BERNARDO di CHIARAVALLE, saint and Doctor of the Church. -
SUMMARY:
I. Life
II. Writings: 1. Epistolae; 2. Sermones; 3. Tractatus. - III. Thought: 1. Religious life;2. Theology
IV. Influence: 1. Religious influence; 2. Political influence; 3. Defender of the faith; 4. Theological influence; 5. Ascetical influence;6. Philosophical influence
V. Iconography.I. LIFE
Born in 1090 (1091?) in the ancestral castle of Fontaines-lès-Dijon (Burgundy), to the noble Tescelino “le Saur” and Elisabetta or Aletta di Montbard. He studied the trivium and part of the quadrivium with the Canons of Châtillon-sur-Seine; but one Christmas night, gladdened by a vision of the Christ Child, he decided to withdraw to a monastery with the intention of observing the Rule of St. Benedict rigorously. After a period of struggles and anxieties over his vocation, and having also lost his mother (1106–1107), at about twenty-two years of age, in 1112, he obtained admission to the monastery of Cîteaux, founded in 1098 by the blessed Roberto, abbot of Molèsmes, bringing with him to the cloister numerous gentlemen, among them his uncle Gaudertico, four brothers (the youngest, Nivardo, would follow him later together with his father Tescelino), and friends: this marked the beginning of the remarkable flourishing and expansion of the new order that later took the name of Cistercian. In the Rule of St. Benedict, which assigns various hours of the day to the choral celebration of the Divine Office (opus Dei), to spiritual reading or study (lectio divina), and to manual labor, B. found great support for his ideal. His continual and meditative study of Sacred Scripture and the Holy Fathers made the Bible so familiar to him that he not only frequently quoted entire passages from it, but also transformed his very speech into a continuous embroidery