SOURCE: Leclercq, Jean. “St Bernard in Our Times.” In Saint Bernard of Clairvaux: Studies Commemorating the Eighth Centenary of His Canonization, edited by M. Basil Pennington, pp. 1-26. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1977.

In the following essay, Leclercq surveys scholarship on Bernard's life and major writings in the 800 years after his death and reflects on the sociological, psychological, and linguistic possibilities for further research.

In 1953 we celebrated the eight-hundredth centenary of the death of Bernard of Clairvaux. At the end of the last of the congresses held in Bernard's native Burgandy on this occasion, it occured to several of the scholars who had been brought together by the study of this singularly attractive personality that it would be a good idea to gather together again in his memory. Two more centenaries were then impending: first of all, in 1963, the introduction of Bernard's cult at Clairvaux—the equivalent of his...