you have seen and heard." So firmly
was Bernard convinced that God had sustained his labors by miracles.

Eugene was at length enabled, in the year 1149, after having for a long
time excited against himself the indignation of the cardinals by his
dependence on the French abbot, with the assistance of Roger, King of
the Sicilies, to return to Rome; where, however, he still had to
maintain a struggle with the party of Arnold.

The provost Gerhoh finds something to complain of in the fact that the
Church of St. Peter wore so warlike an aspect that men beheld the tomb
of the apostle surrounded with bastions and the implements of war.

As Bernard was no longer sufficiently near the Pope to exert on him the
same immediate personal influence as in times past, he addressed to him
a voice of admonition and warning, such as the mighty of the earth
seldom enjoy the privilege of hearing. With the frankness of a love
which, as he himself expresses it, knew not the master, but recognized
the son, even under the pontifical robes, he set before him, in his four
books _On Meditation_, which he sent to him singly at different times,
the duties of his office, and the faults against which, in order to
fulfil these duties, he needed especially to guard.

Bernard was penetrated with a conviction that to the Pope, as St.
Peter's successor, was committed by God a sovereign power of church
government over all, and responsible to no other tribunal; that to this
church theocracy, guided by the Pope, the administration even of the
secular power, though independent within its own peculiar sphere, should
be subjected, for the service of the kingdom of God; but he also
perceived, with the deepest pain, how very far the papacy was from
corresponding to this its idea and destination; what prodigious
corruption had sprung and continued to spring from the abuse of papal
authority; he perceived already, with prophetic eye, that this very
abuse of arbitrary will must eventually bring about the destruction of
this power. He desired that the Pope should disentangle himself from the
secular part of his office, and reduce that office within the purely
spiritual domain; and that, above all, he should learn to govern and
restrict himself.

But to the close of his life, in the year 1153, Pope Eugene had to
contend with the turbulent spirit of the Romans and the influences of
the principles disseminated by Arnold; and this contest was prolonged
into the reign