Death of Bernard of Clairvaux

August 20, 1153

The ascetic preacher who had shaped Cistercian monasticism, launched two crusades, mentored a pope, and argued with Abelard died in his abbey at sixty-three. Gaunt from lifelong fasting and ulcerated from cilice-wearing, he was canonized within twenty years, becoming the last of the Latin Fathers. Bernard left behind a monastic empire of over three hundred Cistercian houses and a rhetorical legacy that would influence Christian devotional writing for centuries.