SOURCE: Merton, Thomas. “Saint Bernard's Writings.” The Last of the Fathers: Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and the Encyclical Letter, Doctor Mellifluus, pp. 47-67. New York, N.Y.: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1954.

In the following excerpt, Merton surveys Bernard's best-known writings, which he says offer a coherent doctrine that embraces life. The critic characterizes them as the work of a mystic who emphasizes grace and expresses in lyrical terms his love for Jesus.

It seems that one of the things Saint Bernard wanted to get away from, when he entered Citeaux, was literary ambition. Profoundly affected by the humanistic renaissance of the twelfth century, his works still bear witness, by their quotations from Ovid, Persius, Horace, Terence, and other classical authors, to the influences he met with when he studied the liberal arts with the canons of Saint Vorles at Chatillon-sur-Seine. He seems to have become afraid of poetry...