BERNARD1 (saint). Bernard of Clairvaux, c. A.D. 1090-1153, was born at Fontaines near Dijon, France. He became a member of the Benedictines in 1113, joining their monastery at Cîteaux, and in 1115 he was sent to be abbot of a new house in Valle d'Absinthe, which he named Clara Vallis or Clairvaux. He became embroiled in several controversies of his day, such as that engendered by the disastrous second crusade of Louis VII and that arising from the condemnation of Abelard. He also entered a dispute with the monks of Cluny, and in a letter to William of St. Thierry he condemned the monks' gluttony and the decorations of their churches. His most famous hymns are addressed to the Virgin Mary, to whom he had a special devotion. Dante celebrates this devotion in Par XXXIII.1-37.
Chaucer adapts St. Bernard's prayer from Par XXXIII for the Invocacio ad Mariam in the Prologue of The Second Nun's Tale. The Prioress's Prologue, PrP 453-487, is modeled on the Invocacio. The Parson says that he quotes from St. Bernard when he describes the sorrow for sin that accompanies penitence, ParsT 130. This quotation appears in one of the sources of the Parson's Tale, in the Summa casum poenitentiae by Raymund of Pennaforte, but R.M. Correale shows that it comes from Nicholas of Clairvaux, Sermo in festo sancti Andrae 8 (PL 184: 1052-1053). The Parson quotes from Pseudo-Bernard's Sermo ad prelatos in concilio, 5 (PL 184: 1098), ParsT 166; he quotes from Feria IV Hebdomadae sanctae ll at ParsT 256; and from the Sermo super Cantica Canticorum, 54 at ParsT 723. The references to Bernard in ParsT 253, 274, and 690 have not been identified.
The name appears medially in SNT 30 and in the prose of The Parson's Tale.