summoned to attend councils and settle quarrels.  His correspondence exceeded that of Jerome or Saint Augustine.  He was sought for as bishop in the largest cities of France and Italy.  He ruled Europe by the power of learning and sanctity.  He entered into all the theological controversies of the day.  He was the opponent of Abelard, whose condemnation he secured.  He became a great theologian and statesman, as well as churchman.  He incited the princes of Europe to a new crusade.  His eloquence is said to have been marvellous; even the tones of his voice would melt to pity or excite to rage.  With a long neck, like that of Cicero, and a trembling, emaciated frame, he preached with passionate intensity.  Nobody could resist his eloquence.  He could scarcely stand upright from weakness, yet he could address ten thousand men.  He was an outspoken man, and reproved the greatest dignitaries with as much boldness as did Savonarola.  He denounced the gluttony of monks, the avarice of popes, and the rapacity of princes.  He held heresy in mortal hatred, like the Fathers of the fifth century.  His hostility to Abelard was direful, since he looked upon him as undermining Christianity and extinguishing faith in the world.  In his defence of orthodoxy he was the peer of Augustine or Athanasius.  He absolutely abhorred the Mohammedans as the bitterest foes of Christendom,—­the persecutors of pious pilgrims.  He wandered over Europe preaching a crusade.  He renounced the world, yet was compelled by the unanimous voice of his contemporaries to govern the world.  He gave a new impulse to the order of Knights Templars.  He was as warlike as he was humble.  He would breathe the breath of intense hostility into the souls of crusaders, and then hasten back to the desolate and barren country in which Clairvaux was situated, rebuild his hut of leaves and boughs, and soothe his restless spirit with the study of the Song of Songs.  Like his age, and like his institution, he was a great contradiction.  The fiercest and most dogmatic of controversialists was the most gentle and loving of saints.  His humanity was as marked as his fanaticism, and nothing could weaken it,—­not even the rigors of his convent life.  He wept at the sorrows of all who sought his sympathy or advice.  On the occasion of his brother’s death he endeavored to preach a sermon on the Canticles, but broke down as Jerome did at the funeral of Paula.  He kept to the last the most vivid recollection of his mother; and every night, before he went to bed, he recited the seven Penitential Psalms for the benefit of her soul.