1.20 About the dawdling brother Benedict, who saw a crowd of men dressed in white.

...

He changed his habit and became a true monk at Cluny.

He was one of a number of their surveillants of the monastery instituted by Holy Benedict for a better observance of discipline.

He perpetually remained silent unless a serious and precise reason compelled him to speak. His words were brief, removed from trifles, jokes and all words without utility. If ever there was a speech about spiritual things, he was never without sighs, never without tears. Unceasing in the psalmody and in constant meditation of the holy scriptures day and night. [...] he sang the psalms not superficially as is the custom for some, but with the greatest attention and devotion. [...] [H]is eyes were rarely free of tears, his tongue never ceased from the psalmody. He was accustomed throughout the whole time of his life to exhaust his body —already broken by innumerable punishments— with the roughest hair shirts. [...] Completely intent day and night at the contemplation of the divine, he transcended all mortal things with his mind and almost continually placed himself with the blessed angels by an envisaging of the internal Creator. His cell was the only witness of his unceasing prayers, of continuous flooding tears, of the most harsh flagellations and of daily sacrifices.[1]

It was, in fact, his habit, when he was accused, to almost never exculpate himself. He perpetually remained silent, unless a precise and serious reason constrained him to speak. His remarks were very brief, strangers to vanities, pleasantries, and more so to all useless speaking. But when it was a question of spiritual things, he never spoke without sighs, never without tears.

He recited the psalms unceasingly, and, day and night, he meditated on the Holy Scriptures... he sang the psalms with an extreme attention and devotion, and not superficially like some do.... His eyes rarely ceased to cry and his tongue never ceased to sing. During almost all his life, he had as a custom, to exhaust with very rough hair shirts his body already broken by innumerable austerities.

If we now describe his exterior aspect, we must consider him sufficiently eloquent [to speak for] himself. In fact, his friendly body, his thin face, his hair uncombed, yet venerable by its whiteness still, his bowed head, his eyes almost always looking down, his mouth ruminating holy speech without rest; all this revealed a man fixed not on the earth but on heaven.

The body of the happy fellow had certainly lost its forces, but the vigor of his soul and his zeal for the house of God still burned in him like it had always.

[at the end of his life, Bernard looks around the infirmary and sees] the assembly was not composed of men, but happy angels. Without a doubt, they had descended from the heights towards their co-citizen who had always conquered alongside them in spirit on the earth...

[1]DM I, xx, 43-72 passim.