Bernard's De Consideratione begun

1145

The abbot of Clairvaux began the treatise of pastoral and political advice he would dedicate to his former pupil Pope Eugenius III. It is one of the sharpest reform statements of the century, castigating papal legalism and warning against the temptations of temporal power. Bernard argued that the pope's true authority lay in moral example rather than legal coercion, a message that later reformers would rediscover and amplify.