Our chief interest in Bernard relates to his monastic work which shed undying luster on his name.  Vaughan, in his “Hours with the Mystics,” says of him:  “His incessant cry for Europe is, Better monasteries, and more of them.  Let these ecclesiastical castles multiply; let them cover and command the land, well garrisoned with men of God, and then, despite all heresy and schism, theocracy will flourish, the earth shall yield her increase, and all people praise the Lord....  Bernard had the satisfaction of improving and extending monasticism to the utmost; of sewing together, with tolerable success, the rended vesture of the papacy; of suppressing a more popular and more scriptural Christianity for the benefit of his despotic order; of quenching for a time, by the extinction of Abelard, the spirit of free inquiry, and of seeing his ascetic and superhuman ideal of religion everywhere accepted as the genuine type of Christianity.”

But in spite of Dunstans, Brunos and Bernards, the monastic institution keeps on crumbling.  The edifice will not stand much more propping and tinkering.  While we admire this display of moral force, this commendable struggle of fresh courage and new hope against disintegrating forces, the conviction gains ground that something is radically wrong with the institution.  There is something in it which fosters greed and desperate ambition.  “Is it not a shame,” we feel compelled to ask, “that so much splendid, chivalrous courage and magnificent energy should be expended in trying to prevent a structure from falling, which, it seems, could not possibly have been saved?” But while the decay could not be stayed, we must admire the noble aims and pious enthusiasm of the reformers who sought to preserve an institution which to them seemed the only hope of a sinful world.

Dr. Storrs, in his life of Bernard, says:  “His soon-canonized name has shone starlike in history ever since he was buried; and it will not hereafter decline from its height or lose its luster, while men continue to recognize with honor the temper of devoted Christian consecration, a character compact of noble forces, and infused with self-forgetful love for God and man.”

The Military Religious Orders

The life of Bernard forms an appropriate introduction to a consideration of the Military Religious Orders.  Although weary with labor and the weight of years, he traveled over Europe preaching the second crusade.  “To kill or to be killed for Christ’s sake is alike righteous and alike safe,” this was his message to the world.  In spite of the opposition of court advisers, Bernard induced Louis VII. and Conrad of Germany to take the crusader’s vow.  He gave the Knights Templars a new rule and kindled afresh a zeal for the knighthood.  Although the members of the Military Orders were not monks in the strict sense of the word, yet they were soldier-monks, and as such deserve to be mentioned here.

At the basis of all monastic orders, as has been pointed out, were the three vows of obedience, celibacy and poverty.  Certain orders, by adding to these rules other obligations, or by laying special stress on one of the three ancient vows, produced new and distinct types of monastic character and life.