The most celebrated of these men is the famous St. Bernard. He is considered the brightest representative of the Roman Catholic religion which the church had seen since the days of Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory. For half a century he appears before us the leading and governing head of Christendom—the oracle of all Europe. The popes are lost sight of in the brighter light of the abbot. "He is the center," says one of his biographers, "around whom gather the great events of christian history, from whose mind flow forth the impulses which animate and guide Latin Christendom, towards whom converge the religious thoughts of men. He rules alike the monastic world, the councils of temporal sovereigns, and the intellectual developments of the age. He is believed by an admiring age to have confuted Abelard himself, and to have repressed the more dangerous doctrines of Arnold of Brescia." To those who have read his life this picture will not appear overdrawn. But as throwing light on those times we would first notice his training.
Bernard was born of noble parentage in Burgundy. His father, Tesselin, was a knight of great bravery and piety, according to the ideas of religion prevalent at that time. His mother, Alith, was likewise of high birth, and a model of devotion and charity. Bernard, their third son, was born at Fontaines, near Dijon, in 1091. From his infancy he was thoughtful and devoted to religion and study. His pious mother died while he was yet a youth, leaving six sons and one daughter. He was then left free to choose his occupation for life. What shall it be? He had no great choice; it must either be a fighting knight or a fasting and praying monk. He resolved at length to retire from the world and devote himself to the monastic state. At the age of twenty-three he entered the monastery of Citeaux.
When his family first heard of his resolution, they were much opposed. His father, Tesselin, and his two brothers, Guido and Gerard, were following the great Duke of Burgundy to his wars, as military noblemen. But such was the force of Bernard's character that he influenced his brothers one after the other, and his sister also, to take the vow; and the whole family in a short time disappeared within the walls of the convent.