Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, the towering intellectual, theologian, and primary architect of the Cistercian monastic reform, passed away at Clairvaux Abbey. Throughout his life, Bernard fiercely opposed scholastic intellectualism, championing instead a theology based on direct affective experience and emotional devotion to the humanity of Christ. His extensive series of sermons on the Song of Songs completely redefined medieval spirituality, emphasizing the mystical marriage between the human soul and the Divine Logos through absolute love.

Bernard's mystical commentary on the Song of Songs became the single most influential blueprint for Western religious lyric poetry for the next three centuries. His sensual, passionate vocabulary of spiritual longing, divine intoxication, and ecstatic union was directly absorbed by secular Troubadours and religious poets alike. It legitimized the use of highly eroticized romantic language to express the most sacred and transcendent internal experiences of the soul.