The monastery of Citeaux in southern France, from which the Cistercians take their name, was another attempt to live in the world but not of it. ‘The White Monks’, so called from the colour of their woollen frocks, sought solitudes in which to build their houses. Their churches and monasteries remain among the glories of architecture; but through fear of riches they refused to place in them crosses of gold and silver or to allow their priests to wear embroidered vestments. No Cistercian might recite the service of the Mass for money or be paid for the cure of souls. With his hands he must work for his meagre fare, remembering always to give God thanks for the complete self-renunciation to which he was pledged by his Order. [Sidenote: St. Bernard of Clairvaux] Chief amongst the Cistercian saints is Bernard (1090-1153), a Burgundian noble, who in 1115 founded a daughter monastery of his Order at Clairvaux, and as its head became one of the leaders of mediaeval thought. When he was only twenty he had appeared before the Abbot of Citeaux with a band of companions, relations and friends whom his eloquence had persuaded to enter the monastery with him. Throughout his life this power over others and his fearlessness in making use of this influence were his most vivid characteristics. ‘His speech’, wrote some one who knew him, ‘was suited to his audience ... to country-folk he spoke as though born and bred in the country, and so to other classes as though he had been always occupied with their business. He adapted himself to all, desiring to gain all for Christ.’ In these last words lie his mission and the secret of his success. Never was his eloquence exerted for himself, and so men who wished to criticize were overborne by his single-minded sincerity. Severe to his own shortcomings, gentle and humble to his brethren, ready to accept reproof or to undertake the meanest task, Bernard was fierce and implacable to the man or the conditions that seemed to him to stand in the way of God’s will. ‘I grieve over thee, my son Geoffrey,’ he wrote to a young monk who had fled the austerities of Clairvaux.... ‘How could you, who were called by God, follow the Devil, recalling thee?... Turn back, I say, before the abyss swallows thee ... before bound hand and foot thou art cast into outer darkness ... shut in with the darkness of death.’ To the ruler of France he sent a letter of reproof ending with the words: ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God even for thee, O King!’ and his audacity, instead of working his ruin, brought the leading clergy and statesmen of Europe to the cells of Clairvaux as if to some oracle’s temple, to learn the will of God.