CENTURY XII. CHAP. I. A General View of the Life of Bernard. A GREAT luminary strikes our attention at the entrance of this century-the famous Bernard, abbot of Clairval. As the general scene of our history still continues dark and gloomy, let us stick close to the splendid object. At least I would wish to exhibit a just estimate of the life, character, and writings of this renowned saint. For the subject may not only throw a considerable light on the religion and manners of this century, but will also illustrate that connexion between christian doctrine and practice, which it is the principal design of this work to explore from age to age. ་ There was a time when Bernard was idolized: his word was a law, while he lived, throughout Europe; and, for ages after his death, he was scarce thought to have been capable either of fault or mistake. But the public taste has long since deviated into the other extreme, and it will behoove me to say a few words, with a view to combat that power of prejudice, by which most minds are apt to be carried down the torrent of fashion. Bernard was doubtless a very ardent champion of the popes of Rome; I mean, of their office, not of their personal characters. He inveighed against the vices of the men, and the various evils of their ecclesiastical administration. But he supported their pretensions to the chair of St. Peter, and opposed with vehemence all who withstood those pretensions. FORGIVE HIM THIS WRONG: it was common to him with the christian world; and the German monk, who four hundred years after, could see at length, though by slow degress, the wickedness and folly of the whole established system, under which he had been strictly educated, has ever been looked on as a prodigy. In superstition also, Bernard was unhappily involved all his days; it was the evil of the times. His austerities have, with nauseous punctuality, been recited by his panegyrists.* They might have spared their accounts, as they themselves confess that he afterwards owned, he was in an error, both in injuring his own health, and in exacting too much of labour and sufferings from his disciples. Nor is the sincerity of Bernard to be doubted, either in his juvenile zeal, or in his candid and frank confession of his faults.† He even accused himself of sacrilege, because, by his indiscreet excesses, he had rendered himself almost unfit to serve God and the church. And though the weakness of his frame continued till death, as the consequence of the injuries, which his body had received by his austerities, he seems to have taken some care of health in the latter part of his life. But the strongest prejudices, which we are inclined to admit against him in our times, are derived from his supposed miracles, and from his real attachment to the cause of the crusades. In truth, I was disgusted with the tedious perusal of his miracles, with not one of which do I mean to trouble the reader. But Bernard was canonized: it was therefore necessary, by the etiquette of the Roman see, that a saint should work miracles; and no wonder, when the interests of all parties concerned were favourable to fraud, and when credulity was a general evil, that miracles should be feigned, be circumstantially related, and be implicitly believed. Thus Ignatius, the father of the Jesuits, was said, sixty years after his death, to have wrought miracles; though in * These are several; the lives of Bernard, which they wrote, are at the close of the 2d vol. of his works; which are two folios. I use the Parisian edition of Mabillon. Vol. ii. p. 1094. his life, published fifteen years, after that event, no mention is made of any. Our king Henry III. was reported to have wrought a miracle after his death, at his tomb. He, also, might have been added to the Roman calendar, if the imposture had not been detected and exposed by the vigour and sagacity of his son Edward I.* Let Bernard, then, be acquitted of all blame on this head, though his panegyrists, it must be owned, have written as absurdly concerning him, as if they had intended to disgrace his character. Of the crusades, the question concerning their policy, is not the same thing as concerning their justice. In the beginning of this century, prodigious armies marched out of Europe, to take possession of the holy land; and, notwithstanding the repeated calamities which attended their progress, the princes of the west still persevered in the attempt. That they should single out Palestine as the scene of their military exploits was fanatical and superstitious. The great inconveniences to which they were inevitably exposed, on account of the immense distances from their respective countries, and the want of all political and prudential wisdom in their plans, are evident; and, in the event, Europe suffered the punishment of their temerity and folly. Add to this, that the improvident waste of so much human blood on so fantastic an object, and the mixture of profane wickedness with absurd superstition in the crusaders, render their characters, on the whole, as reprehensible as they were ridiculous. But when the precise question is asked, whether they had a just cause against the mahometans, I cannot decide, with the generality of modern historians, against them. Perhaps we have too hastily admitted the truth of the accounts, which infidel writers, of no very accurate information, have given of the virtues of the Arabians. It is very evident, that in the wars between them and the christians, the rules of justice and humanity were more frequently and more * Fox. B. of Martyrs, vol. i. 399: atrociously violated by the former than by the latter. Even the very degenerate christianity, which had then for ages obtained, produced a degree of social virtue unknown to the followers of Mahomet. A savage pride, a sanguinary malice, and a shameless perfidy marked, with very few exceptions, the general conduct of men, whom Voltaire, with insidious candor, prefers to their christian adversaries. It should be remembered, that the mahometans from the first publication of the koran, asserted a divine claim to universal empire; and, in their creed, unbelieving nations are continually threatened with the loss of their religion, their lives, or at least their liberties. In the eleventh century the Turks, the successors of the Arabians, both in regard to their empire and their religion, had, in less than thirty years, subdued Asia, as far as the Hellespont.* Yet the same author, who gives us this information, says, the charge alleged against the mahometans, of looking on it as a duty to extirpate all religions by the sword, is confuted by the koran, by the history of the mussulman conquerors, and by the toleration of christian worship. This observation seems scarce consistent with the former. To live in slavery, under the mahometan yoke, was all the indulgence granted to the christians, who sunk beneath their arms; and as they realized this doctrine at one time, even to the straits of Gibraltar; as the pilgrims to the holy land were exposed to many insults, robberies, and extortions; as both Saracens and Turks acted, from age to age, on the maxims of original mahometanism; and as, at length, for want of a proper union of the European princes, in stemming the torrent, they desolated a great part of Europe itself, it seems agreeable to the law of nations, to conclude, that the christian powers had a right to resist their ambitious pretensions. If this state of the case be just, it is sufficient to vindicate Bernard from the charge of iniquity, in encouraging and promoting the crusades. * Gibbon's Decline, c. 58. v. 6 This is enough for my purpose: he might, and he, doubtless, did mean well in his exhortations on this head; and, it is only to be wished that the enterprizes of the christian princes had been conducted on the plan of defensive prudence, rather than of offensive military enthusiasm. I am not, however, called on to vindicate Bernard as a politician, but as a christian. * Bernard was born at Fontaine, a village of Burgundy, in the year 1091; and was the son of Tecelinus, a military nobleman, renowned for piety, at least according to the ideas of religion prevalent at that time. The same character is given of his mother Aleth. She had seven children by her husband, of whom Bernard was the third. From his infancy he was devoted to religion and study, and made a rapid proficiency in the learning of the times. He took an early resolution to retire from the world, and engaged all his brothers and several of his friends in the same monastic views with himself. The most rigid rules were agreeable to his inclination: and, hence, he became a cistertian, the strictest of the orders in France. The cistertians were at that time but few in number: men were discouraged from uniting with them on account of their excessive austerities. Bernard, however, by his superior genius, his eminent piety, and his ardent zeal, gave to this order a lustre and a celebrity, which their institution by no means deserved. At the age of twenty-three, with more than thirty companions, he entered into the monastery. Other houses of the order arose soon after, and he himself was appointed abbot of Clairval.† To those novitiates, who desired admission, he used to say, "If ye hasten to those things, which are within, dismiss your bodies, which ye brought from the world; let the spirits alone enter; the flesh profiteth nothing." Strange advice this may seem, and very different from the meekness and facility, which our Saviour exhibited toward young disciples. Nor would it be worth while * Life of Bernard by Gulielmus, 1077. † Life of Bernard, 1085. |