And finally we come to the capital of Burgundy, to a city of prime importance in the art history of France, although it can claim no one supreme monument. Dijon"s leadership was from 1364 to 1477, under the four art-loving Valois princes, Philippe le Hardi (1364-1404), Jean sans Peur (1404-19), Philippe le Bon (1419-67), and Charles le Temeraire (1467-77). "Never," says Brantome, "were there four greater princes one after the other than the great dukes of Burgundy." Each in turn on his formal entry into Dijon came to the abbey church of St. Benigne to take oath to defend the special privileges of his capital. Tradition says that St. Benignus was sent to Christianize Gaul by St. Polycarp, who had known John the Evangelist. The hypothesis is possible, since it is historically certain that Polycarp provided Lyons with its first two bishops. Many a son of Dijon has borne the revered name of Benigne, none with greater honor for his native city than Bossuet, descended from ancient parliamentary stock. The neo-cla.s.sic taste of the great preacher"s day might prevent his knowing Gothic architecture rightly, but without the centuries that built mediaeval cathedrals he had not been what he was.[306]
Dijon became the capital of Burgundy under the first line of Capetian dukes who governed the province from 1032 to 1361 and who gave the city its franchise and privileges. A duke of Burgundy led the right wing at Bouvines, another fought under St. Louis at Mansourah. From Burgundy"s reigning line came Pope Calixtus II (1119-24), whose brother went crusading in Spain, where he founded the house from which descended Queen Isabella; Burgundian Capetians also reigned in Portugal. Cluny and Citeaux were favored by the first line of Burgundy"s dukes, to which belonged, by ties of blood, the two greatest abbots of their respective Orders, St. Hugues and St. Bernard. In 1361 the last duke died childless and the duchy returned to the French crown.
Three years later the Valois Capetian king, Jean le Bon, gave Burgundy to his youngest and favorite son, Philippe le Hardi, who won his surname of valiant when fifteen years of age through his defense of his father at the battle of Poitiers. When Philippe, by the generous aid of his brother, King Charles V, wedded the richest heiress in Europe, the very plain Marguerite of Flanders, there resulted the political union of Burgundy with the Netherlands that was of important influence on French art. It led to the formation at Dijon of a French-Flemish school of sculpture. The robust middle region of France impressed its own character on the masters from the Lowlands who flocked to the semi-royal court of the dukes, and equally it a.s.similated the artists who came from Lyons and neighboring regions. The Flemish-Burgundian style controlled the first half of the XV century. Its fusion of national and local art traditions with Flemish realism renewed the vigor of French sculpture, and a truly French Renaissance had already set in before the advent of the Italian spirit. In Dijon took place the evolution that changed the sculpture of the Middle Ages to that of modern times.
The artists who had gathered around Charles V in Paris, were scattered by that king"s premature death and the subsequent disorders in the royal domain, and they flocked to the Burgundian court of his brother. Among them were Andre and Guy de Dammartin, who erected outside the gates of Dijon the Chartreuse of Champmol (1388-96) as a burial place for the Valois line of dukes. The work of the Dammartin family--with whom Flamboyant Gothic became a heritage pa.s.sing from father to son--can be found at Bourges, Poitiers, Tours, Le Mans, and Nantes.
What parts of the Chartreuse monastery now remain const.i.tute an asylum.
The sculptured portal of the church shows kneeling images of Philippe le Hardi and his d.u.c.h.ess Marguerite, and in the cloister is the noted Well of the Prophets, conceived, and in part executed, by Claus s.l.u.ter in 1395, and finished by his nephew, Claus de Werve, in 1403. The _Puits de Mose_ was so called because the statue of Moses, alone of the six prophets, shows religious a.n.a.logy with the biblical character it stands for. The others are realistic studies of tradesman, rich citizen, or Jew, in eccentric costumes that probably were copied from those in the mystery plays of the day. With these prophet images of Claus s.l.u.ter, modern sculpture took birth.
The two most regal tombs of the Middle Ages, those of Philippe le Hardi and his son Jean sans Peur, were originally in the Chartreuse church, but were broken up by the Revolution. They were reset, for a time, in St. Benigne"s church, and now are installed in the XV-century guard hall of the ducal palace, a part of Dijon"s Art Museum, raising that collection to first-cla.s.s rank. Near them are placed the elaborately carved and painted altarpieces brought from Termonde by the dukes. The pomp and pageantry of the knighthood described by Froissart and Commines breathes in the two grandiose tombs of Dijon, and the progeny of sumptuous funereal monuments they inspired. Cowled figures called _pleureurs_ are set in niches around each sarcophagus. They seem like symbols of the lesser people"s sufferings in the dire Hundred Years"
War, when France became a field of carnage. Foreign invasion, the Great Schism of the West, pest, ma.s.sacres, misrule, lawlessness--such was the acc.u.mulation of miseries that only the heaven-sent Jehanne la Pucelle, from the far borders of the land, could right the immeasurable _pitie_ there was in the kingdom of France.
Though Burgundy suffered less than the royal domain, the lesser people had to pay heavily for the prodigal largess of their dukes. At times the lavish giving of Philippe le Hardi bordered upon folly; while on visits of state he was forced to put his jewels in p.a.w.n to obtain sufficient funds for his home journey. When he died, in 1404, it took six weeks for his funeral _cortege_ to journey from Brussels to Dijon, and those of his household who accompanied the body were provided with Capuchin capes of black cloth. That is the procession represented by the statuettes around his sarcophagus, though, unfortunately, the original order of their march has been lost. Among the eighty _pleurants_ of the two ducal tombs are only eight restorations.
Jean de Marville, a Lorraine master, designed Duke Philippe"s monument, whose imagery is in greater part from the hand of Claus s.l.u.ter and Claus de Werve, Netherlanders (1384-1411). De Werve made most of Duke Jean"s monument, a replica of his father"s tomb; it was finished by an Aragonese sculptor, Juan de Heurta, and Antoine le Moiturier from Avignon. The latter was nephew of Jacques Morel of Lyons, trained in the Dijon studios, who made for the daughter of John the Fearless, the d.u.c.h.ess of Bourbon, a tomb in Souvigny"s abbatial near Moulins, which M.
Enlart has called the most masterly work in sculpture of the XV century.
Dijon built no XIII-century cathedral. What to-day is its cathedral was originally the abbey church of St. Benigne, not of architectural pre-eminence, but rich in historic memories. Abbot Hugues d"Arcy began it in 1280, in the hour of hope and energy that followed on the Council of Lyons, where Greek and Latin churches fraternally united. In 1286 the choir was dedicated and the relics of St. Benignus transferred from the crypt to the new sanctuary.
St. Benigne of Dijon is a secondary church compared with its neighbors, the cathedrals of Bourges and Lyons. The profiles are emasculated, the clearstory windows lack sufficient height, the wall surface above the triforium is monotonous, the denuded triforium of the nave lacks capitals, and despite the warm brown color of the stone, the general aspect of the interior is glacial. The Gothic effect has been marred further by the numerous busts and statues brought here from other churches after the Revolution.
Far surpa.s.sing in interest the somewhat pinchbeck Gothic upper church of St. Benigne is its crypt, the oldest Romanesque monument in Burgundy. It lies beyond the actual apse. For eight hundred years it was the foundation of a rotunda church of the same type as the round church at Cambridge, England, the prototypes for both being certain Roman mausoleums. Originally the Dijon crypt opened westward on a crypt now lost--the bas.e.m.e.nt for a Latin cross church--and where that juncture occurred are vestiges of buildings that antedate the actual crypt. The round church beyond the apse of St. Benigne"s Gothic abbatial was destroyed during the Revolution, and its crypt filled in and forgotten.
In 1858, while digging foundations for a new sacristy beyond the choir, the circular chamber was unearthed, in which was found a tombstone, apparently the ancient one of St. Benignus. Once again the venerable subterranean shrine became a pilgrimage for Burgundy.
St. Benigne"s crypt has double circular aisles. Its sculpture is rude, even amorphous, and testifies to the extinction of the art during the Barbarians" immigrations. These rough designs on the capitals of St.
Benigne are, as it were, the first stutterings of the national paeans in praise of G.o.d and country that are the imaged portals of Gothic cathedrals.
Abbot William of Volpiano, who made St. Benigne"s Romanesque rotunda and its adjacent basilica, came from Cluny to reform the spiritual life of the Dijon monastery and rebuild its church. Born on an island in the lake of Orta, he had crossed the Alps with Abbot Majolus of Cluny. For over thirty years he exercised his double function of administrative reformer and architect in Burgundy[307] and in Normandy, introducing certain Lombard features such as alternating piers, arched corbel courses, and superimposed arcades for decorative effect, this latter being a Ravennate motive adopted by Lombardy. He began his two connecting churches at Dijon in 1001, and completed them in 1018, when there was a solemn dedication at which St. William preached most movingly. St. Benigne is, therefore, the first-recorded monument built after the terrors of the year 1000, described by Raoul Glaber, who lived in this monastery.
William of Volpiano founded schools, taught the plain chant to children, revised Gregorian music, and established centers for craftsmen. In manner he was authoritative, but one on intimate terms with him wrote: "No one can tell to what degree in him rose mercy and compa.s.sion. In famine time, he sold the gold plate of the church to feed the people."
To this day a gateway of Dijon bears his name, the Porte Guillaume.
A century later Abbot Jarenton of St. Benigne invited monks from Cluny to reanimate the spiritual life of his monastery. Paschal II blessed the Dijon abbatial, repaired after the fall of a tower in 1096. When in 1107 Aleth de Montbard, mother of St. Bernard, died in her castle two miles from Dijon, Abbot Jarenton hastened out to Fontaine-les-Dijon to claim the body of the saintly woman for his hallowed crypt of St. Benigne, and an enthusiastic procession carried the Blessed Aleth to the city. St.
Bernard was an unknown lad at the time.
In 1131, Pope Eugene III blessed the Dijon abbatial subsequent to still other restorations. Finally, in 1271, the easternmost church of William of Volpiano was wiped out by fire (though his rotunda church was to stand till 1792), and the present St. Benigne was begun immediately on the site of the destroyed Latin cross basilica.
If the ex-abbatial which is now Dijon"s cathedral is secondary in size and character, the parish church of Notre Dame is a veritable gem of Gothic architecture, faultless in construction and of singular purity and unity. Its influence on the Gothic art of the province was widespread. After a fire in 1137, which consumed half the city, a Romanesque Notre Dame had risen. It was cited, in 1178, as the first of the town, its bells sounding the opening and the shutting of the city gates and alarms for fire.
The present church of Notre Dame was begun about 1220; a record referred to it as in use in 1245. The architect had to contend with difficulties.
His funds were so small that a minimum of building material was necessary. Three sides of his edifice were bounded by public thoroughfares; hence it was impossible to spread out the piles required by flying b.u.t.tresses; at the same time the limited plot of ground made it imperative not to enc.u.mber the small interior by clumsy piers. How to construct a secure edifice without big piers, thick walls, or flying b.u.t.tresses was the problem.
The builder showed his genius when he used the inclosure wall to counterbut the vault thrust and yet dared open these walls by generous Gothic windows. For ten feet above the ground the walls are heavy; then they become a mere sh.e.l.l, skillfully doubled by the use of colonnettes of durable stone, each slender shaft being so weighted that it stands with the security of iron.
The interior of Notre Dame appears charmingly s.p.a.cious and airy. The XVII century added circular windows to the triforium of the apse, in character with the church, however. The exterior of the apse is plain and neat and, with the central lantern tower, composes an architectural group of simple elegance. The eastern b.u.t.tresses fulfill a triple function as piers, as walls, and as counterb.u.t.ting members. Technical subtlety is to be found throughout Notre Dame. The vaults of the side aisles were constructed to brace the princ.i.p.al span. The piers are uniform monoliths, but a s.e.xpart.i.te vault was built, though for a generation that system had been discarded in the north. The coping stones over the capitals of each alternate pier were enlarged to catch there the heavier weight.
There are so many points of resemblance between Notre Dame of Dijon and the choir of Auxerre Cathedral, begun in 1215, that M. Charles Poree has thought that the same architect designed both. Their profiles are alike, their capitals have similar salient crockets, and their colonnettes were cut from the quarry according to the rock"s horizontal strata, and not by the usual method of vertical cutting.
In boldness of technique the small Dijon church is a masterpiece to which many an eloquent page has been devoted.[308] Beneath an apparent simplicity is unsurpa.s.sed scientific construction. The great engineer Vauban praised it, as did Soufflot, the XVIII-century architect of the Pantheon at Paris. The balanced equilibrium of the national art can be carried no farther, and only the use of hard Tonnerre stone permitted this successful audacity. Were a modern student to present such a plan to any commission, said M. La.s.sus, he would be dismissed as mad.
While the nave was building a narthex was added before the western entrance, consisting of a fifty-foot-deep porch. Notre Dame"s west facade rides astride two rows of pillars set close together before the narthex, again a case of strength being attained by the able use of double walls. The facade"s superimposed arcades, used merely as decoration, as at Pisa, prevented the employment of strong b.u.t.tress ridges, and give to the western front of the church a most un-Gothic aspect. It cannot be said that the lamp of truth is upheld, since the frontispiece makes no pretense to express the three-aisled interior, but rises above the roof like an abstract screen. The gargoyles that alternate with some ancient superbly cut panels of foliage across the west front, date only from 1881, and, as usual with restorations, the grotesque element has been overemphasized. A ma.n.u.script of the XIII century relates that the original gargoyles were removed when a bridegroom (a money-lender) about to enter the church was killed by the fall of a protruding image that represented a man gripping a money bag.
The imagery of Notre Dame"s portal has been entirely obliterated. When the Revolution voted to destroy "all signs of fanaticism," an apothecary of Dijon mounted a ladder each morning and leveled with his hammer all the stonecutters" work. The present image at the trumeau is a fragment saved from the late-Gothic Chartreuse of the Valois dukes. To Notre Dame Philippe le Hardi gave the Jacquemart[309] clock, one of his spoils from the sacking of Courtrai in 1382, whereat he had been a.s.sisted by the Dijon citizens _par loyaute et parfait amour_.
SAINT BERNARD, AND CISTERCIAN INFLUENCE IN GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE[310]
What is genius? It is a mind in which imagination, intelligence, and feeling exist in an elevated proportion and in an exact equation. It is a mind which has a penetrating view of ideas, which incarnates them powerfully in marble, in bra.s.s, in language, and in that dust which we call writing, which also communicates to ideas an impulse from the heart to precipitate them, living, into the hearts of others. Genius is, with conscience, the most beautiful endowment of humanity.... Genius is the greatest power created by G.o.d for grasping truth. It is a sudden and vast intuition of the connections which bind beings together.... It is the faculty of rendering ideas visible to those who would not have discovered them by themselves, of incarnating them in speaking images, of casting them into the soul, enlightening it, subjecting it, thrilling it.--LACORDAIRE (1802-61; born in Burgundy).
Although modern Dijon may momentarily blot out much in its past history by renaming the square before Notre Dame _Place Ernest Renan, auteur de "La vie de Jesus"_ (which work depicts the Saviour as an unconscious charlatan), and christening the square before the cathedral _Place Blanqui, grand Revolutionnaire_ (Blanqui being the Communist who founded the journal _Ni Dieu ni Maitre_), although it may mark one street sign _Rue Babeuf, ecrivain politique, democrate tres ardente_ (the socialist, Babeuf, was executed under the Directory), and another with an equal pedantry that is most un-French, _Rue Diderot, auteur princ.i.p.ale de l"Encyclopedie_ (the encyclopedia which railed at the Christian religion), none the less will the greatest honor of the ancient capital of Burgundy be the monk in whom western monasticism culminated, Bernard of Clairvaux, who led Dante to the Supreme Vision in Paradise, "who spoke to kings as a prophet, to the people as their leader, and transported Christendom by his eloquence," the greatest of Cistercians, the greatest of Burgundians, and the last great Doctor of the Church.
As the XI century drew to a close, certain pious Benedictines, who regretted the laxity of rule in their own convent, retired to the marshy woods near Beaune, to Citeaux, some twelve miles south of Dijon. There was started a new Order which languished during fifteen years, fever decimating the postulants, till the third abbot, St. Stephen Harding, stormed heaven with pet.i.tions to spare his dwindling flock. And efficacious prayers they appeared to be, for one spring day in 1113 there came to the abbey gates (Citeaux" name signifies _Sist.i.te hic_, Halt here!) a group of thirty young n.o.bles, whose conversion was to set all Burgundy talking.
Their leader was Bernard of Fontaine-les-Dijon,[311] then in his twenty-fourth year. When he experienced the call to a monastic life, he drew after him brothers, cousins, uncle, and friends. His mother, the Blessed Aleth, had impressed ineffaceably on his soul her own ardent love of G.o.d. As Peter the Venerable said in that same generation: "With us the virgin, the wife, the mother, expand the soul of the country by the breath of their piety."
When the small band of enthusiasts were quitting the chateau of Bernard"s father, the elder brother and heir, Guy, told Nivard, the youngest of the six sons of Aleth, that now he alone remained to inherit the estate. "Ah," cried the lad, "you would leave me the earthly reward while you gain the eternal? The exchange is not fair." And in time he, too, sought his brothers in the cloister as did his father, who died in a Cistercian robe.
All the nations of Europe were meeting then in the internationalism of monastic inst.i.tutions. St. Stephen Harding, who was practically the founder of the Cistercian Order, who drew up its charter and began its centralized system of chapters-general, was an Englishman, educated in Sherborne abbey in Dorset, and later at Paris University. Feeling the desire to visit Rome in pilgrimage, he went there afoot, reciting each day, as he walked, the entire Psaltery. It is said that benignant joy shone in his face. To-day a Bible he translated is treasured in Dijon; he used to consult the learned rabbis of his acquaintance whenever in doubt concerning the Hebraic text. It was an hour of internationalism. A frequenter of St. Bernard"s own Clairvaux was St. Malachy O"Morgair, archbishop of Armagh, who died in Bernard"s arms in 1147. The Burgundian saint loved Malachy for his gentleness, his holiness, his delicacy of soul, and his n.o.ble majestic presence, and for him trained young Irish monks to serve in the reform needed then in the Celtic church, thus paying back to Ireland the debt incurred by the mission of Columba.n.u.s.
With such souls as Bernard and his kinsmen, the new Order governed by Abbot Stephen Harding took on fresh vigor. Pontigny was founded a year later, and in 1115 Bernard and twelve companions were sent to establish Clairvaux[312] in a former robber haunt given by the Count of Champagne, a valley of wormwood which they turned into a valley of light. By the middle of the XIII century there were five hundred Cistercian houses in Europe. In England, from 1125 to 1200, rose a hundred monasteries of the white monks, Fountains, Furness, Tintern, Kirkstall, "G.o.d"s castles,"
wrote a contemporary, "where the servants of the true anointed King do keep watch, and the young soldiers are exercised in warfare against spiritual evil." Many a Cistercian house was in Scotland and Ireland--Melrose, Mellifont, Boyle; in Germany and the north--Maulbronn, Arnsberg, Warnhem, and Soro; in Spain--Poblet and Santa-Creus; in Portugal--Alcobaca. St. Bernard himself founded Chiaravalle near Milan, and on the spot of the Roman Campagna where St. Paul was beheaded flourished the Cistercian house of Tre Fontane, whose first abbot, trained under Bernard at Clairvaux, mounted Peter"s Chair as Eugene III.
Wherever the Cistercians went they promulgated the new Gothic building lore of France. Their churches with square east end, square chapels opening on transept arms, and neither tower, triforium nor clearstory, were built exactly alike whether it was in the far north as at Alvastra in Sweden, or in the far south as at Girgenti in Sicily. Burgundy"s abbatial at Fontenay is the type at its purest.
M. Camille Enlart was first to draw attention to the active role played by Cistercian monks in the dissemination of Gothic architecture in Europe.[313] All Cistercian churches were dedicated to the Mother of G.o.d, and the use of the gracious term _Notre Dame_ spread from their abbatials to the cathedrals. Dante opens the final canto of the _Paradiso_ by a eulogy of the Queen of Heaven, put into the mouth of St.
Bernard, who never flagged in her praise, culling from Scripture every mystic and lovely name for her. _Io sono il suo fedel Bernardo_, the Burgundian proudly boasts in Paradise. Though Bernard"s devotion to his _Dame souveraine_ was poles apart from Puritanism, his rules for ecclesiastic plainness were as rigid as those of the Puritans. His severe ideas concerning art restrained the earlier Cistercian churches, though his apostolate quickened the spiritual forces that soon were to rear the cathedrals.
It has been said that to relate St. Bernard"s life is to resume the history of the XII century during half its course. He ended the schism of an anti-pope; he went up and down Europe preaching unity and peace and reconciling enemies; he journeyed into Languedoc to combat, by word, the Catharist heresy; fearlessly he rebuked scandal in high places. He drew up the Rule for the Military Order of Templars. His _Book of Considerations_, written for Eugene III, became a manual of behavior for the papacy. His treatise on Grace and Free Will defined so perfectly the Church doctrine of Justification that almost textually it was repeated by the Council of Trent. No man ever received more overwhelming ovations than Bernard; at Toulouse they crowded to kiss his hand till his frail arms were swollen past all movement; at Albi a jeering crowd was subjugated by one sermon; in northern Italy, such was the reverence for the maker of peace between the rival cities, that Genoa chose him as a patron, and Milan placed herself under his protection. As he crossed the Alps, word pa.s.sed among the mountaineers, and his way became a triumphal procession. He was worn to a shadow in the service of Christendom when Eugene III commissioned him to preach the Second Crusade, and when the expedition proved a lamentable failure, Heaven sent this strong man, who had pa.s.sed unscathed through the intoxication of human glory, the severer test of human disgrace.
The figure of the greatest proselytizer since St. Paul is no vague one in history. Bernard was tall and slender, with chiseled features like polished ivory; his hair was red-blond; in his blue eyes was a flame of celestial purity. Many have testified to the serenity of his visage, the modesty of his att.i.tude, and the almost superhuman influence he exerted on those who saw him. They say that the very sight of him preached.
Apart from the numerous descriptions of him by his contemporaries, there are over four hundred of his own letters extant, letters straightforward, abrupt, ironic here and there, fearless, and warm-hearted. He swayed emperors and kings, yet retained always his personal humility. Reluctantly he tore himself from the peace of Clairvaux to direct the affairs of Europe, and eagerly he returned to the life of prayer and brotherly love. A preacher, he said, must be a man of prayer if he would convert men. He must be a reservoir kept full and overflowing, not merely a ca.n.a.l that can run dry.
Some to whom the spiritual life is a dead letter have called the abbot of Clairvaux unsympathetic and superhuman. Others, while admiring him, regret his brusqueness and hardy invectives. It was not a day when controversialists handled their adversaries with gloves; witness Abelard"s onslaughts on those who disagreed with him on the most abstract theological points. No doubt, in some cases, Bernard"s zeal exceeded propriety; perhaps his father had touched exactly on the defect of his qualities when he advised him to keep measure in all things. But who that appreciates this great man would tone down his splendid vehemence? His love for morality and pure doctrine was a glorious pa.s.sion. He struck at the sin, not the sinner. Such censures are the anger of love.
And remark how the men whom Bernard rebuked accepted the humiliation of his public censures. When he asked the archbishop of Sens--the feudal lord, Henri le Sanglier, who began that cathedral--if he thought justice had disappeared from the rest of the world as it had from his own heart, the proud churchman set about curbing his autocratic tendencies, and died an honored pastor. No disputants ever more soundly berated each other than Abelard and Bernard, yet their reconciliation, brought about by kindly, large-minded Peter of Cluny, was frank and complete. And we have seen how Abbot Suger changed his worldly ways of life, how he reformed his monastery, and how the revenues. .h.i.therto wasted on a retinue of sixty hors.e.m.e.n were devoted to building the first Gothic monument in France.
St. Bernard was, without question, the most eloquent preacher of the Middle Ages, but the conversions he wrought were due as much to the purity, charity, and humility of his own life as to his unparalleled powers of persuasion. The ideal of that harsh age, despite its shortcomings, was saintliness, and when men found it incarnate in this Burgundian, they accepted him as their leader. Bernard held that it was false principles that led to social corruption, and to punish the evil act while the mental crime which led to it went unchastened, was illogical. So whenever the purity of Christian doctrine was threatened, this champion of the Cross emerged from his seclusion full armed for its defense. His vigilance was not bigotry. When a fanatical German monk preached a persecution of the Jews, the abbot of Clairvaux came to their defense: "The Just," an old rabbi called him, "without whom not one among our people had saved his life. Honor to him who came to our succor in our hour of mortal anguish."
In all Bernard"s writings is not one word of disloyalty to what he thought was right, not a trace of the hypocrite. If he thundered against ambition, cupidity, and that hypocrisy which moves about in dim corners, _perambulante in tenebris_, he knew that scandals there have been and will ever be, since even among the chosen twelve Judas betrayed, Peter denied, and Thomas doubted. He might flagellate ecclesiastic disorders as openly as Luther himself, but the pope called him the pillar of the Church and its guide. Towering above his fellow men morally, he took up his Master"s cord whips to drive the traffickers from the temple, but he left an altar in the sanctuary and a high priest at the altar, and his own life was blameless.
The choicest spirits of the age sought Bernard"s friendship. He was loved by St. Norbert, whose new Order of Premontre spread over Europe with the same rapidity as that of Citeaux. He had links with the mystics in St. Victor"s abbey at Paris; Hugues de St. Victor submitted cases of conscience to him; Richard de St. Victor asked of him criticism on his book on the Trinity; and the Latin hymns of Adam de St. Victor breathe the selfsame spirit as that of the Burgundian mystic. Geoffrey de Leves, who built the tower at Chartres, traveled with him in Italy and Languedoc. Pierre de Celle, who built the choir of St. Remi, at Rheims, wrote of Bernard: "His life, his fame, his works, his writings, his miracles, his faith, his hope, his charity, his chast.i.ty, his abstinence, his words, his visage, his gestures, the att.i.tude of his body, all, in a word, rendered homage to his sanct.i.ty. He was the well-beloved disciple of the Lord, in whose honor he built, not only one basilica, but all the basilicas of the Order of Citeaux. If, then, thou wouldst touch the pupil of Our Lady"s eye, write against Bernard." And the bishop of Paris, who worked on the facade of Notre Dame, the schoolman, Guillaume d"Auvergne, testified that Bernard "lived in the highest perfection," that his "wisdom proceeded not from human instruction, but from divine inspiration." The first great master of scholasticism, Guillaume de Champeaux, the progenitor of Paris University, was bound to Bernard in loving friendship till his death, and asked to be buried in the abbey church at Clairvaux.
Detachment from the things of the world never weakened this saint"s human affections. What cry from a stricken heart is more moving than Bernard"s lament for his brother Gerard? That elder brother was following a knight"s career when Bernard won him for G.o.d"s service in the cloister. There for twenty-five years they lived side by side. They had just returned together from Italy when Gerard suddenly died.
Dry-eyed, Bernard attended the burial, and dry-eyed he went about his daily tasks. He mounted the pulpit to continue an exposition of the Canticle of Canticles which he was conducting, and all at once his grief broke forth irresistibly in one of the sublime elegies of literature, recorded by a monk of Clairvaux who heard it: "What is there in common between this Canticle of joy and me who am in bitter anguish!... I have done violence to my heart.... Grief shut in but wounds with deeper sting. It has vanquished me. What I suffer must have its way. I must pour out my trouble before you, my sons, who knew the faithful comrade I have lost and the justice of my sorrow. You knew his vigilance, his sweetness; you knew my need of him. When I was weak in body, he strengthened me; when I hesitated he spurred me on; when I grew negligent he cautioned me. My Gerard! why have you left me to stumble alone on the road we two trod together, my brother by blood but still more by religion! Ah! I would know if you still think of one whom you loved, if, in G.o.d"s presence, you can lean toward our distress? You have shed your mortal weaknesses, but surely not your human tendernesses, for charity endures, says the apostle. No! my Gerard does not forget me in eternity! It was our joy to be together, inextricably were our spirits interlinked, the same thoughts, the same emotions, the same will; one only heart, one only soul between us; with one blow, the sword has pierced my heart and his.... That I might have tranquillity he took on his own shoulders the material cares of the convent. It was his heart bore my troubles. His eyes led my steps. Now, when a need rises I turn to where I think to find him, and he is not there!... I am deprived of the best part of myself and I must not weep. My heart is torn from my bosom, and I must not suffer.... But my courage is not of stone.... I suffer, I weep, and my grief is ever before me...."
And so on it runs, this lamentation with its Hebraic note of sorrow"s pa.s.sion. Impregnated through and through was Bernard with the Bible, and his speech fell naturally into its cadences. To mark the biblical references in his works would be, says the student, to fill half the pages with annotations.