St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Who they were

Bernard entered the struggling new monastery of Citeaux at twenty two, and brought thirty relatives and friends with him, recruited by sheer force of personality, a detail that predicts the rest. Sent at twenty five to found Clairvaux, he built it into the engine of the Cistercian explosion, hundreds of monasteries across Europe within his lifetime.

Bernard himself, chronically ill and living on almost nothing, became the most influential man of his century: counsellor of popes, one of them his own former monk, healer of a papal schism, and the era's unmatched preacher, the Doctor Mellifluus, honey tongued, whose sermons on the Song of Songs are a summit of mystical writing. His Marian teaching is his living legacy and this site's inheritance: look to the star, call upon Mary, in dangers, in doubts, in difficulties. The beloved Memorare distils that teaching and tradition attaches his name to it, though its present form is later. And this belongs here too: he preached the Second Crusade, and its failure humbled his final years. He was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1830, and the bees of his eloquence made him patron of beekeepers.

Why people turn to St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Everyone who prays the Memorare, and preachers, writers, and teachers of Marian devotion. Beekeepers and candlemakers by the old emblem.

How to ask their intercession

The Memorare is the asking. Pray it once, slowly, on his word that it has never been known to fail the one who prays it with trust.

A prayer to St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother. To thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. Amen.

The Memorare, a traditional prayer in the public domain. Long attributed to St. Bernard, though its present form dates from a later century.