volume one

HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES. 381
kings, it is doubtless tlie venerable abbot Suger. As abbot
of St. Denis, he, perhaps, enjoyed more wealth than any
monk ought to possess, since we see he proposed to maintain
an army, but he always employed his treasiu'es in the
service of his country and the Churc^i, and never had the
state been so rich as under his administration. His whole
life was a long series of prosperity, and of actions worthy of
being remembered. He reformed the monks of his order
without incurring their hatred ; he created the happiness of
the people without proving their ingratitude ; and served
kings, and yet obtained their friendship. Tortune favoured
all his undertakings, and that there should be nothing unprosperous
in his life, and that he might be reproached with
no fault, he died Avhen he was about to conduct an army to
the East.
Sager and St. Bernard, united by religion and friendship,
had a very different destiny ; the first, born in a low condi-
tion, gave himself to the disposal of fortune, who carried
the second, born in a more
him up to the highest dignities ;
elevated rank, hastened to descend from it, and was nothing
but by his genius. St. Bernard rendered few services to the
state, but he defended rehgion with indefatigable zeal ; and
as church then took precedence of country, he was greater
than the abbot Suger in the eyes of his contemporaries.
"Whilst he lived, the eyes of all Europe were fixed upon the
abbot of Clairvaux ;
he was as a light placed in the midst of
Christendom, every word he preached had the holy authority
of the religion he taught. He stifled all schisms, silenced
all impostors, and by his labours, merited in his age the title
of the last father of the Church, as richly as the great Bos-
suet merited it in his.
St. Bernard may be reproached with having too frequently
issued from his retreat, and with not having always been, as
he himself expresses it, the disciple of oaks and beeches.
He had a hand in most of the political events of his time,
and interfered in all the afiairs of the Holy See. Christians
often asked who was the head of the Church ; popes and
princes sometimes murmured against his authority ; but it
must never be forgotten that he unceasingly preached moderation
to kings, humanity to the people, and poverty to the
clergy.