Saint Benedict’s rule had reference only to a single religious house; but Abbot Stephen of Citeaux united in one compact whole all the monasteries which sprang from the parent stock of Citeaux, and established an organised system of mutual supervision and control.  A general chapter was held annually in September, and every Cistercian abbot whose monastery was in France, Italy or Germany was bound to attend every year; those from Spain, every two years; those from Ireland, Scotland, Sicily and Portugal, every four years; those from Norway, every five years; and those from Syria and Palestine, every seven years.  The “Charter of Charity,” promulgated by this chapter for the guidance of the Cistercian Order, is a brief but pregnant document, which quite explains its success.

II.—­A Great Preacher and Essayist

About 1119, Bernard, who had resumed the duties of abbot, began the career of literary and ecclesiastical activity—­the wide and impassioned correspondence, the series of marvellous sermons—­which have won for him the title of the Last of the Fathers.  His early essays are vigorous, but lack judgement and skill; they are stiff and rhetorical, and far removed from the tender poetry of his later writings.  Three years later we find Bernard credited with many miracles, narrated by William of St. Thierry, who afterwards retired to become a monk at Signy, where he wrote his record of the saint.  It was then regarded as natural that a man of eminent piety should work miracles; and we ought to accept these stories, in their native crudity and simplicity, not as true, but as significant.  Belonging to the time, as much as feudal castles and mail armour do, they form part of a picture of it.

With the exception of a visit to La Grande Chartreuse, and of another to Paris, where he preached the “true philosophy” of poverty and contempt of the world to the schools distracted by scholastic puzzles, Bernard remained a secluded monk of a new and humble Order.  But already, in his thirty-fifth year, the foundations had been laid of that authority which enabled him to quell a widespread schism, to oppose a formidable heretic, and to give the strongest impulse to the Second Crusade.  His power was growing, chiefly by his voluminous correspondence.  He wrote to persons of all classes on all subjects; his letters afford to the historian a wide repertory of indubitable facts, and show what was the part played at that time by the spiritual power—­that of a divine morality and superior culture coming into conflict with, and strong enough to withstand, a vigorous barbarism.  These epistles are full of commonsense and clear, practical advice, and often give us a glimpse of the human, as distinct from the ascetic, element in monastic life.  They show how men could pass pleasant and thoughtful days amid the barbarism of the time.