The twelfth-century abbot and contemplative known to history as "The Mellifluous Teacher' wrote sermons for the entire Christmas liturgical cycle-from the first Sunday of Advent (four weeks before Christmas) to the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary/Presentation of Christ in the Temple (2 February). As he reflects on the wonder of the Incarnation, he reminds Christians still today that Christmas celebrates the awesome condescension of God-with-us, not a commercial carnival.

The monk and the knight -- the two quintessentially medieval European heroes -- were combined in the Knights Templar and in the other military orders founded in the era of the Crusades. With characteristic eloquence, Bernard of Clairvaux voices the cleric's view of knights, warfare, and the conquest of the Holy Land in five chapters on the knights' vocation. Then the cistercian abbot who never visited Palestine and discouraged monks who proposed doing so, in another eight chapters, provides a spiritual tour of the pilgrimage sites guarded by this 'new kind of knighthood and one unknown to ages gone by.'