Eight Verses of Bernard of Clairvaux

Lore & Background

The Eight Verses of St. Bernard are excerpts from psalms which, when recited, were said to have saved souls and guaranteed a holy death. Popular in the Late Middle Ages, the origins of the devotion and details are unknown. Legends attribute the selection and propagation of the devotion to Bernard of Clairvaux.

A humorous legend, included in some 15th-century Books of Hours, explained the selection of psalms attributed to Bernard. The devil is said to have told Bernard that he knew of eight (some sources say seven) psalm verses that would ensure salvation if recited daily. The devil did not reveal which verses. Bernard countered by saying that he did not need to know which verses to say, since he recited the entire Psalter daily as a matter of course. Feeling defeated by the saint's argument, the devil gave up and told the Cistercian abbot which verses to recite. These eight were included in a vast amount of prayer books and were widely copied in Late Medieval Europe.

Reader's Guide

The Eight Verses of St. Bernard represent a distinctive form of late medieval piety, comparable to the Fifteen Joys of Mary and the 30 Gregorian Masses. Their significance lies in their widespread inclusion in 15th-century Books of Hours, where they were often listed after the Psalter. The devotion's appeal rested on the promise that reciting these specific psalm verses daily would save souls and guarantee a holy death, a powerful assurance in an era preoccupied with salvation and the afterlife.

The legend of Bernard's encounter with the devil, preserved in some prayer books, adds a layer of folkloric charm to the devotion. The story emphasizes Bernard's complete trust in the Psalter—reciting the entire book daily—which outwits the devil and forces him to reveal the verses. This narrative likely contributed to the verses' popularity, as it framed them as a divinely (or diabolically) revealed shortcut to salvation. The verses themselves, drawn from the Vulgate, include passages about enlightenment, commendation of spirit, acknowledgment of mortality, and pleas for divine help. Their legacy endures as an example of how medieval Christians combined scripture, legend, and prayer to address deep spiritual anxieties.

Did You Know?

• The origins of the devotion and details are unknown, with legends attributing it to Bernard of Clairvaux.
• A legend says the devil told Bernard he knew of eight (some sources say seven) psalm verses that would ensure salvation if recited daily.
• Bernard countered that he did not need to know which verses, as he recited the entire Psalter daily.
• The verses come from the Vulgata and were widely copied in Late Medieval Europe.

The Devil's Bargain and the Birth of a Devotion

The precise origins of the Eight Verses remain shrouded in mystery, and no definitive historical record explains how these particular psalm excerpts came to be singled out for special devotional use. What we possess instead is a charming and somewhat humorous legend that circulated in Late Medieval Europe, one that credits the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux with the selection and spread of the practice. According to the tale, the devil approached Bernard and confessed that he knew of eight verses—though some versions of the story settle on seven—that, when recited each day, would guarantee the reciter's salvation. Crucially, the demon refused to name which verses they were. Bernard, undeterred, retorted that the knowledge was unnecessary to him, since he already committed the entire Psalter to memory and prayed through it in its fullness every single day. Confronted with a man who rendered the secret worthless, the devil relented and disclosed the specific passages. This anecdote, preserved in certain fifteenth-century Books of Hours, frames the devotion in a tone of gentle comic triumph over evil, and it helped cement the verses' place in popular piety.

The Text: Six Psalms, Eight Counted Verses

The verses themselves are drawn from the Latin Vulgate, and their English rendering most commonly encountered comes from the Douay-Rheims Bible. Though the devotion is called the Eight Verses, the underlying material actually spans six distinct psalms: Psalm 12, Psalm 30, Psalm 38, Psalm 85, Psalm 115, and Psalm 141. Two of these—Psalm 38 (verses 4b through 5) and Psalm 141 (verses 5b through 6)—are each split and counted twice, which is how six psalm passages yield the traditional number of eight. The content moves through a progression of themes: a plea for spiritual vigilance against the sleep of death, the commendation of one's spirit into God's hands, a request to know the number of one's days, a desire for a visible sign of divine aid that would confound enemies, the celebration of broken bonds and a sacrifice of praise, and finally a cry to the Lord as one's hope and portion in the land of the living. Together they trace an arc from vulnerability through trust to gratitude, making them a compact devotional summary of the psalmic tradition.

A Staple of Late Medieval Prayer Books

During the Late Middle Ages, the Eight Verses achieved a level of widespread adoption that placed them among the most recognizable elements of personal devotion across Europe. They were not confined to a single order or region; rather, they appeared in a vast quantity of prayer books and were copied extensively throughout the continent. A particularly common home for the verses was the Book of Hours, the devotional manual of the laity, where fifteenth-century editions frequently appended them as additional prayers following the Psalter. The legend of the devil's reluctant disclosure was sometimes printed alongside the verses themselves, lending a narrative frame that made the practice feel both personal and playful. The Eight Verses existed alongside other popular late-medieval devotional formulas, such as the Fifteen Joys of Mary and the thirty Gregorian Masses, all of which offered laypeople a structured, repeatable means of securing spiritual benefit through prescribed recitation. Their brevity made them especially practical for daily use, and their promise of a holy death gave them a particular emotional resonance in an age when mortality was a constant, visible presence.

Surviving Manuscripts and Modern Scholarship

Although the precise historical circumstances behind the Eight Verses remain unknown, physical evidence of their circulation survives in several notable manuscripts. One particularly instructive example is a prayer book produced in Cologne at the close of the fifteenth century, now held in the collections of St. Petersburg. Its table of contents includes the legend of the saint-and-devil dialogue in the final paragraph, offering a concrete glimpse of how the story was packaged for a late-medieval readership. In the modern scholarly landscape, the devotion has received attention within broader studies of Bernard's cultural afterlife. James France's chapter on the heritage of Saint Bernard in medieval art, contributed to Brian Patrick McGuire's edited volume A Companion to Bernard of Clairvaux (Leiden, 2011), devotes specific pages to the Eight Verses and includes a discussion of an illustration depicting the dialogue between the saint and the demon. Such work underscores that, even where the factual origins are opaque, the verses and their legend left a durable mark on medieval art, book production, and devotional practice.

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