hose from Spain, every two years; those from
Ireland, Scotland, Sicily and Portugal, every four years; those from
Norway, every five years; and those from Syria and Palestine, every
seven years. The "Charter of Charity," promulgated by this chapter for
the guidance of the Cistercian Order, is a brief but pregnant document,
which quite explains its success.

_II.--A Great Preacher and Essayist_

About 1119, Bernard, who had resumed the duties of abbot, began the
career of literary and ecclesiastical activity--the wide and impassioned
correspondence, the series of marvellous sermons--which have won for him
the title of the Last of the Fathers. His early essays are vigorous, but
lack judgement and skill; they are stiff and rhetorical, and far removed
from the tender poetry of his later writings. Three years later we find
Bernard credited with many miracles, narrated by William of St. Thierry,
who afterwards retired to become a monk at Signy, where he wrote his
record of the saint. It was then regarded as natural that a man of
eminent piety should work miracles; and we ought to accept these
stories, in their native crudity and simplicity, not as true, but as
significant. Belonging to the time, as much as feudal castles and mail
armour do, they form part of a picture of it.

With the exception of a visit to La Grande Chartreuse, and of another to
Paris, where he preached the "true philosophy" of poverty and contempt
of the world to the schools distracted by scholastic puzzles, Bernard
remained a secluded monk of a new and humble Order. But already, in his
thirty-fifth year, the foundations had been laid of that authority which
enabled him to quell a widespread schism, to oppose a formidable
heretic, and to give the strongest impulse to the Second Crusade. His
power was growing, chiefly by his voluminous correspondence. He wrote to
persons of all classes on all subjects; his letters afford to the
historian a wide repertory of indubitable facts, and show what was the
part played at that time by the spiritual power--that of a divine
morality and superior culture coming into conflict with, and strong
enough to withstand, a vigorous barbarism. These epistles are full of
commonsense and clear, practical advice, and often give us a glimpse of
the human, as distinct from the ascetic, element in monastic life. They
show how men could pass pleasant and thoughtful days amid the barbarism
of the time.

The feudal fighting, plund