St. Bernard

St. Bernard was born in 1090 at Fontaines-lès-Dijon in Burgundy, France, to a noble family. Around 1112 he presented himself at the struggling new monastery of Cîteaux, mother house of the Cistercian reform, bringing with him some thirty relatives and friends whom he had persuaded to embrace monastic life. Just three years later, in 1115, he was sent to found a new monastery in a valley he named Clairvaux, the "valley of light," and he remained its abbot for the rest of his life. Under Bernard's leadership the Cistercian order expanded with astonishing speed: scores of monasteries were founded from Clairvaux alone, and by his death the order numbered in the hundreds of houses across Europe. Though he longed for the cloister, Bernard became the conscience of his age. He healed the papal schism of 1130 by rallying Europe behind Pope Innocent II, counseled popes and kings, contended with the theologian Peter Abelard, and at the pope's request preached the Second Crusade in 1146, whose failure he bore with sorrow. Bernard's writings earned him the title "Mellifluous Doctor," the doctor whose teaching flows like honey. His treatise On Loving God, his sermons on the Song of Songs, and his work On Consideration, written for his former monk Pope Eugene III, are classics of Christian mysticism, centered on the love of God and devotion to the humanity of Christ. His tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, expressed in his Marian homilies, profoundly shaped later Catholic piety, and Dante placed him as the final guide in the Paradiso. Bernard died at Clairvaux on August 20, 1153, and was canonized only twenty-one years later, in 1174, by Pope Alexander III. Pope Pius VIII declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1830. After the French Revolution scattered the treasures of Clairvaux, his relics came to rest in Troyes Cathedral in Champagne. His feast is celebrated on August 20, and he is honored as a patron of the Cistercians, beekeepers, and candlemakers.