We will, further, that in our times and in those of our successors, according as the opportunities and possibilities of that place shall allow, there shall daily, with the greatest zeal, be performed works of mercy towards the poor, the needy, strangers, and pilgrims.[366] It has pleased us also to insert in this document that, from this day, those same monks there congregated shall be subject neither to our yoke, nor to that of our relatives, nor to the sway of the royal might, nor to that of any earthly power. And, through God and all His saints, and by the awful day of judgment, I warn and admonish that no one of the secular princes, no count, no bishop, not even the pontiff of the aforesaid Roman see, shall invade the property of these servants of God, or alienate it, or diminish it, or exchange it, or give it as a benefice to any one, or set up any prelate over them against their will.[367] 43. The Early Career of St. Bernard and the Founding of Clairvaux The most important individual who had part in the twelfth century movement for monastic reform was unquestionably St. Bernard, of whom indeed it has been said with reason that for a quarter of a century there was no more influential man in Europe. Born in 1091, he came upon the scene when times were ripe for great deeds and great careers, whether with the crusading hosts in the East or in the vexed swirl of secular and ecclesiastical affairs in the West. Particularly were the times ripe for a great preacher and reformer--one who could avail himself of the fresh zeal of the crusading period and turn a portion of it to the regeneration of the corrupt and sluggish spiritual life which in far too great a measure had crept in to replace the earlier purity and devotion of the clergy. The need of reform was perhaps most conspicuous in the monasteries, for many monastic establishments had not been greatly affected by the Cluniac movement of the previous century, and in many of those which had been touched temporarily the purifying influences had about ceased to produce results. It was as a monastic reformer that St. Bernard rendered greatest service to the Church of his day, though he was far more than a mere zealot. He was, says Professor Emerton, more than any other man, representative of the spirit of the Middle Ages. "The monastery meant to him, not a place of easy and luxurious retirement, where a man might keep himself pure from earthly contact, nor even a home of learning, from which a man might influence his world. It meant rather a place of pitiless discipline, whereby the natural man should be reduced to the lowest terms and thus the spiritual life be given its largest liberty. The aim of Bernard was nothing less than the regeneration of society through the presence in it of devoted men, bound together by a compact organization, and holding up to the world the highest types of an