Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

Abbot, Doctor of the Church
(1090–1153)

Saint Bernard was born in 1090 at Fontaines near Dijon in Burgundy, the third of seven children of a noble Burgundian family. He was educated at Châtillon-sur-Seine and showed from youth both great intellectual gifts and an extraordinary personal magnetism. When he was twenty-two he entered the struggling young monastery of Cîteaux, founded twelve years earlier by Saint Robert of Molesme in search of a more rigorous observance of the Benedictine Rule. So compelling was Bernard's personality that he brought with him thirty companions, including several of his own brothers and an uncle.

Three years later the abbot of Cîteaux sent Bernard with twelve monks to found a new monastery in a remote valley in Champagne called the Valley of Wormwood, which Bernard renamed Clairvaux, Valley of Light. He governed this community as abbot for the remaining thirty-eight years of his life, and from Clairvaux he founded sixty-eight daughter houses, transforming the Cistercian order into the dominant religious force in twelfth-century Europe.

But Bernard's influence extended far beyond his monastery. He became the most powerful voice in the Western Church, consulted by popes, kings, and councils, preaching the Second Crusade, resolving schisms, defending orthodoxy against Abelard, and writing works of theology and mysticism that have nourished the spiritual life of the Church ever since. His sermons on the Song of Songs are considered among the masterpieces of Christian mystical literature.

He was a man of burning love for Christ and for the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom he addressed some of the most beautiful prayers in the Latin tradition. He spoke of Mary as the aqueduct through whom the grace of Christ reaches the world, and his influence on Marian devotion throughout the medieval period was immense. He died on August 20, 1153. He was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1830. His feast is celebrated on August 20th.