| One of eight images of Bernard from a Legendary illustrated by Nicolas of Bologna dated 1330-40 and featuring the lives of 51 saints. Four are on this folio and four on the facing folio, each image surrounded by foliate decoration. The image covers two stories in the Vita Prima and repeated in the Golden Legend, both of sexual temptations in his youth: one of resisting the advances of a young woman who climbed into his bed, and the other of catching himself eyeing a young woman and of how he overcame the temptation by leaping into a pool of freezing water. Top right the scene is in a chamber hung with tapestries with Bernard in a bed next to a woman, both of them covered by a patterned bedspread. Below a naked Bernard lies in a bath of icy water. The inscription reads: 'II. Quomodo jacebat cum sorore sua et occulte surgens posuit se in aquam ut fornicatio sibi non evenitur' (How he lay with his sister and, sectetly rising up, placed himself in the water so that fornication might be prevented). The author has chosen to modify the story as it is recorded in both the Vita Prima and the Golden Legend by suggesting that the temptation was of incest with his sister. See also MA246 & 248-53.
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