n mortification that he made himself very
ill, and would most likely have died, if a bishop, who was his friend,
had not stepped in and taken care of him for a time. Bernard afterwards
understood that he had been wrong in carrying things so far; but the
people who saw how he had worn himself down by fasting and frequent
prayer, were willing to let themselves be led to anything that so
saintly a man might recommend to them. It was even believed that he had
the gift of doing miracles; and this added much to the admiration which
he raised wherever he went.

Perhaps there never was a man who had greater influence than Bernard;
for, although he did not rise to be anything more than Abbot of
Clairvaux, and refused all higher offices, he was able, by the power of
his speech, and by the fame of his saintliness, to turn kings and
princes, popes and emperors, and even whole assemblies of men, in any
way that he pleased. When two popes had been chosen in opposition to
each other, Bernard was able to draw all the chief princes of
Christendom into siding with that pope whose cause he had taken up; and
when the other pope's successor had been brought so low that he could
carry on his claims no longer, he went to Bernard, entreating him to
plead for him with the successful pope, Innocent II., and was led by the
abbot to throw himself humbly as a penitent at Innocent's feet.

Some years after this, one of Bernard's old pupils was chosen as pope,
and took the name of Eugenius III. Eugenius was much under the direction
of his old master, and Bernard, like a true friend, wrote a book "On
Consideration," which he sent to Eugenius, showing him the chief faults
which were in the Roman Church, and earnestly exhorting the pope to
reform them.

PART II.

Bernard was even the chief means of getting up a new crusade. When
tidings came from the East that the Christians in those parts had
suffered heavy losses (A.D. 1145), he travelled over great part of
France and along the river Rhine in order to enlist people for the holy
war. He gathered meetings, at which he spoke in such a way as to move
all hearts, and stirred up his hearers to such an eagerness for
crusading that they even tore the clothes off his back in order to
divide them into little bits, which might serve as crusaders' badges.
And he drew in the emperor Conrad and king Lewis VII. of France, besides
a number of smaller princes, to join the expedition, although it was so
hard to