“Bernard led his followers to a wilderness, called the Valley of Wormwood , and there, at his biding, arose the since renowned abbey of Clairvaux. They felled the trees, built themselves huts, tilled and sowed the ground, and changed the whole face of the country round; till that which had been a dismal solitude, the resort of wolves and robbers, became a land of vines and corn, rich, populous, and prosperous.”

This incident forms the subject of one of Murillo’s most famous paintings, and is suggestive of the saint’s intense devotion to the Virgin, which Dante expresses in this line.

Mr. Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics , I 145, gives the following sketch of St. Bernard:⁠—