Cloud of Witnesses: Then two come along together

The name of Bernard is very rare in the listings of Christian saints, even among those who achieved their sainthood by popular acclaim rather than by papal imprimatur. Yet rather like the proverbial buses, you can wait ages for a saint named Bernard to turn up and then two come along together. They are both in the cloister windows of Chester Cathedral, one in the south walk and one in the west. Though separated by two generations, both were born in the 11th century and both came from privileged backgrounds. But there the similarities end, for while St Bernard of Menthon spent most of his life in the high mountains of Switzerland and Italy, St Bernard of Clairvaux opted for the contemplative life of a monk in the wooded silences of the Burgundy and Champagne regions of France.

St Bernard of Menthon’s window in the south walk is one of the most spectacular in the cloister. It shows Bernard dressed in the brown habit of an Augustinian monk standing beside a glacial blue alpine lake with a St Bernard dog at his feet. On the far side of the lake is one of the two hostels that he set up for travellers crossing the high passes between Switzerland and Italy; and towering over the entire scene is the Great St Bernard pass between the two highest peaks in the alps: Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa.

St Bernard of Menthon was born in about 1020 near the alpine town of Annecy. He came from a wealthy family and was educated in Paris before devoting himself to the church. Following ordination, Bernard was sent to work under the archdeacon of Aosta in northern Italy, and he spent the next forty years as a pastor in the mountainous regions of the Swiss and Italian alps. He had a special responsibility for pilgrims on their way to Rome who had to cross the hazardous passes through the mountains from Valais to the Aosta valley. Accompanied by the common herding dogs of Valais, known since the 16th century as St Bernards, Bernard and his fellow workers searched for victims who had succumbed to the severe weather, taking food and clothing to those who were trapped in the passes and retrieving the bodies of those who had perished. He died in 1081 and was canonised 600 years later.

The contrast with St Bernard of Clairvaux could hardly be greater. This Bernard was born into an aristocratic family in Burgundy in 1090, and at the age of twenty-two he entered the Benedictine community at Cîteaux. In 1115 he moved to Clairvaux, on the borders of Burgundy and Champagne, where he established a Cistercian monastery based on the principles of seclusion and self-denial. Although nominally the abbot, Bernard became increasingly detached from the corporate life of the monastery, frequently withdrawing to a small hut where he cultivated a dense and mystical inner life.

With the approach of middle age, Bernard was drawn into the affairs of the church at a time when the papacy was riven by internal dissension. He threw himself into helping the church to overcome these self-inflicted wounds and he defended traditional Christian dogmas against the scholastic arguments of the influential philosopher Peter Abelard. The clashes between Bernard and Peter on the nature of religious perception exemplified the tensions in early medieval theology between intellectual enquiry and mystical experience.

St Bernard died in 1153 at Clairvaux and was buried at the great Benedictine Abbey of Cluny in Burgundy. In contrast to Bernard of Menthon, who took 600 years to achieve sainthood, Bernard of Clairvaux’s reputation as both a mystic and an influential churchman led to his canonisation within a couple of decades of his death. He was later declared a Doctor of the Church. 

Apart from their names and the fact that both were born in the 11th century, the two Bernards have little in common; but in an analogical sense they may be said to represent the fluctuations that many people seem to experience in their spiritual lives – the high mountains and the secluded glades, the excitement of action and the calm of thoughtfulness. The analogy cannot be pressed too far, but as we think about Bernard of Menthon ministering to stranded pilgrims in the alpine passes and Bernard of Clairvaux meditating on the mystery of faith in the monastic calm of rural France, we might draw encouragement from these two saints as we try to get a semblance of balance in our own lives between action and reflection, doing and being.