ABSTRACT
In his Exordium magnum cisterciense, a collection of stories for spiritual instruction, Konrad von Eberbach recounted a famous tale concerning Bernard of Clairvaux’s devotion to the cross. A certain monk saw Bernard lying prostrate before an altar with a crucix placed on the oor in front of him. As the abbot of Clairvaux adored and kissed the crucix with great devotion the corpus separated itself from the cross and embraced him. is legend reects a graphic depiction of a central teaching of twelh-century monastic and canonical preachers, namely, devotion to the cross and the imitation of the crucied Christ.1
