Book Description

THIS selection of S. Bernard's letters has been madr in the hope that it may find its way into the hands of many to whom the volumes of the greater collection are unknown, or are for one reason or another inaccessible. The letters of great and good men give us information about them which can be derived from no other source. "As the eyes are to the other bodily senses," says the editor of S. Augustine's correspondence, so are the letters of illustrious men in numberless ways more wonderful than all their other works. In them, as in the mirror of the human eyes, appear the personal qualities, passions, virtues, and vices of the individual. Just as no one can better show himself to the life than in his letters, so nowhere can he be better known" than in them. This is true of the letters of every saint, as well as of every man of affairs; and the peculiar value and charm of such collections of letters is ahnost universally acknowledged. S. Bernard's unique position in the Church in his day, and the widespread authority he possessed, no less than his acknowledged place among the spiritual writers of all ages, tend to Inake his correspondence peculiarly interesting, as revealing in a more intimate way than any of his more formal writings, the characteristic qualifications and virtues, which won for him the great position he held so long during the tniddle ages. His learning and judgment no doubt fully appear in his tracts, treatises, and sermons; but in the private letters that were intended only for the eye of the recipient, the reader can get a deeper insight into the man and the saint, and learn more fully, because more naturally, his real qualities. In them appear his prudence and zeal, his love of truth and piety, the warmth of his human affections and his natural eloquence with more genuine truth than, say, in his commentary on The Canticle of Canticles, his Mystical Vine, or his Treatise against Abelard.