Bernard of Clairvaux

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) was a Cistercian abbot, theologian, and mystic whose influence over twelfth-century Western Christendom was so pervasive that he has been called "the last of the Fathers." Entering the newly founded abbey of Cîteaux in 1113 and founding the daughter-house of Clairvaux in 1115, he became the driving force behind Cistercian expansion across Europe, personally founding over sixty monasteries. His eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs stand as a masterwork of affective mysticism, centering the soul's contemplative union with Christ; his treatise On Loving God and the letters and sermons that shaped Second Crusade preaching reveal an equally formidable ecclesial and political voice. He was canonized in 1174 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1830, his feast still marking a singular convergence of monastic reform, scholastic critique, and bridal mysticism in Latin Christianity.