resolved on the religious life and had persuaded an extraordinary number of his relatives and friends (about thirty in total, including all four of his older brothers) to enter monastic life with him.¹

The destination he chose was the recently founded reformed monastery of Cîteaux, fifteen miles south of Dijon, where the Englishman Saint Stephen Harding was abbot. Cîteaux had been founded in 1098 by Saint Robert of Molesme as a strict reform of the Benedictine tradition: the Cistercians (the White Monks, named for the undyed wool of their habits) returned to a literal observance of the Rule of Saint Benedict, with manual labor, simplicity in liturgical and architectural ornament, and a strict separation from secular society. When Bernard arrived in 1112 at the age of twenty-two, the community was small and struggling. The arrival of his cohort was the beginning of the rapid expansion that would make the Cistercian Order, by the time of Bernard's death, the largest religious order of the Latin Church.

In 1115, after only three years at Cîteaux, Bernard was sent by Saint Stephen Harding with twelve companions to found a new monastery at Clara Vallis (Clear Valley, Clairvaux) in Champagne. He was made the abbot of the new community at the age of twenty-five. He remained abbot of Clairvaux for the rest of his life, thirty-eight years, during which the abbey grew from twelve monks to seven hundred and sponsored sixty-eight daughter foundations across Europe. He resisted multiple offers of bishoprics and archbishoprics, refusing to leave his monastic vocation, but he could not resist the demands placed on him by the wider Catholic Church.²

His public role in the medieval Catholic Church became extraordinary. He preached the Second Crusade at the basilica of Vézelay on 31 March 1146 at the request of Pope Eugene III (one of his own former monks); the preaching launched the Crusade across Europe. He resolved the disputed papal election of 1130 between Innocent II and Anacletus II in favor of Innocent. He defeated the rationalist theology of Peter Abelard at the Council of Sens in 1141. He refused the papacy itself when it was offered to him after the death of Innocent II. He died at Clairvaux on 20 August 1153, exhausted and beloved, at the age of sixty-three.

Theological and spiritual significance

Bernard's writings constitute one of the principal mystical theologies of the medieval Latin Church. His treatise De Diligendo Deo (On Loving God, c. 1126) is a foundational work of Catholic spiritual theology, articulating the four degrees of love (love of self for self's sake, love of God for self's sake, love of God for God's sake, love of self for God's sake) that became standard in subsequent Catholic mystical writing. His Sermons on the Song of Songs (eighty-six sermons preached over eighteen years and unfinished at his death) develop a Christological and ecclesiological reading of the Old Testament love poem that became the touchstone of medieval Catholic Marian and mystical theology.³

His Marian theology in particular was foundational. The titles of Mary as Stella Maris (Star of the Sea), Mediatrix, and Refuge of Sinners were either coined by Bernard or developed extensively in his writings. The famous Marian image of Mary as the aqueduct of grace (the channel through which the grace of Christ flows to the souls of the redeemed) is from his sermon De Aquaeductu preached on the Nativity of Mary in 1138. Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, in his True Devotion to Mary (early eighteenth century), drew extensively on Bernard, and the modern Marian Memorare prayer ( Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary...) is traditionally attributed to him though documented in print only from the seventeenth century.

He was canonized by Pope Alexander III on 18 January 1174, only twenty-one years after his death. He was declared a Doctor of the Catholic Church by Pope Pius VIII in 1830, with the title Doctor Mellifluus (the Honey-Sweet Doctor) reflecting both the eloquence of his writings and the iconographic association of Bernard with the beehive and bees. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) calls him the last of the Fathers, the final exemplar of the patristic mode of theology before the rise of the medieval scholastic theology of Saint Anselm of Canterbury and Saint Thomas Aquinas.⁴

Devotion and liturgical observance

The feast of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux is celebrated on 20 August in the universal Roman Calendar with the rank of memorial. The Cistercians, the Trappists, and the broader Benedictine family of monastic orders observe his feast as a major celebration, and his memorial in the Catholic calendar is widely observed by lay associates and oblates of these communities.

The principal pilgrimage destination associated with Saint Bernard is the Abbey of Clairvaux, his foundation, in modern Champagne, France. The original abbey was suppressed in the French Revolution and converted into a prison; its surviving monastic structures preserve the memory of Bernard's monastic life. Other major Cistercian and Trappist foundations across Europe and the Americas (Tre Fontane in Rome, Mellifont in Ireland, Rievaulx in England, Gethsemani in Kentucky, and many others) preserve relics and the devotion to him.

The traditional iconography of Saint Bernard shows him in the white Cistercian habit (sometimes with the black Benedictine scapular, in different traditions), often holding a book or accompanied by a beehive (in reference to the Doctor Mellifluus title). He is frequently depicted in three particular scenes: receiving the milk from the breast of the Blessed Virgin in his vision (the Lactation of Saint Bernard, a popular medieval iconographic theme), embracing the crucified Christ, or preaching the Second Crusade at Vézelay. His liturgical color on the feast is white.

Prayers and novenas associated with Saint Bernard

The principal devotion to Saint Bernard is the Novena to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, prayed for the renewal of monastic life, for the gift of contemplative prayer, and for the love of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The novena is most commonly prayed in the nine days leading up to his feast on 20 August.

The most-prayed Marian prayer associated with Saint Bernard is the Memorare of Saint Bernard (Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary...), traditionally attributed to him, which expresses the desperate Marian confidence Bernard's writings made central to medieval Catholic devotion. Catholics frequently pray the Memorare in moments of acute need, often as the flying novena of nine successive Memorares taught by Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

Catholics commonly pair Saint Bernard devotions with the Holy Rosary, the Salve Regina (the Salve Regina, sung by the Cistercians at the close of every day in choir), and the Anima Christi. For the broader theological context, see the Communion of Saints and Saint John of the Cross, the great Spanish Carmelite mystic who continued the Bernardine tradition of Catholic mystical theology.

Sources

Footnotes

1. William of Saint-Thierry, Vita Prima Bernardi (the First Life of Bernard, composed before Bernard's death and after consultation with him; the principal hagiographic source). Geoffroy of Auxerre, Vita Quarta (the Fourth Life, composed shortly after Bernard's death). Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), "Saint Bernard of Clairvaux," available at newadvent.org. ↩

2. The Cistercian Carta Caritatis (the Charter of Charity, the constitutional document of the Order, composed by Stephen Harding around 1119) and the Exordium Magnum Cisterciense (a thirteenth-century compilation of Cistercian foundation history) document the early Cistercian expansion under Bernard. ↩

3. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, De Diligendo Deo (On Loving God, c. 1126). Sermones in Cantica Canticorum (Sermons on the Song of Songs, c. 1135-1153). Both are available in critical edition in the Sancti Bernardi Opera, edited by Jean Leclercq, OSB, and Henri Rochais (1957-1977). ↩

4. Pope Alexander III, Cum a Patre Luminum (canonization bull, 18 January 1174). Pope Pius VIII, declaration of Bernard as Doctor of the Church (1830). Pope Pius XII, Doctor Mellifluus (encyclical, 24 May 1953), on the eighth centenary of Bernard's death. Available at vatican.va. ↩