(excerpts from Butler's Lives of the Saints)

St. Bernard, the prodigy and great ornament of the eleventh age, was the third son of Tescelin and Aliz or Alice, both of the prime nobility in Burgundy, and related to the dukes, particularly Aliz, who was daughter of Bernard, lord of Mombard. Our saint was born in 1091, at Fontaines, a castle near Dijon, and a lordship belonging to his father. His parents were persons of great piety, and his mother, not content to offer him to God as soon as he was born, as she did all her seven children, afterward consecrated him to his service in the church, as Anne did Samuel, and from that day considered him as not belonging to her, but to God; and she took a special care of his education, in hopes that he would one day be worthy to serve the altar. Indeed she brought up all her children very discreetly and piously, and never trusted them to nurses. Their names were Guy, Gerard, Bernard, Humbeline, Andrew, Bartholomew, and Nivard. The other sons were applied young to learn military exercise and feats of arms; but Bernard was sent to Chatillon on the Seine, to pursue a complete course of studies in a college of secular priests who were canons of that church. He even then loved to be alone; was always recollected, obedient, obliging to all, and modest beyond what can be expressed. He made it his continual earnest prayer to God, that he would never suffer him to sully his innocence by sin. He gave to the poor all the money he got. The quickness of his parts astonished his masters, and his progress in learning was far greater than could be expected from one of his age; but he was still much more solicitous to listen to what God, by his holy insinuations, spoke to his heart. One Christmas night in his sleep he seemed to see the divine infant Jesus so amiable, that from that day he ever had a most tender and sensible devotion towards that great mystery of love and mercy, and in speaking of it he always seemed to surpass himself in the sweetness and unction of his words. His love of chastity so restrained his senses, that he never showed any inclination to the least levity or curiosity, by which the passions are usually inflamed, and his body being kept always in subjection to the spirit, was readily disposed to obey it in all habits of virtue.

...He arose steadily fixed in the resolution of embracing the severe Cistercian institute. His brothers and friends endeavored to dissuade him from it; but he so pleaded his cause as to draw them all over to join him in his courageous undertaking. ...Bernard was seconded in his resolutions by thirty noblemen and gentlemen, including his brothers, and after they had staid six months at Chatillon to settle their affairs, he accompanied them to Citeaux. That monastery had been founded fifteen years, and was at that time governed by St. Stephen. This holy company arrived there in 1113, and, prostrating themselves before the gate, begged to be admitted to join the monks in their penitential lives. St. Stephen seeing their fervor, received them with open arms, and gave them the habit. St. Bernard was then twenty-three years old. He entered this house in the desire to die to the remembrance of men, to live hidden, and be forgotten by creatures, that he might be occupied only on God. To renew his fervor against sloth, he repeated often to himself this saying of the great Arsenius; Bernard, Bernard, “why camest thou hither?” He practised himself what he afterward used to say to postulants who presented themselves to be admitted into his monastery at Clairvaux: “If you desire to live in this house, you must leave your body; only spirits must enter here;” that is, persons who live according to the Spirit. He studied to mortify his senses, and to die to himself in all things. This practice by habit became a custom, and by custom, was almost changed into nature; so that his soul being always occupied on God, he seemed not to perceive what passed about him, so little notice did he take of things, as appeared in several occurrences. After a year’s novitiate he did not know whether the top of his cell was covered with a ceiling; nor whether the church had more than one window, though it had three. Two faults however into which he fell, served to make him more watchful and fervent in his actions. The exact author of the Exordium of Citeaux relates, that the saint had been accustomed to say every day privately seven psalms for the repose of the soul of his mother; but he one day omitted them. St. Stephen knew this by inspiration, and said to him the next morning: “Brother Bernard, whom did you commission to say the seven psalms for you yesterday?” The novice surprised that a thing could be known which he had never discovered to any one, full of confusion, fell prostrate at the feet of St. Stephen, confessed his fault, and asked pardon, and was ever after most punctual in all his private practices of devotion, which are not omitted without an imperfection; nor without a sin, if it be done through sloth or culpable neglect. His other offence was, that one day being ordered by his abbot to speak to certain secular friends, he took some satisfaction in hearing their questions and answers; in punishment of which he found his heart deprived of spiritual consolation. In expiation he prayed often prostrate long together at the foot of the altar during five-and-twenty days in sighs and groans, till he was again visited by the divine Spirit. He afterward in necessary conversation kept his mind so carefully recollected on God that his heart did not go astray.

...St. Bernard was partiruar1y devoted to the Blessed Virgin, as his works sufficiently declare. In one of his missions into Germany, being in the great church at Spire, he repeated thrice in a rapture: “O merciful! O pious! O gracious Virgin Mary!” which words the church added to the anthem Salve Regina. The custom was introduced from this devotion of St. Bernard to sing that anthem every day with great solemnity in the cathedral of Spire. The same is done every Saturday in the Cistercian Order, and with particular devotion at La Trappe.

Notwithstanding St. Bernard’s love of retirement, obedience and zeal for the divine honor frequently drew him from his beloved cell; and so great was the reputation of his learning and piety, that all potentates desired to have their differences determined by him; bishops regarded his decisions as oracles or indispensable laws, and referred to him the most important affairs of their churches. The popes looked upon his advice as the greatest support of the holy see, and all people had a very profound respect and an extraordinary veneration for his person and sanctity. It may he said of him, that even in his solitude he governed all the churches of the West. But he knew how to join the love of silence and interior recollection of soul with so many occupations and employs, and a profound humility with so great elevation. The first occasion which called for his zeal abroad was a dissension between the archbishop and citizens of Rheims, whom the saint reconciled, confirming his words by the miraculous cure of a boy that was deaf, blind, and dumb, which he performed in that city, as is recorded by the abbot of St. Thierri. He opposed the elections of unworthy persons to the episcopacy, or other ecclesiastical dignities, with the zeal of an Elias, which raised him many enemies, who spared neither slanders nor invectives against him. Their common-place topic was, that a monk ought to confine himself to his cloister. To this he answered, that a monk was a soldier of Christ, as well as other Christians, and ought to defend the truth and the honor of Gods sanctuary. By his exhortations Henry archbishop of Sens, and Stephen bishop of Paris, renounced the court and their secular manner of living. Suger, who was chosen abbot of St. Denis in 1122, was made by king Lewis VI, surnamed the Big or the Fat, prime minister; and by Lewis the Young, for some time regent of the kingdom; and the reins of the government of the French monarchy have seldom been put in the hands of an abler or better statesman. Whilst he held this employment he lived in great state, and St. Bernard reproached him, in his Apology, with having fifty attendants in his train. But so efficacious were the discourses with which our saint entertained him on the obligations of his state, that he laid aside his worldly views, resigned all his posts, and shut himself up in his abbey of St. Denis, where he banished the court out of his abbey, re-established austerity and regular discipline, and made an edifying end in 1152, after having built, in three years and three months, the stately church of that abbey as it now stands. The remarkable conversions of innumerable great princes and prelates wrought by St. Bernard, are too long to be inserted. He often put ecclesiastics in mind of their strict obligation of giving whatever they enjoyed of church revenues above a necessary maintenance of the poor. Thus he wrote to the dean of Languedoc: “You may imagine that what belongs to the church, belongs to you while you officiate there. But you are mistaken; for though it be reasonable that one who serves the altar should live by the altar, yet must it not be to promote either his luxury or his pride. Whatever goes beyond bare nourishment, and simple plain clothing, is sacrilege and rapine.” In this, his own conduct was at all times a true model. In a great famine in 1125, to relieve the poor, he often left his monks destitute of all provisions.

...In the beginning of the year 1153, St. Bernard fell into a decay, with a loss of appetite and frequent fainting fits. ...Seeing his spiritual children assembled about him all in tears, he comforted and encouraged them, saying that the unprofitable and unfruitful servant ought not to occupy a place in vain, and that the barren tree with good reason ought to be plucked up. His charity for them inclined him to be willing to remain with them till they should be gathered with him to God; but his earnest desire speedily to enjoy Christ made him sigh ardently after the possession of Him who filled the whole capacity of his heart. Commending therefore his brethren to the divine mercy, he, with inflamed sighs of compunction and holy love, prepared himself for his last moment; in which he happily yielded up his soul to God, on the 20th of August, 1153, the sixty-third of his age, having been abbot thirty-eight years. He was buried before our Lady’s altar at Clairvaux. His name was solemnly enrolled among the saints by Alexander III, in 1165. M. Villefore has prefixed to the life of Saint Bernard his portrait, engraved from an old picture drawn from the life when the saint was sixty-two years old.

This holy doctor was during his life the oracle of the church, the light of prelates, and the reformer of discipline; since his death he still continues to comfort and instruct devout persons by his most pious and learned writings. The judicious critic Henry Valois sticks not to say they are the most useful for piety among all the works of the fathers of the church, though he is the youngest of them in time. To pass over the eulogiums which pious writers have bestowed on him, and to appeal to the judgment which the merit of his works hath extorted from the most severe and dry critics, Sixtus Senensis saith of him: “His discourse is every where sweet and ardent; it so delighteth and fervently inflameth, that from his most sweet tongue honey and milk seem to flow in his words, and out of his most ardent breast a fire of burning affections breaks forth.” Erasmus gives him this character: “Bernard is cheerful, pleasant, and vehement in moving the passions.” And in another place: “He is christianly learned, holily eloquent, and devoutly cheerful and pleasing.”