The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

II. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians-Hierarchy the Ministers of Antichrist

The second spur to a new life, a life based on the old rigor of the monastery, was next given by Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the greatest figures of the twelfth century. (For portrait, see p. 685.) He entered a monastery of the Cistercians, but soon founded a new branch house. PFF1 632.8

The Cistercian order, springing from the Benedictines in 1098, was organized at Cistercium (Citeaux), France, in an attempt to return to the original strictness of the Benedictine rule. It was noted for its austerity and emphasis on manual labor, although it also became notable for collecting and copying manuscripts. The widespread influence of the order stems from the time of Bernard, whose deeply religious spirit, fervent zeal, purity of intention, and most eloquent tongue soon gathered a large number of followers about him. And during his lifetime he was able to witness the springing up of a great number of sister institutions in which the same high standards that he had set were adhered to. And fifty years after his death the movement had grown to the number of 530 abbeys and 650 dependencies. PFF1 633.1

These Cistercians cultivated the wildest and least accessible districts. In contrast to the Cluniacs, who centralized all authority in the abbot of Cluny, they maintained the position that each monastery was an independent abbey, but they all bound them selves to the pope by oaths of direct obedience. By this step the monk became the auxiliary of Rome, with the control of his organization centered in the pope. This really meant a giving away of the old monastic ideal—which was a complete renunciation of the world, and sole attachment to God. ⁹ PFF1 633.2

1. FOUNDS NEW MONASTERY AT CLAIRVAUX

BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX (1090-1153), who made kings tremble and caused popes to ponder, was a Burgundian, born near Dijon, France, in the feudal castle of Fontaines, which belonged to Tescelin the knight, his wealthy father. Bernard received his early training at the Cathedral School of St. Martins, at Chatillon-sur-Seine. In this school Latin poetry was stressed, both secular and religious, and emphasis was laid on dialectics and on music. This latter training reappears in Bernard’s enduring hymns. PFF1 633.3

Bernard sprang from the fighting caste. He lived in a turbulent, warring world, and seemed destined for the army. But his whole inclination was toward study and a life of devotion to God. In the silvery peal of the monastery bells he seemed to hear Christ saying, “Come unto Me”; and in 1112, at the age of twenty-two, he, with a group of twenty-nine other nobles and literati, knocked at the gate of the abbey of Citeaux, ruled by the English abbot Stephen Harding and belonging to the Cistercian reformed group of the Benedictine order. ¹⁰ There, where the monks rose at two A.M., and sometimes had but one meager meal a day, Bernard entered upon a life of extreme austerity. The extreme rigors of fasting and manual work, with few periods of rest, nearly broke his health. PFF1 633.4

During that time Citeaux was growing rapidly, and founding other abbeys. Stephen, the abbot, chose Bernard as leader of a group of twelve monks to establish another abbey in 1115. Bernard, eager to break new ground, chose a deep valley on the river Aube, a tributary to the Seine, called the Valley of Bitterness. This he renamed Claire Vallee, or Clairvaux. Painful years of struggle and shortage at the new abbey followed. There Bernard composed his first sermons. He was stirred by the lawlessness of the church, and moved by the walls of splendor within sight of children undernourished and miserably clad. He attacked the departures of the clergy and was horrified over the spectacle of two simultaneous popes opposing each other. PFF1 634.1

2. FOSTERS HOLINESS AND EXPOSES EVIL

Bernard became a revivalist. Although at first speaking to deaf ears, he soon developed into a powerful preacher and persuasive pleader, as we may see in his wonderful series on the Song of Solomon. Bernard cast his soul unreservedly on the pardoning grace of Christ, though he sought to lay hold of Him through the church and through asceticism-the best way he knew. He wrote a number of books and powerful poems, and his influence was far reaching. Even Luther and Calvin paid high tribute to him. PFF1 634.2

Bernard thundered against the growing scholasticism of the time, which aimed at the discovery of rational truth, while he fostered asceticism, which sought the attainment of holiness. His eighty-six homilies on the Song of Solomon illustrate his quest. His clear spiritual insight and experience are reflected in the long poem from which two great hymns have come down through the centuries—”Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts” and “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee”—which are now the common heritage of all Christian bodies. ¹¹ PFF1 634.3

Although he was acquainted with the writings of Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory, Bernard was pre eminently a man of one Book-the Vulgate Bible, which he knew from cover to cover. PFF1 635.1

Men came to Bernard’s monastery for refuge from the chill of the world, that side by side they might keep themselves warm through a purer faith, and many of his sermons had one pre dominant theme—this evil world and the evil in the church. ¹² Bernard preached as often as he could find occasion. His sermons were doubtless taken down by the brethren, with the help of his notes. ¹³ Sermons in those days were not conventional. It is said that the preacher’s admonitions were often punctuated with interruptions from the hearers, and by rejoinders from the preacher. PFF1 635.2

According to the times, monasticism was the refuge of most men of learning or discipline. Bernard was a scholar; he was proficient in Latin and was a master of satire, as his letters show here and there. ¹⁴ He strove for retirement as other men strive for prominence, but he was constantly drawn out of his seclusion by the appeal of others who needed help. The real Bernard was the man of the cloister, and he considered that his real lifework was interrupted when he came out into public affairs—at the call of duty, as he saw it—to make popes or rebuke them, to contend to the death with Abelard, or to preach a crusade. ¹⁵ PFF1 635.3

He cried out courageously against entrenched abuses in the church. He protested to Pope Eugenius III that “the court of Rome” was “a sink of litigation and unjust appeals,” and to Louis VII he was similarly plain spoken. ¹⁶ It must not be for gotten that he lived during the height of the dominance of the all-embracing Roman church, unrivaled because it brooked no rivals. He publicly protested the massacres of the Jews, and made no attempt to excite the populace to the burning of heretics. ¹⁷ In the preface to one of Bernard’s greatest works, De Consideratione (On Consideration), he gives frank and forthright counsel to Pope Eugenius III, who had formerly been one of his pupils. ¹⁸ PFF1 636.1

3. BERNARD’S VIEWS ON SECOND ADVENT

Concerned chiefly with devotional themes, Bernard’s writings have little to say on eschatology. He mentions a twofold advent—the first, in which Christ comes to save the lost; and the second, “in which He shall come and take us to be with Him.” ¹⁹ But in another place he speaks of the threefold advent—the coming “to men, within men, against men.” ²⁰ By the central coming he obviously means the entry of Christ into the heart. ²¹ PFF1 636.2

4. RESURRECTION AT THE SECOND ADVENT

At Christ’s second advent in glory, Bernard holds, comes the resurrection of the body. ²² God’s works will remain imperfect until the “con summation of the Church,” at the end, for both the lower creation and the ancient patriarchs and prophets await the perfecting of the church ²³ by the Bridegroom, whose return is eagerly awaited by the bride, and prayed for daily in “Thy kingdom come.” ²⁴ Bernard expects Christ to return to the judgment in human form (forma humana), in like manner as He went to heaven—to bring salvation to the Jews, to judge the world, and to set up the eternal kingdom, whose subjects are not literal Israel but spiritual. ²⁵ Bernard frequently makes allusion to other prophecies, but without definite prophetic interpretation. PFF1 636.3

5. SPIRITUAL VIEW MOLDS VARIOUS TEACHINGS

To his congregation of monks Bernard held up the ideal of watching for the Lord’s return, with loins girded and lamps burning, whether it be in the first watch (interpreted as obedience to their strict monastic rule), the second watch (purity of motive), or the third (the preservation of unity among themselves). ²⁶ PFF1 637.1

But the spiritual or mystical emphasis of the time permeated much that he wrote, as might be expected—for example, “Tomorrow the Lord shall come; and in the morning we shall behold His glory” (Exodus 16:6, 7): PFF1 637.2

“These words have indeed their own first fulfilment in place and time recorded in the Scripture; but our mother Church has not unfitly adapted them to the Vigil of our Lord’s coming in the flesh.... When then she either transfers or varies the words of Holy Scripture, that transference is even of as much more weight than the original sense as the truth is more than the figure.” ²⁷ PFF1 637.3

He explains: “After two days He will revive us, and the third day He will raise us up” (Hosea 6:3), as meaning “three epochs“: one “under Adam, another in Christ, the third with Christ”; but he also applies it spiritually to the individual as the days of sin, of present life in Christ, and of “tomorrow,” when we shall go forth from the body to be with Christ. ²⁸ PFF1 637.4

6. SEES VIRGIN MARY IN Revelation 12

Bernard has a curious and apparently original interpretation of the woman of Revelation 12:1, in his sermon for the Sunday in the octave of the feast of the assumption of the Virgin Mary: PFF1 637.5

“Do you think she is the woman clothed in the sun? Let it be, indeed, that the very series of the prophetic vision shows it to be understood of the present church; but it seems clearly to be attributed not inconveniently to Mary. Certainly it is she who as it were clothes herself with another sun. For just as he rises indifferently upon the just and the unjust, so she also ... shows herself approachable to the prayers of all.” ²⁹ PFF1 638.1

7. MOON CONSTRUED TO BE THE CHURCH

It is nothing great, says Bernard, to say that the moon (any defect of frailty or corruption) is beneath the feet of her who must be accepted as exalted above all the angels. The moon, he continues, customarily represents foolishness of mind, “on account of fickleness,” and sometimes the present church, because of its reflected light. ³⁰ PFF1 638.2

Mary, he adds, is doubtless “the woman once promised by God to crush with the foot of her virtue the head of the ancient serpent.” Finally the dragon, through Herod, lies in wait to destroy the woman’s Child at His birth. ³¹ PFF1 638.3

Then he continues the eulogy, typical of the time, of Mary as mediatrix: PFF1 638.4

“Assuredly the fleece is the medium between the dew and the ground, the woman between the sun and the moon; Mary is set between Christ and the church.” ³² PFF1 638.5

Paul says, “Put ye on the Lord Jesus” (Romans 13:14); similarly, as Christ, our Sun, remains in Mary, she clothes Him and is clothed by Him. ³³ PFF1 638.6

8. SUN AND TWELVE STARS EXPOUNDED

“It is beyond man” to explain the crown of twelve stars, yet “not incongruously, perhaps, we seem to understand those twelve stars as twelve prerogatives of grace with which Mary is uniquely adorned.” ³⁴ PFF1 638.7

9. PAPAL CLAIMANT CALLED ANTICHRIST

Bernard’s treatment of Antichrist offers an interesting example of the way in which a preacher, concerned with moving his hearers to right living rather than with formulating systematic theology, some times approaches a subject from different angles at different times. Around 1128 we find him disagreeing with Norbert, archbishop of Magdeburg, who was convinced that Antichrist, and a general persecution in the church, would come in his generation. ³⁵ PFF1 639.1

But in 1130, at the death of Pope Honorius II, when Bernard championed the cause of Gregory (Innocent II), against a rival claimant, Peter Leonis (Anacletus), who won control in Rome, he applied the prophetic epithet to the other claimant. PFF1 639.2

“Behold, Innocent, that anointed of the Lord, is set for the fall and rising again of many (cf. S. Luke 2:34). Those who are of God, gladly join themselves to him; but he who is of the opposite part, is either of Antichrist, or Antichrist himself. The abomination is seen standing in the holy place; and that he may seize it, like a flame he is burning the sanctuary of God.” ³⁶ PFF1 639.3

“They [who claim “that the whole Church has been led to recognize Peter Leonis”] are lying men whom, with Antichrist their head, the Truth shall destroy with the breath of His mouth.” ³⁷ PFF1 639.4

10. APPLIES “BEAST” OF APOCALYPSE TO ANTIPOPE

It was in this connection that he wrote concerning this antipope: PFF1 639.5

“That beast of the Apocalypse (Apoc. xiii. 5-7), to whom is given a mouth speaking blasphemies, and to make war with the saints, is sitting on the throne of Peter, like a lion ready for his prey.” ³⁸ PFF1 639.6

He even applies the term Antichrist to a bishop who had deserted the cause of Innocent for that of the schismatic contender. PFF1 639.7

“But whosoever tries to divide those whom Christ has joined together for their salvation proves himself to be, not a Christian, but an Antichrist, and guilty of the Cross and death of Christ.” ³⁹ PFF1 639.8

11. LATER SEES ANTICHRIST AS COMING MESSENGER OF SATAN

In his sermons on the Song of Solomon, written several years after the letters regarding the papal schism, Bernard makes several allusions to Antichrist without specifically identifying him. He is evidently Paul’s Man of Sin, for he is to be slain “by the Breath of His Mouth”; but he is also identified as “night,” which “signifies the devil, the angel of Satan,” who transforms himself into an angel of light. ⁴⁰ In another sermon he is described as the demon of noonday who simulates the midday light in order to deceive, and exalts himself above all that is worshiped. ⁴¹ PFF1 640.1

Quoting Psalm 91, Bernard says that the “terror that walketh by night” was the persecution of the early church; the “arrow that flieth by day” was the teaching of the heretics in the period of the church’s elevation; now, in his time, after the church is free from both these evils, she is still contaminated by “the pestilence that walketh in darkness,” that is, the insidious corruption of the hypocrites in the church, the “Ministers of Christ” who “are serving Antichrist.” This present evil period of walking in darkness is to be followed by “the destruction that wasteth at noonday”—the appearance of Antichrist, who has already seduced the great ones of the church. ⁴² PFF1 640.2

“There remains only one thing—that the demon of noonday should appear, to seduce those who remain still in Christ, and in the simplicity which is in Him. He has, without question, swallowed up the rivers of the learned, and the torrents of those who are powerful, and (as says the Scripture) he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth (Job 40:23)—that is to say, those simple and humble ones who are in the Church. For this is he who is Antichrist, who counterfeits not only the day, but also the noonday; who exalts himself above all that is called God or worshipped—whom the Lord Jesus shall consume with the Spirit of His Mouth, and destroy with the brightness of His Coming (2 Thessalonians 2:4, 8); for He is the true and eternal Noonday: the Bridegroom, the Defender of the Church, Who is above all, God blessed for ever. AMEN.” ⁴³ PFF1 640.3

12. MINISTERS OF CHRIST ARE “SLAVES TO ANTICHRIST

Although ardently attached to the church, Bernard saw in “the pestilence that walketh in darkness,” the corruptions and pride of the hierarchy, now grown too flagrant to be kept secret. He was so struck by the marks of antichristianism in the church of Rome that he thus boldly employed all the thunder of his rhetoric to proclaim that its clergy had become the “servants of Antichrist.” The eminence of the man made his utterances all the more noteworthy, and possibly exerted an influence later on the developing tendency to look in the church and at the Papacy for the prophesied Antichrist. PFF1 641.1

Note in the sermon just quoted Bernard’s incisive rebuke of the clergy who constitute “the destruction that wasteth at noonday“: PFF1 641.2

“All are her [the church’s] friends, and all her enemies; all are her intimates, and all her adversaries; all are of her own household, and none at peace with her; all are very nearly related to her, and yet all are seeking their own interests. They are Ministers of Christ, and they are serving [serviunt, are slaves to] Antichrist. They are advanced to honour upon the goods of the Lord, and to the Lord they render no honour at all. From this proceeds that meretricious splendour, that habit fit for a comedian, that magnificence almost royal which you see every day. Because of this you see gold upon the bits of their horses, upon their saddles, and even upon their spurs; yes, their spurs shine more brightly than their altars. Because of this you see fine tables loaded with splendid services of plate, chased goblets, and, also, with viands correspondingly costly; then follow merrymakings and drunkenness, the guitar, the lyre, and the flute. Thence come groaning winepresses and storehouses full and over flowing with all manner of good things. Thence come vases of rich per fumes, and coffers filled with immense treasures. It is for the attainment of such objects that they desire to be, and are, Provosts of churches, Deans, Archdeacons, Bishops, Archbishops. For these dignities are not given for merit, but are disposed of in that infamous traffic which walketh in darkness.” ⁴⁴ PFF1 641.3

The Cistercian “eschatology was practically that of the early disciples; a close expectation of the Second Coming and a conviction of the imminent appearance of Antichrist; the final fight, in fact, seemed already to have begun. Nation was rising against nation; the disastrous earthquake o£ 1222 seemed a clear fulfillment of Christ’s prophecy.” ⁴⁵ Loyal to the pope, and most active in the Albigensian crusade, inevitably they were drawn into world affairs, and away from their strict adherence to the original Rule of Benedict. But a new factor was about to be injected at this time. PFF1 641.4