But Bernard’s period of retirement was drawing to a close; he was becoming indispensable to his contemporaries.  In 1128 he was called to the Council of Troyes, at which the Order of Knights Templars was founded, and wrote a treatise in praise of the “new warfare,” called the “Exhortation to the Knights of the Temple.”  He was brought, again, to the council convened by Louis VI. at Etampes to decide between the claims of the rival Popes in the Papal schism.  The council opened by unanimous consent that Bernard’s judgement should decide their views; and without hesitation he pronounced Innocent II. the lawful Pope, and Peter Leonis, or Anacletus II., a vain pretender.  He bore the same testimony, in the presence of Innocent, before Henry I. of England, at Chartres, and before Lotharius, the German Emperor, at Liege.  The Pope visited Clairvaux, where he was moved to tears at the sight of the tattered flock of “Christ’s poor,” then presided at the Council of Rheims, 1131, and continued his journey into Italy, still accompanied by the Abbot of Clairvaux.  Bernard, convinced that the cause of Innocent was the cause of justice and religion, set no bounds to his advocacy of it in letters to kings, bishops and cities.  Such was now the fame of his sanctity that on his approach to Milan the whole population came out to meet him.

He returned to Clairvaux in 1135, where he found the community all living in Christian amity, and again retired to a cottage in the neighbourhood for rest and reflection.  “Bernard was in the heavens,” says Arnold of Bonnevaux; “but they compelled him to come down and listen to their sublunary business.”  The buildings were too small for their constantly growing numbers, and a convenient site had been found in an open plain farther down the valley.  Bishops, barons and merchants came to the help of the good work; and the new abbey and church rose quickly.

To Bernard’s forty-fifth year belong the “Sermons on the Canticles.”  In the auditorium, or talking-room of the monastery, the abbot, surrounded by his white-cowled monks, delivered his spiritual discourses.  A strange company it was:  the old, stooping monk and the young beginner, the lord and the peasant, listening together to the man whose message they believed came from another world.

III.—­St. Bernard and the Second Crusade

In the meanwhile, the affairs of the Papacy had not improved—­Innocent was still an exile from his see.  Worst of all, the monastery of Monte Casino, the head and type of Western monarchism, had declared for Anacletus, the anti-Pope; and in 1137 Bernard set out for Italy, visited Innocent at Viterbo, and proceeded to Rome.  As he advanced, Anacletus was rapidly deserted by his supporters, and shortly afterwards solved the difficulty by his death.  So ended the schism; and Bernard left Rome within five days after finishing his work.  With broken health and depressed spirits he returned to Clairvaux.  His brother Gerard, who had shared his journey, died soon after they reached home; and Bernard’s discourse on that event is one of the most remarkable funeral sermons on record.  The monk had not ceased to be a loving and impassioned man.