His labours, anxieties and austerities had well-nigh brought Bernard to the grave, when the good bishop, finding him inflexible, went to Citeaux, and, prostrating himself before Stephen Harding, begged and obtained leave to direct and manage Bernard for one year only. The young abbot obeyed his new director absolutely, and lived in a cottage apart from the monastery "at leisure for himself and God, and exulting, as it were, in the delights of Paradise."
William of St. Thierry and other chroniclers, telling of Clairvaux at this time, are fervid in their reverence and praise. "Methought I saw a new heaven and a new earth" ... "the golden age seemed to have revisited the world" ... "as you descended the hill you could see it was a temple of God; the still, silent valley bespoke the unfeigned humility of Christ's poor. In this valley full of men, where one and all were occupied with their allotted tasks, a silence, deep as that of night, prevailed. The sounds of labour, or the chants of the brethren in the choral service, were the only exceptions. The order of this silence struck such a reverence even into secular persons that they dreaded breaking it even by pertinent remarks."
Saint Benedict's rule had reference only to a single religious house; but Abbot Stephen of Citeaux united in one compact whole all the monasteries which sprang from the parent stock of Citeaux, and established an organised system of mutual supervision and control. A general chapter was held annually in September, and every Cistercian abbot whose monastery was in France, Italy or Germany was bound to attend every year; those from Spain, every two years; those from Ireland, Scotland, Sicily and Portugal, every four years; those from Norway, every five years; and those from Syria and Palestine, every seven years. The "Charter of Charity," promulgated by this chapter for the guidance of the Cistercian Order, is a brief but pregnant document, which quite explains its success.
About 1119, Bernard, who had resumed the duties of abbot, began the career of literary and ecclesiastical activity--the wide and impassioned correspondence, the series of marvellous sermons--which have won for him the title of the Last of the Fathers. His early essays are vigorous, but lack judgement and skill; they are stiff and rhetorical, and far removed from the tender poetry of his later writings. Three years later we find Bernard credited with many miracles, narrated by William of St. Thierry, who afterwards retired to become a monk at Signy, where he wrote his record of the saint. It was then regarded as natural that a man of eminent piety should work miracles; and we ought to accept these stories, in their native crudity and simplicity, not as true, but as significant. Belonging to the time, as much as feudal castles and mail armour do, they form part of a picture of it.