Best known for centuries through the Life of Bernard of Clairvaux on which he was working when he preceded his friend in death, William emerged in the course of the twentieth century as a man of formidable intelligence and profound spiritual insight. His works, like his life, call readers to leave all things to follow Christ alone. He left his homeland to study in the intellectual ferment of northern France. He left the schools to enter the Benedictines at Rheims. He left there to become abbot of Saint Thierry, outside the city. Finally, after longing to enter the Cistercians for some eleven years, he left his abbey to enter the new Cistercian foundation at Signy in the Ardennes, there to seek ‘silence in heaven’.