He built schools and churches in the diocese but is especially remembered for two Alpine hospices he built to aid travellers lost in the mountain passes named Great and Little Bernard after him. He collected endowments for the rest houses and staffed them with men who in time became Augustinian canons regular and built a monastery. The order continued to serve travellers there into the 20th century. The Saint Bernard dog was especially breed to assist travellers in this mountainous region.

He is sometimes erroneously referred to as Bernard of Menthon and the son of Count Richard of Menthon, which he is not (Attwater, Benedictines, Delaney, Farmer).

In art, Saint Bernard is a black monk, or canon in an alb and almuce (fur cape), leading the devil by a chain. (He shouldn't be confused with the white Bernard of Clairvaux, who sometimes also has the devil chained at his feet.) Sometimes his depiction may include (1) corn, vine, and lightning near him, or (2) him kneeling at a reading desk with a vision of God appearing outside the window (Roeder).

From that point he dedicated himself entirely to the ministry of the word. He preached in several provinces before coming to Chartrain, where he found only a small number of Christians--the descendants of those who had been converted by Saint Potentianus and Saint Altinus. Here Caraunus met with success. Soon he had to choose disciples to assist him in preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, while he set out for Paris.

Just three leagues from Chartres, he was beset by a gang of robbers. At their approach, he advised his disciples to hide themselves, so they escaped. When the thugs from that he carried nothing of value, the killed him.

Saint Germain was ordained in Autun in 530 and ten years later was elected abbot of the monastery of Saint Symphorian there. About 556, he was in Paris when the bishopric fell vacant and was appointed both bishop and archbishop to King Childebert I.

In no way did the great office affect the saint's pattern of life. Always austere, he was continuously pestered by the poor and never repulsed them; history has given him the title, "father of the poor." Germain was unwearying and fearless in his endeavors to put a stop to civil strife and to curb the viciousness of the Frankish kings, but with little effect.

Through Germain, God cured King Childebert of an illness and converted him from licentiousness. It was to him that Saint Radegund appealed successfully for protection against her brutal husband, Chlotar I.

When he died, the great poet Venantius Fortunatus wrote a eulogy of his life which, in spite of its many incredible miracles and legends, fittingly thanks God for a vigorous and noble saint.

The oldest and greatest of the medieval abbeys of Paris, Saint- Germain-des-Prés, was in fact founded in the saint's own lifetime--in 558 by King Childebert I. Saint Germain consecrated it to Saint Vincent and to the Holy Cross. When Germain died at the age of eighty, he was buried in this abbey in a sumptuous tomb that the French revolutionaries destroyed; and when he was canonized it was reconsecrated in his name. That King Childebert I should have founded such a place of Christian learning is a tribute to the influence of Saint Germain (Attwater, Benedictines, Bentley).

Gizur's family had been pivotal in the country accepting Christianity. In 1000, the Icelandic Althing (assembly), composed of a pagan majority and a Christian minority who had been converted through English, Norwegian, and German settlers, had been deeply divided about the future of the nation. The Althing decided that the country needed to have only one religion to be determined by a single wise man chosen by the assembly and accepted by all. The wise man decided that Iceland must have Christianity for its religion and the Icelandic law. The only concessions to paganism to be permitted were the exposure of unwanted children to the elements, and the private practice of sacrifice to the traditional gods. After a few years these concessions were abolished.

Foreign priests were soon replaced by native ones after Gizur the White, who had been one of the first to accept baptism, was consecrated bishop. He may or may not have been a widower at the time of his episcopal ordination--an unimportant matter except to those who do not believe that an exception proves the rule. His son and grandson followed in his footsteps. Reformers in the Church disapproved of hereditary succession to episcopal offices, but it was the custom in much of Scandinavia until the time of Saint Eystein of Trondheim.

John Shert: Born at Shert Hall near Macclesfield, Cheshire, England. Blessed John was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford. After his conversion to the Catholic faith, he studied for the priesthood at Douai and Rome. In 1576, he was ordained. Three years later, he was sent to the English mission.

Thomas Ford: Born in Devon, England. Thomas was another martyr converted to Catholicism during his study days at Oxford's Trinity College. He, too, entered the seminary at Douai, where he was ordained in 1573. In 1576, he began his work in the English mission field, where he labored in Oxfordshire and Berkshire until his arrest six years later.

Margaret Plantagenet, daughter of the duke of Clarence and niece of King Edward IV and Richard III of England, married Sir Richard Pole about 1491 and bore him five children. When Henry VIII became king, she was widowed and had her estates, which had been forfeited by attainder, returned to her by Henry, who made her countess of Salisbury in her own right.

She was governess of the king's daughter Mary, but incurred his enmity by her disapproval of his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Despite his remark that she was the holiest woman in England, she was forced to leave the court. When her son Reginald Cardinal Pole wrote against the Act of Supremacy, Henry swore to destroy the family. In 1538, two other sons were arrested and executed on a charge of treason, even though Cromwell wrote that their only crime was being brothers of the cardinal.