When, at eighteen, they sent him to
France to be taught, he did not for his theological studies neglect
the instruction of his boyhood. There he became the disciple and
friend of the Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, more powerful then than
prince or Pope, and when the abbot preached the second great
crusade, promising eternal salvation to those who took up arms
against the unbelievers, whether to wrest from them the Holy
Sepulchre or to plant the cross among the wild heathen on the
Baltic, his heart burned hot within him. It was a long way to the
Holy Land, but with the Baltic robbers his people had a grievous
score to settle. Their yells had sounded in his boyish ears as they
ravished the shores of his fatherland, penetrating with murder and
pillage almost to his peaceful home. And so, while he lent a
diligent ear to the teachings of the church, earning the name of the
"most learned clerk" in the cloister of Ste. Genevieve in Paris,
daily he laid the breviary aside and took up sword and lance,
learning the arts of modern warfare with the graces of chivalry. In
the old way of fighting, man to man, the men of the North had been
the equals of any, if not their betters; but against the new methods
of warfare their prowess availed little.
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