Introduction !
INTRODUCTION
Sain, Bernard of Qairvaux was born in the year 1090 at Fontaines-les-Dijon and died on August 20th, 1153, at Qairvaux.
Lie came of a distinguished family on both sides. His father, Tescelin, held Feudal lordship over property in Burgundy and Champagne, and Aleth, his mother, was related to the Dukes of Burgundy. ljighjy:Jntelligent and with the backing of his influential family,/any career in Church
. or State would have been open to the young Bernard.
But at ^e~^ge--of-twTnty-tvvo he chose to leave everything, turn his back on the world and become a monk. Had he elected to join one of the great Abbeys there would have been nothing strange about his action, there would still have been scope for soaring ambition.
The famous Abbey of Cluny had given popes to the Church, {instead he chose the Abbey of Citeaux, a poor and insignificant monastery which few had ever heard about and none took very seriously.
It had been founded a few years previously by what were probably considered a group of rather eccentric though doubtless holy men^as an escape^r^)m_the pompous magnificence of the great monastic houses back t^Vthe^sirn pi i city ^oT^aTnTr.fiCTrerjtctV"Rnfer At %of fame and young men had come to try the life, but they did not persevere. The situation was unhealthy and the community was desperately poor.
Undoubtedly the life was rough and austere, but we must first it had enjoyed a measure not exaggerate the contrast between the life that Bernard had left behind him in the world and the life he followed at Citeaux. The life of even the richest nobility in those days was intolerably rough compared to that of even the poorest people of our day.
Bernard did not enter Citeaux alone, he
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gave early proof of those wonderful powers of persuasion and leadership which he was to show all through his life by bringing with him no less than thirty companions. He was twentytwo years old when he knocked on the gates of the monastery, and the Abbot at that time, the man who was to have the responsibility of his spiritual formation, was an Englishman, a native of Dorset, called Stephen Harding. {After this the waters closed over the head of Bernard and we hear nothing more of him until three years later when he was sent out to found a new monastery.
For this venture a remote valley of evil repute, called the valley of Wormwood, was chosen, or rather given.
It could not have seemed very suitable except for its remoteness from the world, but the monks were too poor to be particular.
In a very few years Bernard and his sons were to earn for this valley another name, it was to become known the world over as Clairvaux, or the Valley of Light. "JVery soon after this Bern. is dragged from the peaceful service of God in his monastery on to the arena of world affairs.
It was;byjioj^jcej^ the needs of tne nour ana the obedience he owed to his Bishop and thePope compelled him to come forth. In vain he pleaded sickness, for he was always ailing; in vain he pleaded his incompetence to deal with great affairs; men would not listen to him. Honours and anything that the world could give men were prepared to load upon him, but the one thing he asked for, to be left in peace and obscurity, they denied him. He was not free to decline the burdens and troubles of his fellow men, but he could and did reject their honours and adulation.
When a great schism in the papacv rent the whole of Christendom into two camps, Bernard had to heal it. When a violent quarrel Broke out in far-off England over the election of the Archbishop of York, Bernard was appealed to. When a Bishop repented of the evil for which he had been deposed, he came to Bernard to implore his intercession w ith the Pope. When a heresy threatened the Church, Bernard had to quell it.
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W hen the Emperor made his help to the Pope depend upon a shameful condition, Bernard was called upon to confront him and bllrig him to a sense of his duty. When the Saracen began to threat^rTthe I loly Places in Palestine, Bernard was chosen to preach the Crusade.
And then, on top of all this, there were the troubles of poor and humble people, the poignant troubles of the ordinary men and women of his day. They all came to Bernard for comfort and for help, and they were none of them turned away. From the seclusion of his cloister
Bernard carried the whole world upon luTsRouIders, bowed down but not broken by the burden.
Every age has its great men. They strut across the pages of history full of sound and fury, and then they are gone. Darkness overtakes them and the dust they stir by their brief and angry progress settles into the dry records of their biographers.
Great men they may be, but they are of their age and with their age they pass away.
Yet some few are great enough to transcend the limitations of their age with a message for all time.
Shining more with the light of God than with their own, the light they shed remains to inspire men to seek the things that are above and to guide their steps through the storms and darkness of life. Such a man, beyond all question, was Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. He was the very embodiment of all that was best in his times7 yet his doctrine, his writings, his example are as vital and living for us as they were for the men and women of his day^ During his life he bestrode the world like a colossus; and he has not ceased in our time to dominate the consciousness of Christians.
In every age men have succumbed to his influence and paid tribute to his goodness and sincerity even when they have not been able to sympathize with his doctrine.
Clearly everything we can learn of such a man will be of the utmost interest and significance. Happily there is no shortage of information. His early disciples have left us accounts of his life and actions and every
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year brings to light new records.
But best of all we have the living picture he has given us of himself in his letters.
Here, in these intimate and spontaneous documents, his soul is laid bare for all to see.
His correspondence must have been enormous and only a tiny fraction of it has survived but enough to give a glowing picture of a man great by any standard, great enough to fill the canvas of all time. We find him corresponding with Emperors, Kings, Popes, Philosophers and the ordinary men and women of his day. On one page we find him upbraiding some great prince of the Church or State for neglecting his duty towards his flock or for overstepping the bounds of his authority, and on another pleading for a poor man who has lost his pig.
In one letter we find him comforting one of his monks or consoling a dear friend in the world, and in another writing with words of fire on the love of God to the monks of The Grande Chartreuse.
Sometimes we see him in a light and gay mood, at other times aflame with indignation and wrath on behalf of some poor wretch who had suffered an injustice, and at yet other times ill and tired, worn out by the folly and pettiness of human nature.
These letters seem to open for us a small window through which we can gaze out upon all the life and color of the Middle Ages.
In this selection of Saint Bernard's letters I have tried to choose those which are most revealing of their author, those which show best his many-sided character.
With two or three notable exceptions I have avoided the longer letters as apt to be rather tedious for the ordinary reader.
In this bunch all the grapes are ripe, but the reader is advised to take them here and there as his mood and the circumstances of the moment dictate and not to run his teeth through the whole bunch at one time. Above all they should be picked and "inwardly digested" slowly and carefully.
But in_ order_properly to understand them and^ay-oux-their -full flavour it should be borne in mind that the whole of Bernard's thought, not merely his
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phrases, was moulded by thejacred Scriptures all of which he knew byTie art.
His indignation finds its natural expression in the burning words of Jeremias, his affection in the yearning languors of the Canticle, and his fears in the forebodings of Daniel and the prophets.
This translation makes no attempt at being a crib.
It does not claim to be a literal, word for word translation.
It has been the endeavour of the translator to take the sense of the text and wield it into an idiom that can be understood by the ordinary men and women of today, while at the same time preserving as much as possible of the characteristics of the original.
In this work much help has been received from many different quarters all of which have been carefully acknowledged in the introduction to the complete collection of the letters. The letters in the present edition, by the way, are numbered according to their order in the complete collection.
Bruno Scott James