Bernard of Clairvaux

Bernard of Clairvaux joined public authority to an intensely inward spirituality. An abbot who advised rulers, intervened in ecclesiastical conflicts, and administered a large monastic community, he also wrote about longing for God and the soul’s intimate encounter with Christ. His unfinished sermons on The Song of Songs made the language of lovers and the kiss a sustained account of mystical union, while his life demonstrated that contemplation and action need not be separated.

Identity and Formation

Born in 1090 in a small castle near Dijon, Bernard came from a deeply religious family. His father was a military man, and his mother had ties to French aristocratic families. She died when he was in his early teens; his father later spent his final years at Clairvaux Abbey. Educated by the canons at St. Vorles in Châtillon-sur-Seine, Bernard showed an aptitude for writing and little interest in boys’ sports. He seemed indifferent to comfort, food, and drink, and suffered continuing health problems, particularly involving his stomach.

Rather than pursue the promising prospects his education might have opened, Bernard chose monastic life. Around 1113 he entered the new and austere monastery at Cîteaux, reportedly bringing thirty friends and relatives. Under Abbot Stephen Harding, he encountered a hard life in primitive facilities and an isolated setting. His four brothers eventually became monks as well. After novice training, Bernard was sent to establish a new monastery, Clairvaux. The account says little about his early work there, but Clairvaux became both the center of his monastic responsibility and, in his later writing, the community he loved and struggled to serve.

Abbot, Writer, and Public Leader

Bernard’s responsibilities repeatedly drew him away from the monastery. The monks missed him, and he missed them; when he returned, they were eager to hear his teaching. He distinguished their spiritual formation from the instruction given to people in the world, offering his monks what he described as more substantial nourishment. His central scriptural work would be an extended exposition of The Song of Songs, delivered across eighty-six sermons.

He began writing in 1125. The Apology addressed controversies between Benedictines and Cistercians over monastic life; other works included The Steps of Humility and Pride, On Loving God, and On Grace and Free Will. Around 1135–36 he began the sermons that occupied him for the rest of his life. He reached only Song 3:1 before his death, and Sermon 86 remained unfinished. The book presents the series as an allegorical devotional masterpiece and notes that a leading editor of Bernard’s writings regarded it as a major work of world literature.

Between 1130 and 1145, Bernard became deeply involved in church and state affairs. He wrote to European kings and princes about their duties to their kingdoms and the Church, settled disputes among claimants to the papacy, attended Church councils, and influenced ecclesiastical reform. During a papal schism, he worked to establish Innocent II as the legitimate pope at the Second Lateran Council in 1139. In 1140 he secured the condemnation of Peter Abelard, whose rational approach to theology conflicted with Bernard’s contemplative outlook. Bernard declined the archbishopric of Rheims in 1139. In 1145 one of his monks became Pope Eugene III, a high point in Bernard’s influence; Bernard then began to draw back from public life.

His support for the Second Crusade proved the most tragic of his public interventions. The campaign ended in defeat at Damascus in 1148, and many blamed Bernard. The failure stands in stark contrast to the confidence and reach of his other interventions, and prevents his public authority from appearing as an uncomplicated triumph. His reputation rested not only on political influence but also on the difficult consequences of using it.

Love, Desire, and the Song of Songs

On Loving God began as a response to Carthusian monks at the Grande Chartreuse who asked why and how God should be loved. Bernard argued that God is the proper object of love both because no one deserves love more and because loving God benefits the person who loves. Yet he also insisted that God should be loved for God’s own sake, not merely for the benefits received. In describing the degrees of love, he began with love of oneself for one’s own sake and urged that love of neighbor be grounded in God. He also described the recognition that human benefits are gifts of grace rather than rewards earned by merit. At the furthest degree, a person loves the self for God’s sake: self-concern gives way to the divine will. Bernard treated this not as an achievement secured by effort but as a divine gift, made more accessible as bodily desires cease to hold a person back.

The sermons begin with the Bride’s appeal in The Song of Songs, and Bernard returned to that image across several early sermons. For him, the kiss was not a greeting or decorative figure: it represented the fulfillment of a soul’s longing and the union of God with humanity through Christ, the mediator. He associated the kiss with strengthened faith and with the gift of the Holy Spirit. In a later sermon he described the Spirit’s gift as joining knowledge with devotion: reason receives insight and the will receives wisdom. The book’s interpretation thus makes desire more than an emotion; it is the movement toward a relationship understood as intimate, transformative, and dependent on grace.

Bernard did not present that longing as a state he had permanently mastered. In Sermon 9 he spoke of loving God and being grateful for favors received, while still desiring more. In Sermon 14 he recalled the coldness and hardness of heart he experienced early in his conversion, even as he sought God. At times, unexpected occasions seemed to restore movement within him. He worried that memories of human goodness, rather than thoughts of God, might have helped prompt this renewal, and expressed his continuing desire to behold God. The account allows the mystic’s authority to include vulnerability: longing persists alongside gratitude, and spiritual dryness alongside moments of renewal.

Inward Experience and Monastic Strain

Bernard’s account of mystical experience emphasizes interiority rather than sensory spectacle. The Bride seeks God within the heart, not in bodily appearance or an external vision; the delight lies in the gift of love. In Sermon 74, written late in his life, Bernard said that the Word had come to him many times, though he could not identify when it arrived or departed. He reported no sight, sound, taste, smell, or touch. Nor could he locate the Word simply as an object entering from outside or as a good already contained within himself. His language instead places the Word beyond and deeper than the limits of his self-examination.

He recognized God’s presence by its effects. The encounter awakened and changed him: it softened what had been hard, restored what was disordered, illuminated what was dark, and brought his faults into flight and his human yearnings under discipline. But the experience did not endure in full. The narrative therefore presents transformation, rather than a continuing vision, as Bernard’s evidence of divine presence—and acknowledges that the resulting spiritual strength could fade.

His responsibilities as abbot complicated this inward life. In Sermon 30 he used the image of Clairvaux as his own vineyard, overrun by intruders and troubled by anxieties, suspicions, cares, and quarrels. These demands left him little time for prayer and brought sorrow. The image makes monastic leadership itself part of his spiritual account: the community he loved could also exhaust the attention he wished to give to God. In his final, unfinished sermon, he turned to prayer in privacy and silence, particularly when others were asleep, and urged his monks to seek the Word rather than use prayer as a means to some other end.

Legacy and Significance

Bernard died in 1153 before completing Sermon 86; others continued the series, but the account stresses that none wrote like him. His monks were more than an administrative charge: he loved them deeply, and wrote to them of how their memory remained with him when he was away. He also portrayed Clairvaux as a spiritual community joined in devotion to the heavenly Jerusalem. Such attachments complicate any simple contrast between withdrawal from the world and involvement in it. Bernard spent long periods away settling disputes and advising rulers, yet remained bound to his monastery and its daily spiritual struggles.

His significance in the book lies in this conjunction of contemplative desire and public service. The sermons make longing and love central to the search for God; On Loving God describes a gradual deepening of love that ultimately depends on grace. At the same time, Bernard administered a community, intervened in Church affairs, and advised political leaders, with both influence and consequential failure. His life is offered as evidence that a deep inner life can coexist with action in the world, rather than requiring a complete departure from ordinary responsibilities.