ocent was captured, but contrived to make favorable
terms with Roger; and a peace was agreed to, which was finally ratified
by the death of Anaclete, in 1138. Another anti-pope having been set up,
Bernard used his personal influence with the pretender, and induced him
to yield. Thus the schism in the Church was healed, and the good abbot
returned to Clairvaux.

In 1146 he was mainly instrumental in promoting the second crusade. News
reached Europe that, two years before, the Christian state of Edessa
(which, as we have already seen, was founded by Baldwin, brother of
Godfrey de Bouillon) had, through the weakness of its government, fallen
into the hands of the Sultan of Bagdad, and Jerusalem was again in
peril. Inflamed with enthusiasm, Bernard stirred up the hearts of his
countrymen to zeal in the cause of the Cross. Louis VII., of France, was
readily persuaded to undertake the crusade as a penance for his crimes;
but the Emperor Conrad, of Germany, was indisposed to exertion; and to
him, therefore, Bernard hastened, rousing the people of France and
Germany as he travelled through. The frozen reluctance of the monarch
could not withstand the fiery earnestness of the monk. Conrad is said to
have dissolved into tears at the discourse, and eagerly accepted the
cross which was offered. While in Germany Bernard showed his liberality
of thought--rare in those days--by sternly rebuking the ignorance of a
monk who was denouncing the Jews as the cause of the recent calamities.
At the council of Vezelay (in Burgundy), held in 1146, Bernard's
eloquence was as exciting in its influence on his hearers as that of
Pope Urban had been on a previous occasion. As the speaker, at the end
of his oration, held up the cross which was to be the badge of the
enterprise, Louis VII. threw himself at the feet of his subject, and the
whole assembly thronged round him, shouting the old war-cry, "It is
God's will!" Bernard distributed to thousands of eager hands all the
crosses which he had brought with him; and finding these insufficient
for the demand, took off the Benedictine robe which he wore, and tore it
into cross-shaped pieces. So impressed were the chiefs of the crusading
army with his power over the people, that at a subsequent assembly they
even offered the command of the expedition to him--an unwarlike monk.

He declined the post on the ground of unfitness, but had he accepted it,
the issue of the crusades might have been different from