one.

When the Abbot of Clairvaux, in the course of his official visitation, inspected the nunnery of the Paraclete, he found the establishment well conducted, and he approved of every regulation. Only, in the version of the Lord's prayer there in use, he observed these words,—' Give us this day our super-substantial (enovoLov) bread'-and he thought it insufferable that the very prayer which the Deity had deigned to communicate to man for His own service, should be thus senselessly corrupted by the infection of Aristotle. Abelard defended his version; and hence arose the first recorded altercation between those celebrated theologians. The strictures of St. Bernard irritated that vain Scholastic; and as it happened that a large assembly of the Clergy of France was appointed to meet in the city of Sens, on some occasion deemed important *, Abelard challenged his rival to make good, in the presence of that august body, his repeated charges of heresy. St. Bernard would willingly have declined that conflict he feared the superiority of an experienced polemic; I was but a youth †, and he a man of war from his youth. Besides, I judged it improper to commit the measures of divine faith, which rested on the foundations of eternal truth, to the petty reasonings of the schools. Howbeit, the counsel of his friends prevailed; after some hesitation he accepted the challenge, and appeared on the appointed day.

:

Louis VII. honoured the assembly with his presence; the nobles of his court, the leading prelates and abbots, and the most learned doctors of the kingdom were there; and the highest expectations were formed, from one end of the realm to the other, by the rumour of this theological monomachy. The two champions were confronted. Bernard arose: I accuse not this man; let his own works speak against him. Here they are, and these are the propositions extracted from them. Let him say-I wrote them not; or let him condemn them, or let him defend them against my objections.' The charges were not entirely read through,' when Abelard interrupted the recital, and simply interposed his appeal to the Pope. The assembly was astonished at his hasty desertion of the field, which he had so lately sought. Do you fear,' said St. Bernard, for your person? You are perfectly secure; you know that nothing is intended against you; you may answer freely, and with the assurance of a patient hearing. Abelard only replied, I have appealed to the Court of Rome;' and retired from the assembly. I know nothing,' says Milner, in Bernard's *For the translation of the body of some saint into the cathedral church. The assembly took place in 1140.

The Abbot probably meant a youth in controversy,—for as to age, he was then fortynine, and his adversary only two years older. Milner, whose account of this transaction has great merit, seems to have understood him literally.

Church Hist. Cent. xii. ch. 2. This author is probably nearer to truth in his praise of Bernard, than in his censure of the 'heretic.' The reason of Abelard's sudden appeal to a higher court was, unquestionably, his distrust of that before which he stood: he might doubt its impartiality, or he might certainly have discovered its determined prejudice against him; and that it was, in fact, very provident in him to appeal betimes from its decision is clearly proved by a passage in the Account, which certain Bishops of France addressed to the Pope, of the proceedings at Sens. As the arguments of the Abbot of Clairvaux...convinced the assembled bishops that the tenets which he opposed were not only false, but heretical, they, sparing his (the heritic's) person out of deference to the apostolic see, condemned the opinions. A loco et judice quem sibi ipse elegerat, sine læsione, sine gravamine, ut suam prolongaret iniquitatem, Sedem Apostolicam appellavit. Episcopi autem, qui propter hoc in unum convenerant, vestræ Reverentiæ deferentes nihil in personam ejus egerunt, sed tantummodo capitula librorum ejus,' &c. &c. It is therefore manifest that this appeal saved him from some personal infliction. This Letter is published among the works of St. Bernard, p. 1560, edit. Lutet. Paris. 1640. After all, it is some

history more decisively descriptive of his character, than his conduct in this whole transaction. By nature sanguine and vehement, by grace and self-knowledge modest and diffident, he seems on this occasion to have united boldness with timidity, and caution with fortitude. It was evidently in the spirit of the purest faith in God, as well as in the most charitable zeal for divine truth, that he came to the contest.'

We shall now proceed to consider St. Bernard in another (if, indeed, it is another) character,—that of a zealous defender of the power and prerogatives of the church; and we shall observe how far the same principle engaged him, on the one hand, in the support of papal authority, and in the extirpation of heresy on the other. We willingly omit all mention of the miracles which are so abundantly ascribed to him, and which, if they are not merely the fabrications of his panegyrists, are equally discreditable to his honesty and his piety. We defer to a future chapter any notice of the very equivocal zeal which urged him to preach a holy war, to proclaim its predestined success with a prophet's authority, and then to excuse the falsification of his promises by a vulgar and contemptible subterfuge. Yet were all these transactions very certain proofs of his attachment to the principles of the Roman Catholic church. Of the same nature were the eulogies which he so warmly lavished, in one of his treatises, upon the newly instituted order of the Templars. But we pass these matters over, and proceed directly to observe the expressions by which he characterised the Bishop of Rome. Let us inquire,' says he, in his letter to Pope Eugenius III.*, ' yet more diligently who you are, and what character you support for a season in the Church of God. Who are you?—a mighty priest, the highest pontiff. You are the first among bishops, the heir of the apostles; in primacy Abel, in government Noah, in patriarchate Abraham, in order Melchisedech, in dignity Aaron, in authority Moses, in judgment Samuel, in power Peler, in unction Christ. You are he to whom the keys have been delivered, to whom the flock has been entrusted, Others, indeed, there are who are doorkeepers of heaven, and pastors of sheep; but you are pre-eminently so, as you are more singularly distinguished by the inheritance of both characters. They have their flocks assigned to them, each one his own; to you the whole are entrusted, as one flock to one shepherd; neither of the sheep only, but of their pastors also; you alone are the pastor of all. Where is my proof of this?—in the Word of God. For to which, I say,-not of bishops, but of apostles,was the universal flock so positively entrusted? "If thou lovest me, Peter, feed my sheep.".... Therefore, according to your canons, others are called to a share of the duty, you to a plenitude of power. The power of others is restrained by fixed limits; yours is extended even over those who have received power over others. Are you not able, if cause arise, to exclude a bishop from heaven, to depose him from his dignity, and even to consign him over to Satan? These your privileges stand unassailable, both through the keys which have been delivered, and the flock which has been confided to you,' &c. Thus the authority of St. Bernard, which was extremely great, both in his own age and those which immediately followed, was exerted to subject the minds of religious men to that spiritual despotism, which was already swollen far beyond its just limits, and was threatening a still wider and more fatal inundation.

satisfaction to record, that Abelard died (in 1142) in quiet obscurity, in the Monastery of Cluni.

* De Consideratione,' lib. ii., c. viii.

Among the numerous discourses of St. Bernard, two* were more espe cially directed against the heretics of the day; and the preacher declares, that he was moved to this design by the multitude of those who were destroying the vine of Christ, by the paucity of its defenders, by the difficulty of its defence.' In the discharge of this office he inveighs against the innovators in the usual terms of theological bitterness; and at the same time charges them with those flagrant violations of morality and decency, which were so commonly imputed to seceders from the church, though they were, in truth, inconsistent with the first principles of civil society. We shall not repeat those charges, nor copy his ardent vituperations; but there is one passage (in the sixty-sixth sermon), which possesses some historical importance, and which exposes besides the principles of the orator. In respect to these heretics, they are neither convinced by reasons, for they understand them not; nor corrected by authority, for they do not acknowledge it; nor bent by persuasion, for they are wholly lost. It is indisputable that they prefer death to conversion. Their end is destruction; the last thing which awaits them is the flames. More than once the Catholics have seized some of them, and brought them to trial. Being asked their faith, and having wholly denied, as is their usage, all that was laid against them, they were examined by the Trial of water ‡, and found false. And then, since further denial was impossible, as they had been convicted through the water not receiving them, they seized (as the expression is) the bit in their teeth, and began with pitiable boldness, not so much to make confession as profession of their impiety. They proclaimed it for piety; they were ready to suffer death. for it; and the spectators were not less ready to inflict the punishment. Thus it came to pass that the populace rushed upon them, and gave the heretics some fresh martyrs to their own perfidy. I approve the zeal, but I do not applaud the deed; because faith is to be the fruit of persuasion, not of force. Nevertheless, it were unquestionably better that they should be restrained by the sword, the sword of him, I mean, who wears it not without reason,-than be permitted to seduce many others into their error; for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.... Some wondered that the offenders went to execution not only with fortitude, but, as it seemed, with joy; but those persons had not observed how great is the power of the devil not only over the bodies, but even over the hearts of men, which have once delivered themselves into his possession....The constancy of martyrs and the pertinacity of heretics has nothing in common; because that which operates the contempt of death in the one is piety,-in the other, mere hardheartedness.'. . . Marcus Antoninus, in the insolence of empire and philosophy, insulted by a similar distinction the firmness of those sainted sufferers, to whom the Abbot of Clairvaux addressed, as to heavenly Mediators, his daily and superstitious supplications. again, after another long revolution of centuries and of principles, those despised outcasts, whom St. Bernard, in the loftier pride of ecclesiastical infallibility, consigned, with no better spirit, to eternal condemnation, are

*Sermons 'Super Cantica,' lxv. et lxvi.

And now

In other places he acknowledges the same fact. Et item de hæresi, quæ clam pæne ubique serpit, apud aliquos sævit palam. Nam parvulos Ecclesiæ passim et publice deglu tire festinat.' &c. &c. De Consid., lib. iii., c. i.

This was one of the most popular among The Judgments of God.

revered by us as victims in a holy cause, the earliest martyrs of the Reformation!

In the same work in which the office and prerogatives of the Pope were so highly exalted, the writer boldly exposed some of the favourite abuses of the system; and dictated, from his cell at Clairvaux, rules for its better administration, and for the guidance of the autocrat of the church. His instructions were wise, because they were virtuous, and proceeded from a true sense of spiritual duties and dignity. His general exhortations to Eugenius to cast aside the unworthy solicitude respecting secular matters, which at once embarrassed and degraded the Roman see, and to emulate the venerable patriarchs of the ancient church; to leave to kings and their ministers the jarring courts of earthly justice*, and to content himself with distributing the judgments of heaven-these lessons were conceived in the loftiest mood of ecclesiastical exaltation, and with the justest sense of ecclesiastical policy; but the venom had already sunk too deep, and the healing admonitions of the reformer failed to arrest for a moment the progress of corruption.

St. Bernard next addressed his censures more particularly to the prac tice of appeal to Rome, which was then growing into a notorious abuse, After enumerating some of the evils thus occasioned, the delay, the vexation, the positive perversion of all the purposes of justice, How much longer,' he exclaims, will you shut your ears, whether through patience or inadvertency, against the murmur of the whole earth? How much Jonger will you slumber? How much longer will your attention be closed against this monstrous confusion and abuse? Appeals are made in defiance of law and equity, of rule and order. No distinction is made in place, or mode, or time, or cause, or person. They are commonly taken up with levity, frequently too with malice; that terror which ought to fall upon the wicked, is turned against the good; the honest are summoned by the bad, that they may turn to that which is dishonest; and they tremble at the sound of your thunder. Bishops are summoned, to prevent them from dissolving unlawful marriages, or from restraining or punishing rapine and theft and sacrilege, and such like crimes. They are summoned, that they may no longer exclude from orders and benefices unworthy and infamous persons..... And yet you, who are the minister of God, pretend ignorance, that that, which was intended as a refuge for the oppressed, has become an armoury for the oppressor; and that the parties who rush to the appeal are not those who have suffered, but those who meditate injustice.'

Another papal corruption, against which St. Bernard inveighed with equal zeal was the abuse of exemptions. 'I express the concern and lamentations of the churches. They exclaim that they are maimed and dismembered. There are none, or very few, among them which do not either feel or fear this wound: Abbots are removed from the authority of their Bishops, Bishops from that of their Archbishops, Archbishops from that of their Patriarchs and Primates. Is the appearance of this good? Is the reality justifiable? If you prove the plenitude of your power by the frequency of its exercise, haply you have no such plenitude of justice.

Quænam tibi major videtur et potestas et dignitas; dimittendi peccata, an prædia dividendi? Sed non est comparatio. Habent hæc infima et terrena judices suos et reges et principes terræ. Quid fines alios invaditis? Quid falcem vestram in alienam messem extenditis? Non quia indigni vos; sed quia indignum vobis talibus insistere, quippe potioribus occupatis. De Consid., lib. i., c. vi,

You hold your office, that you may preserve to all their respective gradations and orders in honour and dignity, not to grudge and curtail them.' If the virtuous Abbot was moved to such boldness of rebuke by the delinquencies of the eleventh century-the earliest and perhaps the most venial excesses of pontifical usurpation-with what eyes had he beheld the court of Innocent IV., or the chancery of John XXII.! with what a tempest of indignation had he visited the enormities of later and still more degenerate days-jubilees and reservations, annates and tenths and expectative graces the long and sordid list of Mammon's machinations! The halls of Constance and Basle would have rung with his lamentation and his wrath, and both Gerson* and Julian would have shrunk before the manifestation of a spirit greater far than themselves.

But the inquisition of St. Bernard was not confined to the courts of the Vatican. It penetrated into the dwelling-places and into the bosoms of prelates and of monks. Oh, ambition, thou cross of those who court thee! How is it that thou tormentest all, and yet art loved by all? There is no strife more bitter, no inquietude more painful than thine, and yet is there nothing more splendid than thy doings among wretched mortals! I ask, is it devotion which now wears out the apostolical threshold, or is it ambition? Does not the pontifical palace, throughout the long day. resound with that voice t? Does not the whole machine of laws and canons work for its profit? Does not the whole rapacity of Italy gape with insatiable greediness for its spoils? Which is there among your own spiritual studies that has not been interrupted, or rather broken off, by it? How often has that restless and disturbing evil blighted your holy and fruitful leisure! It is in vain that the oppressed make their appeal to you, while it is through you that ambition strives to hold dominion in the church.' In another place§- The unsavoury contagion creeps through the whole church, and the wider it spreads the more hopeless is the remedy; the more deeply it penetrates, the more fatal is the disease. They are ministers of Christ, and they are servants of AntiChrist. They walk abroad honoured by the blessings of the Lord, and they return the Lord no honour: thence is that meretricious splendour everywhere visible-the vestments of actors-the parade of kings: thence the gold on their reins, their saddles, and their spurs, for their spurs (calcaria) shine brighter than their altars (altaria): thence their tables splendid with dishes and cups; thence their gluttony and drunkenness - the harp, the lyre, and the pipe, larders stored with provision, and cellars overflowing with wine. . For such rewards as these men wish to become, and do become, rectors of churches, deans, archdeacons, bishops, archbishops-for these dignities are not bestowed on merit, but on the thing which walks in darkness.'. A considerable portion of another composition|| is devoted to the exposure of monastic dege

John Gerson was a great admirer of St. Bernard. He frequently cited his authority, and composed one discourse expressly in his honour. We always watch with anxiety, and record with respect, the expressions in which one great man has celebrated the excellence of another. But in Gerson's 'Sermo de Sancto Bernardo' we can discover little but fanciful and mystical rhapsody.

Annon quæstibus ejus tota legum Canonumque disciplina insudat?

This passage is from the Third Book of the Consideratio.' It is addressed, we should recollect, to Pope Eugenius, who had been educated in the monastery of Clairvaux. § Super Cantica Ser. xxxiii.

Ad Guillelmum Abbat. Apologia- An Apology to William, Abbot of St. Thierry. The pretext for this Apology was, to defend himself and his own reformed order of Cistercians from the charge of calumniating the rival order, their more opulent brethren, of