cannot have fallen far short of the glory with which the
world will forever associate the name of the Cid Campeador.

ST. BERNARD

By HENRY G. HEWLETT

(1091-1153)

[Illustration: St. Bernard.]

In 1091, when the career of the Cid was drawing to a close in Spain, a
yet greater Christian champion was born in France; greater, if only in
this, that the weapons of his warfare were not carnal. That the work was
good in itself, we think will be clear from a perusal of the life of the
warrior-monk, St. Bernard.

His birthplace was Fontaines, near Dijon, in Burgundy; his father,
Tecelin, a knight of honorable reputation, and so absorbed in his
profession that he was compelled to leave the care of his seven sons, of
whom Bernard was the third, to his wife Aleth. She was a pious and
gentle woman, strictly attached to the duties of religion, and anxious
for the spiritual rather than the temporal welfare of her children, whom
she therefore devoted to the cloister. A dream, it is said, had
indicated to her the future fame of her third son, before his birth. He
rapidly displayed signs of possessing no ordinary character. His
education was undertaken by the then celebrated school of Chantillon and
the University of Paris, where he remained some years, actively pursuing
his studies. His mother died soon after his return home, and he then
proceeded to fulfil her wish, which accorded with his own, of becoming a
monk. His father and friends endeavored to dissuade him from this step,
but instead, he persuaded five of his brothers and twenty-five other
friends to join him in the career which he had chosen. His father and
remaining brothers subsequently followed him, and the whole family took
monastic vows. Bernard did not select for his abode one of those
monasteries whose wealth and splendor had corrupted the intention of
their founders, and softened the severity of the original discipline.
His motive was truly religious, and took the superstitious form then
almost inseparable from earnest piety. He and his comrades entered the
poor convent of Citeaux, near Dijon, where the rules of life enjoined by
St. Benedict in the sixth century were observed with great rigor.
Frequent watchings, fasts, bleedings, and scourgings, for the purpose of
mortifying the body; abstinence from conversation or laughter; habits of
perpetual devotion, laborious exertion, and humble obedience to the
abbot, were the main features of the system. Berna