with years of learning and prayerful solitude behind him, and Bernard’s own remarkable brothers and uncle. Though still young, only thirty-five, the Abbot of Clairvaux had a lot to draw on when he set about responding to the Abbot of Fontenay. What Bernard dictated to his secretary was not wholly new. Godfrey in making his request had in mind some conferences which he himself had heard from the lips of the abbot when he sat at his right in the chapter house at Clairvaux. Now