the life one of exceptional severity. The head of this
monastery was Norbert, subsequently canonized. His order received
papal approbation in 1126, and thereafter it spread rapidly
throughout Europe; two hundred years later there were no less than
seventeen hundred Norbertine or Premonstratensian monasteries.
Norbert himself became archbishop of Magdeburg, and it was in
Germany that the most notable work of his order was accomplished.

BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX

Regarding the illustrious St. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, it is
needless here to say more than that his own age recognized in him
the embodiment of the highest ideal of medieval monasticism.
Intellectually inferior to Abelard and to some others of those over
whom he triumphed, he was their superior in moral strength, in
zeal, and above all in the power of making others share his own
enthusiasms. Born in 1090, he was renowned as one of the foremost
of French churchmen before he was thirty years old; his share in
the contest which followed the death of Pope Honorius II in 1130
made him one of the most commanding figures in all Europe. It was
to him that the Cistercian order owed its extraordinary expansion
in the twelfth century. That Abelard should have fallen before so
redoubtable an adversary (see the note on Pierre Abelard) is in no
way surprising, but there can be no doubt that St. Bernard's
"persecution" of Abelard was inspired solely by high ideals and an
intense zeal for the truth as Bernard perceived it.

ABBEY OF ST. GILDAS

Traditionally, at least, this abbey was the oldest one in Brittany.
According to the anonymous author of the Life and Deeds of St.
Gildas, it was founded during the reign of Childeric, the second of
the Merovingian kings, in the fifth century. Be that as it may, its
authentic history had been extensive before Abelard assumed the
direction of its affairs. His gruesome picture of the conditions
which prevailed there cannot, of course, be accepted as wholly
accurate, but even allowing for gross exaggeration, the life of the
monks must have been quite sufficiently scandalous. It was
apparently in the closing period of Abelard's sojourn at the abbey
of St. Gildas that he wrote the "Historia Calamitatum." He endured
the life there for nearly ten years; the date of his flight is not
certain, but it cannot have been far from 1134 or 1135.

LEO IX

Leo IX, pope from 1049 to 1054, was a native of Upper Alsace. It
was at the Easter