St. Bernard, the great Abbot of Clairvaux, the “Doctor Mellifluus” of the Church, and preacher of the disastrous Second Crusade, was born of noble parents in the village of Fontaine, near Dijon, in Burgundy, in the year 1190. After studying at Paris, at the age of twenty he entered the Benedictine monastery of Citeaux; and when, five years later, this monastery had become overcrowded with monks, he was sent out to found a new one.

Mrs. Jameson, Legends of the Monastic Orders , p. 149, says:⁠—