St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the monastic reformer and theologian, was born of a noble family at Fontaine, France, near Dijon. He became a Cistercian at Cîteaux in 1112 and founding abbot of Clairvaux in 1115. Throughout his life he was a tireless founder, reformer, preacher, and writer who, as friend or opponent, made contact with almost every notable in western Europe. His influence as a simple abbot on high ecclesiastical affairs is without parallel in the history of the Western church, and his spiritual teaching has been a living force to the present day. Though he was a professed enemy of secular culture (he "raided" the schools of Paris on a celebrated occasion in 1140) and was lacking in scholastic training, Bernard was a literary genius of the first order, and no mean theologian. His treatises De Diligendo Deo (On the love...