272 Stanley Abbey. 
there presented himself for admission at Citeaux, with some com- 
panions, a man of strange force of character and of marvellous 
power of influencing his fellow men. One could hardly speak of 
the Cistercians without saying just a word on Saint Bernard, the 
greatest of those whose names appear on the rolls of the order and 
for nearly forty years the leading spirit of his age: from him the 
Cistercians are sometimes called Bernardines, 
Of St. Bernard—the maker of popes, the preacher of crusades, 
the refuser of ecclesiastical dignities, the adviser of kings, the writer 
of hymns still sung,! the author of works (devotional and expository) 
still read, which have obtained for him the title of “ the last of the 
Fathers ”—this is not the place to speak; but it may interest you 
if I give a few words describing his entry on the monastic !ife. 
He was in this but one of a multitude, and it may help to show us 
something of those feelings, now to us almost unintelligible, then 
so strong and absorbing, which led so many to sacrifice everything 
to the spirit of religious devotion, and to embrace lives so full of 
hardship and of toil. Possibly some of you when at Dijon may 
have strolled out to view the ruins of Fontaine, where in 1091 
Bernard was born of wealthy and noble parents. The death of his 
mother, a good and holy woman, who had taken an important part 
in his early education, had on him a great effect. ‘The world,” 
says Dean Milman, whose words I now use, “ was open to the youth 
of high birth, beautiful person, graceful manners, irresistible in- 
fluence. The Court would at once have welcomed a young knight, 
so endowed, with her highest honours, her most intoxicating pleas- 
ures: the Church would have trained a noble disciple so richly. 
gifted for her most powerful bishoprics or her wealthiest abbeys. 
He closed his eyes on the world, on the worldly Church, with stern 
determination . . . . He enquired for the poorest, the most 
inaccessible, the most austere of monasteries. It was that of Citeaux. 
He arrived at the gates, but not alone; already his irresistible 
influence had drawn around him thirty followers, all equally resolute 
1 Several portions of St. Bernard’s hymn, Jesu dulcis memoria, have been 
translated and adapted in our popular hymnals ; for instance, in “ Hymns Ancient 
and Modern,” No. 177, 190, and the three parts of 178. 
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