Part 20

In 1133, the year of the emperor's first expedition to Rome, Bernard was in Italy persuading the Genoese to make peace with the men of Pisa, since the pope had need of both. He accompanied Innocent to Rome, successfully resisting the proposal to reopen negotiations with Anacletus, who held the castle of Sant' Angelo and, with the support of Roger of Sicily, was too strong to be subdued by force. Lothair, though crowned by Innocent in St Peter's, could do nothing to establish him in the Holy See so long as his own power was sapped by his quarrel with the house of Hohenstaufen. Again Bernard came to the rescue; in the spring of 1135 he was at Bamberg successfully persuading Frederick of Hohenstaufen to submit to the emperor. In June he was back in Italy, taking a leading part in the council of Pisa, by which Anacletus was excommunicated. In northern Italy the effect of his personality and of his preaching was immense; Milan itself, of all the Lombard cities most jealous of the imperial claims, surrendered to his eloquence, submitted to Lothair and to Innocent, and tried to force Bernard against his will into the vacant see of St Ambrose. In 1137, the year of Lothair's last journey to Rome, Bernard was back in Italy again; at Monte Cassino, setting the affairs of the monastery in order, at Salerno, trying in vain to induce Roger of Sicily to declare against Anacletus, in Rome itself, agitating with success against the antipope. Anacletus died on the 25th of January 1138; on the 13th of March the cardinal Gregory was elected his successor, assuming the name of Victor. Bernard's crowning triumph in the long contest was the abdication of the new antipope, the result of his personal influence. The schism of the church was healed, and the abbot of Clairvaux was free to return to the peace of his monastery.

Clairvaux itself had meanwhile (1135-1136) been transformed outwardly--in spite of the reluctance of Bernard, who preferred the rough simplicity of the original buildings--into a more suitable seat for an influence that overshadowed that of Rome itself. How great this influence was is shown by the outcome of Bernard's contest with Abelard (q.v.). In intellectual and dialectical power the abbot was no match for the great schoolman; yet at Sens in 1141 Abelard feared to face him, and when he appealed to Rome Bernard's word was enough to secure his condemnation.

One result of Bernard's fame was the marvellous growth of the Cistercian order. Between 1130 and 1145 no less than ninety-three monasteries in connexion with Clairvaux were either founded or affiliated from other rules, three being established in England and one in Ireland. In 1145 a Cistercian monk, once a member of the community of Clairvaux--another Bernard, abbot of Aquae Silviae near Rome, was elected pope as Eugenius III. This was a triumph for the order; to the world it was a triumph for Bernard, who complained that all who had suits to press at Rome applied to him, as though he himself had mounted the chair of St Peter (_Ep_. 239).

Having healed the schism within the church, Bernard was next called upon to attack the enemy without. Languedoc especially had become a hotbed of heresy, and at this time the preaching of Henry of Lausanne (q.v.) was drawing thousands from the orthodox faith. In June 1145, at the invitation of Cardinal Alberic of Ostia, Bernard travelled in the south, and by his preaching did something to stem the flood of heresy for a while. Far more important, however, was his activity in the following year, when, in obedience to the pope's command, he preached a crusade. The effect of his eloquence was extraordinary. At the great meeting at Vezelay, on the 21st of March, as the result of his sermon, King Louis VII. of France and his queen, Eleanor of Guienne, took the cross, together with a host of all classes, so numerous that the stock of crosses was soon exhausted; Bernard next travelled through northern France, Flanders and the Rhine provinces, everywhere rousing the wildest enthusiasm; and at Spires on Christmas day he succeeded in persuading Conrad, king of the Romans, to join the crusade.

The lamentable outcome of the movement (see CRUSADES) was a hard blow to Bernard, who found it difficult to understand this manifestation of the hidden counsels of God, but ascribed it to the sins of the crusaders (_Ep_. 288; _de Consid_. ii. 1). The news of the disasters to the crusading host first reached Bernard at Clairvaux, where Pope Eugenius, driven from Rome by the revolution associated with the name of Arnold of Brescia, was his guest. Bernard had in March and April 1148 accompanied the pope to the council of Reims, where he led the attack on certain propositions of the scholastic theologian Gilbert de la Porree (q.v.). From whatever cause--whether the growing jealousy of the cardinals, or the loss of prestige owing to the rumoured failure of the crusade, the success of which he had so confidently predicted--Bernard's influence, hitherto so ruinous to those suspected of heterodoxy, on this occasion failed of its full effect. On the news of the full extent of the disaster that had overtaken the crusaders, an effort was made to retrieve it by organizing another expedition. At the invitation of Suger, abbot of St Denis, now the virtual ruler of France, Bernard attended the meeting of Chartres convened for this purpose, where he himself was elected to conduct the new crusade, the choice being confirmed by the pope. He was saved from this task, for which he was physically and constitutionally unfit, by the intervention of the Cistercian abbots, who forbade him to undertake it.

Bernard was now ageing, broken by his austerities and by ceaseless work, and saddened by the loss of several of his early friends. But his intellectual energy remained undimmed. He continued to take an active interest in ecclesiastical affairs, and his last work, the _De Consideratione_, shows no sign of failing power. He died on the 20th of August 1153.

The greatness of St Bernard lay not in the qualities of his intellect, but of his character. Intellectually he was the child of his age, inferior to those subtle minds whom the world, fired by his contagious zeal, conspired to crush. Morally he was their superior; and in this moral superiority lay the secret of his power. The age recognized in him the embodiment of its ideal: that of medieval monasticism at its highest development. The world had no meaning for him save as a place of banishment and trial, in which men are but "strangers and pilgrims" (Serm. i., Epiph. n. 1; Serm. vii., Lent. n. 1); the way of grace, back to the lost inheritance, had been marked out once for all, and the function of theology was but to maintain the landmarks inherited from the past. With the subtleties of the schools he had no sympathy, and the dialectics of the schoolmen quavered into silence before his terrible invective. Yet, within the limits of his mental horizon, Bernard's vision was clear enough. His very life proves with what merciless logic he followed out the principles of the Christian faith as he conceived it; and it is impossible to say that he conceived it amiss. For all his overmastering zeal he was by nature neither a bigot nor a persecutor. Even when he was preaching the crusade he interfered at Mainz to stop the persecution of the Jews, stirred up by the monk Radulf. As for heretics, "the little foxes that spoil the vines," these "should be taken, not by force of arms, but by force of argument," though, if any heretic refused to be thus taken, he considered "that he should be driven away, or even a restraint put upon his liberty, rather than that he should be allowed to spoil the vines" (Serm. lxiv.). He was evidently troubled by the mob violence which made the heretics "martyrs to their unbelief." He approved the zeal of the people, but could not advise the imitation of their action, "because faith is to be produced by persuasion, not imposed by force"; adding, however, in the true spirit of his age and of his church, "it would without doubt be better that they should be coerced by the sword than that they should be allowed to draw away many other persons into their error." Finally, oblivious of the precedent of the Pharisees, he ascribes the steadfastness of these "dogs" in facing death to the power of the devil (Serm. lxvi. on Canticles ii. 15).

This is Bernard at his worst. At his best--and, fortunately, this is what is mainly characteristic of the man and his writings--he displays a nobility of nature, a wise charity and tenderness in his dealings with others, and a genuine humility, with no touch of servility, that make him one of the most complete exponents of the Christian life. His broadly Christian character is, indeed, witnessed to by the enduring quality of his influence. The author of the _Imitatio_ drew inspiration from his writings; the reformers saw in him a medieval champion of their favourite doctrine of the supremacy of the divine grace; his works, down to the present day, have been reprinted in countless editions. This is perhaps due to the fact that the chief fountain of his own inspiration was the Bible. He was saturated in its language and in its spirit; and though he read it, as might be expected, uncritically, and interpreted its plain meanings allegorically--as the fashion of the day was--it saved him from the grosser aberrations of medieval Catholicism. He accepted the teaching of the church as to the reverence due to our Lady and the saints, and on feast-days and festivals these receive their due meed in his sermons; but in his letters and sermons their names are at other times seldom invoked. They were overshadowed completely in his mind by his idea of the grace of God and the moral splendour of Christ; "from Him do the Saints derive the odour of sanctity; from Him also do they shine as lights" (_Ep._ 464).

The cause of Bernard's extraordinary popular success as a preacher can only imperfectly be judged by the sermons that survive. These were all delivered in Latin, evidently to congregations more or less on his own intellectual level. Like his letters, they are full of quotations from and reference to the Bible, and they have all the qualities likely to appeal to men of culture at all times. "Bernard," wrote Erasmus in his _Art of Preaching_, "is an eloquent preacher, much more by nature than by art; he is full of charm and vivacity and knows how to reach and move the affections." The same is true of the letters and to an even more striking degree. They are written on a large variety of subjects, great and small, to people of the most diverse stations and types; and they help us to understand the adaptable nature of the man, which enabled him to appeal as successfully to the unlearned as to the learned.

Bernard's works fall into three categories:--(1) _Letters_, of which over five hundred have been preserved, of great interest and value for the history of the period. (2) _Treatises_: (a) dogmatic and polemical, _De gratia el libero arbitrio_, written about 1127, and following closely the lines laid down by St Augustine; _De baptismo aliisque quaestionibus ad mag. Hugonem de S. Victore; Contra quaedam capitala errorum Abaelardi ad Innocentem II._ (in justification of the action of the synod of Sens); (b) ascetic and mystical, _De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae_, his first work, written perhaps about 1121; _De diligendo Deo_ (about 1126); _De conversione ad clericos_, an address to candidates for the priesthood; _De Consideratione_, Bernard's last work, written about 1148 at the pope's request for the edification and guidance of Eugenius III.; (c) about monasticism, _Apologia ad Guilelmum_, written about 1127 to William, abbot of St Thierry; _De laude novae militiae ad milites templi_ (c. 1132-1136); _De precepto et dispensatione_, an answer to various questions on monastic conduct and discipline addressed to him by the monks of St Peter at Chartres (some time before 1143); (d) on ecclesiastical government, _De moribus et officio episcoporum_, written about 1126 for Henry, bishop of Sens; the _De Consideratione_ mentioned above; (e) a biography, _De vita et rebus gestis S. Malachiae, Hiberniae episcopi_, written at the request of the Irish abbot Congan and with the aid of materials supplied by him; it is of importance for the ecclesiastical history of Ireland in the 12th century; (f) sermons--divided into _Sermones de tempore; de sanctis; de diversis_; and eighty-six sermons, _in Cantica Canticorum_, an allegorical and mystical exposition of the Song of Solomon; (g) hymns. Many hymns ascribed to Bernard survive, e.g. _Jesu dulcis memoria, Jesus rex admirabilis. Jesu decus angelicum, Salve caput cruentatum_. Of these the three first are included in the Roman breviary. Many have been translated and are used in Protestant churches.

St Bernard's works were first published in anything like a complete edition at Paris in 1508, under the title _Seraphica melliflui devotique doctoris S. Bernardi scripta_, edited by Andre Bocard; the first really critical and complete edition is that of Dom J. Mabillon _Sancti Bernardi opp. &c._ (Paris, 1667, improved and enlarged in 1690, and again, by Massuet and Texier, in 1719), reprinted by J.P. Migne, _Patrolog. lat._ (Paris, 1859). There is an English translation of Mabillon's edition, including, however, only the letters and the sermons on the Song of Songs, with the biographical and other prefaces, by Samuel J. Eales (4 vols., London, 1889-1895). See further Leopold Janauschek, _Bibliographia Bernardina_ (Vienna, 1891), which includes 2761 entries, including 120 works wrongly ascribed to Bernard.

AUTHORITIES.--The principal source for the life of St Bernard is the _Vita Prima_, compiled, in six books, by various contemporary writers:

## book i. by William, abbot of St Thierry near Reims; book ii. by

Ernald, or Arnald, abbot of Bonnevalle; books iii., iv. and v. by Geoffrey (Gaufrid), monk of Clairvaux and Bernard's secretary; book vi., on Bernard's miracles, by Geoffrey and Philip, another monk of Clairvaux, &c. A MS. is preserved, _int. al._, in the library of Lambeth Palace (S xiv. No. 163). The _Vita_ was first published in _Bernardi op. omn._ by Mabillon (Paris, 1690), ii. pp. 1061 ff.; it was included in Migne, _Patrolog. lat._ clxxxv. pp. 225-416, which also contains the abridgments or amplifications, by later hands, of the _Vita Prima_, known as the _Vita Secunda_, _Tertia_ and _Quarta_. For a critical study of these sources see G. Huffer, _Der heilige Bernhard von Clairvaux_ (2 vols., Munster, 1886), and E. Vacandard, _Vie de Saint Bernard_ (2 vols., Paris, 1895).

Among the numerous modern works on St Bernard may be mentioned, besides the above, J.C. Morison, _The Life and Times of St Bernard_ (London, 1863); G. Chevallier, _Histoire de Saint Bernard_ (2 vols., Lille, 1888); S.J. Eales, _St Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux_ (London, 1890, "Fathers for English Readers" series); ib. _Life and Works of St Bernard_ (London, 1889); R.S. Storrs, _Bernard of Clairvaux: the Times, the Man and His Work_ (New York, 1893); Comte d'Haussonville, _Saint Bernard_ (Paris, 1906). See also the article by Vacandart in A. Vacant's _Dictionnaire de theologie_ (with full bibliography), and that by S.M. Deutsch in Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopadie_ (3rd ed.), vol. ii. (bibliography). Further works, monographs, &c., are given s. "Vita S. Bernardi" in Potthast. _Bibliotheca Historica Medii Aevi_ (Berlin, 1896). (W. A. P.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The Cistercians of this branch of the order were commonly known as Bernardines.

BERNARD OF CHARTRES (1080?-1167), surnamed SYLVESTRIS, scholastic philosopher, described by John of Salisbury as _perfectissimus inter Platonicos nostri saeculi_. He and his brother Theodore were among the chief members of the school of Chartres (France), founded in the early part of the 11th century by Fulbert, the great disciple of Gerbert. This school flourished at a time when medieval thought was directed to the ancient philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and had perversely come to regard Aristotle as merely the founder of abstract logic and formal intellectualism, as opposed to Plato whose doctrine of Ideas seemed to tend in a naturalistic direction. Thus Bernard is a Platonist and yet the representative of a "return to Nature" which curiously anticipates the humanism of the early Renaissance. John of Salisbury (_Metalogicus_, iv. 35) attributes to him two treatises, of which one contrasts the eternity of ideas with the finite nature of things, and the other is an attempt to reconcile Plato and Aristotle. The only extant fragments of Bernard's writings are from a treatise _Megacosmus and Microcosmus_ (edited by C.S. Barach at Innsbruck, 1876). The source of Bernard's inspiration was Plato's _Timaeus_. He maintained that ideas are really existent and are laid up for ever in the mind of God. He further attempted to build up a symbolism of numbers with the view of elaborating the doctrine of the Trinity, and explaining the meaning of unity, plurality and likeness.

See SCHOLASTICISM; also V. Cousin, _Oeuvres inedites_ of Abelard (Paris, 1836); Haureau, _Philosophie scolastique_, i. 396 foll.

BERNARD, CHARLES DE, whose full name was PIERRE MARIE CHARLES DE BERNARD DU GRAIL DE LA VILLETTE (1804-1850), French writer, was born at Besancon on the 25th of February 1804. After studying for the law, and then taking to journalism, he was encouraged by Balzac (whose _Peau de chagrin_ he had reviewed) to settle in Paris and devote himself to authorship; and the result was a series of volumes of fiction, remarkable for their picture of provincial society and the Parisian _bourgeoisie_. The best of these are _Le Noeud gordien_ (1838), containing among other short stories _Une Aventure de magistrat_, from which Sardou drew his comedy of the _Pommes du voisin; Gerfaut_ (1838), considered his masterpiece; _Les Ailes d'Icare_ (1840), _La Peau du lion_ (1841) and _Le Gentilhomme campagnard_ (1847).

His _Oeuvres completes_ (12 vols.), which appeared after his death on the 6th of March 1850, include also his poetry and two comedies written in collaboration with "Leonce" (C.H.L. Laurencot, 1805-1862). A flattering appreciation by Armand de Pontmartin is prefixed to _Un Beau-pere_ in this collection. In W.M. Thackeray's _Paris Sketch-book_ ("On some fashionable French novels") there is an admirable criticism of Bernard. See also an essay by Henry James in _French Poets and Novelists_ (1884).

BERNARD, CLAUDE (1813-1878), French physiologist, was born on the 12th of July 1813 in the village of Saint-Julien near Villefranche. He received his early education in the Jesuit school of that town, and then proceeded to the college at Lyons, which, however, he soon left to become assistant in a druggist's shop. His leisure hours were devoted to the composition of a vaudeville comedy, _La Rose du Rhone_, and the success it achieved moved him to attempt a prose drama in five acts, _Arthur de Bretagne_. At the age of twenty-one he went to Paris, armed with this play and an introduction to Saint-Marc Girardin, but the critic dissuaded him from adopting literature as a profession, and urged him rather to take up the study of medicine. This advice he followed, and in due course became interne at the Hotel Dieu. In this way he was brought into contact with the great physiologist, F. Magendie, who was physician to the hospital, and whose official _preparateur_ at the College de France he became in 1841. Six years afterwards he was appointed his deputy-professor at the college, and in 1855 he succeeded him as full professor. Some time previously he had been chosen the first occupant of the newly-instituted chair of physiology at the Sorbonne. There no laboratory was provided for his use, but Louis Napoleon, after an interview with him in 1864, supplied the deficiency, at the same time building a laboratory at the natural history museum in the Jardin des Plantes, and establishing a professorship, which Bernard left the Sorbonne to accept in 1868--the year in which he was admitted a member of the Institute. He died in Paris on the 10th of February 1878 and was accorded a public funeral--an honour which had never before been bestowed by France on a man of science.

Claude Bernard's first important work was on the functions of the pancreas gland, the juice of which he proved to be of great significance in the process of digestion; this achievement won him the prize for experimental physiology from the Academy of Sciences. A second investigation--perhaps his most famous--was on the glycogenic function of the liver; in the course of this he was led to the conclusion, which throws light on the causation of diabetes, that the liver, in addition to secreting bile, is the seat of an "internal secretion," by which it prepares sugar at the expense of the elements of the blood passing through it. A third research resulted in the discovery of the vaso-motor system. While engaged, about 1851, in examining the effects produced in the temperature of various parts of the body by section of the nerve or nerves belonging to them, he noticed that division of the cervical sympathetic gave rise to more active circulation and more forcible pulsation of the arteries in certain parts of the head, and a few months afterwards he observed that electrical excitation of the upper portion of the divided nerve had the contrary effect. In this way he established the existence of vaso-motor nerves--both vaso-dilatator and vaso-constrictor. The study of the physiological action of poisons was also a favourite one with him, his attention being devoted in particular to curare and carbon monoxide gas. The earliest announcements of his results, the most striking of which were obtained in the ten years from about 1850 to 1860, were generally made in the recognized scientific publications; but the full exposition of his views, and even the statement of some of the original facts, can only be found in his published lectures. The various series of these _Lecons_ fill seventeen octavo volumes. He also published _Introduction a la medecine experimentale_ (1865), and _Physiologie generale_ (1872).

An English _Life of Bernard_, by Sir Michael Foster, was published in London in 1899.