ilure of the Christian arms.

In Languedoc in 1147 he quelled a dangerous heresy, and silenced
Gilbert, bishop of Poitiers, at the Council of Rheims.

In 1148 Malachy, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, who nine
years before had visited Clairvaux and formed a lasting friendship for
Bernard, came there again to die in the arms of his friend. It is
related that the two saints had exchanged habits upon the first visit,
and that Malachy wore that of Bernard on his death-bed. The funeral
sermon preached by Bernard upon the life and virtue of his Irish comrade
is reputed to be one of the finest extant. It seemed as if the Gael had
come to show the Goth the way of death. Bernard's health, early broken
by self-imposed austerity and penances, had never been robust, and it
had often seemed that nothing but the vigor of his will had kept him
from the grave. In the year 1153 he was stricken with a fatal illness.
Yet when the archbishop of Treves came to his bedside, imploring his aid
to put an end to an armed quarrel between the nobles and the people of
Metz, he went cheerfully but feebly to the field between the contending
parties, and by words which came with pain and in the merest whispers,
he persuaded the men who were already at each other's throats to forget
their enmities.

He died at Clairvaux on January 12th, 1153, and was buried, as he
wished, in the habit of Saint Malachy. In 1174 he was sainted, and his
life is honored in the liturgy of the church on the 20th of August.

The marks of Saint Bernard's character were sweetness and gentle
tolerance in the presence of honest opposition, and implacable vigor
against shams and evil-doing. His was the perfect type of well-regulated
individual judgment. His humility and love of poverty were true and
unalterable. In Italy he refused the mitres of Genoa and Milan in turn,
and in France successively declined the sees of Chalons, Langres, and
Rheims. He wrote and spoke with simplicity and directness, and with an
energy and force of conviction which came from absolute command of his
subject. He did not disdain to use a good-tempered jest as occasion
required, and his words afford some pleasant examples of naive puns. He
was a tireless letter-writer, and some of his best writings are in that
form. He devoted much labor to his sermons on the Canticle of Canticles,
the work remaining unfinished at his death. He wrote a long poem on the
Passion, one beautiful hymn of which i