• Christology

  / The Middle Ages

• Peter Abelard

  / Final years of Peter Abelard
• Blessed Eugenius III
• Peter the Venerable
• Suger

• Western architecture

  / Early Gothic
• Roman Catholicism

  / Religious orders: Canons and monks
• Christianity

  / Western Catholic Christianity
• Christianity

  / The union with God
• mysticism

  / The traditional conception of mysticism
• Templar

• Cistercian
• Cîteaux
• oratory
• Crusades

  / The Second Crusade
• France

  / Religious and cultural life
• Scholasticism

  / Early Scholastic period
• medieval philosophy

  / Bernard de Clairvaux and Abelard
• Western philosophy

  / Bernard de Clairvaux and Abelard

Works of St. Bernard

The Works (of St. Bernard of Clairvaux), trans. by a Priest of Mount Melleray, 6 vol. (1920–25); and The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, Cistercian Fathers series (1970– ), are two English-language collections. Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. by J. Leclercq, C.H. Talbot, and H.M. Rochais, 6 vol. (1957– ), is the best critical text.

Works on St. Bernard

St. Bernard of Clairvaux: The Story of His Life As Recorded in the Vita Prima Bernardi, trans. by G. Webb and Adrian Walker (1960), a chief biographical source by several contemporaries of Bernard, must therefore be read with reserve as it presents a different type of historical biography. E. Vacandard, Vie de saint Bernard, abbé de Clairvaux, 2 vol. (1895), was the definitive chronology and remains quite authoritative. I. Vallery-Radot, Bernard de Fontaines: Abbé de Clairvaux, 2 vol. (1963–69), is highly definitive as a chronological study and reviews contributions since the 19th century; Watkins Williams, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1935), concentrates on Bernard’s political activity. E.C. Butler, Western Mysticism: The Teaching of Saints Augustine, Gregory and Bernard on Contemplation and the Contemplative Life (1922), discusses the mystical doctrine of Bernard. Henri Daniel-Rops, Saint Bernard et ses fils (1962; Bernard of Clairvaux, 1964), is a popular biography and description of the historical development of the Cistercian Order. Étienne Gilson, La Théologie mystique de Saint Bernard (1934; The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, 1940), treats the mystical doctrine of Bernard and his contemporaries. Bruno Scott James, St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1957), is a personality study. Jean Leclercq, L’Amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu (1957; The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, 1961), is indispensable for an adequate and appreciative understanding of the entire cultural context of Bernard. Denis Meadows, A Saint and a Half: A New Interpretation of Abelard and St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1963), is a quite thorough and readable treatment of the controversy and personalities involved. Also useful are Thomas Merton, The Last of the Fathers: Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and the Encyclical Letter, Doctor Mellifluus (1954); and Albert Victor Murray, Abelard and St. Bernard: A Study in Twelfth-Century Modernism (1967), a technical and scholarly approach.