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Stanley Alley. 



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, 1 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 life. 

 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. 



