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The saints

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

He knocked on the door of a struggling monastery, with thirty young noblemen behind him.

Feast: 20 August · 1090 to 1153 · The Middle Ages · Burgundy and Clairvaux, France

Read the story 1 min read
The Romanesque cloister of Fontenay Abbey in Burgundy: rounded arches and twin columns around a green garden.

Ibex73, 2020. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Home / The saints / St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Cîteaux, Burgundy, 1113

The monastery of Cîteaux is small, poor and strict.1

One day a young man named Bernard arrives with thirty young noblemen of Burgundy and asks to be admitted.1

Within a few years they sent him out to found a house of his own, in a place called the Valley of Bitterness.

Patronage No official patronage we can cite yet. The Church remembers him as an abbot and Doctor of the Church.

01St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Clairvaux

Abbot Stephen sent the young Bernard at the head of a band of monks to found a new house in the Diocese of Langres.1

Bernard named it Claire Vallée, Clairvaux, on 25 June 1115, and his name and Clairvaux became inseparable.1

His learned and devout writings won him the title of Doctor of the Church.1

He died at Clairvaux on 21 August 1153.1

The Romanesque cloister of Fontenay Abbey in Burgundy: rounded arches and twin columns around a green garden.
The cloister of Fontenay Abbey, Burgundy, a Cistercian abbey of Bernard’s century. Ibex73, 2020. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Live it this week

Bring your friends with you

Bernard didn’t enter the monastery alone; he showed up with thirty friends and relatives. This week, ask one friend to come with you to something you already do for God: Mass, adoration, a Bible study.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), “St. Bernard of Clairvaux”. New Advent edition. newadvent.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.