A Time of Hope and Change

This chapter discusses how the world into which Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was born in 1090 was full of hope and promise. The search for intimacy would come to characterize Bernard's life and helps explain why he joined a monastery. At the same time, however, he benefited from other factors in creating his life. A few decades before Bernard was born, the Western Church had experienced the upheaval of what many history books call the Gregorian Reform. This movement can be called the first medieval reformation, for it brought about a genuine reformation or restructuring of the Christian Church. Bernard came to the monastery as an adult, and the new monasticism that he joined insisted on individual choice. In this sense, Bernard and his contemporaries would discover the meaning of Christianity as manifested in the words of Jesus, emphasizing the consent that comes from the heart instead of the gesture's symbolic assent.