The Cistercians: Monks and Monasteries of Europe 0879516542, 9780879516543

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements 6
Introduction 10
1. The Foundation in the Desert 24
2. Bernard of Fontaines 48
3. The Abbey: Foundation, Construction, Layout and Resources 74
4. The Monks, the Monastery and the Monastic Day 133
5. From St. Bernard to the French Revolution 139
Postscript. After the Storm: 1789 to the Present Day 182
Appendix A. A Description of Clairvaux 189
Appendix B. The Abbeys: a Gazetteer 194
Appendix C. Staying in a Cistercian Abbey 231
Notes 236
Further Reading 236
Index 238

Citation preview

The Cistercians Monks and Monasteries o f Europe Stephen Tobin j O fu ll-c o lo r and j j black and white photographs

T

hroughout Europe, some o f the most arresting sites are Cistercian monasteries, where even the most

jaded travelers are bewitched by their breath­ taking beauty and simplicity. This stunningly photographed architectural study is the most complete visual record available. The feeling o f serenity this architecture evokes pervades every cloister, refectory and chapter house with an almost magical sense o f harmony. These extraordinary examples o f monastic architecture were born o f the rebellion against the gaudy exuberance o f the architecture o f the day: local stonecutters schooled in the ornate Romanesque and Gothic styles adapted their work to the requirement o f Cistercian simplicity, with striking geometric patterns and stylized foliage taking the place o f distracting gargoyles and fantastic bestiaries. Stephen Tobin gives a detailed and insight­ ful account o f the founding and development o f the Cistercian Order, which swept across Europe in the twelfth century. His discussion o f architectural practice and the precepts o f design behind these enduring monasteries is invaluable; maps covering all o f Europe, instructive tables and over ioo magnificent photographs detail all the male abbeys founded during the Middle Ages, highlighting their style and accessibility. Am appendix pro­ vides useful information on those converted into hotels, guest houses or restaurants.

The Cistercians

Piedra, Spain. Nave, C ul-de-lam pe, or corbel

The

Cistercians Monks and Monasteries o f Europe

Stephen Tobin

The Overlook Press Woodstock • New York

frontispiece

\

bove

M aulbronn, Germany. W ash house, fountain

Bebenhausen, Germany. N ich e by stair descending through curtain wall.

The larger niche held a lantern, while the smaller held tinder and flint. Both have lost their doors

First published in the United States of America in 1996 by The Overlook Press Lewis Hollow Road Woodstock, New York 12498 First published in Great Britain in 1995 by The Herbert Press Copyright © 1995 Stephen Tobin All Rights Reserved. No part o f this publication may be reproduced or trans­ mitted in any form or by any means, electronic, including photocopy, record­ ing, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in

connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. Library o f Congress Cataloging-inPublication Data

Tobin, Stephen. The Cistercians : monks and monasteries o f Europe/Stephen Tobin, p. cm. ISBN: 0-87951-654-2 i. Monasteries, Cistercian. 2. Archi­ tecture, Cistercian. 5. Cistercians— History. I. Title. NA4828.T63 1996 72ó'.77i2— dc2o 96-484 CIP Printed in Hong Kong

Contents Acknowledgements Introduction

6

io

1. The Foundation in the Desert 2. Bernard o f Fontaines

24

48

3. The Abbey: Foundation, Construction, Layout and Resources 74 4. The Monks, the Monastery and the Monastic Day 133 5. From St Bernard to the French Revolution 139 Postscript

After the Storm: 1789 to the Present Day 182 A ppendix A

A Description o f Clairvaux

189

A ppendix B

The Abbeys: a Gazetteer

194

A ppendix C

Staying in a Cistercian Abbey Notes

236

Further Reading Index

238

236

231

Acknowledgements

M y first debt must be to those owners or custodians o f abbeys and former abbeys who so kindly allowed me to visit and photograph their properties: M . Mauvais o f Reigny, General and Mme du Pontavice o f Le Reclus (who met my request to take a few shots o f the abbey with the remark: ‘I f you wish to visit our house then you shall do so properly or not at all!’ and promptly gave me a full guided tour); Signor Tanini o f the Badia a Settimo; the owners o f Mariental, Rosières, Jouy, La Ferté, La Charmoye, Ecurey (where I was shown not only the twelfth-century lay brothers' re­ fectory but also, quite unexpectedly, a unique private collection o f nine­ teenth and twentieth century European and American tractors not usually open to the public), Froidmont, Quincy, L'Isle-en-Barrois, Lanvaux, Boulancourt, Larrivour, Escarp, Biddlesden, Garendon, Coggeshall, Merevale, Stoneleigh, Robertsbridge (where a kitchen garden now covers the site o f the chapterhouse. When I explained this to the owner, she ex­ claimed: ‘What? You mean to tell me there are abbots buried under my cabbages!'), Boxley, Sant'Agostino di Montalto and La Matina. M . Lebrun o f Vaucelles and Bob the warden o f Thame (both o f whom gave me personal guided tours o f the properties in their care), the charm­ ing Eva o f Zlata Koruna, the residents o f the village o f Sagittario, and the custodians o f Bonport, Prières, Cercamp, Vignogoul, Landais, Valle Crucis and Vale Royal. The nuns o f Llantarnam, Acquafredda, La Trinità di Cortona, Boquen, La Maigrauge and Gradefes; Dorn Gabriel o f Stams and the monks o f La Trappe, Aiguebelle, Wilhering, Schlierbach (where father prior gave me an exhaustive tour o f the abbey and then pressed two cheeses from the monks' own farm on me for my picnic); Le Tre Fontane, Galeso, Hauterive and Huerta (where we were offered yet more cheese); the parish priest o f Fitero (who kindly waived the rule that all photography requires the permission o f the Bishop o f Pamplona); the incumbents o f Sambucina,

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

7

Arabona, S. Maria in Strada, Buonsollazzo and San Martino al Cimino, and the vicar o f Abbey Dore. M y especial thanks must also go to the warder in charge o f France’s top security prison, the former abbey o f Clairvaux, who kindly allowed me to view (though understandably not to photograph) the magnificent remains o f the lay brothers’ building dating back to the time o f St Bernard; also to the firemen stationed in the erstwhile refectory o f the College des Bernardins in Paris who let me visit and photograph their ‘barracks’. On a more personal level, I shall not forget the kindness and interest shown by Hélène Palouzie o f the Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques et des Sites in Montpellier, who shared with me both her immense knowledge o f the Languedoc and her generous hospitality. Dorn Goffredo Viti oc o f the Certosa in Florence not only made numerous valuable suggestions but also gave me the freedom o f the monastery’s wellstocked library. Gerry Slowey o f the University o f Birmingham kindly sent me much useful information. M y thanks must also go to my wife Blandine, my daughter Héloïse and my family and friends for their sup­ port and interest, and the patience many o f them have shown while trekking across half o f Europe in search o f Cistercian abbeys, in conditions ranging from blinding snowstorms in N orth Yorkshire to the sweltering heat o f Apulia in summer, from the thick mud o f rain-drenched Brittany to the unforgiving dust o f the Castilian meseta, often to find that only a few stones ( if that) were left. M y last mention can only be for Maurizio Bossi o f the Gabinetto Vieusseux in Florence, who alone must shoulder the responsibility for the conception o f this book. It was he who, as we sat in a trattoria in deepest Abruzzo enjoying the spit-roast lamb and Montepulciano, cried out in despair: After this lunch, I refuse to set foot in any more Cistercian abbeys, unless you start doing something useful with all those slides you take — like writing a book, or something I make no attempt to hide my enormous debt to the scholarship o f Dorn Louis Lekai oc o f the University o f Dallas, but it goes without say­ ing that any errors, omissions, hypotheses or conclusions in this book are my own. Having visited over 300 Cistercian sites, I find it encouraging to record that I have been well received at all but six.

overleaf

Fossanova, Italy. N ave

Introduction

in N orth Yorkshire, attracts more visitors in a year than any other monument in England except the Tower o f London. The Abbey o f Las Huelgas, outside Burgos, is visited by more people daily than the city’s cathedral, one o f the glories o f Spanish Gothic architecture. The Abbey o f Fontenay, in Burgundy, is one o f the few monuments in France to have been accorded the status o f World Heritage Site by u n e s c o . When it was decided to make a film o f Umberto Eco s best-selling novel The Name of the Rose, a story about a Franciscan sleuth set in a Benedictine monastery, the film makers had no hesitation in choosing the Abbey o f Eberbach, on the Rhine, as the perfect location. The Italian radio programme for lorry drivers, ‘M ondo Cam ion, strongly urged its listeners to visit the Abbeys o f Fossanova and Casamari as soon as they could afford to take a little time o ff work for sightseeing, describing the two abbeys as oases o f calm after the stress o f driving a juggernaut for long hours on the motorway. These six abbeys have two things in common: they all manifestly exercise some form o f magnetic attraction on a considerable proportion o f the European public ‘at leisure’, and they are all Cistercian. Professor Braunfels, in his classic work Monasteries of Western Europe, chooses an illustration o f the cloister o f Fontenay as his frontispiece, and opens Chapter i with these words: ‘Whoever sets foot in some peaceful haven o f the Cistercians, whoever comes upon a scene o f ruins in the snow, a church choir forgotten in the woods, . . . is moved by them. Solemnity, calm and dignity speak from these stones’. At many Cistercian sites today, the little kiosk where you buy your ticket, not unlike a cinema box-office, and the waste-paper baskets and well-meaning signposts or, where the ruins have not been taken into care, the cars parked right up against the crumbling walls and all the trappings o f Sunday outings, from the remains o f picnics to candy-floss stalls, do little to sustain the feeling o f awe described by Braunfels. And yet despite all this, these ruins still have the power to move even the most jaded contemporary sensibilities.

F

o u n ta in s

abbey

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o p p o s i t e Buildwas, England. N ave

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INTRODUCTION

Why? Is a ruin anything but a worthless pile o f old stones? Certainly up until the French Revolution anyone suggesting that it was would have been taken for an eccentric. At best, ruins were a handy source o f readycut building material simply asking to be reused. I f we appreciate the beauty and understand the scientific and archeological importance o f ruins today, we owe this almost wholly to the Romantic movement, which began in England in the late eighteenth century. As with the enthusiasm for nature, it grew out o f a common European preoccupation. A feel­ ing o f uneasiness, which was a direct result o f the political turmoil surrounding the French Revolution, created a new sympathy for the Middle Ages. In the eyes o f the Romantics, beauty was no longer auto­ matically associated with classical perfection. The emotion a work o f art excited had taken the place o f the objective criterion o f flawless form. The imagination o f the perceiver became at least as important as the technical mastery o f the artist, and it was not long before that imagination turned its attention to the ivy-covered ruins o f castle and abbey. In truth, the Romantics had been preceded almost two centuries earlier by the English playwright John Webster, whose Antonio, in the Duchess o f Malfi, exclaims: I do love these ancient ruins. W e never tread upon them but we set O ur foot upon some reverend history: And, questionless, here in this open court, W h ich now lies naked to the injuries O f storm y weather, some men lie interr’d Lov'd the church so well, and gave so largely to t, T h e y thought it should have canopied their bones T ill doom sday . . .

A century later, the Buck brothers were making sketches o f many o f the finest abbey ruins in England and Wales, while John Aubrey described the remains o f the Cistercian Abbey o f Waverley in these words: T h e A b b y is situated, though low, in a very good Air, and is as Rom antick a Place as most I have seen. Here is a fine Rivulet runs under the H ouse and fences one Side . . . Here also remain W alls o f a fair Church . . . and within the Quadrangle o f the Cloysters was a Pond, but now is a M arsh.

INTRODUCTION

lì

But these still uncommon views were not to acquire any degree o f currency for another hundred years. By the late 1700s, the ‘Romantick’ quality o f ruins had become fashionable, but their scientific value was unrecognized and no attempt was made to preserve them as historical relics. When the owners o f the Yorkshire abbeys o f Roche and Fountains decided to im­ prove the ‘Romantick’ aspect o f their ruins, they felt no compunction at using the weapon o f demolition to achieve the picturesque effect they were seeking. It was only in the early years o f the nineteenth century that the prevailing romantic mood encouraged the scholarly study o f medieval architecture. Rudimentary archeological excavation began to be under­ taken, and even the landscaping o f privately owned ruins betrayed a more scientific approach. When the ruins o f another Yorkshire abbey, Jervaulx, were incorporated into a landscaped park in the early 1800s, the tables were turned and it was the ruins which influenced the layout o f the garden rather than vice versa. The Industrial Revolution and the psychological alienation it created among the newly urbanized classes, was instrumental in reviving interest in the Middle Ages; the calm o f the cloister was seen as a haven o f peace by those who could no longer bear the nerve-racking drumming o f the cotton mills and the filthy smoke belching from factory chimneys. Considered ^barbarie’ ever since the sixteenth century, the Middle Ages were now seen as a mythical golden ‘age o f faith’, in contrast to the degenerate atheism and materialism o f modern times. The severity o f Puritanism and the rationality o f the Enlightenment were replaced by a sentimental longing for the pageantry and colour o f medieval religion, and neo-Gothic architecture was to be its vehicle. Post-Reformation furnish­ ings were ruthlessly ripped out o f surviving medieval churches, which were equally as ruthlessly ‘restored’ to their original appearance. In this climate, the appeal o f ruined Gothic abbeys was assured. The example o f Kirkstall, in Yorkshire, is typical. When the abbey was painted by William Richard­ son in the 1840s, it was in the middle o f the countryside. Rapid urban expansion soon brought it within easy distance o f Leeds, one o f the most important centres o f the industrial revolution in the country. The City Council acquired the site in 1889 and turned the grounds into a public park for the material and spiritual recreation o f the urban population. In the rest o f Europe the nineteenth century was still very much a time o f wanton demolition, which the heartfelt but isolated pleas o f enlight­ ened public functionaries such as Prosper Mérimée and Viollet-le-Duc in

14

INTRODUCTION

France, or the influence o f artistic groups such as the Nazarenes and their quasi-monastic ‘Guild o f St Luke* in Germany and northern Europe, were by and large unable to stop. The early years o f this century, however, saw the spread o f the appreciation o f monastic ruins and, by extension, o f surviving monastic architecture, from England to the Continent. The Abbey o f Fontenay, spared after the Revolution through being turned into a paper factory by Elie de Montgolfier, was restored to its original purity o f form by his descendant Edouard Aynard in 1911. Noirlac, a porcelain factory until 1894, was bought by the Département du Cher in 1909, although restoration work only got under way in 1950. Les Vaux-deCernay was bought in the nineteenth century by the de Rothschild family and turned into a country retreat. In this century it has become a luxury hotel. The former abbey o f San Pietro alla Canonica, in Amalfi, was already a ‘romantic’ hotel at the end o f the last century, while the same fate overtook Piedra, in Castile, in the early years o f this century. Eberbach was used as a prison after its secularization in 1813, and remained so until restoration work began in 1926. Vaiserena, the abbey which inspired Stendhal to write his La Chartreuse de Parme, was a tomato purée factory until the outbreak o f World War II: restoration is still in progress. As late as the 1950S, the Abbey o f Clairmont, in Maine, was scheduled for demo­ lition by the authorities in charge o f France’s artistic heritage. Luckily the sensitivity o f the explosives expert sent to blow the church up prevented him from placing his charges. Since the blinkered destruction o f so much ‘uncouth’ and ‘socially useless’ medieval architecture after the Revolution, the wheel had turned full circle, and two sisters, who had fallen in love with the ruins, purchased Clairmont and restored it for no other reason than to offer it for public enjoyment and edification. The Romantic ethic, supported by the standing which the discipline o f archeology now en­ joyed in scientific circles, had triumphed. Where previous centuries saw ruins as a simple pile o f stones which it was a shame not to exploit, we, who have inherited the Romantic movement’s understanding o f ‘atmos­ phere’, cannot but respond to the call o f the whispering walls and ‘bare ruin’d choirs’. Indeed the current tendency among archeologists is to en­ courage ruins to keep their ‘romantic’ unkempt look, after their counter­ parts in the early part o f this century, headed by Sir Charles Peers, the C hief Inspector o f Ancient Monuments in Britain, had popularized the now common ‘didactic’ appearance o f closely-mown lawns and vacuumed masonry.

INTRODUCTION

l5

The battle to preserve abbey ruins and monastic architecture from the philistine attacks o f the insensitive clearly involves the buildings o f all orders. But what is special about the Cistercians that their abbeys should attract so many more visitors than those o f any other order? The very fact that the Cistercians contrived to build their monasteries ‘far from the com­ merce o f men , in what were wild and impossibly isolated valley floors in the twelfth century and are now, for the most part, charming out-of-theway rural settings, is undoubtedly a major factor. The setting o f a Cis­ tercian abbey is almost invariably one o f great beauty, thanks partly to the skills in husbandry o f the monks, who ‘tamed’ their chosen wildernesses, and partly to a growing awareness and appreciation in Europe today o f our natural environment. The ubiquitous presence o f flowing water is another key to the secret o f Cistercian sites, and this is no accident. In the Middle Ages it was said that ‘while Benedict built on the mountain top, Bernard chose the valley’; not only was running water essential to the material needs o f the monastery, but springs and rivers have always been imbued with magical powers since the dawn o f mankind, and in the Christian tradition they were dedicated to the Virgin. St Bernard o f Clairvaux, the driving force behind Cistercian expansion in the twelfth century, had a special devotion to the Mother o f God and insisted that all abbey churches were dedicated to her. Another bewitching quality to be found in Cistercian abbeys lies in the breathtaking beauty and simplicity o f the architecture. Born in rebellion against the gaudy exuberance o f contemporary Romanesque, Cistercian architecture is a byword for clarity, precision and simplicity. The modern predilection for bare stonework, which can be traced back to the sensi­ bility o f aesthetes such as John Ruskin, had never existed before the last century — with one exception: the Cistercians. In their own day the Cistercians, with their bare, hull-like churches, were an eccentricity in the colourful panorama o f contemporary architecture. Today the function­ ality o f their design appeals instantly to the modern predilection for understated harmony. Finally, the nationalism which characterized Europe from the Renaissance to the end o f World War II is being rapidly replaced by a new sense o f belonging on two levels, the European and the regional, which are complementary rather than contradictory. Hand in hand with an increasing awareness, made possible by the advent o f mass tourism, o f a cultural heritage with undeniable common roots going back to the

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INTRODUCTION

San M artino al Cim ino, Italy, T h e abstract elegance of this lotus-flower capital well illustrates the skill of the local stonecutters in conjugating their artistry with the O rder s ban on the anthropom orphic and grotesque carving typical of con­ temporary Rom anesque sculpture

INTRODUCTION

17

classical world and beyond, there is a new need to safeguard regional identity against the risk o f bland uniformity. One o f the major factors in forming our common European heritage was the Christian religion. Whether we subscribe to its teachings today or not, we are likely to think o f ‘cultural tourism’ in whatever part o f Europe as involving a visit to a handful o f ‘old churches’. And once inside, certain things like a crucifix, a baptismal font or a pulpit are reassuringly familiar. After the fall o f the Roman Empire, the Church remained the greatest patron o f the arts in Europe until the beginning o f this century. While the idea o f modern architecture is likely to conjure up an office block or some other utilitarian structure, if we think o f Romanesque or Gothic architecture, we will almost certainly think o f a church, and whether we are in Scotland, Sicily or Spain we will instantly recognize the two styles. Yet the light and scintillating Sicilian Romanesque, influenced by local Arab tradition, is a totally different style to the heavy Norman architecture o f the British Isles, and the Cathedral o f Florence, while un­ deniably Gothic, could never be mistaken for Chartres or Amiens. W hat we have, in effect, is a series o f uniquely regional interpretations o f style resting on a common base, and this brings us back to our initial premise. The exploration o f ecclesiastical architecture is a rewarding experience which inevitably leads to increased awareness o f our common European heritage, made up o f a fascinating kaleidoscope o f regional and local variations on a number o f stylistic themes. The Cistercian Order, within this framework, occupies a unique position. One o f the last great pan-European phenomena before the triumph o f the nation-state, the order acknowledged, and was politically able in twelfth-century Europe to acknowledge, no other sovereign than the Pope. When the founding fathers o f Cîteaux instituted the first real monastic family, where every abbey down the family tree owed its ulti­ mate allegiance to the mother-house in Burgundy, they did so without it even crossing their minds that this allegiance might one day be seen as dangerous. By the time o f the Hundred Years War, for instance, in the fourteenth century, many Cistercian houses in England were considered potential hotbeds o f treachery, owing obedience as they did to a motherhouse in France, and transferring monies to it on a regular basis. That this suspicion was not unfounded is borne out by comparison with what had happened in Germany two centuries before. When Frederick Barbarossa, the H oly Roman Emperor, insisted upon the recognition o f

Byland, England. W est front

Las Huelgas, Spain. ‘Sm all’ cloister. St Bernard thundered against the fantastic bestiaries and grotesque gargoyles which populated the capitals o f Cluniae cloisters, distracting m onks and nuns from their meditation on things spiritual. As this striking detail shows, plain geometric patterns and stylized foliage were not the only substitute for such ‘abom inations’. T h is miniature church façade was designed to direct the thoughts o f the sisters towards the heavenly Jerusalem

opposite

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INTRODUCTION

an antipope, the German Cluniacs followed his instructions, while the German Cistercians followed the lead o f their Order as a whole and re­ fused to obey him, their temporal overlord. For the Cistercians, man’s prior obligation was to God, and theirs in particular was to God via the abbot o f their mother-house. They considered themselves exempt from allegiance to any temporal master, and were granted real exemption by the Papacy from obedience to their immediate spiritual lord, the local bishop. An abbey was known as abbatia nullius, an abbey belonging to no one, since it belonged to the Order alone and owed allegiance to no one but the Pope. It is hardly surprising to find the Cistercians espousing the cause of, and indeed harbouring, Thomas Becket in his quarrel with King Henry II over the right o f felons in holy orders to be tried by the church rather than by the state. N or is it surprising to find them mediating in affairs o f such importance for the Continent as a whole as the Cathar heresy, the crusades, or the countless quarrels between the emerging power o f the national monarchies and the old trans-European institutions o f Papacy and Empire, or at times between the princes o f Christendom themselves. W hile the history o f the Order after the golden age o f the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with the creation o f national congregations and so forth, is very much one o f adaptation to the requirements o f a continent divided into nations, the vision o f the founders embraced the whole o f Europe, or Christendom as they would have called it, without distinction. The art and architecture o f the Cistercians reflect the Order’s adherence to this unwritten principle with remarkable constancy. In an age where design was transmitted by direct contact, word o f mouth and the roughest o f drawings, the Cistercians ‘exported’ their interpretation o f the plainest twelfth-century Burgundian architecture to the four corners o f Europe, reproducing wherever they went, and with astonishing accuracy, the earthly Jerusalem which they identified with their mother-house. And yet, as Christopher Holdsworth points out, ‘i f . . . one looks at the [statutes] as a whole, from the beginnings to the late thirteenth century, one can­ not fail to be struck by what is not covered. There is . . . not a word about the size and shape o f any o f the buildings . . . in 1192 the chapter could condemn a dormitory as having been built contrary to the form and customs o f the order in the expectation that everyone would know what was meant.’ Yet nowhere can we find a prescription for the ideal dormi­ tory, or indeed for any new building, in Cistercian documents. But armed with a ground plan o f a standard Cistercian monastery (see page 21), the

°Thc monks’ dormitory lay over the entire east range

*°The lay-brothers' dormitory lay over the entire west range

Plan of a typical Cistercian abbey

modern visitor has absolutely no trouble in locating the whereabouts o f the individual buildings or rooms, whether he be in Denmark, Portugal or Sardinia. And yet twelfth-century uniformity o f spirit was a far cry from the standardization o f today. The same visitor, while deriving a warm sense o f satisfaction from the familiarity o f his surroundings, is likely to be intrigued and fascinated by the concessions to local tradition evident in the buildings around him. The creative tension engendered by the conflict between the aspirations o f local stonemasons and sculptors, and the stringent precepts o f the Orders artistic policies, is responsible for some o f the most appealing architecture in Europe, architecture that is at once immediately recognizable and richly articulated, satisfying the visitors need to conjugate the familiar with the novel.

Fontaine-Guérard, France. T h e siting of this nunnery is perfectly ‘Cistercian’, a narrow valley by the source o f a stream

Fontaine-Guérard, France. Nave. M ost nunneries had aisleless naves

i. The Foundation in the Desert

First appeared on the scene o f medieval Burgundy towards the end o f the eleventh century, in an age where national boundaries had yet to make an impression on the collective consciousness. Until that time, western monasticism had relied almost entirely on the rule o f Benedict o f Nursia to give it form and structure, yet Benedict himself (r. a d 480—550) would have been the first to express surprise at the idea o f his rule spawning an ‘O rder. It was in fact only under Pope Leo X III in the late 1800s that the followers o f his rule were pulled together into a single congregation, and to this day the independence o f Benedictine houses is jealously guarded. The Abbot Primate o f the Order is in effect no more than a figurehead. Benedict was inspired by a rich tradition o f monasticism transmitted from the Middle East to the West through many channels, possibly including the writings o f a fourth-century monk called John Cassian. W hat Benedict had done, in the simplest terms, was to suggest to those who wished to renounce the world and give their life to God, and to do so by living in a community rather than in or before moving on to a hermitage, that it would be for the best if there were an abbot (from the Aramaic ‘abbas’ or ‘father’) to govern that community, giving it the spiritual benefit o f his wisdom and experience and keeping a fatherly eye on the orderly running o f its daily life. It was by historical circumstance rather than by design that the structure o f the Roman domus (house) to which the followers o f Benedict were accustomed, with its functional rooms and offices arranged around an enclosed inner atrium (sheltered courtyard), was adapted to form the classic monastery laid out around a cloister. Just as it had been the domain o f the ‘cloistered’ womenfolk in imperial times, so it lent itself admirably to the needs o f an enclosed self-supporting community in barbarian sixth-century Italy.

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THE FOUNDATI ON IN THE DESERT

25

Benedict propounded, in his ‘little rule for beginners’, a life o f severity and humility, balanced by a healthy dose o f humanity and sound practical good sense. Total obedience to the abbot was tempered by the obligation laid on the abbot himself to take counsel o f the whole com­ munity. The monk’s day was to be divided between work about the monastery and what Benedict called ‘G od’s work’ (opus Dei, literally ‘G od’s work’ —totally unrelated to the modern Catholic institution o f the same name). Monastic work included gardening and household chores, although the practice o f agriculture on the scale it took in the later Middle Ages seems not to have formed any part o f Benedict’s thinking. G od’s work combined moments o f private prayer and meditation with com­ munity worship in the oratory —more akin to a simple house o f prayer than to our idea o f a monumental abbey church. The concentrated power o f any ideal which gains common currency tends to become more and more diluted as it spreads. Benedict’s rule was no exception. By the end o f the tenth century, when his rule had been accepted in almost every monastery in Christendom, it was ripe for reform. Two distinct trends in monastic reform can be distinguished during this period: the first is almost wholly an Italian phenomenon, while the second is essentially Burgundian. Italy during this period was the seat o f the Papacy and as such was unavoidably at the centre o f the cut-and-thrust power politics o f the day. The Pope was becoming increasingly aware o f his temporal ‘responsibilities’, which opposed him sometimes bitterly to the ambitions o f the Holy Roman Emperor, and distracted him and his entire curia from what should have been the spiritual concerns o f his mission. This involvement o f the Church in temporal quarrels and worldly affairs provoked a reaction in the more spiritually sensitive men o f the day. Thus it is no accident that three o f the greatest reformers came from central Italy, the Pope’s own hunting ground. St Romuald fled to the secluded valley o f the Casentino, in Tuscany, where he founded the abbey o f Camaldoli. In a literal attempt to inter­ pret the rule o f St Benedict, he built a monastery for beginners at the bot­ tom o f the slope and a series o f individual hermitages for more seasoned ascetics on top o f the mountain overlooking the valley. St Giovanni Gualberto took to the hills around Florence, founding an isolated monas­ tery deep in the forest o f Vallombrosa where the echoes o f political

Foliina, Italy. Cloister, east walk, showing typical decoration: plaster painted to resemble the poor materials it conceals

Tintern, W ales. T h e ruins o f Tintern Abbey, in the solitary W ye Valley, were among the first to capture the imagination o f the eighteenth-century Rom antics

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THE FOUNDATI ON IN THE DESERT

turmoil could not penetrate. Peter Damians retreat from the world was a hermitage high in the Appennines on the borders o f Umbria and the Marches, at Fonte Avellana, where he spent his life writing and in medi­ tation, as far removed from the troubles o f his time as possible. The second strain which we can discern in the movement towards monastic reform was not so much a return to the spirit and letter o f Benedict s original rule as a move towards adapting the monastic phenom­ enon to contemporary political conditions — a far more worldly enter­ prise altogether. In a d 909, the Duke o f Aquitaine had bequeathed some land he owned in Burgundy for the foundation o f a Benedictine monastery that should acknowledge no authority other than the Popes. Given the weakness o f the Papacy in the tenth and eleventh centuries, however, it quickly became clear that it was the Pope who would be leaning on the monks for support and protection rather than the other way around. That Cluny, as the new foundation was known, was able in the course o f two hundred years to exercise immense political influence and in so doing to accrue the great wealth it did, was due in part to a succession o f hard-headed and extremely able abbots and in part to its geographical position. Cluny was situated in an area which was at the time under the suzerainty o f neither the Emperor nor the King o f France. The abbey was thus at liberty to put into practice its proclaimed allegiance to the Pope, and to advertise this fact by dedicating the churches o f all its foundations to St Peter. While Cluny founded many abbeys and priories, it never really organ­ ized them into any form o f structured family, simply concentrating all power over them into its own hands. The two salient features o f Cluniae monasticism, apart from involvement in temporal affairs, concern the movement’s approach to liturgy and the plastic arts. A Cluniae monk dedicated the greater part o f his day to the celebra­ tion o f church services, to the almost total neglect not only o f manual labour but even o f private prayer and study. A monk from Cluny by the name o f Ulrich, in 1075, wrote a full account o f life there, and readily confesses that the greater part o f the day, and night, was taken up in ful­ filling liturgical obligations in church, such as the singing o f hymns, psalms and litanies, including at times the whole Psalter, interspersed with readings from the Bible and the church fathers. N ot surprisingly, there was very little time left to do anything else. Under the man whom some consider the greatest o f Cluny’s abbot-

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29

potentates, Peter the Venerable, Cluny in the early twelfth century wit­ nessed a flowering o f Romanesque art the like o f which had rarely been seen before. In keeping with the Cluniae theory that no cost should be spared in adorning the house o f God, the Abbey Church at Cluny (destroyed during the French Revolution) was ablaze with brilliant colours, its capitals alive with a writhing bestiary, its floors a carpet o f brightly coloured tiles and its furnishings a treasure chest o f gold and silver, enamel and precious stones. While the church and cloister at Cluny have both gone, one can get an idea o f how richly the abbey must have been decorated by looking at the cloister o f Moissac, the church o f the Madeleine at Vézelay, or the treasure o f Ste Foy at Conques. And yet for all the arrogant attachment to worldly power and soft if not luxurious living usually associated with Cluny, the impression we are left with after reading the letters o f Peter the Venerable is one o f great warmth and humanity. While the language Peter uses is invariably flowery and in many ways excessive, resembling the sculpture and frescoes he encouraged in his church and cloisters, his writings are permeated with a spirit o f charity and compassion for human frailty. He approved o f hermitage, but understood that not everybody could aspire to such perfection. He was an orthodox theologian, one o f the most eminent o f his time, yet it was at Cluny under Peter s fatherly eye that Peter Abelard found refuge after his final defeat and humiliation. He was an unswerving upholder o f the Papacy, yet commissioned the first translation into Latin o f the Qu ran. In a religious climate which encompassed both the burning singleminded fervour o f Saints Romuald and Giovanni Gualberto and the allembracing generosity o f spirit o f Peter the Venerable, it is perhaps not surprising to find a number o f Cluniae monks who felt that the life they were leading was rather less in keeping with the spirit o f St Benedict s rule than they would have liked. Indeed St Romuald himself had started his monastic career as a Cluniae. But he lived in Italy where the worldly pre­ occupations o f the clergy drove him to seek the peace and solitude o f a virtual hermitage in order to find his path back to God. In France, dis­ content with the monastic world arose from within that world itself. In 1098, a group o f monks seeking to perfect their way o f life in stricter observance o f the rule o f St Benedict, abandoned the Cluniae abbey o f Molesme in Burgundy and followed their Abbot Robert to found a new monastery. It is worth pausing for a while to examine briefly the career o f Abbot Robert before 1098.

Bénisson-Dieu, France. Early Cistercian nave, fifteenth-century roof

opposite

Caugé, France. Barn: a grange o f the Abbey o f La Noe

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T HE FO UND AT I ON IN T HE DESERT

Born around 1028 in Champagne, Robert joined the monastery o f Montier-la-Celle, near Troyes, very early in life, and at the age o f about twenty-six was already prior. The next we hear o f him, in 1068, he is abbot at the Cluniae abbey o f St Michel-le-Tonnere, a position presumably not congenial to him since we find him back in Montier in 1072, with the rank o f ordinary choir-monk. Some months later he is appointed Prior o f Saint-Ayoul in Provins, a dependency o f Montier-la-Celle, only to aban­ don this post after less than two years. By 1074 he has led a group o f his companions to the woods o f Collan to found a hermitage, and in 1075 moves on to some land given to him by Hugues o f Maligny to found the abbey o f Molesme. Despite the comparative lack o f reliable historical detail regarding Robert’s career and motivations to fill out this bare list o f dates, it is diffi­ cult not to get a picture o f a man o f intense feeling whose restlessness and dissatisfaction with the rhythm o f Cluniae life prevailing in his day com­ bine with an immense charisma over his fellow monks, the whole seasoned with more than a little confusion over the course o f action to pursue. Here we have a man living a life he feels to be too far removed from what St Benedict was talking about 600 years earlier, and determined to take steps to remedy the situation: the Cistercian ideal had been conceived. One could be forgiven for thinking that the Abbey o f Molesme was to-provide the perfect setting for this man o f piety to put his ideals into practice. His obvious sincerity and genuine desire for a return to the asceticism o f the early Benedictine experience attracted numerous postu­ lants to the Abbey. It soon earned itself such a reputation for spiritual efficacy that it became the object o f an abundance o f donations, becom­ ing increasingly wealthy and powerful, founding over forty priories, cells and hermitages and generally turning into a successful version o f the very Cluniae abbeys whose lifestyle it had set out to reject. While in 1082 the high spiritual tension o f Molesme had attracted such fervent idealists as St Bruno, who was inspired by Roberts love o f heremitic asceticism to found the Carthusian order after doing his novi­ tiate in the abbey, by 1090 the mass o f new recruits and the benefices and donations in money and property flooding in required organizational qualities, or ‘managerial’ talents as we would call them today, quite beyond the capabilities o f Robert and his original band o f hermits. Frustrated in his search for peace, simplicity and nearness to God, Roberts thirst for perfection got the better o f him and he moved to Aux,

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near Riel-les-Eaux, to found a new hermitage and start all over again. But Molesme without Robert had lost its most important attraction, and within a short time the monks had persuaded Robert to return. Molesme in the 1090S is the real birthplace o f the Cistercian ideal. After Roberts return, the abbey split into two camps: those who, with Robert, upheld the superiority o f the rule o f St Benedict over all else, and those, the majority, who insisted on the supremacy o f Cluniae usage. This incurred bitter discussion and argument. A number o f the original group o f hermits, utterly weary o f this state o f affairs, left Molesme in 1097 to found a hermitage high in the Alps o f Savoie, called St Jean d’Aulps. The charter o f Aulps mentions, among other things, that the monk s intention is to adhere strictly to the rule o f St Benedict, to the exclusion o f any other tenet or dictate. The monks left with the blessing o f Robert, and the charter was drawn up by his secre­ tary, one Stephen Harding from Sherborne in Dorset. It was in the autumn o f the same year that Roberts patience ran out. Shamed into action by the resolve o f his companions at Aulps, he gath­ ered his most faithful followers around him, including his secretary Stephen, and swept o ff to demand an audience o f Archbishop Hugues o f Lyon. To this most staunch supporter o f the reforming policies o f the current Pope, Gregory V II, he presented his case for founding a new monastery ÇNovum Monasterium ) in strict observance o f the rule o f St Benedict, openly accusing his own Molesme o f slothful negligence and lukewarm adherence to the Benedictine ideal. The Church at this time was feeling ebullient, thanks to Pope Gregorys recent triumph in the squabble over papal investiture. The Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV had been thoroughly humbled outside the walls o f Matilda o f Tuscanys castle o f Canossa, and perhaps there was a general feeling in church circles that the knife should be driven home while the wound was fresh. Any reform tending to uphold the spirituality o f the church and to be seen to do so could only add lustre to the triumphal reign o f Pope Gregory and give depth and substance to his recent victory. Strengthened in their resolve by the enthusiasm shown by Archbishop Hugues, Robert and his band o f twenty-one faithful followers took pos­ session, on 21 March 1098, o f a small parcel o f land some 20 kilometres south o f Dijon, given to them for the express purpose o f founding on it their Novum Monasterium. The nature o f the land was distinctly unwel­ coming, consisting o f dense forest interspersed with marshy bogland,

St Jean d ’Aulps, France. Abbey Church, ruins

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THE F O UND AT I ON IN T HE DESERT

and there is every reason to believe that this is just what Robert and his followers wanted. The place was called Cîteaux, or Cistercium in Latin. Many theories have been advanced as to the etymology o f the word Cîteaux, but the most likely is as always the most banal: it would seem that the site lay Vis tertium lapidem miliarium (just this side o f the third mile­ stone) on the old Roman road from Langres to Chalon-sur-Saône. The complete absence o f anything stirring about the name is in striking con­ trast with what was to become a hallmark o f Cistercian settlements. Contenting themselves with nothing short o f the most inhospitable, iso­ lated, overgrown and generally hostile wildernesses, their radiant faith in God s mercy and their own skills in husbandry, mixed with a dash o f pre­ sumption and bravado, have given us a litany o f names that reads like a poem: La Bénisson-Dieu, Belloc, Val-Benoîte, Bonaygue, Grace-Dieu, La Merci-Dieu, La Colombe, Palais Notre-Dame, Bon-Repos, Clairmont, Lieu-Dieu, Clairmarais, La Clarté-Dieu, Bonnefontaine, Clairefontaine, Beaulieu, Clairlieu and Clairvaux. The same is true outside France: Chiaravalle, Vaiserena, Acquaformosa, Bonaval, Valparaiso, Valbuena, Valdieu, M ariawald, M arienfeld, Ruhekloster, Baumgartenberg, Bonmont, Vallis Honesta, Zlata Koruna, Paradies, Vale Royal, Dieulacres, Strata Florida, Sweetheart, Mellifont, Belmont. The new community spent most o f the rest o f the year building them­ selves temporary lodgings, clearing the land and sowing essential crops; their spiritual needs were served by an old chapel existing in the vicinity. ‘ Ora et Labora (Pray and Work) had found its true home. N ot many months passed, however, before the monks o f Molesme, once more in difficulty without their figurehead, appealed to the Pope to have their abbot returned. The Pope deferred the case to Archbishop Hugues, who in turn deferred it to a synod o f local worthies and bishops. Abbot Geoffrey o f Molesme resigned to facilitate Robert s return, and Robert was ordered to resume the post. Provision was made for any other monk o f Cîteaux to return if he pleased, and a number o f them did so. It is sig­ nificant that the document ordering Robert back to Molesme specifically mentions the ‘habitual inconstancy’ we had noted in his earlier career, opening the way for Geoffrey to be reinstated as abbot should Robert wander o ff again. The clause proved an unnecessary precaution, and Robert ended his days peacefully in Molesme in m i; he was canonized in 1220, and it is only after 1222 that official Cistercian documents start to include his name at the beginning o f lists o f the Abbots o f Cîteaux.

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We are told by William o f Malmesbury, an English Benedictine monk writing within Roberts lifetime, that Robert returned ‘not unwillingly’ to Molesme; apparently the order which was to spring from the Novum Monasterium he had founded, and which had its roots in his ideals, took over one hundred years to forgive him for what it regarded as his betrayal o f the cause. I f we consider for a moment that Robert was into his 70s when Gtcaux was founded, and that the harsh conditions o f life there, before any permanent structure had been put up, must have been far more o f a burden for him and his contemporaries than for those brothers fired with the ardour o f youth, perhaps we can afford him a little more sympathy and understanding than the first Cistercian historians. His humanity may have weakened his resolve at the end, but it is thanks to his vision alone that the seeds were sown which were to change the face o f medieval monasticism. The flowering o f the Cistercian Order under the steady hand o f 'Stephen Harding and the fertile guidance o f Bernard o f Fontaines could only have taken root in the furrows ploughed by Robert o f Molesme. A large majority o f the original hermits returned to Molesme in Robert’s wake, leaving a mere handful to persevere with the ideal. This handful elected Robert’s deputy, Prior Alberic, to the abbacy, and it was he who, against all likelihood, strengthened and consolidated the spirit­ ual and material legacy o f Robert, encouraging new vocations, adhering strictly to the letter o f Benedict’s rule, and at the same time dealing with the physical business o f setting the abbey on its feet. Accepting realistically that the first piece o f land they had occupied was totally unsuitable for settling, and that no monastic foundation could be expected to survive on it, Alberic promptly moved to a site one kilo­ metre away. Just as unwelcoming and wild as their first piece o f land, this one was, however, served by a brook. This is one o f Alberic’s first recorded decisions, and it is entirely practical, without in any way diminishing the spiritual value o f the enterprise. Nothing could better sum up the differ­ ence between Robert and his successor. In the entire account o f Robert’s life, we are not told o f a single practical decision he made. Perhaps it was to the good fortune o f the Cistercian Order that, after enfusing the foun­ dation with his spiritual idealism, Robert decided to return to Molesme. Alberic set about consolidating the foundation in numerous ways. It was under him that the abbey’s independence was confirmed by the same papal privilege that put the new community under the protection o f the

$8

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Pope. He personally ensured the benevolence o f the Dukes o f Burgundy towards the new monastery, negotiating with Duke Odo the donation o f the orders first vineyard, Meursault, and with his son and successor Duke Hugh the supply o f stone to build the first abbey church. The abbey church was formally consecrated by the Bishop o f Chalonsur-Saône on 16 November 1106 and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In principal, all Cistercian abbey churches ever since that date have been dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It has been suggested recently that the Cistercians, alone o f medieval monastic orders, built their churches in harmony with ‘earth forces’, an ancient druidic teaching and one closely associated with the powers attributed to underground springs and streams, said to flow from the earth mother or mother goddess. I f this is so, then it is surely fitting that the abbey church, the true hub o f the monastic com­ plex, should be dedicated to the person who occupies the place o f that mother goddess in the Christian tradition. Alberic’s lasting contribution to the Cistercians, however, was un­ doubtedly his decision to abandon the traditional black garb o f the Benedictines and to clothe his small flock in a habit o f undyed wool. The rejection o f the wordly wealth associated with the Cluniacs inevitably brought with it the inability and unacceptability o f purchasing cloth ready woven and dyed black. At the same time a return to a balanced interpret­ ation o f Benedict’s injunction both to pray and to work meant that early Cistercian communities were self-supporting. Only thus could monks desiring to be cut o ff from the world fulfill their ambitions in a world largely dominated by monks and monasteries. They reared their own sheep and made their own clothes from undyed wool in a literal inter­ pretation o f Benedict’s recommendation to wear the ‘basest garment possible’. The resulting habit was at first a dirty grey colour; while it was soon bleached white, to represent purity, it was never dyed and to this day the white habit under a black scapular affords instant recognition o f the White Monks o f popular tradition. In January 1109, Alberic’s death set the stage for the election to the abbacy o f Stephen Harding, the man whose genius is responsible for the survival, and indeed for the very existence, o f the Cistercian movement in the form in which it left its mark on history. To paraphrase a well-known saying about another genius, Augustus, Stephen Harding ‘found Cîteaux just another reformed abbey and left it the head o f the first religious order in the true sense o f the word’. Nothing like it had ever been seen before.

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At the head o f a flourishing family o f daughter-houses, with a clearly defined manifesto and a full legal constitution, Cîteaux was to become a force for change, and a force to be reckoned with in a world where church and state, from Pope and emperor to bishop and baron, vied to outdo each other in accruing and displaying wealth and power. O f noble Anglo-Saxon birth, Stephen entered the Abbey o f Sher­ borne, in Dorset, when still a boy. The fate o f his family after the Battle o f Hastings in 1066 is unknown to us, but it might not be a coincidence that it was in the 1070s that Stephen undertook a pilgrimage to Rome. His original intention might have been to return to his monastery at Sherborne once he had completed the journey, but fate decreed otherwise when it led him along a path that passed by the gates o f Molesme. Here, in 1085, he found a haven o f spirituality and a safe refuge from a world that to him must have seemed especially troubled. fHis sharp mind and penetrating intellect soon brought him to the attention o f Abbot Robert, and within a short time he had become a con­ vinced disciple o f the man and his ideals. In his travels he cannot have failed to come into contact with the reforms o f Giovanni Gualberto and St Romuald in Italy, and the increasingly obvious difficulties encountered by Robert at Molesme must have appeared to him as a challenge to put his experience and organizational skills to good use in helping the saintly abbot achieve his purpose. By 1109, Stephen was one o f the veterans o f the group at Cîteaux and probably the one closest in sensibility to Robert s original aims, so it is not unnatural that he was unanimously agreed upon to be the perfect choice for abbot. Essentially likable, kind-natured and possessed o f great charm, Stephens greatest legacy to the Cistercians is the constitutional framework he gave to the order, known as the Carta Caritatis, the charter o f charity. Oddly, for a document whose impact was so profound and whose fame has echoed down the ages, we have no idea exactly what the original text looked like. The version that has come down to us, and which is believed to contain modifications compared to the original text, can­ not be earlier than the second half o f the twelfth century, and Stephen died in 1134. However, reference is made repeatedly to the existence o f the document throughout the first flowering o f daughter-houses which occurred under Stephen from 1112 until his death. So although we have to guess at the text, we can be reasonably certain that it was written within the first ei ght een months o f Stephens abbacy and its formulation

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T H E F O U N D A T I O N IN T HE DESERT

in his mind probably goes back to his days in Molesme. It had been proved time and again that for a return to the spirit and the letter o f St Benedicts rule to work, good intentions were simply not enough. Stephen himself had been an eye-witness to the very limited success and at times the complete failure o f such attempts, and was now personally involved in the front line. His clear and rational vision made it obvious to him that if any such attempt were to be lastingly successful, then some sort o f guideline and a set o f regulations to govern it were going to have to be laid down. And that is exactly what he did. The six little pages o f flowing Latin prose that make up the Carta Caritatis are in effect the constitution o f an articulated religious order, regulating the relationship within that order between the various houses comprising it and rooting that relationship in charity. Very little that is new in the document actually concerns the lifestyle o f each monk to be observed within the individual monasteries, but then o f course Benedicts rule was very specific on that already. A number o f modifications were envisaged to bring certain aspects o f the rule into line with the spirit o f charity, or humanity, on which the edifice o f Citeaux was built. For instance, the practice o f accepting child novices forced into the cloister against their will by overburdened, ambitious or uncaring relations was abolished. O f course, the fact that the monks may have found young chil­ dren in the cloister a distraction may also play a part in this decision. But the fundamental principle which informs the Carta Caritatis throughout is that the rule o f St Benedict is to be observed rigorously, strictly and as literally as possible. The very reason for the existence o f Citeaux lies in keeping faith with this tenet. W hat is revolutionary about the document is the structure imposed on the series o f abbeys which were soon to make up the Cistercian family. Modern research has shown that this part, at least formally, is the prod­ uct o f a later hand. But it was a significant part o f Stephens vision that only mutual love and esteem, combined with a benevolent eye to human frailty and gentle correction to guide wanderers back to the true path, could ensure the survival o f the ideal. From now on, as the name o f the document implies, charity rather than the exercise o f power was to be the guiding principle behind the organization o f the monastic family, both within each establishment and as a group. The Carta Caritatis instituted the system o f visitation o f daughter-houses by the mother-house on a regular basis, and provided for the holding o f

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an Annual General Chapter to take place at Cîteaux every year, at which all the abbots were required to be present. It was the first time that a monastic family had been given a family-tree. The abbot o f a motherhouse could call to order or even depose, for any transgression o f the rule, the abbot o f any o f his abbey s daughter-houses, while he himself could in turn be dismissed by the abbot o f his own mother-house. Even the Abbot o f Cîteaux itself had to answer to the abbots o f the first four foundations. As is to be expected from a product o f the twelfth century, this system shares many elements with the feudal structure, such as the obligation to keep faith with ones overlord and the overlords duty to dispense justice in his turn to his vassals. However, under the feudal system no one could depose the king, hence the pyramid is perfect and inherently stable, regardless o f the downward behaviour o f its component members. At Cîteaux the very fact that everyone was keeping an eye on everyone else meant that no one could afford to stray from the prescribed path, since all abbots were merely caretakers. In theory the individual power o f the great feudal abbots had been broken, to be replaced by that o f the Order. The figure o f the all-powerful feudal abbot o f medieval tradition is exemplified by the abbots o f Cluny, who in effect governed a virtual empire. It is thus no surprise to learn from William o f Malmesbury that Stephen devoted much o f his time to upholding the Cistercian reform against attacks by the Cluniacs. Robert o f Molesme had already had to sustain such attacks several years earlier and had had to take a defensive stance, maintaining that he and his band were planning nothing more sub­ versive than a return to a literal interpretation o f the rule o f St Benedict. Stephen, however, was altogether more virulent in his tactics, unabashedly attacking Cluniae customs and propounding the superiority o f the Cis­ tercian life style which could trace its ancestry more directly to the noble lineage o f St Benedict. It is here that we find the spirit, if not the letter, o f the Carta Caritatis at work in Stephens activity, and thus we can claim with some confidence that the whole Cistercian adventure began as a re­ action to Cluny, and that this reaction was crystallized into institutional form under Stephen Harding. This is an important point to make, since it is often maintained that it was Bernard o f Fontaines who initiated the attack on Cluny and its excesses in his famous ‘Apologia’ o f 1124. While it cannot be denied that the discussion grew in scope and power after this date, it is essential to realize

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that Bernard, thanks in no small measure to his outstanding command both o f Latin prose and o f rhetoric, simply championed a cause that had first taken root some forty years earlier. The climax o f the conflict came towards the middle o f the century and must have held the sweet taste o f tfïumph for the Cistercians. At the height o f his powers, Abbot Peter the Venerable o f Cluny, whose qualities we have already extolled, not only praised the virtues o f Cistercian reform (although he pointedly omitted humility from the list) but actually tried to introduce a few elements o f that reform into Cluniae life. Stephen Harding is also responsible for introducing an element into Cistercian life which was to become a distinguishing feature o f the order. It was during Stephens abbacy that the first ‘granges’ were acquired to provide the abbey with the means to remain self-supporting. One o f Stephen’s first acquisitions was the area known as the ‘Clos Vougeot’. A ‘grange’ was in essence a farm situated some distance away from the abbey itself, requiring that a separate cell be set up to manage the estate. Granges were generally up to a day’s walking distance from the abbey precinct, thus occasionally requiring its sta ff to remain absent from the monastery overnight. T h is o f course was hardly compatible with the rule o f St Benedict. Indeed there are grounds for thinking that when Benedict spoke o f ‘labor’, what he had in mind was not so much heavy manual labour on the farm as sweeping, cleaning, washing-up, cooking and doing other odd jobs or practising light handicrafts around the cloister. To solve this dilemma in a manner both consonant with spiritual requirements and o f immense practicality (a combination typical o f Stephen Harding), the Cistercians institutionalized a practice that had existed casually in a number o f Benedictine monasteries for some time.

opposite

above

Great Coxwell, England. Barn: the slit window on the first-

floor porch o f this grange barn, belonging to the A bbey o f Beaulieu, corresponds on the inside to the brother grangiarius’ simple living quarters. T h e word grange, for the Cistercians, applied to the whole farm rather than just the barn, as was the case with other orders. T h e thirteenth-century barn is still in use opposite

below

Volleron, France. Barn: although the thunder o f jet aircraft

landing at nearby Charles-de-Gaulle airport has long since put paid to the tran­ quillity o f this Cistercian grange, belonging to the Abbey o f Chaalis, the barn at Volleron still fulfills its original function. T h e wide door on the left was in­ serted 200 years ago to accommodate large wheeled vehicles; the tower on the right contains a spiral stair leading to the brother grangiarius’ living quarters

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They gave formal dignity to the figure o f the ‘conversus or lay brother. Lay brothers were normally o f less exalted stock than the full choir monks, could neither read nor write, and only took partial vows. They were in effect the agricultural labourers o f the monastery and grange, usually far outnumbering the actual choir monks, and the whole west wing o f the monastery was given over to them. They acted as a buffer between the monks and the world, acting for them in business and making it un­ necessary for them to leave the monastery. The popularity o f such an institution with the peasant classes all over Europe is easily understandable in an age when no one was sure where the next meal would come from. Employment as a lay brother meant a guar­ antee o f a roof over ones head, a dry if somewhat uncomfortable bed, and two meals a day. In exchange for such otherwise unattainable security, all that was required o f the lay brother was to work probably no harder than would have been necessary on his own or his feudal lord s land, to attend church services perhaps a little more frequently, which can hardly have been much o f a sacrifice in an age where belief in God was seldom ques­ tioned, and to forgo the company o f women, which was possibly a little more taxing. Surely a small price to pay, however, in return for what was offered? The institution o f the lay brothers reached its apogee in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, a time o f rising population and labour glut. It became the cardinal point on which the future success o f Cistercian abbeys rested, and indeed the true decline o f the order set in after the Black Death o f 1348 had deprived the whole o f Europe o f the major part o f its labour force. People often express surprise when they learn that the sweeping view up the aisle o f a Cistercian abbey church as we see it today would have been impossible during the heyday o f the order due to the presence ot a rood screen or jubé, more often than not a stone wall dividing the church into two quite rigidly distinct sectors, the east end near the high altar and the crossing for the choir monks, and the west end for the lay brothers. This surprise, which owes much to current notions o f equality, would have been beyond the understanding o f an inhabitant o f twelfth-century Christendom where few questioned the position they occupied in the social pecking order. To them it was obvious that God had placed them

Chiaravalle di Fiastra, Italy. Lay brothers’ refectory: the floor tilts imperceptibly inwards so that water used to wash it can flow through draining holes in the flagstones in the central channel which are laid directly over a stream

opposite

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in their given station in society, and living in accordance with G o d s will, rather than emancipation, was the most important aspiration o f twelfthcentury man. The Novum Monasterium, just like Molesme a quarter o f a century before, quickly attracted numerous novices inspired by its reputation for moral rectitude and religious fervour. Within three years o f Stephen being elected abbot, sufficient recruits had arrived at Cîteaux for him to send out a party o f twelve monks and their designated abbot to found the first daughter-house. So a group o f monks (reflecting in number the apostles o f Jesus Christ) set out to build another temple to the rule o f St Benedict in a marshy wilderness in the south o f the diocese o f Chalon-sur-Saône, at a place called La Ferté-sur-Grosne. Cistercian tradition has it that La Ferté was founded in M ay 1113. In that same year a young nobleman o f the region called Bernard o f Fontaines, along with thirty companions including four o f his brothers, numerous cousins, uncles and other relations, came knocking on the gate o f Cîteaux, asking to be admitted as novices. The future o f the order was assured. As we shall see in the next chapter, this man, better known to history as St Bernard o f Clairvaux, placed the Cistercian order singlehandedly in the forefront o f European affairs. A certain hagiographie tradition has grown up around the figure o f St Bernard which claims that the monastery at Cîteaux was all but moribund and would soon have sunk into insignificance had it not been for the arrival o f Bernard in time to save it. His powers o f resurrection are often portrayed as little short o f miraculous. To bolster this picture, his biographers, from the Middle Ages to today, have even gone so far as to falsify the date o f his entry to Cîteaux, placing it in 1112 to make the foun­ dation o f the first daughter-house at La Ferté appear to have been made possible only by his arrival. This, as we have seen, is untrue and ungener­ ous to Bernard s predecessors. W hat cannot be disputed, however, is that Bernard’s arrival did give tremendous impulse to the expansion o f the order. La Ferté was followed in 1114 by Pontigny, Bernard himself founded Clairvaux in 1115, and Morimond was founded in the same year. By 1119 Preuilly, La Cour-Dieu, Bouras, Cadouin and Fontenay had all been added to the family. By the time Stephen Harding died in 1134, seventy abbots attended the Annual General Chapter. In 700 years o f monasticism in Europe, nothing quite like this had ever been seen before. opposite

above

Badia a Settim o, Italy. Lay brothers’ refectory

opposite

below

Tintern, Wales. N ave, west end: remains o f wall originally

dividing lay brothers’ nave from aisles are clearly visible

2. Bernard o f Fontaines

was born in 1090 in his fathers castle o f Fontaines, a small village in Burgundy not far from Dijon. Third child o f a family o f the minor nobility, vassals o f the Dukes o f Burgundy, from and for whom they held the castles o f Fontaines and Châtillon, Bernard received his early education at home. FIis mother Aleth, a woman renowned for her piety in the neighbour­ hood, personally taught him to write and to read from the psalter — as the third son, his father Tescelin had already marked him out for an eccle­ siastical career. It was expected, given the excellent family connections with which Bernard was blessed, that he would rise high in the service o f Holy Mother Church. One cannot help but muse that while Bernard did indeed rise to the greatest heights, it was possibly not quite in the way his father had originally intended. At the age o f seven, on Christmas Eve 1097, Bernard is said to have had a dream in which the Virgin appeared to him holding the Christ Child in her arms as though He had been born again under Bernard s very eyes. This vision marked the young and obviously impressionable boy deeply, and it was soon after that his parents decided to send him to the school run by the Canons o f St Vorles in Châtillon. Initially a timid if very talented pupil, after a year we are told that he had already emerged as something o f a leader among his fellow scholars, admired for his silent strength. He excelled in the study o f both sacred and classical texts. It appears that, o f the church fathers, St Augustine made a particular impression on him, while Ovid was his favourite among the classical authors. His studies also embraced texts as diverse as the Bible and Boethius, and great emphasis was laid on the study o f grammar, rhetoric and dialectic. It is unlikely that the study o f the last o f these three subjects found much favour with Bernard, in the light o f his later differences with Peter Abelard, but it was in these formative years that the kernel o f Bernard s mysticism swelled and began to ripen.

B

ernard

of

fontaines

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To Bernard, knowledge in itself was not a force for evil, as it had been for Peter Damian, the hermit o f Fonte Avellana. It became evil when it was divorced from faith. Inspired by his reading o f St Augustine, who held that knowledge should be harnessed to faith rather than pursued for its own sake, Bernard was later to write: ‘Thus (with Peter Abelard) the human intellect usurps everything to itself, leaving nothing to faith; it wants to go too high in enquiries which go beyond its power. When rea­ son ruled faith, as it did with Abelard, then Bernard condemned it. ‘W hat do the Apostles teach us? N ot to read Plato, nor to turn and return to the subtleties o f Aristotle, not always to learn in order never to reach knowl­ edge o f truth; they have taught me to live. Do you believe it is a little thing to know how to live? It is a great thing and indeed the greatest.’ In an age such as our own, accustomed to acknowledging without question the supremacy o f scientific enquiry, this statement may raise a few smiles; we should not, however, so easily discount Bernard’s arguably sometimes selfrighteous defence o f humility against the self-confident assertions o f Peter Abelard on the superiority o f dialectic. It was this search for humility and the recognition o f his own wretchedness in the eyes o f God that kindled in him the ability to feel compassion for the misery o f others. This aware­ ness was to lead him straight down the path to Citeaux, the monastery whose whole manifesto centered on charity. When Bernard reached his sixteenth birthday, it was decided that his formal education was complete and that he should return to take an active part in the running o f his father’s estates. Just a few days after his return to Fontaines, with the household in a festive mood to celebrate the feast o f St Ambrosinianus on i September, the family’s joy was suddenly and tragically cut short by the death o f Lady Aleth. Bernard was shattered. He had been much closer to his mother than was usual in those days, and this sudden loss, just when he had been looking forward to spending much more time in her company, marked him deeply. His later devotion to the Blessed Virgin has often been seen as a projection o f the adoration he had for his mother, and in years to come he admitted that whatever he had accomplished he owed to his determination to fulfill his mother’s desires. Lady Aleth’s death represented a turning point in Bernard’s life. Unsure how to pursue his mystical ideal, he was subjected to the contrasting advice o f his father and his many brothers. His father suggested that he go to study in Germany, after which he could return to serve at the court o f the Dukes o f Burgundy in Dijon, as a first stepping-stone in his

Sénanque, France. South transept. It was not long before the bare interiors o f many abbey churches began to get cluttered with the tombs o f benefactors, who insisted on being buried as close to the high altar as possible. T h e tomb in the picture is that o f the Seigneur de Yenasque, mid-thirteenth century

opposite

Le Thoronet, south-transept chapels from south aisle

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ecclesiastical career. His brothers, impatient with his dithering, sum­ moned him to their aid in helping the Duke o f Burgundy besiege Grancey. Bernard felt sure that neither o f these paths was the right one for him, but for lack o f a better occupation he took himself o ff to Grancey to join his brothers. On the way, his mother appeared to him in a dream and re­ proached him for not showing enough strength o f character. He replied that her death had caused him such a grievous sense o f loss that he felt in­ capable o f making any decision. H is mother advised him to go into a chapel nearby and pray, and it was in that chapel that a light parted the clouds in his mind and he knew that his path would lead to the gates o f Cîteaux. Cîteaux at the time had already acquired a reputation for honesty and rigour in the region, but was considered for the most part a fringe ex­ perience and not one that would allow any o f its adherents to climb the ladder o f a rewarding ecclesiastical career. When Bernard reached Grancey, he only admitted his plans to his uncle Gaudry; afraid o f his brothers’ scorn, he lied to them that he was unable to take part in the siege since he had made up his mind to go on pil­ grimage to Jerusalem. This sounded fairly plausible, given his known re­ ligious bent, and the recapture o f the H oly City from the Saracens at the end o f the first crusade in 1099 was still fresh in everyone’s memory. This, his only recorded lie, is based on a dream he entertained for the whole o f his life and never realized. In view o f the fervour with which Bernard was to preach the second crusade some thirty-five years later, it is likely that this tale did contain a kernel o f truth, and that he would very much have liked to go to Jerusalem. Yet despite extensive travelling throughout Christendom and the fact that, during his lifetime, the Latin Kingdom o f Jerusalem was at its safest and most easily accessible from the West, Bernard never went to the Holy Land. His close involvement with the Knights Templar is further proof o f his passion for the crusading ideal, and modern research has suggested that the plan o f every Cistercian monastery is an attempt to reproduce the Celestial Jerusalem, Augustine’s City o f God, on earth. However that may be, Bernard never saw the earthly Jerusalem. H is uncle Gaudry, inspired by the fervour with which Bernard revealed to him his true plans, was unable to keep the secret for long and soon an­ nounced his intention o f joining Bernard in his decision to enter the novi­ tiate at Cîteaux. His true purpose revealed, Bernard quickly displayed his natural qualities as a leader and set about convincing his brothers to adhere

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to the enterprise too. By the time the family had arrived back in Châtillon, Bartholomew, Guy, Andrew and Gerard who, though wounded and taken prisoner during the siege and miraculously escaped, had all decided to take up with their brother. It was thus that a band o f thirty aspiring novices, all friends and relations who had fallen under Bernard’s charis­ matic spell, arrived in the spring o f 1113 at the gates o f Cîteaux, asking to be received into the monastery, to pursue their search for God in the fellowship o f the austere White Monks o f Abbot Stephen. At Cîteaux, Bernard was finally in his element. W hile he felt more keenly than most the physical deprivations caused by the severity o f the rule o f Cîteaux, to the extent that he fell ill early on and never really recovered to the end o f his life, his spiritual talents blossomed. Always willing to learn in humility from Abbot Stephen and his fellow monks, Bernard soon be­ came one o f the most eloquent interpreters and defenders o f the message o f Cîteaux. Stephen Harding was not slow to recognize Bernards excep­ tional qualities. When he received a request from Count Hugh o f Cham­ pagne in i i 15 to found a monastery on his lands, he chose the twentyfive-year-old Bernard to lead the party o f monks he was proposing to send to comply with Count Hugh’s invitation, and to become abbot o f the new foundation. The land Count Hugh offered was, not surprisingly, a for­ bidding piece o f marshy bog in the midst o f a barren wilderness. Bernard decided that it would be called Clairvaux, the clear valley, where, with G od’s help, the monks would make a second paradise out o f land that no normal person would even have attempted to cultivate. Bernard was to remain Abbot o f Clairvaux for the rest o f his life. He had found his roost. And yet in the thirty-seven years o f life left to him, he spent more time away from his monastery than in it. He was looking for, and had found, total seclusion from the world, a desert like that o f the early Christian hermits in which to pursue his ideal o f oneness with God in the exclusive company and charitable fellowship o f like-minded souls. After two years, even his father and his youngest brother joined him at Clairvaux. And yet almost despite himself he couldn’t keep himself from playing an active and indeed dominating role in the affairs o f his time. It is little wonder he defined himself as the chimera o f his century. His reputation for sanctity soon spread throughout France, and within three years o f Clairvaux being established, there were sufficient inmates to permit the foundation o f its first daughter-house, Trois-Fontaines in Champagne, not far from the town o f Vitry-le-François. His writings

N oirlac, France. M o st abbeys in the early days would have resembled an anony­ mous (but prosperous) collection o f farm buildings

opposite

N oirlac, France. South aisle, looking west

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attracted the attention o f the great all over Christendom in an age which, in the words o f Lekai, ‘was desperately in search o f an able and compe­ tent authority'. In the H oly Roman Empire, the death o f Emperor Henry V without a clear heir, in 1125, had left the land in the turmoil that was to engender the feuds o f the Guelph and Ghibelline factions. In England a similar situation had developed with the death o f Henry I Beauclerc, the last son o f the Conqueror. His daughter Empress Matilda, widow o f Emperor Henry V, had been challenged in her claim to the succession by her cousin Count Stephen o f Blois, giving rise to a civil war that was to last fifteen years. In France, King Louis V I, the Fat, had left a weak-willed and inex­ perienced young boy to follow him, having made sure before he died that the boy married the wealthiest heiress in Christendom. W hat the king had been unable to do was to judge the wife he was thrusting on his son, known to history as Louis the Monk, in any other way than on hearsay. The Lady Eleanor o f Aquitaine, whom Bernard was to get to know very well during the course o f his career, was quite the most extraordinary woman o f her century, and far too strong for poor young Louis V II. History knows her as the wife o f two kings and the mother o f another two kings and two queens. Bernard was to find this tempestuous lady more than a little disconcerting. In Italy the prosperous cities o f the north were taking full advantage o f the chaos to assert their independence. Emperor Frederick Barbarossas sack o f Milan is the most eloquent testimony o f the sort o f retribution they attracted. In Rome rival factions managed to elect two rival popes on the same day that Pope Honorius II died in 1130. It could be said, and indeed it was said, that God had turned his face away from the world. The nobility, both lay and ecclesiatical, o f France held a council at Etampes to decide which pope it served their best interests to support, and Bernard was called in to advise. In the end it was his eloquence in favour o f Innocent II and his condemnation o f the violence o f Anacletus II that carried the day for the former. Having persuaded the French o f the sanctity and righteousness o f Innocent’s claims, Bernard now felt he had to see his task through. He persuaded King Henry I o f England, when the latter monarch was visiting his domains in Normandy, to lend his sup­ port to Innocent’s cause, and spent the better part o f the next eight years convincing every one else in Europe who mattered to put their weight behind the man he regarded as G od’s elected. His fiery letters, draughted

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in a consciously elegant and beautiful Latin prose, sped to and fro between the chanceries o f half Christendom. Between 1130 and 1131 he personally accompanied Innocent on a campaign which took him to the four corners o f modern France putting his talents o f persuasion at the service o f the papal cause. In 1132 he travelled south to uphold the cause before the assembled mag­ nates o f the Midi. The next year he was doing the same in Genoa, then in Pisa, and finally he accompanied Innocent to Rome. In 1135 he took part in the Diet o f Bamberg, and in the same year he was again in Pisa for the great Council meeting, after which he toured the Po valley from Milan to the coast, preaching in favour o f Pope Innocent. Finally, in 1137, he was called to Rome by the college o f cardinals to assist in arbitration, and in 1138 the schism came to an end, with the deposition o f Anacletus and the victory o f Innocent II. In view o f the travelling conditions o f the day, we cannot but admire Bernard s boundless energy in favour o f a cause he championed with passion, but what is most to his credit is that, wherever he went, he actually succeeded in bringing all his audience round to his way o f thinking. So persuasive an orator was he that it is said ‘mothers locked their sons away and wives their husbands’ when he was in the vicinity preaching to attract postulants. Bernards charisma was such that throughout his travels, ostensibly given over to the promotion o f Innocent IPs cause, he won over recruits to his monastic ideal, both among aspiring novices or existing monastic com­ munities and among the landed gentry. Wherever he went he not only fired men with the enthusiasm to join the order o f Cîteaux but was con­ tinually offered land on which to build new monasteries. The fact that the Cistercians purposely sought out land that was otherwise unprofitable may have influenced the generosity o f many benefactors, such as the Lord o f Marigny who donated an especially inhospitable piece o f land he owned in the valley o f the Arvault in Burgundy for the purpose o f founding the abbey o f La Bussière, which even today is particularly difficult to get to. The act o f donation states that Marigny s gift was made to ensure the sal­ vation o f his soul. It cannot have been purely incidental that by the same act he turned some useless land in one fell swoop into a highly profitable agricultural estate. Within his own lifetime, Bernard personally founded and sponsored the foundation o f or reformed some sixty-five abbeys in Europe. During the eight years in which he travelled through France and Italy on Innocent

W ettingen, Switzerland. Stained-glass window in the cloister arcade tracery: St Bernard at the feet o f the M adonna and Child

T iglieto, Italy. T h e sorry state o f the chapter house in the first abbey founded outside France. Since the photo was taken, the bas-relief has been stolen

6o

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Us behalf, Clairvaux became the mother o f Chiaravalle di Milano, Chiaravalle della Colomba, Le Tre Fontane, Fossanova and Sant’Andrea di Sestri in Italy, Bonmont in Switzerland, Eberbach and Himmerod in Germany, Rievaulx and Fountains in England, Les Dunes in Flanders, Moreruela in Spain, and in his native France, o f Vaucelles, Vauclair, GraceDieu, Noirlac, La Bénisson-Dieu and Clairmarais. Meanwhile, the other daughters o f Cîteaux were not idle. Pontigny had founded Bourras, Fontainejean, Jouy, St Sulpice and Quincy during the same period, and the old-established abbey o f Cadouin had voluntarily placed itself under the Cistercian wing. Morimond had been particularly fertile in Alsace, Franche-Comté and the territory o f the H oly Roman Empire, founding Bellevaux and La Crête by 1121 and Camp and Ebrach within the same decade. Heiligenkreuz near Vienna followed soon after. While Cîteaux itself counted relatively few direct daughter-houses after it had founded the first four, it became the recipient o f an extraordinary transfer in 1147 when the entire recently-founded order o f Savigny made itself over to the mother-house o f the Cistercians. This order included twenty-nine fully-fledged abbeys, among which Buildwas, Byland and Furness are the best known in England, and Savigny, Les Vaux-de-Cernay, Aulnay and La Trappe in France. One o f the smallest o f the shoots o ff the monastic family tree belongs to La Ferté, Cîteaux’s first daughterhouse, and yet it is to this abbey that is ascribed the first foundation out­ side the boundaries o f modern France. As early as 1120 a stalwart group o f twelve monks with their designated abbot and accompanying group o f lay-brothers set o ff across the Alps to found Santa Maria di Tiglieto in the diocese o f Genoa in Northern Italy. A large proportion o f the monks that peopled all these new foundations came from the intelligentsia o f twelfth-century society. In the early years at Clairvaux, students and teachers from the famous school o f Châlons flocked to the abbey to listen to Bernard’s sermons, and later, when he travelled to Rheims, Liège and Paris, the same phenomenon repeated it­ self. It was in Paris that he first came into conflict with that other great master o f theology and rhetoric, Peter Abelard. Bernard was a mystic, Abelard a rationalist, there was no common ground between them. Abelard took an almost sensual delight in his own powers o f reasoning, in the brilliance o f his intellectual abilities, in his capacity to be a thorn in the side o f the establishment, and even in his success with women. He ‘feared no repulse from whatever woman he might deign to honour with

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6I

his love’. He also found great enjoyment in drawing away others’ students, and in the end it was his capacity to irritate and antagonize his peers and his superiors that proved his downfall. Unsparing o f his adversaries, he could expect no quarter. Abelard was the dominant intellectual figure o f his day, but he could not resist the temptation to be controversial. In his arrogance, he was always right and, while it is thanks to him that Paris University became the foremost centre o f theology and dialectic o f the Middle Ages, his voice was out o f place in a world thirsty for the un­ questioning spiritual certainties o f St Bernard. When Abelard finally came to grief at the Council o f Sens in 1140, it was Bernard and his fellow Cistercian William o f St Thierry who were among the most vehement in demanding his condemnation. It has become quite fashionable to portray Abelard as the sensitive, almost modern free-thinker, sacrificed like a lamb on the altar o f St Bernard’s intransigent and often obtuse defense o f orthodoxy, but what is often overlooked is the reconciliation which took place between the two at Cluny just prior to Abelard’s death, under the aegis of Abbot Peter the Venerable. However misguided, Bernard’s intention in opposing Abelard had been that Abelard should see the error o f his ways. Bernard would never have countenanced, and certainly did not approve of, the appalling punishment meted out to Peter Abelard for his affair with Héloïse. Whatever he may have felt about Abelard’s errors, both theological and human, he was always moved in his relations with the man by the ideal o f charity. He sincerely believed that Abelard was wrong and, given his charisma, a danger to the Church at a time when the Church needed bolstering. On a personal level he had no objections. Two works composed by Bernard in his mature years give us an insight into the sort o f man he was and the ideals which moved him. At the age o f thirty-eight he wrote the rule for the Knights Templar and at fortyfive he began his sermons on King Solomon’s Song o f Songs. It is clear from the very different nature o f these two documents that Bernard was unaware o f any natural incompatibility between fervent admiration o f the hardy and ruthless Knights Templar and impassioned devotion to the beautiful and delicate biblical poem. Bernard’s good faith is never in doubt, however, and the link between two such seemingly irreconcilable facets o f the Christian experience may after all not be so hard to discern. Bernard shared with Solomon that quality common to all mystics that uses a sensual vocabulary to describe spiritual union with the deity. While

Quincy, France. The chapter house is now a cowshed

San Giusto, Italy. Crypt. Crypts are generally absent from Cistercian churches, but where the order took over existing abbeys from the Benedictines or others it rarely implemented major architectural changes. T h is crypt was prob­ ably built in the eighth to ninth century using recycled classical columns opposite

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the life o f a hermit was ideally devoted to accomplishing this union, the concept was not absent from the sort o f monastery that Bernard was busy setting up, a reflection on earth o f the celestial Jerusalem. Bernards mani­ festo for redemption which eventually filled Christendom with hundreds o f small earthly Jerusalems could hardly wash its hands o f the defense o f the real thing. It is interesting, in this regard, that the Knights Templar took their name from and made their headquarters in the Temple built by the author o f the Song o f Songs. In the same year that Bernard was laying the foundation stone o f his abbey’s first daughter-house, there came to fruition a project which had been evolving for some years in the heads o f a handful o f knights in the capital o f the newly conquered Latin Kingdom o f Jerusalem. This group o f veteran Frankish warriors, under the leadership o f Hugh de Payens, and counting Bernard’s uncle André de Montbard in their number, approached King Baldwin II with a proposition. It was their intention to form a military religious order. Nothing o f the sort had ever been heard o f before, and indeed to many seemed a contradiction in terms. The word ‘crusader’ was completely unknown to those who took part in the con­ quest o f Jerusalem in 1099, and even the concept o f ‘soldiers o f Christ’ was alien to them. They were, and defined themselves as, simply pilgrims. They were armed for the good reason that the aim o f their pilgrimage was to recapture the holy places from an armed foe, the infidel Saracens. While many o f those, especially among the nobility, who joined the first crusade were motivated by faith and greed to the same degree, no one had apparently thought much beyond the recapture o f Jerusalem or con­ sidered the need to defend the H oly Land on a permanent basis once the object o f the pilgrimage had been achieved. King Baldwin o f Jerusalem immediately grasped the implications behind the offer o f this wellintentioned band o f soldiers and lodged them in a wing o f his palace, the mosque o f Al-Aqsa on the Temple Mount. Ostensibly, the task these knights set themselves was to serve as armed convoys for pilgrims on their travels within the Holy Land, which was still, though conquered, a pre­ dominantly moslem-populated and thus potentially hostile country. Their phenomenal growth as an Order (paralleled only by that o f the Cistercians), their immense wealth in later years and their obvious ex­ pansion beyond their initial purpose coupled with their heroic end have encouraged much speculation as to the real nature o f the Knights Templar. We will probably never know the whole truth about this enigmatic

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brotherhood, but certainly St Bernards imagination was fired by their zeal. In 1128, at the Council o f Troyes organized by Count Hugh o f Champagne, the first patron o f the Abbey o f Clairvaux and a member o f the Templars, Bernard was called upon and enthusiastically agreed to draw up a rule for the new order. Over and above the monastic vows o f poverty, chastity and obedience, and the practice o f fasting and abstinence, it was enjoined upon the brethren to attend Mass three times a week. Each knight was further required to swear to dedicate his life to the defence, with all his strength, o f ' our belief in the unity o f the Godhead and the mystery o f our faith’. In practical terms he promised to cross the sea as often as necessary and in total obedience to the Grand Master o f the Order to aid and bring suc­ cour to kings and princes engaged in the holy struggle against the infidel. He was forbidden to retreat or surrender even if the odds be three to one against him. He had to be at least the son o f a knight, legitimate, free o f all debt and a bachelor or a widower. The proviso that was to have the most lasting and widespread effect was undoubtedly that which specified that no postulant could be under twenty-one years o f age. This gradually came to be accepted as the age o f majority by society as a whole, and was to remain so for almost 800 years. That Bernard felt the Templars to be the fighting arm o f his own Cistercian order, or at least to be inspired by exactly the same ideal o f poverty and other-worldliness, is indicated by his letter to Hugh on learn­ ing that he had renounced his title o f count in favour o f his nephew Thibaut, and had embraced the ideals o f the Temple. He writes: ‘I f for G od’s cause you have turned from count to knight and from rich to poor, we congratulate you on your advancement. For this is the work o f G od’s right hand’. In a pamphlet entitled De Laude Novœ Militiœ (On the Praise o f the N ew Knighthood), Bernard condemns what he calls the effemi­ nacy o f current knightly practice, denouncing those knights who bedeck their horses with silk, stud their bridles with gold and precious stones, grow their hair long and wear long floating silken tunics which hamper their vision and impair their freedom o f movement. How much worthier, he claims, are the ‘Knights o f God, with their discipline and unqualified obedience. Each one wears the dress given to him, none goes in search o f fine food or garments according to his whim. The Templar is content with what is most necessary, shunning anything superfluous. Impudent words, senseless occupations and immoderate laughter are unknown to him. He despises mimes and jugglers, dirty songs and the performance o f

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Badia a Settimo, Italy. Lay brothers’ refectory: capital portraying abbey benefactor opposite

Alcobaça, Portugal. Nave, based on Clairvaux

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buffoons, all these are vanity and inane folly. He cuts his hair short, bathes rarely and is dirty and hirsute, tanned by his hauberk and by the sun. In these vibrant words o f praise, it is not difficult to hear the echo o f Bernard s condemnation o f Cluniae excesses in the cloister. The life style he envisages for the Templars reflects the austerity o f his own order, save in regard to their diet. As fighters, they needed meat and were permitted to drink wine, at the discretion o f the master, with their evening meal. Bernard s insistence in this tract on avoiding the superfluous immedi­ ately strikes a note o f recognition in the modern reader familiar with Cistercian architecture, and it is ironic that the treatise should have been composed in the ornate Latin prose which was his most effective tool. For Bernard, the beauty o f compositio was alone worthy o f the grave and perfect harmony which is the image and reflection o f God. O f all the writings o f St Bernard, his skill in the art o f Latin composition is shown to best advantage in his sermons on the Song o f Songs, the spiritual testimony o f love seeking nuptial union with the Deity. This sublime text combines at once the thousand-year-old tradition o f Christianity (and indeed Bernard has been called the last o f the Church Fathers) with the first germs o f a modern, psychological approach to religion. A cardinal work in the development o f Christian thought, the sermons, in jthe words o f Father Bouyer, ‘plunge to the source o f the Scriptures, like the ancient Fathers, in a way that was not to be seen again. Like the Fathers, Bernard sees Christianity with a single sweeping glance, and monasticism is an integral part o f that Christianity’. But, like all great creators who influence their century to the point where it seems they em­ body it, it is what Bernard concedes spontaneously to the spirit o f his time which enables him to play such a crucial part in forming it. All the sen­ sibility o f the twelfth century, which in less than a hundred years was to transform through its literature the very conception that man had o f his humanity, is enshrined in the sermons on the Song o f Songs. With this sensibility, it is the awareness o f self, the subjectivity in which the spirit o f the modern age is born, that Bernard baptises and thrusts upon the stage o f western civilisation. The ‘theology o f mysticism’ based on the

o p p o s i t e

a b o v e

Les Vaux-de-Cernay, France. Nave,

lo o k in g

west

Fontenay, France. One of the two twin-light windows used by representatives o f the lay brothers to follow discussions relating to any abbey business which might concern them. It was forbidden to lay brothers actually to attend chapter o p p o s i t e

b e l o w

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incontrovertible facts o f redemption and grace revealed by the Word o f God, gives way to the ‘psychology o f mysticism’ which was to reach its climax with the breathtaking visions o f St Teresa o f Avila and St John o f the Cross. The twelfth-century renaissance owes at least as much to the deep soul searching o f St Bernard as it does to Queen Eleanor o f Aquitaine’s fabled courts o f love. In the 1140S the proliferation o f Cistercian abbeys throughout Europe was reaching such proportions that there was reputedly not a corner o f Christendom left where it was possible to walk ten miles without meet­ ing a white habit. The four first-born were still prodigiously founding, and their daughters, now into the third and fourth generations, were out­ doing their parents. T his was the decade which saw the birth o f Rufford and Roche, Kirkstead and Woburn in the British Isles, Fiastra and Follina, Sambucina and Casamari in Italy, La Noe, Le Pin, L ’Etoile and Froidmont in France, Schönau, Otterberg and Viktring, in the H oly Roman Empire. Fitero, Veruela and Huerta in Spain, Silvacane, Fontfroide and Franquevaux in Provence, all belong to this period, as well as the first foundations in Scandinavia, Alvastra and Nydala, and in Ireland, M ellifont and Bective. W hile it is true, as is often claimed, that this rapid expansion was due to the excess o f postulants which forced abbeys to found daughter-houses or risk anarchy, there is also an element o f fashion which should not be disregarded. The Cistercians, from a band o f well-meaning hermits lost in the depths o f Burgundy, had grown into the most authoritative religious community in Europe. It was natural that royalty and nobility wanting to found a monastery should turn to the most fashionable order o f the moment, whose prayers were esteemed to be the most efficacious. But this could create problems. In 1189 the Annual General Chapter reiterated that each house should contain at least twelve monks, which presumably indicates that some fell short o f this number. By the end o f the century Bonlieu, San Sebastiano and L^d were in danger o f being demoted to the status o f granges, while Fallen, San Giusto di Tuscania and Sala were noted as having fewer than the required number o f monks. These were, however, the exceptions, and while we can have no reliable idea about the exact population o f the individual monasteries, it cannot be far from the truth to say that by the 1190s there were over 20,000 Ciscercian monks and lay brothers in Europe and the Latin Kingdom o f Jerusalem. As far back as 1124, when the reputation o f Cluny was at its lowest ebb

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after the appalling mismanagement o f Abbot Pons o f Melgueil, Bernard had felt the time was right to deliver his fatal thrust at the corruption o f the black monks, contained in a letter to William o f St Thierry known as the Apologia. As we shall see later, this letter unwittingly laid down the canons, never otherwise formally enshrined in the statutes, o f what was to become the Cistercian style in art and architecture. Its purpose in the eyes o f the writer, however, was to prove once and for all the superiority o f the Cistercian way o f life over the ‘usages’ o f Cluny. He claims that the Cistercians are ‘the only monks with any virtue, more saintly than any others, the only monks to live in conformity with the Rule; so far as other monks are concerned, they are simply transgressors o f the Rule . . . All monks who make their profession according to the Rule must observe it to the letter, without any dispensation whatsoever’. W hat Bernard was attempting to do was to make the white o f the Cistercian habit seem even brighter against the black o f the rich, pompous and easy-going Cluniacs. The Cistercians alone were the true heirs to the Gregorian reform, poor in Christ, living o ff the fruits o f their own hard work, renouncing the world and living apart from it, in poverty and austerity, simple in dress and diet, living in unadorned buildings and zealous in their asceticism. Bernard was not alone in championing this lifestyle. The theme was taken up by St Ailred o f Rievaulx in his Speculum Caritatis, and some years later, with all the passion o f a convert, by a former Cluniae who had recently joined the Cistercians, one Isung o f Prüfening, in his Dialogue Between a Cluniae and a Cistercian. As self-proclaimed vessels o f the Gregorian reform, it was a triumph for the Cistercians, and for Bernard in particular, when a monk o f Clairvaux was elected Pope with the name o f Eugene III, in 1145. But the Christian world which greeted the election o f the new Pope was shocked to its very foundations by the news which came from the east. On Christmas Eve o f the previous year, the Saracen leader Nur-ed-Din had captured the Christian citadel o f Edessa in the Latin Kingdom. Queen Melissenda o f Jerusalem sent urgent pleas to the princes o f Christendom for help in defending her throne and the Kingdom against this new threat. The first crusade had succeeded thanks to the disunity o f the infidel factions, but now the Arab armies had united and the only way the Latin Kingdom could survive was for the forces o f Christendom to present an equally united front and send a massive army to the Middle East to counter the Arab hosts.

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Pope Eugene was instantly sensitive to this appeal, and in this showed himself to be a true son o f St Bernard. He begged Bernard to use his powers o f persuasion to preach the crusade, and naturally Bernard didn’t delay. He spent the next two years, from 1146 to 1147, haranguing the crowds from France to Germany, rallying the forces o f Christendom for this great adventure. With the approval o f his spiritual protégé King Louis V II o f France, and to the initial displeasure o f the latter’s wife, Queen Eleanor o f Aquitaine, Bernard organized an assembly at Vézelay for Easter 1146 during which he would proclaim the holy cause. The news that Bernard was to preach brought listeners from all over the kingdom. Louis had him­ self vowed to take the cross at the end o f the previous year but his attempt to fire the nobility with something o f his own enthusiasm had proved a failure, and so he appeared in full support o f his spiritual mentor at the assembly, ensuring that it was seen that the venture had the weight o f his authority behind it. W hat Louis probably failed to realize was that Bernard actually carried more authority than he did and, where Louis had failed, Bernard once again succeeded. Even Eleanor vowed, at Vézelay, to take the cross and accompany her husband and his army on crusade. Her behaviour on that crusade is another story altogether. To his joy, Bernard was able to write to the Pope a few days later: ‘You ordered, I obeyed, and the authority o f him who gave the order has made my obedience fruitful. I opened my mouth; I spoke; and at once the cru­ saders have multiplied to infinity. Villages and towns are now deserted. You will scarcely find one man for every seven women. Everywhere you see widows whose husbands are still alive’. Fired by the success o f the assembly at Vézelay, Bernard travelled around Burgundy, Flanders, Alsace and Lorraine, the Rhineland, where he was invited by the Archbishop o f Cologne, then to Frankfurt, Freiburg, Schaffhausen, Basle and Lake Constance. At Speyer he convinced King Conrad to join the crusade, and everywhere people flocked in their hun­ dreds. That the crusade got o ff the ground at all is thanks to his mag­ netic powers o f persuasion and charismatic eloquence. There was nothing o f the ranting fanatic about his sermons however. He was the first to guard against the excesses that his enthusiasm might spark o ff in a half-starved population. When a deranged Cistercian monk called R u d o lf began to encourage the massacre o f Jews in the Rhineland, Bernard immediately called him to order, chased him back to his monastery and confined him

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there. A contemporary Jewish chronicler, whom it would be difficult to suspect o f bias, says o f Bernard: ‘Without this just man sent by God, we should all have perished’. When the crusade proved a failure, and the armies o f Christendom returned to the west defeated and disorganized, Bernard was heard to re­ mark, on being told many laid the blame at his door, that he preferred the blame to fall on him than on God: ‘I f the blindness, avarice and mistrust o f men has turned a sure victory into a humiliating defeat, then they only have their sins to blame for it. I f in their arrogance they cannot see this, then let them blame me.’ While perhaps a little extreme and couched in the language o f his century, this perspicacious comment is fairly near the truth. The second crusade failed principally because its commanders could agree on nothing from the moment they set out in 1147 until they returned two years later. Immensely saddened by this setback, Bernard returned to Clairvaux and dedicated his time to writing his last great work, the De Consideratione, a masterpiece o f Latin prose dedicated to his erstwhile pupil who had risen to the papacy. Essentially a guide to avoiding the errors into which any Pope might fall in his humanity, it reflects his experience with the second crusade when he sustains that failure must be accepted as a judgement o f God. The work is in effect Bernard’s spiritual legacy to the world, a sum­ mary o f his entire life consecrated to God and the Church. Some still feel it has relevance today: Pope John X X III habitually had it read to him at meal times. Bernard made one further sortie from Clairvaux, in 1153, when he was called to Lorraine to help prevent a massacre that was about to take place in Metz, where two opposing factions sought control o f the city. Both sides listened to him in awe and respect, and the conflict was averted, but the effort proved too much for Bernard. Old at sixty-three, in a world where average life expectancy was not much more than thirty-five and the austerity o f Cistercian life reduced even that to twenty-eight, ill and worn out by constant travelling, Bernard made his way painfully back to his beloved Clairvaux where, on 20 August 1153, he died. At the time o f his death the Cistercian abbeys in Europe numbered almost 350. O f these he had personally founded or provided for the foun­ dation o f sixty. From Ireland to Sicily, from Spain to the Baltic, no cor­ ner o f Christendom had been left untouched by the tidal wave o f the Cistercian spiritual revolution which stemmed from Clairvaux.

3- The Abbey: Foundation, Construction, Layout and Resources

decided to endow an abbey, he would first apply to the authorities o f whichever order he had chosen to favour. I f his application was acceptable, and with Cîteaux this was not automatically the case, the Annual General Chapter would empower one or usually two abbots from neighbouring monasteries to carry out a survey o f the site. In their quest for solitude, they had promulgated a strict ruling that no abbey was to be situated within 24 kilometres (15 miles) o f another. Given the immense spaces available in the under-populated Europe o f the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, this rule might appear unnecessary, but one o f the characteristics o f the twelfth century is the growth in population and the drive to bring under cultivation vast areas o f forest, marsh and flooded coastline. In fact we hear o f cases where the new arrivals, in their deter­ mination not to sacrifice their ideal o f solitude, actually created the desert they sought, transplanting entire villages in order to take possession o f the land offered them. The phenomenal growth and popularity o f the order also accounted for a number o f internal difficulties arising. Byland Abbey in Yorkshire had to be resited four times, over a space o f nearly forty years, before it finally took firm root in 1177. Its second site had been immediately contested by the Cistercian monks o f Rievaulx who com­ plained that the new foundation was so near to them they could hear its bells ringing and confused them with their own. Once the foundation had been approved, the ground had to be pre­ pared to receive the abbey buildings. As soon as the colony o f twelve monks, with their designated abbot and a handful o f lay brothers had arrived at the site, they set about clearing and draining the land on which the buildings were to rise. Temporary wooden accommodation was

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usually erected immediately after a timber or rough stone chapel had been built. Worshipping God was the monks’ primary purpose in life, and took precedence over everything else. It is not known exactly who did what in terms o f design and construction o f the abbey church and monastery but, while there are undeniable features common to Cistercian architecture from Ireland to the Lebanon, it seems unlikely that the choir monks them­ selves played any dominant role in the work. Certainly they inspired the design, and most probably lent a hand in a menial capacity, consonant with their aspiration to humility. The construction work proper, however, appears to have been entrusted to travelling teams o f skilled masons, who moved from site to site and lived separately from the monks in their own lodges. They would have been given help by the lay brothers, but we must not forget that it never took less than five years to complete just the bare bones o f the monastery. During that time masons, choir monks and the lay brothers themselves had to be fed and clothed, so it is not unreasonable to suggest that they spent most o f their time doing what they were constitutionally engaged to do, namely clear the land, drain the marshes and generally make the site suitable for farming. The abbey church was the first building to go up, starting with the east end. Cistercian abbeys were always oriented, the high altar set towards the east (towards Jerusalem), unless some natural impediment prevented this. Thus, even in the rare cases where the façade is not facing the sunset, it is commonly referred to as the west front. The abbey was built over a number o f years, with work out o f doors usually limited to the spring and summer months. The master mason would be assisted by the senior car­ penter and the plumber who was responsible for lead and glass work. A plumb line was used to ensure that the walls went up straight, and much use was made o f set square and compass. The stone tended to arrive already shaped, and marked with the mason’s mark in the quarry since masons were paid on a piece-work rather than an hourly basis. As the church walls got higher, wooden scaffolding was erected and primitive cranes used to raise the stone. Arches and vaults were built over supporting wood frames which were removed once the mortar had set. Made at ground level, roof sections were hoisted to the roof, placed in position and covered with lead and tiles. Once the roof, which had been built in sections on the ground, was in position, the rest o f the work on the inside could be finished unhurriedly whatever the weather.

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Vaiserena, Italy. T h e absence o f a separate bell tower was compensated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by the development o f splendid bell hous­ ings rising above the crossing Com m elles, France. Brick-oven: many o f the bricks used to build the Abbey o f Chaalis ( o f which Com m elles was a grange) were baked in this oven

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After the church had been completed, work proceeded on the lay brothers’ quarters, then on the chapter house, monks’ day-room and dor­ mitory, and finally on the refectory,, kitchen and warming-house wing. The cloister, usually a wooden lean-to structure replaced only later by stone arcading, completed the picture. The pattern is the same for every single one o f the hundreds o f Cistercian abbeys built throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. Only the vocabulary varies, and then much less than one would expect in a world where style and design were passed on by drawings and word o f mouth or a picture in the mind’s eye alone. Each Cistercian abbey is a masterpiece produced by the synthesis o f the skills o f a master mason and his crew, trained to work in the local material and using the local idiom, with the rigid directives o f an abbot and his monks dedicated to reproducing their beloved Cîteaux wherever they went, in the spirit and in the stone. And yet what is it in Cistercian abbeys that sets them apart from the rest? The layout o f a Cistercian abbey, apart from one or two details, is shared by most o f the other religious orders o f the period, by cathedrals and collegiate churches, Cluniacs, Premonstratensians and Augustinians alike. In the words o f Van der Meer, whose beautifully illustrated and acutely intelligent study o f the Cistercian order Atlas de l’Ordre Cistercien is now sadly out o f print and rarely found even in antiquarian or specialist book shops, ‘the originality (o f Cistercian architecture) lies solely in sim­ plicity taken to its ultimate consequences, especially in the abbey church. The church, the jewel o f the complex everywhere else, is here the plainest element: it is in the church that the break with tradition is most evident’. While the Cistercians’ approach to ornament was dictated by their desire that nothing should distract them from their devotion to the wor­ ship o f God, they had nothing against the decoration o f churches per se. St Bernard was fully aware o f the positive effect o f majesty on the some­ times unruly populace, and the frescoed or painted stories from the Bible or the Lives o f the Saints were often the only means whereby the illiter­ ate congregation could find visual comfort in the Word o f God. They propounded their philosophy fiercely, but only intended it to apply to themselves and their fellow monks. Ascetics, they required ascetic churches which, unlike the churches o f most other monastic orders, were not open to the laity. Had a Cluniae monk walked into one o f their churches in the twelfth century, he would have been utterly dumbfounded. Again Van der Meer

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Eberbach, Germany. South aisle

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puts it succinctly when he says that our hypothetical Cluniae, used to ‘chandeliers burning, candelabra tall as trees, reliquaries on the altar encrusted with precious stones, mosaic floors, billowing incense and silken altar-cloths, all this under the vaults o f a choir so lofty it made him dizzy, in a venerable abbey church filled with images o f the saints, echo­ ing with ancient chant under the enormous figure o f Christ in majesty dominating the stately apse’, was convinced that he lived in an image o f the celestial Jerusalem. On entering a Cistercian church he would have been struck by the mean­ ness o f height o f the nave, the low, square-ended presbytery, the rough wooden choir stalls, the interior divided up into forbiddingly enclosed sections where not even royalty could trespass. He would have noticed the lack o f tombs, the absence o f images and lights other than the natural light o f day let in through the small windows. A simple wooden cross with a roughly painted image o f Christ hanging above the altar was all that re­ minded him he was in a place o f worship. The priest saying Mass wore a chasuble o f undyed wool, the deacon and sub-deacon nothing that could identify them as such. The altar, alone in the small squat east end o f the church, was covered with a simple white cloth and bore two unadorned iron candlesticks. N or would our Cluniae recognize the strange, clipped chanting which echoed through this barn o f a church. Stephen Harding, in his rejection o f Cluniae liturgical excess, remembered the references St Benedict makes in his rule to the hymns o f St Ambrose, and once more followed Benedict to the letter. After much study and research, he came up with what he believed to be the original chants o f St Ambrose both in word and tune, and had them adopted as part o f the standard Cistercian liturgy. When mention is made o f Cistercian architecture, an image is usually conjured up o f a style that is obviously not Romanesque and yet would be hard to define as Gothic. In effect, albeit unintentionally, the Cister­ cians managed to develop a distinct architectural style o f their own which, by its very originality, defies inclusion among the traditional denomina­ tions. Borrowing the stylistic vocabulary prevalent in Burgundy at the time, the pointed arch, ribbed vaulting and other elements o f early Gothic

Le Tre Fontane, Italy. Chancel: typical square-ended chancel, built during St Bernard s lifetime

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Heisterbach, Germany. Chancel

Silvacane, France. V iew across nave to south aisle

Clairm ont, France. East end: Cistercian architecture at its bleakest

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grafted onto a Romanesque interpretation o f mass, volume and spatial definition, the Cistercians sought essentially to translate into architecture the principle o f perfect measure expressed in geometrically determined harmony o f proportion. This principle had first been given currency in the De Musica o f St Augustine, one o f St Bernard s most consistent sources o f inspiration. After the death o f Stephen Harding in 1134, the General Chapter im­ plicitly sanctioned official adoption o f the style by condemning departure from the austerity and simplicity which were the hallmark o f the Order and, over the next hundred years, we find the Chapter reiterating this prin­ ciple again and again. I f the Chapter felt the need to restate its policy con­ tinually, we can only assume that it had to combat a natural tendency towards decoration and embellishment. In the course o f time it became, not surprisingly, impossible to maintain the spiritual tension and initial burning enthusiasm which had informed the ideals o f the founding fathers. W hat is perhaps more surprising is that the style o f building born o f that spiritual tension was adhered to for so long. The spate o f re­ building, especially o f the east end o f churches, which took place after 1153 with Bernard still warm in his grave, sometimes evokes an image o f monks straining at the bit under his iron rule, and adhering forcibly to a style they intrinsically disliked, only to replace it without even waiting a decent interval after his death, with something more akin to their natural preferences. This simplistic view fails to take into account, as Bernard himself failed to take into account, the need for expansion due to the sheer number o f vocations. Bernard strongly resisted the move to a more con­ venient site when his own abbey o f Clairvaux was patently insufficient to accommodate the growing number o f aspiring novices, even though the move only involved a few hundred yards. Similarly, the tendency in many o f the major abbey churches, including Qteaux, Clairvaux, Pontigny and Morimond, to rebuild the small squat east end, and at times the entire church, should be seen not so much as a move away from the canons o f austerity typified by what is known at the Bernardine plan, but rather as a realistic attempt to cope with the expanding number o f choir monks and an ever-increasing proportion o f ordained priests among them.1 It is significant that amost all the east ends rebuilt in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were designed to accommodate large numbers o f altars, to enable those priests to fulfil their obligation to celebrate Mass daily.

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Le Thoronet, France. Nave

Fontenay, France. W est door r i g h t

Fontenay, France. N ave and north aisle

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The Cistercian abbey church kept to the standard Benedictine plan in the use o f the Latin cross shape, replacing the rounded apse o f Benedictine tradition and rounded ambulatory with apsidal chapels o f more recent Cluniae inspiration, with a small square-ended chancel. Even when this small chancel was demolished, it is very rare to see it replaced by one o f the existing traditional east-end types. In many cases a large square chan­ cel would be built with individual chapels all around it, and even when the new chancel was rounded and took an ambulatory, the chapels lead­ ing o ff it tended to have square end walls. The search for geometric harmony and consistency was always the inspiring principle. In the two arms o f the Latin cross, the transepts, we find two or three small private chapels against the east wall on either side o f the presbytery, for ordained monks to say Mass privately. One o f the most prominent features, usually o f the south transept, is the night stair. T his led directly from the monks’ dormitory into the church and was used by the brethren to attend the services which took place in the early hours o f the morning. In some cases, where the lie o f the land had made it impossible to build the cloister, and consequently all the conventual buildings, on the south side o f the abbey church, the night stair will be found in the north transept. At the crossing o f the transept arms with the main body o f the church, normally under some form o f tiburium (crossing tower) which housed the two bells permitted by the rule, we find the monks’ choir. External bell towers and splendid peals were regarded as typical symbols o f Cluniae pride and expressly forbidden. A maximum o f two bells might be housed in the church and these would normally be placed directly above the choir with the ropes hanging down over the plain wooden stalls to enable a monk to ring them when required during the service. It is often noticeable when wandering around either a Cistercian ruin or a church which, though intact, has had its furniture moved around, that the lower part o f the pillars or columns o f the first few bays o f the nave west o f the crossing are left rough and unfinished on the inside. T his is easily explained when one realizes that, since the choir occupied these few bays (and not the chancel as is often supposed), the stonework would have been hidden from view by the now vanished wooden stalls. Any finishing not structurally necessary was therefore superfluous.

Huerta, Spain. Night stairs: it was down these stairs that the monks processed directly from bed to choir stall to attend the night-time services

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V allbona de les M onjes, Spain. T ibu riu m at the base o f the crossing tower left

Riddagshausen, Germany. Chancel chapels from crossing below

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M aulbronn, Germany.

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Just beyond the choir, stone or more often wooden benches for the sick and infirm brethren were placed against the stone screen wall which sep­ arated the monks' precinct from that o f the lay brothers within the church. The lay brothers, whose liturgical obligations were confined to two church attendances a day, had two altars set against the back o f the screen. Their stalls occupied the next few bays o f the nave, after which came the benches for the elderly and infirm, situated directly against the inside wall o f the west front. Since the very essence o f a Cistercian abbey church was to interpret the paradisus claustralis (cloistered paradise) o f a contemplative monastery, no provision was made for a congregation in whose face the doors o f the church (and many Cistercian west fronts were indeed with­ out doors) remained rigourously closed. Given the total isolation o f the majority o f Cistercian settings, this caused few difficulties, and the Cistercians were rarely afflicted by any o f the wrangling and bickering that many other orders encountered in their dealings with their ‘parishioners’. Passing pilgrims and travellers were catered for in the capella ad portas (the chapel at the gates), many fine examples o f which survive. Cistercian in style, they make numerous concessions to the decorative fashions o f the day, since they were intended for lay visitors to whom the rules o f austerity were never meant to apply. Stephen Harding had in fact created one o f the most successful and original schools o f manuscript illumination at Cîteaux, and Bernard him­ self, far from showing insensitivity towards artistic beauty, admits that it is the very attraction o f art which made it a potential distraction for his monks from the ideals o f contemplative worship: ‘A ll around is such a fantastic variety o f figures that it would be easy to prefer fulfiling the Lectio Divina (Spiritual Reading) by contemplation o f the walls (in church, and the fantastically sculptured capitals in the cloister) rather than by reading a book. It is easier to spend a whole day in ecstatic admiration o f these things than in contemplating the law o f G od’. That Bernard never took any public stance on manuscript illumination in particular may simply show that he wished to avoid being seen to hold a different, more stringent view on the matter than Stephen Harding, thus implicitly criticizing his superior.

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Badia a Cerreto, Italy. Façade, showing narthex

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Kirkstead, England. Chapel at the gates

San Galgano, Italy. Nave: unfinished stonework on nave pilasters would originally have been hidden by choir stalls o v e r l e a f

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Outside the west front many churches sported some form o f portico or narthex, whose purpose is not immediately apparent. Certainly the elaborate narthexes o f Cluniae and Benedictine tradition, supposedly built to offer shelter to pilgrims, are the direct derivation o f the imposing west­ werk so characteristic o f Carolingian architecture in the eighth and ninth centuries. It seems likely that a portico was accepted as an intrinsic part o f monastic church architecture and played some role in ceremonial and processional activities (such as the lighting o f the paschal candle at mid­ night Mass on Easter Saturday); the Cistercians once again simply sheared away the excess and reduced the portico to its most elemental form. Apart from the main doorway or doorways in the west front, there were five other doors in the abbey church. One was located at the west end o f the south aisle and led either directly into the lay brothers’ wing or, more likely, a narrow passageway known as the ruelle des convers (lay brothers’ alley). It was through this door that the lay brothers entered and left the church twice a day. To reach it from the complex o f halls and rooms which made up their wing, they would use the narrow ruelle which ran parallel to the west walk o f the cloister but was completely walled o ff from it, to ensure that there was minimum contact between the choir monks, usually o f noble stock, and the illiterate lay brothers o f humbler origin. The door leading out o f the north transept invariably gave onto the monks’ cemetery, and is normally known as the lychgate or porte des morts. The monks were buried in nameless graves, clad in their habits and laid straight into the ground. They made their last journey through this door, and at all times other than during a funeral service it was kept shut. At the east end o f the south aisle, just before the corner leading round into the south transept, was the choir monks’ entrance to the church. This was the door used by the monks to reach their stalls for the daytime services. During the night, as we have seen, they entered the church via the south transept. In many ruins, or in some churches which have been

Valle Crucis, Wales. South transept: dormitory doorway gives onto thin air where night stairs have disappeared opposite

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Bonnefontaine, France. Collation seat: unique example o f a collation seat surviving when the entire south wall o f the church and surround­ ing north cloister walk have gone opposite

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Chiaravalle della Colomba, Italy. Cloister, north-east corner

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converted for parochial use and detached from their secularized conven­ tual buildings, the night stair is frequently the first thing to have been demolished, which explains the puzzling presence o f a door halfway up a wall and apparently giving out onto thin air. The last door in the church led out o f the south transept at ground level, and can normally be found immediately below the night-stair door. It communicated with the sacristy. Cistercian sacristies are usually much humbler in proportion and scale than those in the churches o f other less austere orders, since the monks vested directly at the altar, and yet even in these secondary spaces we find the love o f geometric clarity and harmony which manages to weld the vast and disparate buildings o f the conventual complex into such a satisfying unitary whole. I f we leave the church by the monks’ daytime doorway, we immediately find ourselves in the north walk o f the cloister. The cloister, a gallery com­ prising four walks and a central garth, is the true centre o f monastic daily life, just as the church is the centre o f the monks’ spiritual life. Originally derived from the Roman atrium, a central courtyard o ff which opened all the main rooms o f the house, the cloister serves the same basic purpose in the monastery. All the main functions o f monastic life take place in rooms or buildings which give onto the cloister, and to get from any one part o f the monastery to another one must cross this space. It is in fact a masterpiece o f functional planning, raised to new heights o f spatial dig­ nity by the simplicity o f Cistercian design. Situated wherever possible on the south side o f the church, to take full advantage o f natural sunlight, the cloister was frequently a simple, wooden lean-to structure only replaced in stone when every other building in the monastery had been completed. The arcading could vary from tight spaces with walling in between, especially in the hot south where it served as protection against the merciless midday sun, to wide arches carried on slender columns to let in as much sunshine as possible, and even, in the far north, to glazing in order to afford some measure o f shelter against the freezing winters o f Scotland and Scandinavia. While the cloister was basically a service area, it also performed a num­ ber o f functions in its own right. On the cloister side o f the south wall o f the church there stood the collation seat, with benches on either side o f it, where the abbot would sit after supper, surrounded by his flock, while a monk read to them from the Bible, the Lives o f the Saints or other edifying literature. opposite

La Oliva, Spain. Cloister, north walk

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The Cistercians, at least in the intentions o f the founders, were not an intellectual order, and the books an abbey was allowed to keep were few. This becomes evident when we note the size o f the armarium or book cup­ board, situated in the east wall o f the cloister, just by the monks’ door­ way and next to or in front o f the sacristy. In very few cases could it contain more than forty or fifty books o f the size usual in the M iddle Ages, and frequently they failed to reach that number. The titles permitted were strictly dictated by the Annual General Chapter and normally included works considered indispensable for liturgical purposes, for the lectio divina or the meditatio, both performed in the cloister, and occasionally included works by the monks themselves. One o f the most beautiful rooms o ff the east walk o f the cloister is in­ variably the chapterhouse. So called because a chapter from the rule o f St Benedict was read to the monks assembled in it, the chapterhouse was usually a square or rectangular room divided into bays with one or more columns in its centre. The typical entrance to the chapterhouse consists o f two twin-light windows, one on either side o f the arched entrance door­ way. The large unglazed windows were designed to enable representatives o f the lay brothers to sit in on meetings and hear the abbey business dis­ cussed each day after the reading o f the chapter and the confession o f faults. The monks themselves sat on the stone bench which ran all the way around the wall on the inside, interrupted only by the abbot’s seat placed directly opposite the entrance. It was in this room that the abbots were given a slightly more dignified burial than their less exalted brethren were entitled to. Today the floors o f many chapterhouses are paved with exquisite tombstones extolling the virtues o f one or other o f the abbots. The door next to the chapterhouse gave onto the day stairs leading up to the dormitory which occupied the whole o f the upper storey o f the east wing. Contrary to popular belief, the monks slept in their habits on

opposite

above

Eberbach, Germany. D orm itory. By the late thirteenth cen­

tury the spartan appearance o f the dorm itory had been somewhat mitigated and it was usual for wooden partitions (here long since removed) to separate the palliasses o f the individual monks. T h is dorm itory was used as the setting for the scriptorium in the film The N am e o f the Rose opposite

below

Arnsburg, Germany. Cloister, north-east corner: monks'

daytime doorway from church to cloister, and book cupboard overleaf

Rueda, Spain. Chapter house, entrance

T H E ABBE Y

I07

straw-filled mattresses on the floor in a common room where perhaps only the abbot had a curtain to afford him some little privacy. It was not before the very end o f the Middle Ages that the single dormitory, usually an open space vaulted in wood or stone, was divided up into cells by the construction o f flimsy partition walls between the beds. Beyond the dormitory, a separate room housed what is known as the reredorter or latrine block, used by all the brothers immediately after the second service o f the morning. The reredorter was normally a hall-like structure divided into cubicles by wooden partitions. Each cubicle con­ tained a horizontal wooden board (the Venetian for ‘small board* or ‘plank’ is toleta, from which the word ‘toilet’ is indirectly derived) pierced by two holes (the monks used the ‘toilets’ two to a cubicle) giving directly onto the fast-flowing stream below. Anyone who has visited a Cistercian monastery cannot fail to be aware o f the immense importance the archi­ tects attached to the system o f drains and plumbing in general. A glance at the standard plan o f a monastery, or a visit to Fountains or Netley, Eberbach or Maulbronn, Fontenay or Fontaine-Guérard will confirm the complexity and innovation o f Cistercian sanitary engineering. The brook which was always a key element o f a Cistercian site was diverted upstream o f the reredorter, so that while the main current flowed directly under the latrine cubicles in a stone-lined channel, a branch tunnelled under the dormitory, emerging in the cloister in the form o f a washing fountain, continuing its journey via the kitchens and rejoining the main brook thereafter. St Bernard’s first biographer describes how the monks building the abbey o f Clairvaux ‘divided the river, set it in new channels and lifted the leaping waters to the mill-wheels; fullers and bakers and tanners and smiths and other artificers prepared suitable machines for their tasks, that the river might flow fast and do good wherever it was needed in every building, flowing freely in the underground conduits; the streams per­ formed suitable tasks in every office and cleansed the abbey and at length returned to the main course what it had lost’. The forge at Fontenay is a

opposite

above

Bebenhausen, Germany. Dorm itory. By the fifteenth century

each monk had his own cell opposite overleaf

below

Bebenhausen, Germany. M o n k s’ dayroom, capital

N oirlac, France. Chapter house window

I Io

T H E ABBE Y

wonderful example o f what the writer is describing, where the thunder­ ing o f the water seems to invade every nook and cranny, and one can still almost feel the monks sweating and toiling over their work in one o f Europe’s first industrial buildings. Below the dormitory is usually situated one o f the rooms whose exact purpose and function is a matter o f controversy. Diversely described in guide books and pamphlets as the ‘scriptorium, the ‘monks’ day-room’, the ‘novices’ room’ and even the ‘refectory’ or ‘novices’ refectory’, no one seems to be quite sure what this room was for, for the simple reason that St Bernard makes no mention o f it. The most logical explanation for its existence seems to lie in the need, as numbers swelled, to enlarge the dor­ mitory overhead. Since the dormitory could no longer be contained in the space available over the sacristy, chapterhouse and day stairs, a new ground-floor room automatically came into being. Usually a vaulted room with a row o f pillars down the centre dividing it into two aisles, the monks’ room rarely opened directly onto the cloister. Instead it gave onto a passageway leading to the area behind the east range, occupied more often than not by the infirmary and connected buildings or the herb and vegetable garden. Sometimes this passageway was adjacent to or acted as the ‘parlour’, the only space in the monastic enclosure where the monks were allowed to talk. The vow o f silence was so strict that even then the parlour was used mostly for the prior to impart his instructions con­ cerning the work rota to the monks after chapter rather than for any idle chatter between the brethren. The south walk o f the cloister, furthest removed from the church, gave access to a series o f rooms concerned principally with relieving, to a small extent, the rigours o f an ascetic life. The first room housed the calefactorium or warming-house, the only room in the entire monastery apart from the kitchen where a fire was allowed, and even then the fire was lit only when the holy water in the stoup in the abbey church had frozen over! The warming-house was strategically placed next to the monks’ day-room to take the edge o ff the frozen air that would have made much o f their writ­ ten work impossible to execute. Even then, it is recorded that at Kirkstall in northern England, the brothers stuffed their stockings with hay to stop their toes freezing during the winter months. It was also in this room that the monks had their hair tonsured and their beards cut seven times a year.

opposite

Noirlac, France. Refectory

I I2

THE

ABBEY

M aulbronn, Germany. Refectory

THE ABBEY

M aulbronn, Germany. Wash house: half-timbered upper floor added later

Le Thoronet, France. Cloister, east walk opposite

above

opposite

below

N oirlac, France. Cloister, north walk L ’Epau, France. Chapter house

I I6

THE

ABBEY

The dominant feature o f the south walk o f the cloister is the lavatorium or wash-house, a generally octagonal pagoda in Cistercian abbeys, built out into the cloister garth midway down the arcade and housing a oneor two- or sometimes even three-tiered fountain at which the monks washed their hands and heads before meals. It lies directly across the clois­ ter walk from the entrance to the refectory. In view o f the exquisite beauty o f the examples extant, it is a great shame that this more than any other building, perhaps because o f its fragility, has totally disappeared from the majority o f Cistercian abbeys, whether in ruin or still in use. Sometimes the pagoda was replaced by a simple trough placed against the south wall o f the cloister and surmounted by a bench on which the monks could sit with their feet in the water for the mandatum ceremony, the washing o f the feet. Refectories are in themselves among the most imposing o f the build­ ings to be seen in a Cistercian monastery. Unlike the majority o f monas­ tic orders, from about the mid-twelfth century onward, the Cistercians almost always built their refectories perpendicular rather than parallel to the south walk o f the cloister. Where they failed to do so after that date, the lie o f the land, lack o f funds or the presence o f a pre-existing build­ ing normally account for the anomaly. Many words have been spent in attempting to explain why the Cistercians should have adopted this peculiar difference as one o f their hallmarks. Nothing is known o f the position o f the original refectory at Cîteaux before the arrival o f St Bernard and his companions. It may still have been o f wood. W hat is certain, however, is that Bernards mother, Lady Aleth, had been buried in the Abbey o f St Bénigne in Dijon, an abbey Bernard and his family knew well and visited frequently, given their devotion to that saintly lady. The refectory o f St Bénigne, uniquely for a Benedictine abbey, is set perpendicular to the cloister. Scholars o f the eminence o f Professor Braun­ fels feel that this can be no mere coincidence. Another perhaps more persuasive reason has recently been put forward by Peter Fergusson. Professor Fergusson maintains that the repositioning o f the refectory ‘was

Huerta, Spain. Refectory: on the left o f the picture can clearly be seen the reader’s pulpit opposite

above

Reigny, France. Refectory: currently houses a fine collection o f old cars and carriages opposite

below

Roche, England. Plum bing. T h e reduction o f the conventual buildings at R oche to little more than their foundations provides an excellent opportunity to appreciate the ingenuity o f Cistercian plumbing. T h is picture was taken from the site o f the kitchen yard. From here the stream passed under the foundations o f the refectory (first ‘bridge'), past the m onks’ room (second ‘bridge’) and out through the reredorter (latrine) to pursue its course back into nature, taking with it all the biodegradable waste the monastery needed to dispose o f opposite

Valle Crucis, Wales. Chapter house.

I 20

T H E ABBE Y

part o f a complete reorganization o f the south side o f the cloister*. The refectory was realigned as a consequence o f the need to render directly accessible from the cloister two rooms, the warming house and the kitchen, which had hitherto (in Benedictine and early Cistercian monas­ teries) lain outside the cloister. In Professor Fergusson’s words: it was the position o f these two structures . . . which presented the Cistercians with a trying conflict. Strict adherence to the rule o f St Benedict ad litteram lay at the heart o f the Cistercian reform. T h u s m onks took turns to serve as cooks week by week. Yet in the traditional layout, kitchen and warming house were inaccessible from the cloister and thus cooking and warming could be accomplished only by infringing the rule.

By realigning the refectory so that its narrow side abutted the south clois­ ter walk, the kitchen and warming-house could be brought in to occupy the space freed up by the move, enabling direct access from the cloister. The problem was thus solved. Professor Fergusson claims there is some evidence that Clairvaux was the first abbey to adopt this plan, some time around 1150, three years before St Bernard died. Is it too fanciful to sug­ gest that it was while seeking a solution to this infringement o f the rule, that St Bernard s memory went back to the abbey where his mother was buried and there found his answer? Whatever the origin o f the realignment, this positioning o f the refec­ tory enabled the designers and architects o f the monasteries to express some o f their most inspiring work. A lofty two-storey great hall, gener­ ally vaulted and divided into two aisles by a row o f pillars, it had nothing to hinder the construction o f a row o f tall windows down either side o f its length, to allow the light to come flooding in all day long. A constant feature o f the refectory is the pulpitum or readers pulpit, from which one o f the brethren would read aloud during mealtimes from the Bible, the Lives o f the Saints, the Rule o f St Benedict and so forth. In contemplat­ ing these magnificent structures, it is interesting to ponder the words o f Peter Cantor, a monk o f Longpont, who says that St Bernard would burst into tears every time he passed the wretched thatch and timber or wattle and daub huts o f the peasants, because he was ‘reminded o f the early days o f the Cistercians’. Immediately adjacent to the refectory is the kitchen, served by running water from the brook channelled beneath its floor. Occasionally the water

T H E ABBE Y

I 21

would flow directly into a small pool inside the kitchen and escape through an overflow, but only after first depositing any fish swimming in it as prisoners in the pool! This exceptional arrangement can still be seen at the Abbey o f Alcobaça in Portugal. It was more usual, however, for the monks to have their own vivarium or fish pond in the grounds. The kitchen sometimes had a serving hatch on either side o f it, one side communi­ cating with the monks’ refectory, the other giving onto the lay brothers’ building. The entire west range, normally separated from the cloister proper by the ruelle des convers (lay brothers’ alley), was devoted to the lay brothers and their activities and responsibilities. The arrangement o f the buildings was similar to that on the monks’ side o f the cloister, with a large refec­ tory situated on the ground floor adjacent to the kitchen. It usually rose only one storey in height, with the dormitory extending the full length o f the west range over it. Underneath the dormitory, to the north, lay the cellarium or storehouse, another room similar in construction to the lay brothers’ refectory, with a single row o f pillars down the middle to divide it into a two-aisled vaulted space. Between the cellarium and the lay brothers’ refectory stood the main gateway into the monastic enclosure, usually no more than a tunnel leading past the ruelle des convers into the south-west corner o f the cloister. Mafly o f the lay brothers’ buildings, after falling into disuse with the demise o f the ‘conversus’ system,2 were converted into comfortable private apartments by the abbot for his own use and the entertaining o f guests. Without doubt the most important subsidiary building in the abbey grounds was the infirmary. Cistercian asceticism was a regime that not everyone was able to tolerate with the same degree o f physical resistance, and the old and infirm accounted for a fair proportion o f any monastery’s population. M ost infirmaries were originally not unlike the refectory building in design, two-storey in height with one or two rows o f columns down the middle to divide them into aisles. Beds, one per bay, were some­ times screened o ff from each other by curtains but it was not until the fifteenth century that the first cubicles appeared. The beds were lined up perpendicular to the side walls so that their occupants could get a good view o f the altar containing the blessed sacrament which stood against the end wall. In later times, a separate chapel would be built, and a separate kitchen, known as the meat kitchen, to provide slightly more substantial

Longpont, France. W arm ing house left

M ariental, Germany. Lay brothers’ refectory

below

Sénanque, France. Lay brothers’ dorm itory

opposite

T H E ABBE Y

125

meals for the sick than the rule permitted for the hale. Eventually all these buildings were, quite naturally, grouped around a small cloister, with a herb garden often occupying the garth. A splendid example o f this arrangement can be seen at Eberbach in the Rhineland, although the buildings now house a wine cellar and, apart from a small area used for wine tasting, are not generally open to the public. Numerous other outbuildings occupied much o f the ground between the monastic enclosure proper and the wall running round the abbey land. These might include industrial buildings such as the forge already men­ tioned, or mills, pigeon-coops or dovecotes, workshops, the bakery or, as at Villers-la-Ville in Brabant, a brewery o f industrial proportions. They would undoubtedly have included, at least from the thirteenth century on, some form o f guest accommodation, and in some cases a market hall, fine examples o f which can be seen at Staffarda in the Piedmont. The gate­ house itself could often be o f quite some size and occasionally house the guest lodgings, pharmacy, herbarium or other functions. The capella ad portas, or strangers’ chapel, for non-monastic worship, was generally situated just outside the gatehouse. In their determination to be totally self-supporting, the Cistercians refused in principle to accept the tithes and dues which had enabled abbeys such as Cluny to accrue great wealth. Over the years this rule was in­ creasingly relaxed, to the point o f making the order virtually indistin­ guishable from any other in this regard. By the time o f the Black Death in 1348 the lay brother work force was so decimated that strict observance o f this precept was no longer a viable proposition. (The first recorded instance o f a Cistercian abbey agreeing to own a property simply for the revenue it would bring in goes back to 1189, when Richard the Lionheart gave Scarborough parish church to the abbey o f Rievaulx, also in York­ shire.) The vast properties which they acquired through donations and endowments required skilled management. It was thanks to the need to institutionalize the figure o f the lay brother and the grange system to provide this management that the Cistercian order made its outstanding contribution to the development o f agriculture in Europe. Much o f the old Continent’s agricultural layout today owes its appearance to the order.

opposite

Bon-Repos, France. Gatehouse

Fountains, England. By the late fifteenth century statutes prohibit­ ing sumptuous bell towers were largely ignored

overleaf

128

THE

ABBEY

In Burgundy and on the Rhine, the monks perfected the art o f viticulture, producing many o f the finest wines in these areas on estates still renowned for the quality o f their vintages. Meursault and the Clos Vougeot, Steinberg with its famous Riesling and Nierstein on the Rhine are but some o f the world-famous vineyards which began life in the care o f the white monks. The abbey o f Himmerod owned many o f the most pros­ perous wine-growing areas along the banks o f the Moselle, and it is no surprise to learn that, all in all, the sale o f wine was the orders single most profitable enterprise. In England and Wales, the Cistercians were the largest body o f sheep farmers in the country, their yield playing a major role in Britain’s export trade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, supplying wool for the looms o f Flanders and Italy. Their granges, with the vast barns sometimes called tithe barns (erroneously since the order refused tithes), were the single most effective agrarian institution o f the Middle Ages. When King Richard the Lionheart was held in captivity in Germany in 1193, the Cistercians repaid his generosity o f four years before and emptied their barns to the tune o f one whole year’s yield o f wool as a contribution to the ransom, and the Cistercian abbots o f Boxley and Robertsbridge were entrusted with negotiating Richard’s release. The lay brothers also ran the markets for which many abbeys were granted charters, and worked the flour mills which played an important part in bolstering abbey revenues. With their specialist knowledge o f draining and irrigation, acquired in turning marshy bogs into ‘clear valleys’, they became experts in pisciculture. Some abbeys even appointed afrater piscatorius to manage the fish ponds and look after the wholesale o f their produce. The Abbey o f Waldsassen in Germany had over 150 fish tanks supplying fresh carp and trout to the whole o f the Upper Palatinate. The Cistercians’ fruit orchards were famous throughout Germany, and in Belgium their beer is still considered to be the best brewed today. The building reputed to be a vast brewery at the Abbey o f Villers-la-Ville near

Tilty, England. Chapel at the gates: modern whitewash covers original decorative scheme

opposite

above

opposite

below

Fontenay, France. Forge

Fountains, England. Lay brothers’ wing: originally partitioned into separate areas (refectory, cellarium etc.) overleaf

I}2

T H E ABBE Y

Brussels bears eloquent witness to this profitable activity even in its ruined state. The orders insistence on uniformity in all things, including diet, probably accounted for the invention by the brothers in the cooler northern climes o f their most lasting contribution to horticulture: the greenhouse. The lay brothers were also unwitting actors in Europe’s first industrial revolution after the fall o f the Roman Empire. The British Isles provided the setting for the Cistercians’ pioneering work in the fields o f coal mining, at Newbattle and Culross abbeys in Scotland, and at Neath, Margam and Llantarnam in Wales, lead mining and foundry work at Fountains, Basingwerk, Strata Florida and Strata Marcella, and the mining and smelting o f iron ore at Furness, Flaxley, Rievaulx, Kirkstall, Jervaulx, Byland, Sawley, Louth Park and Stanley in England, Grace-Dieu, Tintern and Margam in Wales. Masters o f metallurgy, the Cistercians invented the camshaft to exploit hydraulic energy to drive the machinery and bellows in their forges. The Abbey o f San Tommaso dei Borgognoni on the island o f Torcello in the Venetian lagoon was heated by natural gas. A document recently found hidden in a bottle concealed in the chimney in the one surviving wall o f the gatehouse recounts how a brother was killed in the late sixteenth century when a gas leakage caused an explosion and the ceiling o f the porter’s room fell on his head. In France, the abbeys o f Fontenay, La Crête, Clairvaux, Igny and TroisFontaines were all famed for their ironworks, while Walkenreid in Germany and its daughter-house Sittichenbach specialized in copper mining. Another daughter—house o f Walkenreid, called Grünhain, mined coal and iron and silver, as did the abbeys o f Altzelle in Saxony, and Ossegg and Sedletz in Bohemia. The Abbey o f Rein, the first Cistercian foun­ dation in Austria, possessed the largest salt mine in the area, and in northern Germany the salt pits o f Magdeburg, Marlow and Lüneburg were exploited by the Cistercians from neighbouring abbeys. Doberan and Reinfeld owed their prosperity to this activity, as did the Abbey o f Wi^chock near Cracow in Poland. The production o f salt in an age where the absence o f refrigeration meant that most food had to be salted down for the winter, was obviously o f vital importance in all areas o f Europe and played a major role in the economies o f the abbeys o f Holmcultram, Calder, Furness, Byland, Newminster, Jervaulx and Louth Park in England, Quarr on the Isle o f Wight and Clairvaux in Champagne.

4- The Monks, the Monastery and the Monastic Day

and lay brothers who peopled the abbeys? How was their day organized? First o f all we should remember that until reasonably accurate clocks were introduced in the seventeenth century, the monks’ day, like that o f most o f the rest o f Christendom, depended on the sun and was thus subject to considerable variation according to the seasons. The difference, o f course, was that most o f the rest o f Christendom went to bed at dusk and got up just after dawn. The monks spent half the night in church. Once a novice had been through a year’s novitiate, he would be accepted into the community as a fully-fledged choir monk. Rising from his palliasse on the cold floor o f the dormitory at about 1.30 a.m., already clad in his habit, he joined his brethren in the aisle between the rows o f mattresses and together they processed towards the door which led down the night stairs and into the choir stalls. The service o f matins lasted for an hour, followed after a short interval by lauds. In winter this interval lasted four and a half hours, giving the monks time to return to the dormitory for a rest until 7 a.m. In summer, prime followed lauds at 4 a.m., and was in turn followed at sunrise by private mass and the conventual morning mass. In winter this sequence was inverted and prime took place at 8 a.m. after the morning mass. The first appointment o f the day outside the church was chapter. Held at 4.30 a.m. in the summer, chapter only started after tierce at about 9.30 a.m. in the winter. During chapter the abbot or prior, whichever o f the two was conducting the ceremony, read out and commented on the relevance o f a chapter from the Rule o f St Benedict, after which the monks were encouraged to confess their sins or others’ sins known to them in front o f their brethren and to invite chastisement for the sake o f charity. Only by helping each other lovingly to mend their ways could they do

B

ut

w h a t

of

the

m onks

G4

THE

MONKS

justice to the spirit o f charity on which the whole philosophical design o f Cîteaux rested. This was followed by a discussion o f any business the abbey might have that day, and on Sundays and holy days a reading was taken from the Book of Usages and the Statutes of the General Chapter o f the order. Chapter was also the setting for the acceptance o f novices, the vestition o f new monks, the profession o f the vows, and the naming o f officials to their new posts, such as cellarer, novice master and prior. Chapter ended with a com­ memoration o f the brothers who had passed on to eternal life, and the recital o f the De Profundis. As the brethren filed out o f the chapterhouse, the vaulted parlour already echoed to the sound o f Brother Prior beating a stick on the wooden tabula or sounding board, calling them together for the allocation o f their daily tasks. Each monk would then return up the day stairs to the dormitory, collect his tools from beside his mattress and silently make his way to his place o f work, be it the herb garden, the fields, the forge or the dovecote, the sheep-pen or the scriptorium. A bell, or in the more austere monasteries a wooden clapper, called the monks to the service o f sext at about n a.m., which brought the morning to a close. In summer, sext was followed immediately by lunch in the re­ fectory. Before entering the hall, all the brethren crowded into the wash­ house opposite the refectory door and washed their hands and heads to remove all trace o f ink, mud and dust. This was the only occasion in the whole day when the monks washed, although it is not unreasonable to suppose that the washing o f the feet, or mandatum,' which took place every Saturday evening from Easter to 14 September served a practical as well as a ceremonial purpose. Whatever the case, its importance is underlined by St Bernard s proposal to make it the eighth sacrament. Concepts o f personal hygiene in the Middle Ages were o f course very different to those o f today, and what is remarkable is not that the monks by our standards washed so little, but rather that such strict insistence was laid on washing heads and hands daily. Taking a bath was another matter. Regarded as a

Le Tre Fontane, Italy. Chapter house, with recycled classical columns and capitals opposite

above

Eberbach, Germany. Chapter house. The monks would have sat on the stone benches clearly visible around the base o f the walls

opposite

below

i }6

the monks

sensual luxury, incompatible with St Bernards injunction to those who entered Qteaux to ‘leave their bodies at the gate', bathing was permitted in the infirmary alone. Anyone leaving the abbey precinct to go in search o f a hot bath was not allowed back into the monastery. We know o f at least three separate occasions at which monks earned themselves a severe reprimand for taking a bath. The natural sulphur springs o f Etruria proved too great a temptation for the Abbot o f San Giusto di Tuscania, who was admonished by the General Chapter o f 1202 for picnicking with laymen and then removing his habit to bathe in the springs outside the abbey grounds. A monk o f Hautecombe in Savoie was required to explain his behaviour in eating meat and bathing in 1212, and the Abbot o f Pilis in Hungary in 1225 had dared to go to the public baths on Holy Saturday and be given a shave. It is only towards the middle o f the fifteenth century that baths began to be considered a necessity rather than a luxury, reflecting the evolution o f general social standards. Even then, however, a bath once a month was deemed perfectly sufficient, with the specific proviso that it be taken in silence and not become an occasion for rowdy and unseemly behaviour. Lunch in the refectory never lasted more than about half an hour, and was taken in silence. As the brothers ate their frugal meal, one o f them read to the community from the Bible and the writings o f the Church Fathers. Those who finished first were encouraged to form a cross with the stray breadcrumbs on the table in front o f them as they listened to the readings, to prevent their minds from wandering. During the centuries o f strict adherence to the rule, everything the monks ate was produced by the abbey, a tangible demonstration o f its aspirations to self-sufficiency. At their two meals a day in the summer, or their one daily repast in the winter, the brethren were allowed an abundance o f bread and vegetables, flavoured with herbs from their garden, fish and eggs on feast days, occa­ sionally cheese, and about three-quarters o f a litre o f wine, or beer and cider in colder northern climes. But under absolutely no circumstances, outside the infirmary, was meat ever present on the table. In the words o f St Bernard: ‘I abstain from meat because if I feed my body too much, I nourish carnal desire thereby; I eat bread in moderation, because a heavy stomach prevents me from standing up straight at my prayers'. To guard against the temptations o f the flesh, the monks were also subjected to blood-letting four times a year, and meat was only permitted in the infirmary on the premise that its inhabitants were already well out o f

THE MONKS

G7

Satan’s grasp, either too old or too ill to spare the pleasures o f the flesh more than a passing thought. Lunch ended with grace said by the prior, and an act o f thanksgiving in the abbey church. After this service, or immediately after lunch on Fridays during Lent, when all the brothers were allowed was bread and water, there followed a welcome siesta (the very word deriving from sext, the service preceding lunch) o f one or two hours, and then back to the choir stalls for nones. In winter, lunch followed rather than preceded nones since it was the only meal o f the day. A few hours’ work occupied the afternoon, until vespers was rung at 6 p.m. At supper, immediately after vespers in summer, vegetables and fruit accompanied the remainders o f each monk’s loaf from lunch. After supper the monks gathered in the north walk o f the cloister to hear a read­ ing, the ‘collation’, given by one o f the brothers. The abbot sat against the south wall o f the church, the reader opposite him and the monks in a row on the cold stone benches o f the cloister arcading. Following collation, the final service o f the day, compline, took place at about 7.30 p.m. and by 8 p.m. the brethren were asleep on their mat­ tresses, wrapped in their habits with a single rough blanket pulled over them. They managed to snatch almost six hours’ sleep (in winter, with no supper served, vespers was held at 3.30 p.m., compline at 4 p.m., and with the light faifing, the monks took themselves to the dormitory and slept a full nine hours) before the bell for matins woke them again at 1.30 a.m. When one o f the brothers had come to the end o f his earthly voyage, his brethren gathered around him to witness the administration o f ex­ treme unction, laying him on a mattress over a layer o f ashes on the floor. After death, the body was placed on a stone table, stripped and washed. Though the story may be apocryphal, it was apparently only during this ceremony that the brothers o f the Abbey o f Schönau realized that they had had a sister in their midst for some years. The ‘blessed Hildegund’ had gone on a pilgrimage to the H oly Land with her father, but he died leaving her alone in a foreign land. Eventually she made her way back to Germany and was admitted to Schönau by the abbot who was convinced that she was a young boy. Realizing her good fortune in a world full o f uncertainty for a girl in her position, without a dowry to enter a convent, she kept up this pretence until her death in 1188. The dead brother was clothed in the full habit, his corpse watched over for the rest o f the day and the following night by his erstwhile brethren,

i $8

the monks

then a requiem mass was offered in his memory, and the brothers finally accompanied him through the small door in the north transept o f the abbey church to the grave awaiting him. Many monasteries kept a grave permanently dug in readiness for the next occupant; as soon as it was filled, another was dug. The monk was lowered into the cold earth without coffin or shroud, to rest for ever in a nameless unmarked grave. N o wooden cross nor coffin could be needed by a brother who had left his body at the gate many years before.

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T h e great tree o f Cîteaux grew prodigiously: in less than a century, its branches stretched out to the frontiers o f Christianity, from Alvastra in Sweden and Tutero in Norway, M ellifont and Boyle in Ireland, to Sambucina in the Calabrian mountains o f Sila and Osera in Galicia, Alcobaça in Portugal and W ^chock in Poland. Then, imperceptibly, the branches stop reaching out. T h e leaves fan out peacefully under the warm sun o f the 13th century and the tree confines its activities to producing the seasons fruits.

(Van der Meer, F.

Atlas de l’Ordre Cistercien)

describes the fate o f the Cistercian Order after the first great wave o f enthusiasm had subsided and the zeal o f the founding fathers had been tempered by the practicality o f their heirs. The history o f the Order after the death o f St Bernard is one o f limited, if still substantial, expansion, and o f consolidation. Cîteaux became part and parcel o f the establishment. This is not to say that, within the confines o f the monastery, their particular asceticism waned. Throughout the Middle Ages there continued to exist a crucial difference in spirituality between the Cistercians and their rivals the Cluniacs. I f anything, the acceptance o f the Cistercians by the world at large meant that they themselves still influenced the world to a greater extent than that to which their own ideals were watered down by contact with it. Many other religious orders during the Middle Ages were inspired by or even copied the practices, architecture and spiritual approach o f the Cistercians. The Premonstratensians, the followers o f Joachim o f Flora, the Franciscans and Dominicans: none would have accomplished what they did without the impact on twelfth century society o f the Cistercian revolution.

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The history o f the Cistercian Order from the death o f St Bernard to the eve o f the French Revolution, covering a timespan o f over 600 years, is remarkable for many reasons, not least for the extent to which mem­ bers o f an order which renounced the world became actively involved in the political vicissitudes o f that world. The careers o f two prominent members o f the Cistercian Order in the twelfth century highlight the move towards involvement with the world in the latter part o f the century. St Ailred o f Rievaulx, often referred to as a second St Bernard, spent almost as much time away from his abbey as did St Bernard himself, persuading monarchs to support this or that papal cause, and engaged in other royal business. And yet his whole life, to judge from his writings, is one long hymn to the perfection o f Cistercian isolation. It is he who gives us our first glimpse, after Stephen Harding, o f the gentler side to the asceticism o f Cîteaux. His writings pulse with the pleasure he took in the beauty o f his surroundings, however harsh and unwelcoming, and the impression we are left with is o f a smile bestowed on those who were the poorer for not sharing the privilege o f living in the Cistercian desert. Baldwin o f Forde, on the other hand, a second generation Cistercian, already begins to show many o f the signs that were inevitably to weaken Cistercian isolation from the weighty affairs o f the world. After strenu­ ously defending Thomas Becket against King Henry II during his youth, he became Bishop o f Worcester and then, as Archbishop o f Canterbury and Primate o f England, he accompanied Henry’s son Richard the Lionheart on crusade to the Holy Land. The third crusade (1189—1192) was preached and to a large extent organ­ ized by the order. Gerard, Archbishop o f Ravenna, Cistercian monk and papal legate to the Christian armies, Henry o f Marcy, Cardinal o f Albano and former Abbot o f Clairvaux, and Baldwin, Archbishop o f Canterbury, were the driving forces behind recruitment for the crusade in Italy, France, England and Germany. All three were to die during the siege o f Acre, which saw the triumph o f Richard the Lionheart. When Pope Innocent III, probably the most forceful pope in the his­ tory o f the Middle Ages in defense o f the temporal power o f the papacy,

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Daphni, Greece. Cloister arcade Vignogoul, France. Chancel vault

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wondered who should be sent in the wake o f the fourth crusade to the newly conquered Latin Empire o f the East to prove the superiority o f Roman Christianity over that propounded by the Orthodox Church, the answer could only be the Cistercians. In fact the monks o f Cîteaux had again played a major part in organizing the crusade, and Abbot Luca o f Sambucina had been entrusted with preaching the cause, soon joined by six other abbots o f the order. When the wily Venetians hijacked the Christian armies, persuading de Villehardouin and his fellow Christian commanders to attack Constan­ tinople (‘hive o f heretics and schismatics’, and incidentally Venice’s chief commercial rival in the Mediterranean) abbots Peter o f Lucedio and Guy o f the Vaux-de-Cernay were among the most outspoken opponents o f the Venetian conspiracy and immediately reported it to Innocent III, sadly to no avail. After the sack o f Constantinople in 1204, however, the Cis­ tercians, realistic in their acceptance o f the situation, wasted no time in colonizing the new Latin Empire, in a well-meaning attempt to show what they believed to be the true path o f Christ to the schismatic Orthodox Greeks. In Constantinople itself they took over no less than five monas­ teries, and on mainland Greece they made three foundations o f some importance, one o f which was to last until the Turkish conquest o f Constantinople in 1453. There are still impressive ruins to be seen at Zaraka in the Peloponnese, and the former Cistercian abbey o f Daphni, now returned to the Orthodox Church, is one o f the wonders o f Attica. In the Holy Land, during the brief and turbulent existence o f the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Order founded four abbeys and two convents o f nuns both dedicated to the Magdalen. The very existence o f the Latin Kingdom, however, was fragile and the most important o f the male abbeys, Belmont in the Lebanon whose buildings are still miraculously intact and currently occupied by Orthodox monks, saw which way the wind was blowing. Soon after the disastrous battle o f the Horns o f Hattin in 1187, in which the entire Christian army was decimated by the Moslem forces o f Saladin, the monks o f Belmont founded the Abbey o f Beaulieu near Nicosia in Cyprus. When the crusader kingdom finally fell in 1289, the brethren had a new home ready and waiting for them. Beaulieu was finally demolished in 1567 by the Venetians who needed the stone to shore up the walls o f Nicosia against the onslaught o f the Turks. The role played by the Cistercians in the crusade against the Cathars, or Albigensians, heretics who spurned Rome as the living incarnation of

V alle Crucis, W ales. T h e ruined chancel o f the abbey church and the late fifteenthcentury prior’s chamber reflected in the vivarium, or fish pond

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the biblical ‘Whore o f Babylon, is a source o f controversy. St Bernard had spent some time in the 1140s preaching orthodoxy in the south west o f France among the communities o f Cathar followers and had had a rea­ sonable amount o f success. It was only natural therefore that Popes Alexander III and, after him, Innocent III, exasperated by these heretics, should call on the Cistercians to supply them with preachers to send among the rebels. Garin o f Pontigny and Henry o f Clairvaux were the first to take up the challenge, followed by Ranieri o f Ponza and Guy o f Cîteaux. When Ranieri died, he was replaced by Peter o f Castelnau, a monk o f the Languedoc Abbey o f Fontfroide. Finally, in 1204, the pope placed the task squarely at the feet o f Arnaud Amaury, Abbot o f Cîteaux. The first Cistercian missions had been characterized by peaceful attempts at persuasion and dialogue. The debate o f Montréal and Pamier in 1207, during which twelve Cistercian abbots led by Amaury and in­ cluding Guy o f the Vaux-de-Cernay discussed doctrinal matters with the parfaits (the priests) o f the Cathar religion, is the most famous o f these episodes and also the last. Peter o f Castelnau pleaded the pope for help in his wearying task and was sent two ecclesiastics from Spain: Diego Bishop o f Osma and his young assistant Dominic Guzman. They both symbolically donned the Cistercian habit but soon found it too charit­ able for their liking. They were convinced the rebels could be brought round by something a little stiffer than dialogue. In 1208, just after the arrival o f Dominic Guzman on the scene, the rebels realized that the possibilities offered by peaceful dialogue had come to an end. The murder o f Peter o f Castelnau sparked o ff a bloody perse­ cution which lasted over forty years, until the Cathars had virtually ceased to exist as an organized sect. To the eternal shame o f the Order, it was the Abbot o f Cîteaux Arnaud Amaury who, when asked by the captain o f the Catholic army during the sack o f Béziers how to distinguish the heretics among the inhabitants who had taken refuge in the church o f the Magdalen, is claimed to have said: ‘Kill them all! God will recognize his own.’ The massacre commenced forthwith. Whether this famous story is true or a legend, it effectively illustrates how the spirit o f violence which was to characterize the Order founded by Dominic Guzman, and the terrifying methods o f his H oly Inquisitors, had taken the upper hand over the spirit o f charity which governed the Cistercian ideal. The Dominicans, the self-styled Order o f Preachers, were soon to become known as the ‘Domini Canes’, the hounds o f the Lord.

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And yet after the royal house o f France which united the territories o f the Counts o f Toulouse to the crown, and the papacy that strengthened its spiritual hold in the area, it was not the Dominicans but the Cistercians who reaped the richest pickings o f the crusade, with members o f the Order becoming bishops o f Narbonne, Toulouse and Carcassonne. Just as the Cistercians had been the inspiration behind the Knights Templar, they became the driving force behind other orders o f chivalry in the Iberian Peninsula. The Abbey o f Morimond, mother-house to Fitero in Castille, wrote the rule for the Knights o f Calatrava and the Order o f Alcantara in the 1150s, while after the suppression o f the Temple in 1312, Morimond took responsibility for the Order o f Montesa born out o f its ashes, and Alcobaça did the same in Portugal for the Order o f Christ. The Cistercians also played a crucial role in the conversion to Christianity o f the Baltic regions o f Estonia and Latvia, thanks to the untiring efforts o f Dietrich o f Treiden, a monk o f the Abbey o f Loccum, who personally supervised the foundation o f the fortified Abbey o f Dünamünde in Latvia and played an important part in setting up the two military orders o f the Knights o f the Sword and the Knights o f Dobrin in the early thirteenth century. The area also saw the creation o f five nuns’ convents and two more male abbeys. The Order was in full expansion on the outer edges o f Christendom just when it was slowing down to a sedate pace in the centre o f the politi­ cal world. In that centre the Order continued to uphold the cause o f ortho­ doxy, standing up for the papacy against monarchs o f such diverse temperament as the Emperor Frederick II in southern Italy and King John Lackland in England. By Frederick, a man o f extraordinary intellect and versatility, they were to be rewarded for their honesty and constancy with the endowment o f new houses.1 King John, in his jealous anger, was to confiscate lands and wealth and generally make their life difficult until he repented and founded the magnificent abbey o f Beaulieu in Hampshire. By the thirteenth century, the Cistercian Order had become a pillar o f the society it had set out to reject. King Louis IX o f France filled his king­ dom with abbeys for the white monks, often spending long periods o f time with the community. But the abbeys he endowed were, not surpris­ ingly, fit to entertain royalty. His favourite foundation, Royaumont near Paris, is a shining example not o f simple Burgundian architecture but o f the proudest, soaring Ile-de-France Gothic. The absence o f a bell tower or richly-coloured glass shows nothing more than token lip-service to the

Orvai, Belgium. Chapter house

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original precepts o f the Order. Soon its ambulatory was filled with royal tombs, against all the injunctions o f the early Cistercian fathers. The king would, laudably, come to assist the lepers in the infirmary, pray with the monks in their stalls, beg to be allowed to wash the feet o f the brothers during the Saturday mandatum, and generally make it impossible for the monks to avoid contact with the world. In due course the brothers abandoned the sign language they had developed to communicate in respect for their vow o f silence, and thin wooden partitions and fireplaces crept into the dormitories, making winters a little more comfortable. Meat gradually found its way into the refectory, at first under the guise o f dispensations for the sick in the infirmary, but it soon became standard practice to find the thinnest o f excuses in order to benefit from this sort o f dispensation. In the four­ teenth century, the hospitality the Order increasingly offered to travellers, together with a certain difficulty in finding sufficient vegetables, did away even with the need for an excuse and, by 1439, the General Chapter rec­ ommends that meat should be eaten no more than twice a week, increas­ ing to three times a week by i486. The same Chapter o f 1439 sanctioned what had obviously become standard procedure, authorizing baths for the brothers once a month and, by the seventeenth century, the monks who had prided themselves on shaving only twice a month were growing and trimming their beards into the latest fashionable shapes. The thirteen century witnessed a radical transformation in the Order s attitudes to books and learning, thanks almost solely to the far-sighted­ ness o f another Stephen from England, Abbot Stephen Lexington.2 After completing his studies at Oxford, Stephen joined the Cistercian Abbey o f Quarr on the Isle o f Wight and within ten years had been promoted to Abbot o f Stanley in Wiltshire. A man o f considerable learning and quick intelligence, Stephen was appalled by the state o f the Irish monasteries which it was his task to visit, and reached the conclusion that their unruliness could be put down to the almost total ignorance and illiteracy o f their inhabitants. They spoke neither Latin nor French nor English and he was at his wits’ end to find some way o f communciating with them. Marked by this experience, he made it a rule that all monks, on completing their novitiate, should spend two full years studying the laws and practices o f the order, with no other duties during this period to interfere with their study.

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Tintern, Wales. West window

Cleeve, England. D orm itory: showing spartan conditions o f early Cistercian life

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Huerta, Spain. R efectory

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Stephen went on to become Abbot o f Savigny and saw his precepts applied there too. In 1227 he had already complained that a lack o f great minds in the order, such as those that had filled the monasteries in the golden age o f St Bernard s lifetime, was bringing it to a grave pass. ‘Our order is old and vacillating,’ he cried, ‘soon the Dominicans will come in and take over, reforming our order with their terrible methods.’ Already seven monks from Languedoc had embraced the Cathar heresy through ignorance. His pleas were apparently heard and in 1237 Everard, Abbot o f Clairvaux, asked the General Chapter to authorize him to send some o f his monks to the schools in Paris to study. One older monk and two lay brothers were to accompany them and take care o f their material needs. When Stephen was elected Abbot o f Clairvaux in 1243, he wasted no time and, thanks to the enormous prestige that being Abbot o f Clairvaux carried with it, he was able to go straight to the pope with a request to open a Cistercian college in Parish He received papal authorization almost immediately, Pope Innocent IV expressly stating that the college should be founded ‘for the salvation and honour o f the Cistercian order’. Stephen had aroused the jealousy o f his conservative fellow abbots by going first to the pope before consulting them and then secretly asking him to send a letter to the General Chapter practically demanding that they endorse his idea. Soon after Pope Innocent I V ’s death, Stephen was deposed and retired to the Abbey o f Ourscamp where he lived out the rest o f his days in anonymity; but his college went from strength to strength despite the early hostility o f the General Chapter. It was still functioning on the eve o f the French Revolution and its great hall, a firemen’s barracks until 1994, is one o f the most beautiful buildings on the left bank o f the Seine. Two further colleges were soon founded, at the universities o f M ont­ pellier and Toulouse, and it was decreed that at least one abbey in every region should provide monks with the opportunity o f studying theology. Alcobaça in Portugal built a college at the University o f Coimbra, and Thame Abbey in England founded a daughter-house, the Abbey o f Rewley just outside Oxford, for the sole purpose o f serving as a base near the university for Cistercian students from all over the country. This was supplemented in the fifteenth century by a college o f St Bernard in the town o f Oxford itself. After King Henry V III dissolved the monasteries in 1538, the college became known at St Johns, and continues to function to this day under that name, with a statue o f St Bernard, renamed St John, over the gateway.

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Altenberg, Germany. By the fourteenth century there was little to distinguish many Cistercian abbeys from the great G othic cathedrals

Poblet, Spain. W ash house, fountain

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Altenberg, Germany. N orth-transept window (restored)

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Naturally, if abbeys were to become training grounds for aspiring theologians, they needed libraries worthy o f the name, and many monks’ dayrooms were soon converted for this purpose. The Cistercians o f the fifteenth century, in total contrast to their thirteenth century predeces­ sors, whose suspicion o f learning had brought about the downfall o f Stephen Lexington, were among the first religious to adopt the newly discovered process o f printing. The Abbey o f Zinna in Germany and the Abbey o f La Charité in France both had printing presses as early as the 1490S and, from the sixteenth century on, printing became a customary activity in many o f the Orders houses. N or were the monks insensitive to the winds o f humanism that had begun to blow over Europe from the south. Altzelle in Germany grew to become one o f the centres o f Renaissance learning in the March o f Meissen between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, while in Florence the monks o f the Abbey o f San Salvatore a Settimo had their convent in town completely rebuilt by no less a personage than Giuliano da Sangallo, architect to Lorenzo the Magnificent; and the choir o f their own abbey church is said to have been redesigned by the greatest Renaissance archi­ tect o f all, Filippo Brunelleschi. The history o f the order in the century which saw the Reformation and the upheavals it produced, is one o f sadness and decay. Many o f the northern abbeys were destroyed and the monks murdered or martyred, during the Wars o f Religion in France in the second half o f the sixteenth century, and during the Dissolution o f the Monasteries in England and Wales in the 1530s. It is undeniable that a certain amount o f rot had set in by the early sixteenth century, providing King Henry V III with the excuse he needed to unleash his commissioners on the ‘corrupt’ abbeys. In 1535, for instance, one Robert Salisbury, abbot o f Valle Crucis, was known to be the ring-leader o f a band o f highway robbers in Oxfordshire. But sporadic gestures o f heroic resistance put up by monks o f the calibre o f Adam Sedbergh and George Lazenby o f Jervaulx or Robert Hobbes o f Woburn could not halt the determination o f King Henry V III’s com­ missioners, bent on lining their own and their sovereign’s pockets with the wealth the abbeys had accumulated over 400 years.

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Sticna, Slovenia. Refectory: restored outer wall reveals how a tall

thirteenth-century refectory was first modified in the fifteenth century, then a floor was put in and the ceiling lowered in baroque times, to accommodate a library

San Galgano, Italy. V iew o f the site from M onte Siepi. ‘Bernardus valles, Benedictus montes amabat’ (Bernard loved the valleys, Benedict the mountains —traditional medieval axiom). T h e ruined abbey o f San Galgano lies deep in the valley o f the river Merse, ‘far from the haunts o f men’ V y ssi Brod, Czech Republic. T h e forbidding barn-like west front and tiny bellcote reflect Cistercian preoccupation with austerity (the bell tower is a later addition)

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In Ireland the few foundations that had survived the wrath o f Henry V III and his daughter Elizabeth were given the final coup de grâce by Oliver Cromwell in the seventeenth century. In Norway and Scotland the destruction was less vicious and pursued with less vigour, but the results were the same. By the end o f the 1500s not one abbey in Norway still stood, and the last surviving one in Scotland was to last only a few years into the next century. In Flanders and the Netherlands, the passage o f the protes­ tant Gueux in 1566 had spelt the end o f every abbey in the area, with only feeble attempts made to restore some form o f Cistercian life thereafter. The huge Abbaye des Dunes was completely razed to the ground, its bricks being used to repair the fortifications o f Nieuport and Dunkirk, and it was only after many tribulations that the community managed to salvage and restore a building in the city o f Bruges that had once been the property o f its sister abbey Ter Doest, and start again with much reduced numbers. In France not one o f the abbeys escaped damage during the Wars o f Religion. This accounts for so much conventual architecture dating from the great rebuilding o f the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But de­ spite the rebuilding, when the wars were over 180 abbeys had been wiped o ff the map for ever, and the rest were in a sorry state. Many were aban­ doned for ever, while others were put to the most varied uses. The fate o f the Abbey o f Le Reclus, in the Champagne region o f France, is especially interesting. The abbey had to close due to the massacre o f its monastic population and the severe damage the buildings had sustained during the Wars o f Religion. But the Abbot o f Clairvaux, loath to part with such a valuable property, decided to keep the premises open as a prison for recalcitrant members o f the Order. From 1744 until the outbreak o f the French Revolution, offending monks were sent to atone for their faults in the cells into which the former dormitory and monks’ day room had been divided up. To this day visitors are still shown the elegant graffiti with which the prisoners covered the walls o f their cheerless cells, whiling away the time between one service and another (for though prisoners, they were still monks and as such, bound to follow the monastic daily routine). In Sweden, Denmark and the Protestant principalities o f Germany, many o f the abbey churches were converted into Protestant temples for the new religion, and owe their survival to this twist o f fate. To see what

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Abbaye des Dunes II, Belgium. Cloister

Vaimagne, France. Nave: completed in ‘Ile-de-France’ G othic a mere two years after the end o f the Albigensian crusade. T h e church bears eloquent witness to the deliberate policy o f cultural dom i­ nation pursued by the victorious French

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La Maigrauge, Switzerland. Fourteenth-century choir stalls, portraying abbey benefactors.

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a Cistercian abbey would have been like in Germany during the golden age, it is now necessary to visit the Protestant north, since in the Catholic south it is not often easy to discern the original purity o f line under the heavy Baroque ornamentation with which the Cistercians ‘updated’ the churches they still inhabited in the eighteenth century. To some extent the same fate befell the Italian abbeys. Cheap stucco and golden putti were applied to disguise the original lines, since most abbeys lacked the financial means to rebuild on the grand scale north o f the Alps. The reason for the abbeys’ disastrous financial state lies in the institution in much o f Europe o f a practice known as commendation. Under this system the abbacy was given by the pope or the king to a favourite or minion, or farmed out to anyone who could pay the price. The ‘abbot’ hardly ever resided at the abbey, was rarely a cleric, and sim­ ply used the abbey revenues for his own purposes, allowing the buildings to fall into decay. There are cases on record o f the ‘abbots’ even selling parts o f the abbey, its grounds or its buildings for their own profit. The lead from the roof o f the Abbey o f San Galgano in Tuscany was removed and sold by Abbot Girolamo Vitelli in the eighteenth century. Within a few years the wooden beams, stripped o f their protective covering, rotted and fell through onto the vaults which promptly collapsed under the extra weight. The result is the ruin we see today. The commendation system obviously met with much hostility, and various attempts were made to counter the decadence it invariably in­ duced. One Martino Vargas, a monk o f La Piedra in Castile, left the Order in 1427 with eleven companions, to found a new abbey at Montesion, out­ side Toledo. He virtually rewrote the rules governing the visitation o f abbeys by the (often now commendatory) abbots o f their mother-houses and greatly reinforced the authority o f the prior who was elected for a three-year period and who, to all intents and purposes, took the place o f the abbot. M artino’s ‘rebellion’ incurred the displeasure o f the General Chapter at Cîteaux, especially when six other Castilian abbeys embraced his reform, and he was excommunicated for insubordination. His move, however, is important in that, as well as representing an attempt to defeat the evils associated with the commendation, it was the first time in the history o f the order that a grouping o f abbeys assumed some sort o f ‘national’ identity distinct from that imposed by the mother-house in France. In time M artino’s family o f reformed abbeys, taken back under the wing o f Cîteaux at the insistence o f the Pope, came to be known as

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the Congregation o f Castile. The rising nationalism o f the fifteenth cen­ tury had made its mark. The European ideal, which had opposed pope and emperor for so long, had become an anachronism, and before long the entire Cistercian Order, while still owing obedience to the General Chapter at Citeaux, was divided up into regional and national Congre­ gations and Provinces. N o history o f the Cistercians would be complete without mentioning the Congregation o f Our Lady o f Feuillant. A young nobleman by the name o f Jean de la Barrière, whose story in some ways foreshadows that o f Jean de Rance in the following century, was made commendatory abbot o f the Abbey o f Feuillant, near Toulouse, in 1562 when he was only eigh­ teen. After showing a total lack o f interest in his post for some years, he converted while a student in Paris and joined the Cistercian Order, de­ termined to wipe out the moral laxity and decadence prevalent in ‘his’ abbey. He did this with extraordinary success, establishing a regime which, despite its severity, attracted numerous postulants. New foundations were made and the Congregation o f the Feuillants came into being. While observing the Cistercian rule in all its primitive austerity, eating only bread, water and vegetables, sleeping on boards with stones for pillows, and eating on their knees rather than o ff tables, the Feuillants preferred to reside in towns where they became actively involved in preaching the values o f the Counter-Reformation. But while much o f Europe suffered the consequences o f the Reform ­ ation, the Catholic regions o f Bavaria, Swabia and Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and Poland flourished. Bell towers with brass onion bulbs rise over Burgundian naves unrecognizable in their gay baroque costume, and Gothic Hallenkirchen (hall churches) sport gaudy rococo disguises. Many o f the abbeys were rebuilt from the foundations and are among the most dramatic examples o f German baroque architecture. Schöntal, Wald­ sassen, Fürstenfeld, Grüssau in Poland, Rein, Schlierbach and Wilhering in Austria, are all powerful baroque churches in their own right, and there are many more abbeys where only the church remains o f the medieval buildings. At Hauterive in Switzerland, a primitive Burgundian church is flanked by a majestic baroque monastery, while at Bildhausen the church was positively dwarfed by the baroque conventual buildings before it was

W ilhering, Austria. Nave

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demolished in the last century. In the Iberian Peninsula too, many o f the surviving abbeys continued to flourish. Alcobaça in Portugal and Poblet in Catalonia both reached their apogee during the eighteenth century. This architectural renaissance was accompanied by a flowering o f the liberal arts such as had never been seen before in the Cistercian Order. Music played an increasingly important part in the monastic schedule, and there are cases recorded o f abbots turning their skills to the compo­ sition o f polyphonic pieces for use both during divine service and for entertaining guests during dinner. To celebrate the jubilee o f the Abbot o f Zwettl in Austria in 1768, the services o f no less a musician than Joseph Haydn were engaged to put to music a cantata written by the monks themselves. N o r was less time dedicated to the cultivation o f the refined aristocratic tastes so typical o f the eighteenth century in matters o f art and science. The Abbey o f Raitenhaslach housed a picture gallery con­ taining 150 works by old masters, and a scientific laboratory where experi­ ments were carried out in physics, botany, biology and zoology. Certain other abbeys even built observatories in order to encourage the study o f astronomy. And yet this dedication to worldly interests rarely detracted from the spiritual discipline and austerity o f the communities. A monk from the Abbey o f Heinrichau, visiting Salem Abbey in the middle o f the century, was struck by the contrast between the richness o f the abbey as a whole and the poverty o f the individual brothers. In a monastery where one o f the most well-stocked libraries in Germany boasted a librarian fluent in seven languages, where the quality o f the music in the refectory at dinner excelled that offered under comparable circumstances by the cream o f the local bourgeoisie, and where the sacristan had an ostensory in the trea­ sure house worth 60,000 florins, the monks observed the strictest rules o f silence, and wore the coarsest woollen underwear. He was so impressed by the austerity o f the community’s life style that he was prompted to say ‘Here I feel I have returned to Clairvaux at the time o f our father Saint Bernard’. The revival o f the order in seventeenth-century France followed an altogether different path. France was certainly not immune to the new baroque style o f architecture, and at Valloires Abbey in the Pas de Calais we have the single most complete baroque Cistercian abbey still func­ tioning as a community centre, matched only by that o f Sankt Urban in Switzerland. But for the Cistercian Order, the seventeenth century in

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France is o f the greatest importance for reasons totally divorced from any artistic consideration. It is the century o f the Abbé de Rance and the Abbey o f La Trappe. Born in 1626, Armand Jean le Bouthillier de Rance came from a family o f the minor French nobility. Destined by birth to a life o f com­ parative obscurity, Armand had the good fortune to have as godfather the Cardinal Richelieu. With Richelieu’s rise to power, the prospects o f advancement at court became distinctly brighter for the young de Rance. Popular with the men and enjoying enviable success with the ladies o f the court, thanks to his charm and wit, de Rance soon acquired a reputation for being something o f a wag and a libertine, the life and soul o f court festivities. To maintain his position he needed an appropriate income: what better than the commende o f some prosperous or well-propertied abbey? Armands elder brother had recently died and his benefice, the Cistercian abbey o f La Trappe on the borders o f Normandy, was thus vacant. It was bestowed on Richelieu’s godson as a means o f providing him with the sustenance he needed to maintain the estate and continue to enjoy the good living to which he had become accustomed. But for de Rance fate had reserved a very different road, not unlike that travelled by St Paul on the way to Damascus. The young aristocrat, sad­ dened by the death o f his love at court, retreated to his country property, where he was absolutely horrified by the state o f dilapidation o f the build­ ings and the complete moral and spiritual degeneracy o f the abbey’s inhabitants. Taking things firmly in hand, he started a programme o f re­ building, the results o f which can still be distinguished today despite the fury vented on the abbey during the French Revolution. But, more im­ portantly, he espoused the cause o f reform which had been gaining strength in the Order since the 1570s when Jerome de la Souchière, Abbot o f Clairvaux, had taken part in the Council o f Trent and decided that the Cistercians would benefit from strict application o f the tenets o f the Counter-Reformation, a conviction confirmed by Abbot Denis Largentier o f Clairvaux in 1615. The new reformatory movement, particularly popular among the younger members o f the Order, had come to be known as the ‘abstinent’ movement from its most evident distinguishing feature, the return to an exclusively vegetarian diet. In reality these ardent young monks pressed for a wholesale return to the unrelenting asceticism o f the first Cistercian

Fountains, England. Rem ains o f narthex

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fathers. With papal approval they constituted themselves into a congre­ gation known as the ‘Strict Observance’, while the older monks who felt that Cistercian spirituality was not compromised by aq updating o f their life style came to be known as the Cistercians o f the ‘Common Observance’. However, as with most schisms, the division was far from painless, and not willingly accepted by the brothers o f the Common Observance, who held themselves to be the only true heirs to the teaching o f St Bernard and in any case the legitimate representatives o f the Cistercian Order in the world. The quarrels which ensued spanned the better part o f a cen­ tury, dominating the Cistercian movement throughout the 1600s. The ‘A bstinents’ were required to defend their cause almost continuously. In 1664 they called on a member o f their congregation who, by his sudden conversion to the strictest observance o f the rule after a life o f dissolu­ tion and profligacy, stood as a shining example to brethren from both fac­ tions, Abbé Armand de Rance. It may have been purely incidental that the noble background and connections o f this young ex-courtier were likely to carry a lot o f weight with the aristocratic College o f Cardinals called to judge the issue. In the event, de Rance s impassioned defence o f the reform movement proved indecisive, and the quarrelling dragged on for another two years before a papal bull, known as In suprema, officially put an end to the dis­ pute. Brethen o f both the Common and Strict Observances were to lead substantially similar lives, with the brothers o f the Common Observance allowed meat three times a week except during Lent and Advent, while the reformers returned to the practice o f total abstinence. Juridically the reform movement was allowed to exist as an independent structure, with its own abbots as visitors and a share in the university colleges, as well as the right to assign ten abbots to the executive committee o f the General Chapter. But it still remained under the wing, and watchful eye, o f the Annual General Chapter at Cîteaux. For de Rance, this made a mockery o f everything he had fought for. His violent temper and blinkered sense o f morality got the better o f him and he denounced the papal bull as an attempt to clip the movement’s wings and reduce it to impotence. One cannot but speculate that, had he fought less and tried more gentle per­ suasion, the Order might have been reformed and reconciled at the same time rather than split into two groupings which still look askance at each other today.

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Be that as it may, de Rance imposed an extremely strict lifestyle on his own monks at La Trappe, stricter even than that o f the original fathers at Cîteaux. He not only forbade the eating o f meat, but also o f fish, eggs, cheese and butter. His attitude towards life in the monastery betrayed an obsession with sin and repentance which can be traced back to his profligate youth. N o one really doubts the good faith and piety o f de Rance but his excessive religious zeal has the taint o f fanaticism. Often called by his own disciples the ‘second St Bernard’, he appears rather to represent the panicky post-Tridentine asceticism o f his century which expressed itself more through the Inquisition and witch-hunts than through any mystical aspiration to unity with God. And yet his work survived, and the family o f the Strict Observance prospered. By the time o f the French Revolution there were sixty-five abbeys, by now with their own General Chapter and a much greater degree o f independence from Cîteaux, answering to the name o f Trappist. The eighteenth century spelled the end o f the great adventure. In 1782 the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II ordered all ‘useless religious institutions’ closed. In the age o f illuminism, this enlightened monarch considered con­ templative monasticism a waste o f time. Luckily for posterity this move was made by an intelligent and ageing man. N o Tudor greed bent on gain nor popular fury venting its spleen was to wreak the destruction visited on the monasteries during the English dissolution or the French Wars o f Religion. The houses were closed and their occupants pensioned off. The buildings were simply put to secular use and many o f the churches became parish churches serving local communities. In the outer reaches o f the Empire, in Belgium for instance, such abbeys as had survived the sixteenth-century wars managed to outlive the Emperor Joseph as well. He died before his decree could be fully imple­ mented. But what had at first appeared to be a stroke o f luck proved in the event to be fatal. Only seven years after the Habsburg decree, the out­ break o f revolution in France sealed the fate o f the Cistercian Order. Regarded by the populace and the bourgeoisie as bulwarks o f privilege and bastions o f reaction, the monasteries and religious institutions were among the first targets o f the revolutionary fury. While there was un­ doubtedly some truth in this belief, it is hard to excuse the wholesale destruction o f over ninety per cent o f some o f the finest medieval archi­ tecture ever created. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

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saw speculation and greed rest their eye on these superb quarries o f readycut stone, and demolish them in the name o f equality, liberty and frater­ nity, from Languedoc to Belgium, from Brittany to the Franche-Comté and, during the Napoleonic invasions, down into Italy and Spain too. While speculation on the part o f local businessmen accounted for most o f the destruction, in some cases we hear o f the pointless torture o f the two or three venerable old men still clinging pathetically to their voca­ tions, the only inhabitants o f their decaying monasteries. At the Abbey o f Mortemer in Normandy, visitors are still shown the cellar in which the last two brothers, aged well into their eighties, were tortured and finally starved to death. At Royaumont near Paris, the former keeper o f Queen Marie Antoinette s gaming purse, who had bought the abbey at auction, demonstrated his republican fervour by wantonly tearing down, stone by stone, the vast Gothic church ‘built by one o f our late tyrants’, and then boasting about it to the National Assembly who suspected him, probably rightly, o f royalist sympathies. The greater part o f the abbeys sold at auction appealed to the bour­ geoisie and what was left o f the minor aristocracy because it offered them a chance to recoup most o f their initial capital outlay by selling o ff cut stone from the church they demolished, and turning the often recently rebuilt Renaissance and baroque conventual buildings into stylish manors and chateaux'at little cost and with great speed. Many an abbots lodging provided the perfect ‘gentilhommière, and the famed Cistercian fruit orchards, woods, arable land and, most o f all, their vineyards, proved very attractive to the rising class o f newly rich entrepreneurs who were to characterize the nineteenth century. The procedure o f suppression and the sale o f abbey possessions is particularly well documented in the case o f the mother-house itself, Cîteaux. In M ay 1790, inventories were taken o f all the abbey property and the monks assembled and asked whether they were content with the pension being offered them. Fourteen monks, including Abbot François Trouvé, replied indignantly that they wanted to continue in the religious life, while twenty-nine others stated that they would happily accept the pension and return to their civilian status; two were unsure. Between September o f 1790 and January o f the following year, most o f the monks

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Royaumont, France. Cloister, north walk Elan, France. Abbots lodgings, fifteenth century

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departed the abbey with their pensions and the rest were thrown out since, by then, the property had been sold, the sale going through on 24 March for the sum o f £482,000. The local populace took the fall o f the abbey as a signal to join in the free-for-all and grab as much as they could with im­ punity. Things not unnaturally took a violent turn and an artillery squad, under the command o f one Napoleon Bonaparte, was called in to quell the riots. Abbot Trouvé retired to the house o f his nephew in Vosne, from where he wrote to the seat o f the Order in Rome, the Abbey o f Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, delegating all his powers to the Procurator General o f the order with the Holy See, Abbot Alano Bagatti. In 1797 he died in the little house in Vosne, after writing the last chapter o f a story that had begun 700 years earlier, almost to the day, when Robert o f Molesme had set out from his abbey to try and find God in a desolate wilderness near Vosne, called Cîteaux.

opposite

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Royaumont, France. All that remains o f the abbey church after the

Postscript

After the Storm: 1789 to the Present Day

following the cata­ clysm o f the French Revolution is a story o f determination and single-mindedness bordering often on the heroic; in fact it is probably the closest thing to a return to the original intentions o f the founding fathers since de Rance had rebelled against the laxity o f the order in the seventeenth century. Thus it is no mere chance that we find the Trappists, who prior to the Revolution had been a minority in the order, leading the movement to revive the Cistercian ideal. The reign o f terror in which the French Revolution had culminated, had created a widespread feeling o f disillusionment with the ‘enlightened' ideals which had fostered it. Society as a whole became more sympathetic to both the spiritual ideals which had inspired the Cistercian way o f life and to the material remains o f that lifestyle. Our appreciation o f ivy-clad ruins can o f course be traced back, in part, to the eighteenth century and the birth o f the Romantic movement, but it is perhaps less widely ac­ knowledged that the cultural climate which favoured the development o f the Romantic ideal was also responsible for allowing the resurrection o f monastic life. The last novice master before the Revolution at the Abbey o f La Trappe had been a certain Dorn Augustin Lestrange. When the abbey was requi­ sitioned and the monks expelled, Lestrange, acting under the authority o f Abbot Trouvé of Cîteaux and Abbot Rocourt o f Clairvaux, had fled to Switzerland taking twenty-one monks with him. The government o f the Canton of Fribourg allowed him to settle with his small community in the abandoned charterhouse of La Valsainte near Gruyères, and it was here, in 1791, that the flame o f Cistercian life was rekindled. At the time, Lestrange and his group of faithful followers simply sought to prevent

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that flame from being extinguished altogether, implementing in their almost frantic attempts to preserve their way o f life a series o f rules which were, if anything, even more stringent than those laid down by de Rance. In their Alpine stronghold the monks dispensed with all forms o f heat­ ing, slept on rough planks with a single coverlet, ate nothing but bread and boiled pulses, drank only water and spent at least twelve hours a day in church. The rest o f the day was equally divided between sleep and manual labour. Contrary to Lestrange s expectations, the severity o f this life style attracted a fair number o f vocations and, in 1794, the community was authorized by the pope to elect an abbot, the choice falling naturally on Lestrange. The elders o f the Canton o f Fribourg had specified that the community o f La Valsainte should not exceed twenty-four in number. Thus, in best Cistercian tradition, Lestrange began sending monks o ff to wherever he thought, or had been informed, that the climate was right for founding daughter-houses. While the preparation o f these monks was at best some­ what cursory, a fact readily excused by the critical nature o f the times, they were by no means lacking in ardour and determination. Twice, pioneer­ ing groups o f three or four brothers set out for Canada, but on both occasions failed to reach their destination. The political upheavals domi­ nating European affairs in the late eighteenth century prevented the first group from leaving continental Europe: they got no further than Amster­ dam, where they founded a monastery in a farmhouse near Westmalle, only to be moved on a few years later by the invading armies o f France, ending up in Darfeld in Westphalia. The second group reached England but made no further progress. They set up house in Lulworth on the Dorset coast, where their abbey, the first founded in England since the sixteenth-century Reformation, survived until 1817. After the defeat o f Napoleon and the lifting o f the ban on re­ ligious communities in France, the monks returned to their native land and restored the old Cistercian abbey o f Melleray in Brittany, where the Trappist community is still very much a part o f the local scene. Melleray itself was able, after only twenty years, to found two new daughter-houses in the British Isles, Mount St Bernard in Leicestershire and Mount Melleray in Ireland; these too are still active centres o f monastic life today. Meanwhile, the attitude which had caused the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II in 1782 to insist that all monasteries demonstrate their social usefulness was still a decisive component o f the contemporary cultural

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climate, and Lcstrange felt it incumbent upon him to subscribe at least in part to that philosophy. He opened a school for local boys at La Valsainte and founded the Trappist third order for sympathetic laymen who wished to live in spiritual communion with the precepts o f the order but were unable, for one reason or another, to take full monastic vows; at the same time, he encouraged refugee nuns in other parts o f Switzerland to found similar schools for girls. But when Switzerland was invaded by the French Revolutionary armies in 1798, Lestrange was forced once again to take to the road, this time with a monastic family o f over 250 people including monks, nuns, members o f the third order (or tertiari es as they were called) and children from the monastic schools. At the invitation o f the Czar o f Russia, this ragged band o f refugees started out on an odyssey that was to last almost two years, earning the admiration even o f Napoleon Bonaparte. Reaching Belarus after six months, the restless Lestrange failed to find the welcome he had expected and turned his thoughts once more to the New World. The group took ship at Danzig but was forced ashore by a storm at Lübeck, where many o f the monks, disheartened by the succession o f misfortunes, left to join their former comrades in Darfeld. Others returned to La Valsainte, fol­ lowing the reconciliation between Pope Pius V II and Napoleon, while only a small number continued with the plan to cross the Atlantic, found­ ing the first Cistercian community on American soil in Baltimore in 1803. Renewed hostilities between France and the papacy in 1809 caused the French authorities to clamp down once more on religious houses and Lestrange was arrested, but he managed to escape and make his way to New York, where he purchased some land with the intention o f found­ ing, at last, the community o f which he had dreamed since first fleeing La Trappe some twenty years before. The fall o f Napoleon only three years later, however, enabled him to return to Europe and so nothing came o f his plans, but the land he had bought on the island o f Manhattan re­ mained church property: on it now stands St Patrick’s, the cathedral church o f New York City. The expansion o f the Trappists after the downfall o f Napoleon and the virtual re-establishment o f religious freedom in much o f Europe was extraordinary. Lestrange was able to restore his own Abbey o f La Trappe

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Cîteaux, France. T h e disappointing modern church now

occupying the site o f Cîteaux opposite

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La Valsainte, Switzerland. Nave

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and further foundations soon followed, including the Port-du-Salut, where the monks ensured their economic survival by selling the cheese they made from the rich milk provided by their herd o f cattle. Within Lcstrange’s lifetime the abbeys o f Melleray, Aiguebelle, Bellefontaine, Bellevaux and Notre-Dame-du Gard had been added in France, and the community o f Darfeld had founded Olenberg in Alsace. By 1825 there were eleven male and five female monasteries in Europe, as well as two schools run by the tertiaries. Thirty years later the male monasteries had reached a total o f twenty-three, including two in America and one in Algeria, and by the end o f the century the order counted more than twice that number. In 1894, 3,000 Trappist monks were living a regular monastic life in accordance with the precepts o f the founding fathers o f the Cistercian Order as interpreted by the Abbé de Rance. The abbeys they founded reached from their native France, through Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, Spain and England, Holland and Ireland, to Canada, Australia, South Africa and China. Lestrange s last years were embittered by the realization that the rule he had enjoined upon his followers in the heroic days o f La Valsainte was too harsh for any realistic expectation that it would be adhered to in all its severity by the growing Trappist family. As early as 1815 the Abbot o f Darfeld, Dom Eugène de Laprade, had successfully petitioned the pope for his community to be allowed to return to the milder prescriptions o f de Rance. There ensued more than half a century o f what can only be described as petty bickering, with abbeys adhering to one or the other ‘observance’ according to which way the wind blew in Rome, and del­ egations nominated by one or the other tendency trying to win papal approval. By the late 1860s the Trappist movement had officially split into two separate congregations, known as the ‘Old Reform ’, comprising those abbeys that had returned to the interpretation o f de Rance, and the ‘New Reform ’, which grouped together the adherents o f Lestrange. It was not until 1892 that the two tendencies were once again reunited under the denomination o f ‘Order of the Reformed Cistercians and o f Our Lady of La Trappe’, thanks largely to the efforts o f Abbot Sebastian Wyart o f the Abbey o f Sept-Fons in Burgundy. Abbot Wyart’s success was to be crowned by the Trappist’s purchase in 1898 o f the first mother-house o f the order, Cîteaux itself. The monastery and church had been completely destroyed during the Revolution, but the new community restored the eighteenth-century wing, which had been

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spared any major damage, and built a new church on the site o f Stephen Hardings original cluster o f buildings. The white monks had come home and, in recognition o f this, the name o f La Trappe was dropped from their title. While they are still unofficially known as Trappists even today, the order, which counts eighty abbeys and some 3,400 monks, was solemnly renamed by papal decree in 1902 the ‘Order o f the Reformed Cistercians of the Strict Observance’, and recognized to be the true heir to the spiritual values o f the pioneer monks who had first settled at Cîteaux. Heir to the legal and material as well as the spiritual inheritance o f Cîteaux, on the other hand, was the ‘Common Observance’. Recognized as such by the Holy See immediately after the Revolution, the order was only very loosely organized in a series o f national congregations which had managed to survive the storm. Communications between these inde­ pendent congregations were so difficult as to be almost non-existent. N ot only did the very supranational nature o f organizations such as the Cistercian Order arouse suspicion in the heavily nationalistic climate prevalent throughout the nineteenth century, but most o f the conservativeoriented governments which took office in Europe after the downfall o f Napoleon, though not specifically anti-clerical, were hostile to what Emperor Joseph II had termed socially ‘useless’ monastic orders. The papacy obviously encouraged the rebirth o f the Cistercians: at Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome, and at Casamari; while the proCatholic government o f the new state o f Belgium favoured the purchase o f the ruins o f Val-Dieu, near Liège, by the abbeys last surviving monk, Bernhard Klinkenberg. All three abbeys are still active centres o f monastic life today. Abbé Léon Barnouin bought the disused buildings o f Sénanque in Provence and, in 1855, in honour o f the recently instituted dogma o f the Immaculate Conception, he founded the Congregation which took its name from the abbey. Within a few years the Congregation o f Sénanque had restored three more abbeys on French soil. The thirteen or so abbeys that had survived Emperor Joseph II's blitz against the contemplative orders were reduced, despite their buoyancy in terms o f vocations, to little more than appendages o f the secular clergy. Still required to demonstrate their social usefulness, they devoted their energies almost exclusively to teaching and pastoral work. Typically, the Hungarian Abbey o f Zirc had to care for twelve parishes as well as run­ ning three schools, and all with a complement o f thirty-five monks. Understandably, the monks had little time left to perform the liturgical

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obligations enjoined upon them or to live anything approaching the sort of monastic life envisioned by the founding fathers. The government adopted a form o f ‘pincer’ strategy to strengthen its grip on the abbeys: all novices were obliged to attend state-approved seminars where govern­ ment policy was forcefully propounded, while no abbey was allowed to entertain relations with other Cistercian abbeys in the Empire or with the mother-house in Rome. The revolution o f 1848 softened the government’s attitude towards the Church, and the Austro-Hungarian ‘congregation’ was able to make contact with the Orders abbot president, and efforts to restore a degree o f traditional monastic discipline resulted in the publi­ cation o f the Statutes o f Prague ten years later. While these statutes were never officially ratified, they mark a turning point in the history o f the Common Observance. They represent the first real steps within the Order towards reconciling traditional contemplative monasticism with what we today might term ‘social commitment’. Despite numerous encounters, negotiations and appeals to outside jurisdiction throughout the rest o f the century, however, no real progress was made towards a reunification o f the Common Observance, although the individual congregations were in a position, from the point o f view o f vocations, that it would be difficult to call unhealthy. Their numbers were on the increase in all three provinces: Austria-Hungary, France and Belgium, but that their principal concern was o f a pastoral and intellec­ tual nature can be deduced from the almost total absence o f lay brothers, that ancient institution which had characterized the Order for so long, and the high proportion o f priests. While the Trappists counted more than 2,000 lay brothers at the end o f the century, the Common Observ­ ance had a total o f 146. On the other hand, the abbeys o f the Common Observance catered for more than 250,000 souls in the parishes under their care, as well as running numerous schools at all levels, many o f which were reputed to provide the best education available. Today the Cistercian Order o f the Common Observance, grouped in tightly knit regional or national congregations and united once again, since 19^, under the central authority o f an Abbot General, is a thriving religious institution. Present in force in North and South America, Australia and the Far East as well as in Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Slovenia, the Order is currently engaged in restoring some o f its abbeys in the former Iron Curtain countries, determined to keep alive the flame lit by Robert o f Molesme 900 years ago.

Appendix A

A Description o f Clairvaux

to picture Clairvaux, the following has been written to serve you as a mirror. Imagine two hills and between them a narrow valley, which widens out as it approaches the monastery. The abbey covers the half o f one hillside and the whole o f the other. With one rich in vineyards, the other in crops, they do double duty, gladdening the heart and serving our necessities, one shelving flank providing food, the other drink. On the ridges themselves it is often the monks’ work (pleasant indeed and the more so for being peaceful) to collect dead brushwood and tie it in bundles for burning, sorting out the prickly brambles and cutting and tying only what is fit for the fires. Their job too to grub out the briars, to uproot and destroy what Solomon calls the bastard slips, which throttle the growing branches or loosen the roots, lest the stouf oak be hindered from saluting the height o f heaven, the lime from deploying its supple branches, the pliant ash that splits so readily from growing freely upwards, the fan-shaped beech from attaining its full spread. Farther on, the rear o f the abbey extends to the wide valley bottom, much o f which lies inside the great sweep o f the abbey wall. Within this cincture many fruit-bearing trees o f various species make a veritable grove o f orchards, which by their nearness to the infirmary afford no small solace to the brothers in their sickness: a spacious promenade for those able to walk, an easeful resting-place for the feverish. The sick man sits on the green turf, and, when the merciless heat o f the dog days bakes the fields and dries up the streams, he in his sanctuary, shaded from the day’s heat, filters the heavenly fire through a screen o f leaves, his discomfort further eased by the drifting scent o f the grasses. While he feeds his gaze on the pleasing green o f grass and trees, fruits, to further his delight, hang swelling before his eyes, so that he can not inaptly say: ’I sat in the shadow o f his tree, which I had desired, and its fruit was sweet to my taste.’ A

S

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A DESCRIPTION

OF

CLAIRVAUX

chorus o f brightly feathered birds caresses his ears with sweetest melody. Thus for a single illness God in his goodness provides many a soothing balm: the sky smiles serene and clear, the earth quivers with life, and the sick man drinks in, with eyes, ears and nostrils, the delights o f colour, song and scent. Where the orchard ends the garden begins, marked out into rectangles, or, more accurately, divided up by a network o f streamlets; for, although the water appears asleep, it is in fact slipping slowly away. Here too a pretty spectacle is afforded to the sick, who can sit on the grassy banks o f the clear runnels watching the fish at play in the translucent water, their manoeuvres recalling troops in battle. This water, which serves the dual purpose o f feeding the fish and irrigating the vegetables, is supplied by the tireless course o f the river Aube, o f famous name, which flows through the many workshops o f the abbey. Wherever it passes it evokes a blessing in its wake, proportionate to its good offices; for it does not slip through unscathed or at its leisure, but at the cost o f much exertion. By means o f a winding channel cut through the middle o f the valley, not by nature but by the hard work o f the brethren, the Aube sends half its waters into the monastery, as though to greet the monks and apologize for not having come in its entirety, for want o f a bed wide enough to carry its full flow. And should this stream in spate surge forward in a tumultuous sally, re­ pulsed by the fronting wall under which it has to flow, it falls back into itself, and the current once again embraces the reflux. As much o f the stream as this wall, acting as gatekeeper, allows in by the sluice-gates hurls itself initially with swirling force against the mill, where its ever-increasing turbulence, harnessed first to the weight o f the millstones and next to the fine-meshed sieve, grinds the grain and then separates the flour from the bran. The stream now fills the cauldron in a nearby building and suffers itself to be boiled to prepare the brothers’ drink (should husbandry have been ill-rewarded by a poor vintage, and malt, in default o f grape juice, have to supply the want). N or does it hold itself acquitted yet. The fullers, next door to the mill, invite it in, claiming with reason on their side that, if it swirls and eddies in the mill, which provides the brothers with food, it should do no less by those who clothe them. The stream does not demur, nor indeed refuse any request made o f it. Instead, raising and lowering by turns the heavy pestles (unless you prefer the term mallets or, better still, wooden feet —the expression which seems most suited to the gymnastic

A DESCRIPTION

OF

CLAIRVAUX

I9I

occupation o f the fullers), it frees these brothers from their drudgery. And should their gravity be broken by some jest, it frees them too from punish­ ment for their sin. O Lord, how great are the consolations that you in your goodness provide for your poor servants, lest a greater wretchedness engulf them! How generously you palliate the hardships o f your penitents, lest perchance they be crushed at times by the harshness o f their toil! From how much back-breaking travail for horses and arm-aching labour for men does this obliging torrent free us, to the extent that without it we should be neither clothed nor fed. It is most truly shared with us, and expects no other reward wheresoever it toils under the sun than that, its work done, it be allowed to run freely away. So it is that, after driving so many noisy and swiftly spinning wheels, it flows out foaming, as though it too had been ground and softened in the process. The tannery is next to capture the stream, and here it displays its zeal in the fashioning o f all that goes to make the brothers’ footwear. There­ after, its water decanted into a succession o f channels, it carries out a dutiful inspection o f each workshop, diligently inquiring where it can be o f service and offering its ungrudging help in the work o f cooking, sifting, turning, whetting, watering, washing, grinding and softening. Lastly, to ensure that no cause for gratitude be wanting, that its tasks be left in no respect unfinished, it carries the waste products away and leaves everything dean in its wake, and, while Clairvaux renders it thanks for all its blessings, it courteously returns the abbeys greetings as it hastens away to pour back into the river the waters siphoned o ff into the monastery. The two currents are indistinguishably mingled and the river, shrunken and sluggish since the diversion, surges forward under the onrush o f water. Now that we have returned the stream to its bed, let us go back to those rills we left behind. They too are diverted from the river and meander placidly through the meadows, saturating the soil that it may germinate. And when, with the coming o f the mild spring weather, the pregnant earth gives birth, they keep it watered too lest the springing grasses should wither for lack o f moisture. As it is, these have no need to depend on drops begged from the clouds, fostered as they are by the care o f the kindred river. These rills, or more properly trenches, their job done, are swallowed once more by the river that spewed them forth, and the Aube, now fully replenished, rushes o ff on its steep downhill course. And we, who have kept it company all this way, until it, in Solomons words, has returned to its place, let us too return to our point o f departure and,

192

A DESCRIPTION

OF

CLAIRVAUX

wasting no words, leap lightly over the wide expanse o f the meadow. Here is a spot that has much to delight the eye, to revive the weak spirit, to soothe the aching heart and to arouse to devotion all who seek the Lord. It brings to mind the heavenly bliss to which we all aspire, for the smiling face o f the earth with its many hues feasts the eyes and breathes sweet scents into the nostrils. Both the sight and the scent o f the meadow put me in mind o f tales o f long ago. Their scent recalls to me that the smell o f Jacobs garments was compared to the fragrance o f a fertile field; their colour, how the splendour o f Solomons purple was displayed. And yet he, who lacked neither the skill derived from wisdom nor the means that power affords, could not in all his glory rival the lilies o f the field. And so it is that, while agreeably employed in the open, I get no little pleasure from the mystery beneath the surface. This meadow is refreshed by the floodwaters o f the Aube, which runs through it, so that the grass, thanks to the moisture at its roots, can stand the summer heat. Its extent is great enough to tire the community for the space o f twenty days when the sun has baked to hay its shorn grassy fleece. N or is the haymaking left to the monks alone: alongside them a count­ less multitude o f lay-brothers and voluntary and hired helpers gather the mown grass and comb the shorn ground with wide-toothed rakes. Two granges divide this meadow between them, the Aube serving as an equitable judge and surveyor in the settling o f disputes. Assigning to each its share, like a marking-rope it sets the bounds that neither dares cross to invade the others portion. You would take these granges not for the living quarters o f lay-brothers but for monastic cloisters were it not that ox-yokes, ploughs and other farm implements betray the inhabitants’ status, and that no books are opened there. As regards the monastic build­ ings themselves, you will admit that they are well-fitted in size, siting and appearance to a large community o f monks. In the part o f the meadow nearest the wall, a watery lake has been cre­ ated from the solid field. Where in former times the sweating labourer mowed the hay with a sharp scythe, today the brother in charge o f the fish-ponds, seated on a wooden horse, is borne over the smooth surface o f th is liquid field. Wherever he goes, a light pole serves him for spurs to speed his progress, for a curb when turning. The net destined to entangle the fish is spread under the water, and its favourite baits are set, but primed with a hidden hook to catch the unwary — an example which teaches us to spurn delights, for pleasure harms and suffering is its price. Only the

A DESCRIPTION

OF

CLAIRVAUX

*93

man who has never sinned or never done true penance for sin can possibly ignore that the outcome o f pleasure is pain. M ay God keep pleasure far removed from us —that pleasure at whose doorway death stands posted, and which a wise man likens to bees on the wing, which, as soon as they have shed their sweet burden o f honey, turn and strike the addicted heart with a deep-seated sting. The high bank surrounding the mere is faced with wattle made from withy roots to prevent the soil from slipping into the water that washes it. A brook some thirty feet distant keeps the waterlevel constant by means o f feeder ditches, which carry and regulate both inflow and outflow. But while I am winging my way across the plain, breathless with the exertion, whether it be describing the vivid surface o f the meadow painted by Wisdom s own hand or the ridges o f the hills with their shaggy pelt o f trees, I am taxed with ingratitude by that sweet spring from which I have drunk times without number and whose deserts I have ill requited. It has often quenched my thirst, humbled itself to wash not only my hands but my feet, and done me many a kindness and service — good offices which merited a better reward. For now it reproaches me bitterly with having assigned it the last place, and that only just, in my topographical list, when the first, by right o f reverence, was its due. And indeed I can­ not deny that my memory was laggard when it gave others precedence. This spring, like the waters o f Siloam which move silently, glides to and fro unheard down subterranean channels. Its course cannot be detected by the faintest murmur, and, as though it feared discovery, it hangs its head and turns its face aside. W hy should I not think it wanted to be passed over in silence when it secretes itself under cover? Like all good springs it sallies out over against the rising sun, so that midsummer finds it greeting the roseate splendour o f dawn full in the face. A small but pretty hut, or tabernacle to use a more reverential word, encloses it and protects it from any dirt. It wells out o f the hillside only to be swallowed by the valley, and in the very place o f its birth it seems to die, nay, even to be buried. But do not look for the sign o f Jonah the prophet, expecting it to lie hidden away for three days and three nights: at once a thousand feet away, it rises again in the abbey cloister, as it might be from the bowels o f the earth, and, as it were restored to life, offers itself to the sight and use o f the brethren, lest its future lot should be with any but the holy. W ritten by an a n o n ym o u s tw e lfth -c e n tu ry m onk Translated and edited by Pauline Matarassofor ‘ The Cistercian World: Monastic Writing of the Twelfth Century’, pp i 8 j —gz. Penguin Classics, /993. Copyright © Pauline Matarasso, /993.

A ppendix B

The Abbeys: A Gazetteer

A complete list o f male Cistercian abbeys founded between 1118 and 1390. Where the remains warrant, nunneries (indicated by Roman numerals) and granges (indicated by a letter) are included. Key Abbey

N am e by which the abbey is most com m only known today (alternative names are in brackets). N B:

A n * a ft e r the n a m e in d ic a te s that the a b b ey , w h a t e v e r its c o n d itio n , is e s p e c ia lly r e w a r d in g to v isit.

Condition

o = Site unknown 1 — Site known, but little or nothing remains 2 = Som e ruins visible or

T h e buildings on the site are unrelated to the original abbey structure ] — Considerable remains 4 = Reasonably complete or

W hat few buildings remain are intact 5 = T h e abbey is virtually complete (but no longer a place o f worship) 6 = Still a place o f worship (the abbey is not necessarily intact)

Style

— = T h e remains, if any, are so insubstantial, as not to warrant definition c = Early Cistercian (sometimes defined as ‘Transitional R om anesque/G oth ic ) R = Romanesque

THE

= i = B = M =

g

ABBEYS

A GAZETTEER

*95

Gothic Renaissance Baroque or Rococo Modern (including neo-Romanesque, neo-Gothic etc.)

N B : A combination o f tw o or more letters (eg. C - G - B ) indicates that more than one style w ill befo u n d at the site

Accessibility

0 = N o t accessible to the public 1 = Outside only visible to the public 2 = N o t normally open to the public (a prior phone call or polite request m ay get you in!) 3 = Som e parts open to the public at given times 4 = Accessible to the public during opening hours (which may be seasonal) 5 = A s above, with leaflet available at site, guided tours etc. (and possibly an entry fee)

I.

For the convenience of the modern traveller, this gazetteer is broken down by country within current boundaries.

II. Every attempt has been made to keep the gazetteer as accurate as possible. Constantly changing conditions, however, whether political, cultural or re­ ligious, make this an extraordinarily difficult task. Readers' comments and indications will be most welcome, and will be taken into account in future editions o f this book. III.

Where I have been unable to find any information concerning the current state of a particular abbey, I have been forced to leave the entry blank. Any information concerning those abbeys from readers who have personal knowledge of them, will be most welcome and will be incorporated (with appropriate acknowledgement of the source) in future editions o f this book.

196

THE

a b b e y s

: a g a z e t t e e r

Abbey AUSTRIA

M ap Ref.

C on­ d itio n

S ty le

A ccessi­ b ility

(m ap p. 223 )

B

a u m g a r t e n b e r g

i

6

C-G-B

3

E

n g e l z e l l

2

6

G-B

3 4 5

6

R-G

3 5

6

C-B

6

C-B

6

6

G

H E IL IG E N K R E UZ L I LI E N F E L D *

*

(Bors M onostra)

M

a r i e n f e l d

N

e u b e r g

N

EU K L O S T E R

7

6

G-B

R

e i n

8

6

B

*

3 4 4 3 3

S

ä u s e n s t e i n

9

2

G-B

S

c h l ä g l

10

6

C-G-B

S

c h l i e r b a c h

11

6

B

S

t a m s

12

6

B

IKTRING

*3

6

C-G-B

W lLH E R IN G

14

6

C-B

4 5

Z

U

6

C-G

5

16

C-G-B

3

17

3 i

G

18

2

C-B

4 5

*9

C

20

5 3

G

20a

6

B

4 5 3

B

2

G-B

2

C-B-M

2

V

w e t t l

*

BELGIUM A

u l n e

Ba C

(m ap p. 2 2 7 )

*

u d e l o o

a m b r o n

Ter D Ter D Ter D

- C

4 5 5 5

a s t e a u

s T ( barn only)* u I N e N (Abbaye des D un es) u i n e n (II) 0 E

G

r a n d p r e

21

H

o c h t

22

M

o u l i n s

23

4 3 4

24

6

C-M

5

S t . B E R N A E R D S - O p ’t - S C H E L T

25

4

B

V

a l

26

6

G-M

3 3

V

a l

27

C-B

V

IL L E R S -la -V ILLE

28

4 4

C-G-B

3 5

I

5

G-B

5

II

5

G-B

3

O rv

De

a l

- D

*

i e u

St L

B

a m b e r t

i j l o k e

La C a m b r e (T er Kameren)

THE

a b b e y s

Map Ref.

: a

197

g a z e t t e e r

Conditioin

Style

Accessi­ bility

2

c

4

i

—

4

747

6

B

4

43

i

C-G

4

29

2

C

3

N EPOMUK

30

2

C

4

O

sek

31

6

C-G-B

P

lasy

32

6

G-B

5 2

S

edlec

33

6

G-B

S

kalice

34

2

G-B

S

vate

35

i

—

4

37

6

R-B

3

38

6

C-G

39 40

i

—

5 2

5

G-B

3

4 1

6

G-B

3

4 2

6

C-G

5

in

6

C-B

3

IV

6

R-C

4

44

2

C

i

45 46

6

C-B

3

i

—

4

47

6

C

5

0 M KLOSTER

48

2

c

5

S OR 0 *

49

6

C-B

3

Tvis

50

i

—

4

51

4

C-B

5

Abbey CROATIA T

oplica

V

allis

Z

a g

R

H

a b

onesta

Ia

745 (K u tje v o , P o z e g a ) 7 4 6

( I n s u la S a v e )

(m a p p .230)

C Y P R U S B

( m a p p. 2 2 2 )

eaulieu

CZECH M

REPUBLIC H

nichovo

( m a p p. 2 2 3 )

radiste

(M ü n c h e n g r ä tz )

(O sse g g )* ( P la s s ) ( S e d le t z ) * K

P

ole

V

elehrad

V

yssi

B

lasterska

rod

(S k a litz )

(H e ilig e n fe ld )

(H o h e n fu r t)*

V

izovice

( A V is o w it z )

Z

b r a s lav

( K ö n ig s a a l)

Z

dar

Z

lata

O

slavan

(S a a r ) K

(G o ld e n k r o n )*

oruna

Y

T ISNOV

D E N M A R K E H

( m a p p. 2 2 8 )

srom olme

*

K

nardrup

L

ogum kloster

V ITSK

0 L

4 2

*

I9 8

THE

a b b e y s

: a g a z e t t e e r

Abbey

C on­

Ref.

ditio:n

S ty le

A ccessi­ b ility

52

C-G

5

53

3 i

—

i

54

2

C-G

1

(m ap p. 2 2 0 )

ENGLAND B KA U

Map

L 1KU

B

i d d l h s d e n

B

in d o n

B

o r d e s l e y

55

2

C

5

B

o x l e y

56

2

C

0

B

r u e r n

57

i

—

0

B

u c k f a s t

58

2

G

3

B

u c k l a n d

59

3

C-G

5

B

u i l d w a s

60

4

C

5

B

y l a n d

61

3

C-G

5

C

a l d e r

62

3

C

1

C

l e e v e

63

4

G

5

CoGGESHALL

64

2

C-G

0

C

65

3

R-C

5

COMBERMERE

66

i

—

0

C

r o x d e n

67

3

C

5

D

i e u l a c r e s

68

2

G

0

0

69

6

C

5

u n k e s w e l l

70

i

—

4

71

2

C-G

2

72

4

C-G

5

73

4

C-G

5

7 4

R-C-G

5

75

4 i

C

0

76

i

—

(W o o lb rid g e )

*

0

*

o m b e

Abbey D

D

o r e

F

l a x l e y

F

o r d e

F

o u n t a i n s

F

u r n e s s

0 *

*

G

a r e n d o n

G

r a c e

H

a i l e s

7 7

3

G

5

H

o l m c u l t r a m

78

6

R-C

5

79

i

G

4

80

3

C-G

5

81

4

G

-1

4

82

4

R-C-G

3

83

6

C

84

i

—

4 i

L u l w o r t h (Little Bindon)

85

i

R

i

M

e a u x

86

i

—

4

M

e d m e n h a m

87

2

G

0

M

e r e v a l e

88

2

C

0

Abbey J

D

H

i e u

u l t o n

e r v a u l x

K

i n g s w o o d

K

i r k s t a l l

K

i r k s t e à d

L

o u t h

P

(gatehouse only

)

*

(gate chapel only

)

a r k

4

THE

a b b e y s

Map

: a

199

g a z e t t e e r

Ref.

C on ditioi a

S tyle

A ccessi­ b ility

89

4

C-G

5

90

i

—

91

2

c

PlPEW ELL

92

i

—

Q

u a r r

93

2

c

R

e v e s b y

94

i

—

R

e w l e y

95

i

G

4

R

i e v a u l x

96

4

C-G

5

R

o b e r t s b r i d g e

97

2

C

i

R

o c h e

98

3

C

5

R

u f f o r d

99

3

C

5

100

i

G

2

C

5

A bbey

N

e t l e y

N

e w e n h a m

N

e w m i n s t e j

St M

*

*

*

*

G

a r y

r a c e s

(b astm in ster)

S

a l l e y

ioi

3

S

a w t r e y

102

SiBTON S

i 4 2

5 4

i

—

4

103

2

C-G

2

t a n l e y

104

i

—

4

S

t o c k i n g

105

i

R

i

S

t o n e l e i g h

106

3

G

2

S

t r a t f o r d

107

i

G

0

Sw iN ESH EA D

Io8

i

—

i

T

h a m e

109

2

G

0

T

IL T Y

110

4

C-G

4

V

a l e

i i i

i

M-C

3

V

a u d e y

112

i

—

L

a n g t h o r n e

(gate chapel only R

)

o y a l

0

W

a r d e n

113

i

G

-1

i

W

a v e r l e y

II4

2

C-G

4

W

h a l l e y

5

4

C-G

5

W

o b u r n

116

i

a

5

C

5

G

r e a t

C

*

i i

o x w e l l

—

5

(m ap p. 2 2 8 )

ESTONIA F

a l k e n a u

7 2 6

2

c

i

P

a d i s

7 2 7

6

G

1

7

6

C-B

2

18

6

C

2

FRANCE A

c e y

A

i g u e b e l l e

(m ap p. 221 ) i i

*

i

200

THE

a b b e y s

: a g a z e t t e e r

Abbey

M ap Ref.

C on­

A ccessi­

d itio n

S ty le

b ility

119

2

c

0

—

2

A

r d o r

A

u b e p i e r r e s

120

2

A

u b e r i v e

111

5

C-B

2

A

u b i g n a c

122

2

C

4

123

3

C-G

i

124

3

C-B

2

L ’A A

e l

(Petit Cîteaux)

u m o n e

u n a y

B

a l e r n e

125

4

B

2

B

a r b e a u x

126

2

B-M

2

B

a r b e r y

127

3

C-B

2

B

a r z e l l e

128

2

C

2

B

a u m g a r t e n

129

4

R-C

2

B

e a u b e c

130

2

C-G

i

B

e a u g e r a i s

131

2

C-I

4

4

B

2

BEAULIEU-en-B ASSIGN Y

I

B

e a u p r e

133

4

B

2

B

e a u p r e

134

4

B

2

B

e g

1 35

5

B

3

B

e l l a i g u e

136

6

C

4

B

e l l e

137

3

C

2

B

e l l e b r a n c h e

138

2

C

2

B

e l l e p e r c h e

139

4

C-B

4

B

e l l e v a u x

140

4

C-B

2

B

e l l o c

141

5

C-G-B

5

142

6

C-G

5

143

4

G-B

2

14 4

4

C-B

2

145

4

C-G

i

u iL

146

2

C

4

B

i t h a i n e

14 7

4

C-B

i

B

o h e r i e s

148

4

B

2

B

o i s

149

4

R-B

2

150

4

C-B

3

151

4

C-G-B

2

152

3

C

2

153

4

C-B

2

154

6

C-G

4

155

3

C-G

5

La La B

ARD

- E

*

(Belleau)

a u

(Beaulieu-en-Rouergue)*

B

e n i s s o n

- D

i e u

B

e n i s s o n

- D

i e u

(N iz o rs)

e r d o u e s

Les Le

La

B B

B

e

e r n a r d i n s

- G

r o l a n d

*

o i s s i e r e

(Carbon-Blanc)

B

o n li e u

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2 I4

THE

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Map Ref.

Con­ ditio n

Style

Accessi­ bility

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2 I6

THE

a b b e y s

: a g a z e t t e e r

A bbey

ISLE R

OF

M A N

SZEPES

S L O V E N IA

(map p.2 2 2 )

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SLO V A K IA

A ccessi­

M ap Ref.

4

(map p. 226)

A

c i b e i r o

645

6

R

4

A

r m e n t e r a

4 19

6

C

4

a i x

6 4 6

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THE

a b b e y s

: a

217

g a z e t t e e r

Conditioia

Style

Accessi­ bility

6 7 2

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5

673

6

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OviLA

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675

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Abbey

Map Ref.

N

671

o g a l e s

La O

O

*

s e r a

y a

*

li v a

*

P

a l a z u e l o s

6 76

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i e d r a

678

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4

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*

6 79

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680

RuEDAdeEßRO*

681

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682

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3

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S

a c r a m e n e

( r e f e c t o r y , c lo i s t e r in M i a m i , F I . ) S

a n d o v a l

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e

’ ( F uen clara)

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2I8

THE

a b b e y s

: a g a z e t t e e r

Map Abbey S W A

E D E N

À s G

u d s b e r g

H

e r r e v a d

Style

Accessi­ bility

699

3

c

5

70 0

1

( m a p p. 2 2 8 )

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l v a s t r a

Ref.

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703

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( S a b a ) ( J u l i t a C a s t l e o n siit e )

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( m a p p. 2 2 5 )

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( m a p p. 2 3 0 )

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( m a p p. 2 3 0 )

a u r u s

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n g e l u s

in P

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n g e l u s

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e t r a

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t e p h a n u s

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r e c i a

THE

Abbey W A L E S (map p. 2 2 0 ) A berconwy B ASINGWERK* CWMHIR C YMMER L l a n t a r n AM M AENAN M argam0 N eath0 S t r a t a F l ori da S trata M arcella T INTERN0 V alle C r u c i s * W hitland

a b b e y s

: a

Map Ref.

Conditioin

728

6

729

3 i

730

731 7 32 733 734 735 736 7 37 738 739 740

Y U G O S L A V I A (Serbia) (map p. 2 2 2 ) A b r a h a m (Bacs Monostor) 741 B e La Ku T (Petervarad) 742

2

i i 6 4 2

i 4 4 i

i i

219

g a z e t t e e r

Style

c c C-G G G —

R-C C-G R-C —

G C-G —

—

Accessi­ bility

4 5 4 5 2

4 5 5 5 4 5 5 4

4 4

2 20

THE

a b b e y s

: a g a z e t t e e r

222

THE

a b b e y s

: a g a z e t t e e r

THE ABBEYS

A GAZETTEER

223

2

24

THE

abbeys: a gazetteer

SWITZERLAND

22 5

226

THE

ABBEYS

A GAZETTEER

THE

a b b e y s

: a g a z e t t e e r

2 27

•o O

228

TH H ABBHYSI A GAZETTEER

SCANDINAVIA & THE BALTIC COUNTRIES

THE

a b b e y s

: a g a z e t t e e r

229

230

THE

a b b e y s

: a g a z e t t e e r

12TH-CENTURY LATIN KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM - LATIN EMPIRE 13TH CENTURY

Appendix C

Staying in a Cistercian Abbey

In the hope that reading this book, or simply looking at the photographs, may awaken a desire in the reader to take a look at the abbeys for him or herself, I have prepared a list o f establishments offering hospitality o f one form or another to the tourist who wants to experience the added pleasure o f actually dining and possibly sleeping where the white monks once lived and prayed. T h e places I list below are no longer active Cistercian abbeys, but simply abbey buildings or even ruins where small and usually rustic guesthouses have been established. T h o u gh there are one or two luxury hotels, the average ex-abbey guesthouse is usually moderately priced, and much more atmospheric than an ordinary bed and breakfast (many are reputed to be haunted). Rather than give prices, which would become out o f date so quickly, I have indicated with a star system the price bracket into which each establishment falls. O ne star means cheap, two reasonable, three expensive to very expensive (but well worth it at least once in a lifetime). W e shall certainly never forget the one night we spent at the hotel in the lay brothers’ wing o f the Vaux-de-Cernay near Paris — the atmosphere was unmatched by anything we have experienced before or since, the service absolutely exquisite in a charming ‘olde worlde’ sort o f way, and the bill astronomical! M o st active Cistercian, and other, monasteries provide the wayfarer with some sort o f hospitality. I have stayed at none o f them and can offer no information concerning the facilities provided. I can only say that one day I turned up quite without warning at a convent o f Cistercian nuns in Cortona to take some photo­ graphs (just before midday), and found a table laid and my lunch waiting for me when I had finished. M other Abbess herself waited on me, and we engaged in stimulating conversation while I ate. T h e courses were four, the wine plentiful, and the coffee excellent. W h en I rose to leave and proffered payment, it was re­ fused with a smile and the offer o f an apple for my journey! For ease o f consultancy, in this appendix I have listed the abbeys by country, subdivided into regions. Fo r each entry I have given the nearest town, the original name o f the abbey, the current name o f the establishment, the phone number i f

STAYING

IN

A CISTERCIAN

ABBEY

there is one, and the dining and sleeping facilities. W here a section is blank, the service described in that column is not provided or is irrelevant. T h is list obviously reflects my personal experience and knowledge o f the establishments listed, and makes no claim to be complete. A s I visit more and more abbeys on my travels in Europe and the N ear East, I hope to be able to add to it in future editions o f this book.

Nearest town

Abbey

Current name

Telephone Description

Dining Sleeping

A u b erge à L ’A n g e

0 6 1.3 1 18 8 6

D*

BELGIUM ARDENNES O

B o u illo n

rval

G a r d ie n

in m o d e r n p u b o n site o f m e d ie v a l in n b y g a te h o u s e

B R A B A N T B ru ssels

V

i LLERs - l a - V i LLE

H o t e l d es R u in e s

0 7 1 .8 7 7 0 5 7

in th e 1 4 t h / 19 th c. a b b e y m ill

C h a r le r o i

A

u ln e

C a v e s d e L ’A b b a y e

0 7 1 .5 1 9 8 2 8

in 1 7 t h c. u n d e r c r o ft

C h a r le r o i

A ulne

A u b e r g e d e L ’A b b a y e

0 7 1 .5 6 0 1 9 5

in 13th c. m ill

H o f T er D o est

0 5 0 .5 4 4 0 8 2

in 1 7 t h c. b u ild in g s o n site

D** D* D*°

F L A N D E R S B ru g e s

T

er

D

C oxyde

A

bba ye

V

a l

oest

de s D

m o d e r n p u b in th e a b b e y r u in s

un es

H E R V E L ie g e

- D

ieu

C a s s e - C r o û t e de

in a b b e y o u t b u ild in g s

D *

o p e n f o r C h r is t m a s h o lid a y s —

D*

L ’A b b a y e

DENMARK Tonder

L

o g u m k l o s t e r

S*

b o a r d a n d l o d g in g p r o v id e d

ENGLAND C H E S H I R E C h e ster

V ale R oyal

T h e i6 th —19 th c. s ta te ly h o m e o n th e a b b e y site is d u e to o p e n as a c o u n t r y h o te l

G L O U C E S T E R S H I R E Tot bury

K

i n g s w o o d

C a lc o t M a n o r

0 1 6 6 6 8 9 .0 3 9 1

in th e 15th c. a b b e y g u e s t h o u s e

D°*

S*

T h e Sh aven C ro w n

0 1 9 9 3 .8 3 0 3 3 0

in th e 1 4 t h c . a b b e y g u e s t h o u s e

D**

S**

D* *

S*'

O X F O R D S H I R E S h ip t o n - u -

B

r u e r n

W ych w ood

( p u b f o o d a v a ila b le )

Y O R K S H I R E R ip o n

J

e r v a u l x

Je rv a u lx H a l l

0 16 7 7 .4 6 0 2 3 5

o n th e a b b e y site

STAYING

Nearest town

IN

A CISTERCIAN

ABBEY

2 33

Abbey

Current name

Telephone Description

Dining Sleeping

ALSACE Porrentruy

L ucelle

Maison de Vacances St Bernard

89.40.85.38

in updated medieval abbey outbuildings

D*

BERRY St Amand

N

Auberge de l’Abbaye

48.96.22.58

in the medieval gate-chapel

D**

40.04.40.25 97.56.00.25 Hotellerie de l’Abbaye 96.24.98.j8

in 18th c. abbey buildings in 17th c. abbots lodge in the medieval abbey stables

D **

S**

D**

S* S**

BURGUNDY Beaune M ai zi eres Chateauneuf LaBussi ERE

Chateau de Maizières

85.49.45.79 80.49.02.29

in 18th c. abbot’s lodge in the ijth/igth c. abbey

D**

S**

D*

S*

CHAMPAGNE Brienne-leBo u l a n c o u r t Chateau

Ferme Auberge

25.04.60.18

in a 19th c. building on the site

D*

S*

62.j9.ij.ij

in i2th/i7th c. abbey

D**

S**

FRANCE

oi rlac

BRITTANY Nantes V i lleneuve Pluvigner L a nvaux Rostrenen B o n - R epos

Hotel de l’Abbaye

GASCONY Bagnères-de- L’E s caladi eu Bigorre ILE-DE-FF(ANCE Rambouillet V a u x - d e - C e r n /kY

S*

01.j4.85.2j.00 in the ijth/i9th c. lay brother wing

Q*** S* *

55.80.78.91

in i2th/i7th c. abbey ruins

D*

S*

L A N G U E D iO C V a l magne Montpellier S i lvanes St Affrique

67.78.06.09 65.99.51.8j

i jth c. rooms available for functi ons in 12th c. dormitory and day D* room

S*

MAINE Le Mans

4j.20.15.74

in the i jth/ 17th c. lay brother wing

D*

S*

j5.ji.04.11 j2.j7.61.87

18th c. rooms available for functiions D* 18th c. house on site (groups only) 18th c. rooms available for funct:ions

L I M O U S I I ' vl Boussac P rebenoi t

Centre d’Animation et de Tourisme

C hamp agne

N O R M A N DY Le V alasse Bolbec Evreux La N oé Lyons-la-Foret M o r t e m e r

Base de Loisirs

j2.49.54.j7

S*

234

Nearest town

STAYING

Abbey

IN

A CISTERCIAN

ABBEY

Dining Sleeping

Current name

Telephone Description

Ecuries de Lieu-Dieu

22.51.40.50 22.29.92.55 22.30.92.23 23.96.01.53 23.96.02.44

in i8th c. abbey buildings D* S* D* S* in i8th c. abbey buildings in abbey stables D* S* 13th/i8th c. rooms available for functions within the 13th c. abbey precinct D **

66.73.51.03 75.04.83.21

in 18th c. buildings on abbey site D * S* 12th c. nuns’ dormitory available for functions

PI CARDY Amiens Argoulcs Hu Soissons Soissons

Le G ard Valloi res L 11: u - D 11: u Longpont Longpont

PROVENCE Arles S a u ve ré al BoIIcnc Lc B o u c h k t

Hotel de l’Abbaye

Mas de Sylvereal Coopérative Viticole Abbaye du Bouchet

Gordcs

S HNANQ UK

90.72.02.05

in 12th c. abbey

D*

S*

VENDÉE Luçon

M orei ll es

51.56.17.56

in 18th c. abbot’s lodge

D°

S*

in former monastery

D **

S**

in the 13th c. abbey guesthouse

D **

S**

in 17th c. abbey mill

D **

S**

in i4th/i9th c. abbey guesthouse D ** wine-tasting in the 13th c. infirmary within the 13th c. abbey precinct D **

S**

GERMANY BAVARIA Altötting Vilshofen

R ai tenhaslach A l de rs bach

Gasthof Mayerhof

08677.7062 08543.1602

HESSEN Giessen

A rnsburg

Alte Klostcrmühle

06404.2020

RHINELAND Cologne A ltenberg Mainz Pforzheim

E berbach M aulbronn

Hotel Altenberger H o f 02174.4242 06723.4228 Klosterkeller 07043.6539

SWABIA Emmendingen T ENNENBACH Gasthof‘Engel’ Herrenalb B ad H e r r e nal b Mönchs Posthotel

07641.8664 07083.7440

in the 16th c. abbey guesthouse D* in modernised 14th c. guesthouse D **

S* S**

WESTPHALIA M ari enfeld Halle

Hotel Klostersforte

05247.7080

in baroque gatehouse

S**

Hotel I Cappuccini

089.871008

in i2th/ 18th/ 19th c. abbey buildings

D **

ITALY CAMPANIA S. P i e t r o alla Amalfi C anoni c a LAZIO Priverno Soria

F os s a nov a C a s a mar i

Ristorante La Grancia 0773.93085

in the 13th c. barn in 12th c. precinct wall

D«* D*

STAYING

Nearest town Viterbo

MARCHE Macerata

Abbey

IN

Current name

A CISTERCIAN

ABBEY

235

Telephone Description

Dining Sleeping

S. M a r t i n o al C i mi n o

12th c. scriptorium available for functions

F i astra

Wine tasting in the 12th c. lay brothers’ refectory

PIEDMONT Saluzzo S taf f arda TUSCANY Florence B adi a a S e t t i mo

D **

Locanda del Chiostro

0175.703108

in the 15th c. stables

Sig. Tanini

055.790007

12th c. cellarium available for functions. Pub/Bar in the 13th c. abbot’s dining hall

Hotel ‘Monasterio de Piedra’

0976.849011

in the 12th/ 17th c. abbey buildings

D **

in the 17th c. clubhouse (abbey now golf club)

D **

in the 16th c. abbey guesthouse

D **

SPAIN ARAGON Zaragoza

P i edra

S**

SW ITZERLAND GENEVA Geneva

Bo n m o n t

LAUSANNE Lausanne M ontheron

Auberge de Montheron

ZURICH Baar ( z g ) Wettingen

K appel W ETTINGEN

Wirtschaft zur Post Gasthof Sternen

01.7641Z39 056.27.14.61

T INTERN

The Anchor Hotel

01291.689207 pub in 14th c. abbey outbuilding D*

The Priory

01492.660247 19th c. hotel built with abbey stone 01978.861297 in 18th c. farm on abbey site

D **

S**

D*

S*

01624.823240 19th c. hotel on abbey site

D**

s**

within the 14th c. abbey precinct D ** at abbey gates D **

S**

WALES GWENT Chepstow

GWYNEDD Llanrwst C o n wy Llangollen

V alle C ruci s

I S L E OF MAN Ballasalla R ush en

Abbey Farm and camp site

Abbey Hotel

Notes CHAPTER

}

1 Up until fairly recent times it was not considered necessary for a monk (i.e. a ‘brother’) who renounced the world to live in a religious community, also to become a priest (i.e. a ‘father’) empowered to say Mass and administer the Sacraments. 2 Due to the Black Death o f 1^48 and possibly the stronger appeal exercised on voca­ tions from the humbler classes by the mendicant orders o f Franciscans and Dominicans. CHAPTER 4

i M a n d é in French, from which the English ‘Maundy’ is derived. Washing o f the feet is still an important part o f the Catholic ritual performed on Maundy Thursday. CHAPTER

5

1 The Basilica del Murgo in Sicily is such a house, and the monks’ advice was sought and expertise engaged in the building o f Castel del Monte, that most enigmatic and breathtaking o f castles in Apulia. Frederick also granted the monks o f Morimondo in Lombardy authority over fishing, irrigation and navigation on the River Ticino. 2 As early as the 1220s, the Bavarian Abbey o f Aldersbach was running Europe’s first co-educational school, in an age when very few boys and no girls received any more than the rudiments o f a formal education. O f course this does not represent the Cistercians’ first encounter with urban civi­ lization. As early as the twelfth century many abbeys owned town houses where their farm produce could be stored for sale in the markets, their abbots could lodge while on abbey business or at court, and the monks could take refuge in troubled times. Many o f these houses are still standing. The Maison d’Ourscamp now houses the Association for the Safeguard o f Historic Paris, in the Marais quarter. ]

Further Reading Various authors, B e r n a r d de C la ir v a u x , U n e E glise A im ée, Strasbourg, 1990 Various authors, S tu d i su S a n B e rn a rd o d i C h ia ra v a lle n e ll’O tta vo C e n te n a rio della Frosinone, 1975 B a d s t ü b n e r , E. K irc h e n d er M önche, Leipzig, 1984 B e di N i, B. L e A b a z ie C istercen si d ’Ita lia , Casamari, 1980 B i l l i n g s , M. The C ro ss a n d The C rescen t, London, 1987 B o r d o n o v e , G. Les Tem pliers, Paris, 1977

C a n o n iz z a z io n e

FURTHER

237

Westmalle, 1959 B r a u n f e l s , W. M onasteries o f Western E u ro p e, London, 1972 B r o o k e , C. M on asteries o f the W orld, Ware, 1974 B u t l e r , L. and G i v e n - W i l s o n , C. M e d ie v a l M on asteries o f G r e a t B r it a in , London, 1979 C o c h e r i l , M. D ic tio n n a ir e des M onastères C istercien s, Rochefort, 1976 D i m IER, A. L ’A r t C istercien , Vols I and II, La-Pierre-Qui-Vire, 1971/72 B

o u t o n

,

J.

READING

H is to ire de l ’O r d r e de C ît e a u x ,

D u b y , G. S a in t B e r n a r d et l ’A r t C istercien, Paris, 1979 D e la F o y e , J. O n d es de Vie, O n d es de M o rt, Paris, 1975 F ergusson , P. A rchitecture o f Solitude, Princeton, 1984 F r a c c a r o d e L ong h i , L. L ’A rchitettura delle C h iese C istercen si

Milan, 1958 D e G a s t y n e , T. Vie Q u o tid ie n n e d ’u n M o in e à Fontenay a u K i l l e Siècle, Montbard, 1987 G e r v e r s , M. (ed.) T h e Second C r u s a d e a n d the C istercia n s, New York, 1992 H a LL a m , E. and others, The P lantagenet C hron icles, London, 1986 H a s k i n s , C. The R enaissance o f the î z t h C e n tu r y , Harvard, 1927 J

a n a u s c h e k

K

ing

,

E.

,

L.

O r ig in u m C istercien siu m ,

M e d iev a l E n g la n d ,

Ita lia n e,

Vienna 1877, repr. Ridgewood 1964

Oxford, 1988

L e f e v r e , R. and others, T ra le A b b a z ie del L a z io , Rome, 1987

L e f f , G. M e d ie v a l Thought, London, 1958 L e k a i , L. J. T h e C istercia n s: Id ea ls a n d R e a lity , Kalamazoo, 1977 M a z z u c c o , G. M o n a steri B en ed ettin i nella L a g u n a Veneta, Venice, 1983 V an d e r M e e r , F. A tla s de l ’O r d r e C istercien , Paris, Bruxelles, 1965 M

o n t a g u

of

B

eau lieu

and T

o m k in s

,

S.

B e a u lie u Palace H o u s e a n d A b b ey,

Beaulieu, 1988 N e g r i , D. A b b a z ie C istercen si in Ita lia , Pistoia, 1981 N e w , A. A G u id e to the A bbeys o f E n g la n d a n d Wales, London, 1985 N o r t o n , C. a n d P a r k , D. ( e d .) C istercia n A r t A n d A rchitecture in the B r itis h h ie s, Cambridge, 1985 O u r s e l , R. L ’E s p r it de C ît e a u x , La-Pierre-Qui-Vire, 1978 P r a w e r , J. The W orld o f the C ru sa d e rs, London, 1972 P r e s s o u y r e , L. L e R ê v e C istercien, Paris, 1990 P r e s s o u y r e , L. (ed.) L ’Espace C istercien , Paris, 1994 P r e s s o u y r e , L. and K i n d e r , T. (ed.) S t B e r n a r d & D M o n d e C istercien , Paris, 1992 R i l e y - S m i t h , L. and J. The C ru sa d e s, London, 1981 R

u n c im a n

S

c h n e id e r

,

S.

,

A.

D i e Cistercienser,

Yale, 1987 S i k k e r s , E. and H e r t k o r n , A. D ie Z isterz ien ser, Stuttgart, 1991 ViNCENOT, H. L es E to iles de C o m p o s te li, Paris, 1982 W i l l e m s , E. E sq u isse H is to riq u e de l ’O r d r e de C ît e a u x , Liège, 1957

S

R. y d o w , J., M

Cambridge, 1952 Geshichte, G eist, K u n s t , Cologne, 1974

A H is t o r y o f the C ru sa d e s,

ta l le y

,

The C istercia n M on asteries o f Irela n d ,

Index c.a. = C iste rc ia n A b b e y F ig u re s in italics refer to illu stration s

A b b e y ( P la n o f a ty p ica l C iste rc ia n )

21

Beaulieu ( C y p r u s ) c.a. 1 4 4 Beaulieu (E n g la n d ) c.a. 36, 43, 1 4 7

A b e la rd , Peter 2 9 , 4 8 , 4 9 , 60 , 61

Bebenhausen c.a. 10 6

A b stin e n ts 1 7 4

Becket, T h o m a s 2 0 , 1 4 1

Burgundy 10, 17 , 28, 2 9 , 4 8 , 51, 52, 7 0 ,

C o lo m b e , L a c.a. 36 C o m m e lle s, G ra n g e o f 7 7

7 2 , 8 1 , 1 2 8 , 1 8 6 , 233

C o m m e n d a tio n 1 6 6 , 17 1

Bussière, La c.a. 5 7 , 233 Byland c.a. 18, 60, 7 4 , 1 3 2

C o m m o n O b se rv a n c e , C iste rc ia n O r d e r o f the 1 7 4 , 1 8 7 , 1 8 8

A c q u a fo r m o s a c.a. 36

Bective c.a. 7 0

A c q u a fr e d d a c.a. 6

B e lg iu m 1 2 8 ,1 6 3 , 1 7 5 , 1 7 7 , 1 8 7 , 1 8 8 ,

C o n r a d III, H o l y R o m a n E m p e r o r 7 2 C a d o u in c.a. 4 6 , 6 0

C o n s ta n tin o p le 1 4 4

A ig u e b e lle c.a. 6 , 1 8 6

B ellefo n tain e c.a. 186

C alatrav a, O r d e r o f K n ig h ts o f 1 4 7

C o n w y c.a. 235

A ilr e d o f R ie v a u lx , S t 7 1 , 141

B ellevaux c.a. 6 0 ,1 8 6

C a ld e r c.a. 132

C o u n te r -R e fo r m a tio n 1 6 7 , 1 7 1

a l-A q s a M o s q u e 6 4

B e lm o n t c.a. 36,

C am ald oli 25

C o u r -D ie u , L a c.a. 4 6

A lb e r ic , A b b o t o f G t e a u x 3 7 ,3 8

B én ign e, S t , B en ed ictin e A b b e y o f

C a m p c.a. 60

C rè te , L a c.a. 60, 132

C a n a d a 183, 186

C r o a tia 19 7 , 2 2 3 ( m a p )

A lc o b a c a c.a. 6 6 , 1 2 1 , 1 3 9 , 1 4 7 , 1 5 4 , 1 7 0

B ern ard, C o lle g e o f S t 154

C a n o n ic a , S . P ie tro alia c.a. 14, 2 3 4

C ro m w e ll, O liv e r 163

A ld e rsb a ch c.a. 169, 2 3 4 , 236 0

B ern ardin e C h u rch P lan 85

C a n o ssa 33

C ru sa d e s, ist 52, 6 4 , 7 1 — 2 n d 7 2 , 7 3 —

B ernardins, C o llè g e des 7

C a n to r , P eter 120

B ern ard o f C la irva u x , S t 7 , 1 5 ,3 7 , 4 1,

Carta Caritatis 39—4 1

C u lro s s c.a. 132

4 3, 4 6 , 4 8 , 4 9 , 52, 53, 56, 57, 60, 61,

C a rth u sia n O r d e r 30

C y p r u s 14 4 , 19 7 , 230 ( m a p )

6 4 , 65, 6 9 - 7 3 , 7 8 , 85, 93, 10 7, no,

Casamari c.a. 10, 7 0 , 1 8 7 , 2 3 4

C z e c h R e p u b lic 19 7 , 2 2 3 ( m a p )

A ltz e lle c.a. 1 3 2 ,1 5 8

116, 120 , 134, 136, 139, 141, 14 6 , 154,

C assian , S t Jo h n 2 4

A lv a stra c.a. 7 0 , 1 3 9

170 , 17 4 , 175

C a ste l del M o n t e 236n

196, 2 2 7 (m a p ), 2 3 2

A c r e 141

A lca n ta ra , O r d e r o f K n ig h ts o f 1 4 7

A le th , m o th e r o f S t B ern ard 4 8 , 4 9 , 116 A le x a n d e r III, P o p e 146 A lte n b e tg c.a.

133, 137, 2 3 4

A m b ro s e , S t 81 A m e ric a , N o r t h 1 8 4 , 1 8 6 , 1 8 7 A m e r ic a , S o u th 18 7 A n a cletu s II, P o p e 5 6 , 5 7 A n d re a di Sestri, S t c.a. 60 A n n u a l G e n era l C h a p te r 4 1, 4 6 , 7 0 , 7 4 , 85, 10 2, 136, 150, 154, 166, 16 7,

174

143

116

B en ed ict o f N u r s ia , S t 15, 2 4 , 25,

3rd 141 — 4 th 1 4 4

D am ian, S t P eter 2 8 , 4 9

C a stile 7 , 14, 1 4 7 , 166, 16 7

2 8 - 3 0 , 33, 37, 38, 4 0 , 4 1, 4 3, 4 6 , 81,

C a th a rs 2 0 , 1 4 4 , 14 6 , 154

D ap h n i c.a. 1 4 0 ,1 4 4

10 2 ,12 0 ,13 3

C e r c a m p c.a. 6

D arfeld c.a. 1 8 3 , 1 8 4 , 1 8 6 D e Consideratione 73

Ben edictin e O r d e r 10, 2 4 , 2 8 , 38, 43,

C e r to s a d i V a l d ’E m a c.a. 7 C h â a lis c.a. 4 3 , 7 6

D e Laude Novae M ilitiae 65

B é n isso n -D ie u , L a c.a. 3 0 , 36, 60

C h a m p a g n e 30, $ 3 ,1 3 2 ,1 6 3 , 233

D e Musica 85

B e llo c c.a. 36

C h a m p a g n e c.a. 233

D e n m a rk 2 1 , 1 6 3 , 1 9 7 , 2 2 8 ( m a p ) , 2 3 2

Dialogue Between a C luniae and a

88, 9 7 , 116, 120

B éziers 146

C h a rité , L a c.a. 158

Apologia 4 1, 7 1

B id d le sd e n c.a. 6

C h a rm o y e , L a c.a. 6

Cistercian 7 1 D ie u la cre s 36

A q u ita in e , D u k e W illia m o f 2 8

B ild h au sen c.a. 16 7

C h â tillo n 4 8 , 5 3

A r a b o n a c.a. 7

B lack D e a th o f 13 4 8 4 $ , 125, 2 }6 n

C h ia rav alle d ella C o lo m b a c.a. 6 0 ,

A r is to d e 4 9

B o eth iu s 4 8

C h ia ravalle d i F ia stra c.a. 4 4 , 7 0 , 2 3 ;

D ie tric h o f T re id e n 1 4 7

A r n a u d A m a u ry , A b b o t o f Q t e a u x

B o h em ia 1 3 2 , 1 6 7

C h ia ravalle d i M ila n o c.a. 6 0

D ijo n 33, 4 8 , 4 9 , 116

B o n ap arte, N a p o le o n 1 8 0 ,1 8 3 , 1 8 4 ,

C h in a 186

D is s o lu tio n o f th e M o n a s te rie s i$8, D o b e ra n c.a. 132 D o b r in , O l d e r o f K n ig h ts o f 1 4 7

14 6

98

D ie g o , B ish o p o f O s m a 14 6

'75

Atlas de l’Ordre Cistercien 7 8 , 139

B o n aval c.a. 36

C hrist, O rder o f K n igh ts o f 1 4 7 C im in o , S . M a r tin o al c.a. 7

A u b re y, Jo h n 12

B o n ayg u e c.a. 36

The Cistercian World: Monastic Writing o f

A u g u stin e o f H ip p o , S t 4 8 , 4 9 , 5 2 , 85

B o n lieu c.a. 7 0

A u g u stin ia n O rd e r 7 8

B o n m o n t c.a. 36, 60, 235

A u ln a y c.a. 60

B o n n efo n tain e c.a. 36, 9 6

4 9 - 5*. 5?> 57. 60 , 7 4 , 7 8 , 85, 9 3 ,1 1 6 ,

D o m in ic G u z m a n , S t 14 6 D o r e , A b b e y c.a. 7

A r n s b u rg c.a. IOJ, 2 3 4

18 7

the Twelfth Century 193

D o m in ic a n O r d e r 139, 1 4 6 , 1 4 7 , 1 5 4 ,

G te a u x c.a. 1 7 , 3 3 , 3 6 , 3 7 , 3 9 —4 1, 4 6 ,

236n

A u ln e c.a. 2 3 2

B o n p o r t c.a. 6

1 3 4 ,1 3 6 , 1 3 9 , 1 4 1 , 1 4 4 , 1 6 6 , 1 6 7 , 1 7 4 ,

A u stra lia 186, 18 7

B o n -R e p o s c.a. 36, 12 4 , 233

1 7 5 ,1 7 7 ,1 8 0 ,1 8 2 ,1 8 4 ,

A u stria 1 3 2 , 1 6 7 , 1 7 0 , 1 8 8 , 1 9 6 , 2 23

Book of Usages 134

C ity o f C od 52

Duchess o fM alß 12 D ünam ünde 14 7

183,1 8 6 , 1 8 7

D r u id ic T e a c h in g 38

B o q u en c.a. 6

C la ire fo n ta in e c.a. 36

A y n a rd , E d o u a rd 14

B ossi, D o tt. M a u r iz io 7

C la irlie u c.a. 36

D u n e s , A b b a y e d es I c.a. 6 0 ,1 6 3 , 2 3 2

A y o u l, S t , P r io r y o f 30

B o u ch et, L e c.a. 2 3 4

C la ir m a ra is c.a. 36, 60

D u n e s , A b b a y e des I I c.a. /62

B o u la n co u rt c.a. 6, 233

C la ir m o n t c.a. 14, 36, S j

B o u ras c.a. 4 6 , 60

C la irv a u x c.a. 7 , 3 6 , 4 6 , 53, 60 , 65, 6 7 ,

(m a p )

B ad ia a C e rre to c.a. 92

Bouyer, F a th er 69

7 1 , 73, 85, 10 7 , 120 , 132, 1 4 1 , 1 5 4 , 163,

E b e rb a c h c.a. 1 0 , 1 4 , 60, 79, / 0 3 ,1 0 7 ,

170 , 171, 18 2, 189, 191

B ad ia a S e ttim o c.a. 6, 4 7 , 6 7, 158, 235

B o xley c.a. 6, 128

B agatti, A la n o 180

B o yle c.a. 139

C la r té -D ie u , L a c.a. 36

'2 5 . U T 2 Î 4 E b ra c h c.a. 60

B a ld w in o f F o rd e 141

B raun fels, P ro f. W . 10, 116

C lo s V o u g e o t 4 3 , 1 2 8

E c o , U m b e r t o 10

B ritish Isles 17 , 132, 183

C lu n ia e O r d e r 20 , 2 8 , 2 9 , 30, 33, 38, 4 1,

E c u r e y L ’ c.a. 6

B a ld w in II, K in g o f Jeru salem 6 4 B am b erg, D ie t o f 57

B run ellesch i, F ilip p o 158

43, 6 9 , 7 1 , 7 8 , 81, 88, 9 7 , 139 C lu n y , A b b e y o f 2 8 , 2 9 , 4 1, 43, 61, 7 0 ,

E d e ss a 71 E la n , L ’ c.a. /76

Barrière, Jean d e la 16 7

B ru n o , S t 30

B a rn o u in , L é o n 18 7

B u c k B ro th ers 12

B asin gw erk c.a. 132

B u ild w as c.a. 1 1, 6 0

C o g g e sh a ll c.a. 6

E liz a b e th I, Q u e e n o f E n g la n d 163

B au m g arten b erg c.a. 36

B u o n so lla z z o c.a. 7

C o im b r a 154

E m p ire , H o l y R o m a n / A u s t r o -

71. 125

E le a n o r o f A q u ita in e 56, 7 0 , 7 2

INDEX

H u n g a ria n 2 0 , 56, 6o, 7 0 , 1 7 5 , 1 8 6 ,

G ra d e fe s c.a. 6

188

G ra n c e y 52

1 8 6 ,1 8 8 , 2 11, 2 2 9 (m a p ), 2 3 4 Isu n g o f P rü fe n in g 7 1

G ran g es, G ra n g e S y ste m 4 3, 4 5 , 7 0 ,

E m p ire o f the E a st, L a tin 1 4 4 E n g la n d 1 0 , 1 2 , 1 4 , 4 3 , 5 6 , 60 , 7 0 , 93, n o , 12$, 1 2 8 , 1 3 2 , 1 4 1 , 1 4 7 , 1 5 0 , 1 5 4 ,

239

M a rie -A n to in e tte , Q u e e n o f Fran ce

177 M a rie n fe ld c.a. 36, 2 34 M a rie n ta 1 c.a. 6, »22

1 2 5 ,12 8 ,1 9 2 G re a t C o x w e ll, G ran g e o f 4 2

Jean d ’A u lp s, S t c.a. 33

M a rig n y , L o r d o f 57

G reece 1 4 1 , 14 4 , 20 9 , 230 (m a p )

Jeru salem 20 , 52, 6 4 , 7 0 , 7 1, 75, 81, 1 4 4

M a r tin o al C im in o , S . c.a. 235

Esca la d ieu , L ' c.a. 233

G r e g o r y V I I , P o p e 33

Jervau lx c.a. 13, 132, 158, 2 32

M a ta ra sso , Pauline 193

E s c a r p c.a. 6

G riin h ain c.a. 132

Jo ach im o f F lo r a 139

M a tild a , E m p re ss 56

E sto n ia 1 4 7 , 1 9 9 , 2 2 8 (m a p )

G n issa u c.a. 16 7

Jo h n X X I I I , P o p e 7 3

M a tild a o f T u scan y, C o u n te ss 33

E ta m p e s, C o u n c il o f 56

G ru y è re s 182

Jo h n , C o lle g e o f S t 154

M a tin a , L a c.a. 6

E to ile, L ’ c.a. 7 0

G u a lb e rto , S . G io va n n i 25, 2 9 , 39

Jo h n L a ck la n d , K in g o f E n g la n d 1 4 7

M a u lb ro n n c.a. 9», 10 7,

E u gen e III, P o p e 7 1 , 7 2

G u ild o f S t L u k e 14

Jo h n o f the C ro ss, S t 7 0

M e lisse n d a , Q u e e n o f Jeru salem 7 1

E verard o f C la irva u x 154

G u y o f Q t e a u x 146

Jo sep h II, E m p e ro r 175, 183, 18 7

M e lle ra y c.a. 1 8 3 ,1 8 6

G u y o f the V a u x -d e -C e r n a y 1 4 4 , 1 4 6

Jo u y c.a. 6, 60

M e llifo n t c.a. 36, 7 0 , 1 3 9

1 5 8 ,1 8 3 ,1 9 8 , 2 2 0 (m a p ), 2 32

112, 113, 2 3 4

M e r c i-D ie u , L a c.a. 36 M ereva le c.a. 6

Falleri c.a. 7 0 H a r d in g , S t S tep h e n 3 3 ,3 7 —4 1, 4 3. 4 < y »

Fergu sson , P ro f. P. 1 1 6 , 120

53, 81, 85, 93, 18 7

Ferté, L a c.a. 6

K ap p e l c.a. 235

M e rim é e, P ro sp e r 13

K in g sw o o d c.a. 2 32

M e tz 73

Feu illan t c.a. 16 7

H a stin g s, Battle o f 39

K irk stall c.a. 13, n o , 132

M e u rsa u lt 3 8 ,1 2 8

F itero c.a. 6, 7 0 , 1 4 7

H a ttin , Battle o f H o r n s o f 14 4

K irk stead c.a. 7 0 , 92

M ic h e l-le -T o n n e rre , S t 30

F la x le y c.a. 132

H a u te co m b e c.a. 136

K lin ken berg, B ern hard 18 7

M o le s m e 2 9 , 3 0 , 3 3 , 3 6 , 3 7 , 3 9 , 4 0 , 4 6

F o liin a c.a. 26 , 7 0

H au terive c.a. 6, 16 7

F o n ta in e-G u éra rd c.a. 2 2, 2 j, 10 7

H a y d n , Jo sep h 170

Fon tain ejean c.a. 60

H e ilige n k reu z c.a. 60

La Chartreuse de Parme 14

M o n te s a , O rd e r o f K n ig h ts o f 1 4 7

Fo n tain es 4 8 , 4 9

H e in rich au c.a. 170

L ^ d c.a. 7 0

M o n te s io n c.a. 166

M o n ta lto , S . A g o s tin o d i c.a. 6 M o n tb a r d , A n d re de 6 4

So

L a n d ais c.a. 6

M o n tg o lfie r, E lie de 14

H é lo ïse 61

L a n g res 36

M o n th e r o n c.a. 235

H e n r y I, K in g o f E n g la n d 56

L a n g u e d o c 7 , 146 , 154, 17 7 , 233

M o n tie r -la -C e lle 30

F o n tfro id e c.a. 7 0 , 14 6

H e n r y II, K in g o f E n g la n d 20, 141

Lan vau x c.a. 233

M o n tr é a l 146

Fo ssan ova c.a. 7 , 10, 60, 2 3 4

H e n r y V I I I , K in g o f E n g la n d 154, 158,

L ap rad e, E u g è n e de 186

M o re ille s c.a. 2 3 4

Largen tier, D e n is 171

M o re ru e la c.a. 60

H e n r y IV , H o ly R o m a n E m p e ro r 33

L a rriv o u r c.a. 6

M o r im o n d c.a. 4 6 , 6 0 , 8 5 , 1 4 7

H e n r y V , H o ly R o m a n E m p e ro r 56

L a tv ia 1 4 7 , 213, 2 2 8 (m a p )

M o r im o n d o c.a. 236n

69, 7 0 , 7 2 , 7 6 , 85, 9 7 , 10 7, n o , 116,

H e n r y o f C la irva u x 146

L a y B rothers 4 5 , 4 6 , 60, 6 7 , 7 0 , 7 4 , 75,

M o r t e m e r c.a. 1 7 7 , 233

1 2 ;, 128, 1 3 2 , 14 1, 146 , 14 7 , 15 8 ,16 3 ,

H e n r y o f M a r c y 141

7 8 , 93, 9 7 , 1 0 2 , 1 2 1 , 1 2 5 , 1 2 8 , 1 3 2 , 1 8 8 ,

M o u n t M e lle ra y c.a. 183

166, 170 , 171, 1 7 ; , 180, 183, 18 4 , 186,

H ild e g u n d o f S ch ö n au , Blessed 137

19 2 , 236n

M o u n t S t Bern ard c.a. 183

1 8 8 ,1 9 9 , 2 2 1 (m a p ), 233

H im m e ro d c.a. 6 0 ,1 2 8

L a ze n b y , G e o r g e 158

F ran cisca n O rd e r 1 0 ,1 3 9 , 236n

H o b b e s , R o b e rt 158

L e b a n o n 7 5 , 14 4 , 213, 230 (m a p )

F ran q u evau x c.a. 7 0

H o f T e r D o e st 2 32

L e k ai, D o rn L o u is o.c. 7 , 56

F red erick I Barbarossa, H o ly R o m an

H o ld s w o r th , P ro f. C . 20

Leo X III, Pope 24

The Name o f the Rose 10

H o lla n d 163, 186, 2 0 9 , 2 2 7 (m a p )

Lestran ge, A u g u stin 18 2 —4 , *86

N a tio n a l A sse m b ly, F ren ch 1 7 7

H o lm c u ltra m c.a. 132

L e x in g to n , S te p h e n 1 5 0 ,1 5 4 ,1 5 8

N a z a re n e s 14

H o ly L a n d , the 52, 6 4 , 137, 1 4 1 , 1 4 4

L ie u -D ie u c.a. 36, 2 3 4

N e a t h c.a. 132

F reib u rg -im -B reisg a u 7 2

H o n o r iu s II, P o p e 57

L la n ta rn a m c.a. 6 , 1 3 2

N e t l e y c.a. 10 7

F rib o u rg , C a n to n o f 182, 183

H u elgas, L a s c.a. 10, 19

L o c c u m c.a. 1 4 7

N e w b a t tle c.a. 132

F r o id m o n t c.a. 6, 7 0

H u e rta c.a. ó, 7 0 , 69, 117, i j j

L a g u m k lo ste r c.a. 2 32

N e w m in s te r c.a. 132

F u rn ess c.a. 60, 132

H u g h , C o u n t o f C h a m p a g n e 53, 65

L o n g p o n t c.a. 120 , »22, 2 3 4

N e w R e fo r m 186

F ü rsten feld c.a. 16 7

H u g h , D u k e o f B u rgu n d y 38

L o r e n z o d e’ M e d ic i, the M a g n ific e n t

N e w Y o r k C i t y 18 4

H e iste rb ach c.a.

F o n te A vellan a 2 8 , 4 9 F o n ten a y c.a. io, 14, 4 6 ,

65, 66,

67,

10 7, 1 2 9 ,1 3 2

F o u n tain s c.a. 10, 13, 60, 10 7, 126, (JO, 132, 17 2 ,

back cover

F ra n ce 7 , 1 0 , 1 4 , 1 7 , 4 3 , 5 3 , 5 6 , 5 7 , 60,

E m p ero r 1 7 ,5 6 F red erick II, H o l y R o m a n E m p e ro r 14 7 , 236n

,63

H u g h de Payens 6 4

158

M u r g o , B asilica del c.a. 236n

N ie rste in 128

H u g u e s, A r c h b ish o p o f L y o n 33, 36

L o u is V I , K in g o f F ran ce 56

N o è , L a c.a. 7 0 , 233

H u g u e s o f M a lig n y 30

L o u is V I I K in g o f F ran ce 56, 7 2

N o ir la c c.a. 1 4 , 5 4 , 60 , 10 6 ,

G a lg a n o , S . c.a. 9 4 , 1 6 1 , 166

H u n d re d Y ears W a r 17

L o u is I X , K in g o f F ra n c e 1 4 7

G a rd , N o t r e D a m e d u c.a. 186, 2 3 4

H u n g a r y 1 3 6 ,1 6 7 , 18 7, 2 0 9 , 2 2 3 (m a p )

L o u th P ark c.a. 132

N o r w a y 13 9 ,16 3 , 2 1 4 , 2 2 8 (m a p )

G a re n d o n c.a. 6

L u ca , A b b o t o f S a m b u c in a 1 4 4

N u r - e d - D in 7 1

G a rin o f P o n tig n y 14 6

L u c r ile c.a. 233

N y d a la c.a. 7 0

G a le s o c.a. 6

*ìì

L u lw o rth c.a. 183

G e o ffre y , A b b o t o f M o le s m e 36

Ign y c.a. 132

G e ra rd o f R a ven n a 141

In n o cen t II, P o p e 5 6 ,5 7 , 60

G e rm a n y 14, 17, 4 9 , 60, 7 2 , 7 8 , 81, 102,

In n o cen t III, P o p e 141, 14 4 , 146

O d o , D u k e o f B u rg u n d y 38

1 0 7 , 1 1 2 , 1 1 3 , 128 , 132, 134, 137, 141,

In n o cen t I V , P o p e 154

M a g d a le n , S t M a r y 1 4 4 . 1 4 6

155, 15 8 ,16 3 , 166, 16 7, 170 , 186, 188,

In q u isitio n , H o ly 146 , 1 7 4

M a ig ra u g e , L a c.a. 6, 165

O liv a , L a c.a.

20 6 , 2 2 4 (m a p ), 2 3 4

In Suprema, p ap al bull 17 4

M a iz iè re s c.a. 233

O r v a l c.a. 232

Ireland 7 0 , 73, 75, 139, 163, 183. 186,

M a n d a tu m (M a n d e , M a u n d y ) 134,

O s e ra 139

G eru sa lem m e, S . C r o c e in c.a. 180, 18 7

150, 2 }6 n

2 0 9 , 2 2 0 (m a p )

O ld R e fo r m 186

101

O s s e g g c.a. 132

G iu s to di T u sca n ia , S . c.a. 6 j, 7 0 ,1 3 6

Isle-en -B arro is, L ’ c.a. 6

M a n , Isle o f 216, 2 2 0 (m a p ), 235

O tte rb e rg c.a. 7 0

G r a c e -D ie u (F r a n c e ) c.a. 36, 60

Italy 25, 45, 4 6 , 56, 57, 60, 6 7 , 7 0 , 76 ,

M a rg a m c.a. 132

O u rs c a m p c.a. 154, 236n

M a ria w a ld c.a. 36

O v id 4 8

G r a c e -D ie u ( W a le s ) c.a. 132

81, 93, 9 7 , 128, 134, 141, 14 7 ,

177.

in , 114 ,

240

Palais N o t r e - D a m e c.a. 36 P alo u zie, H é lè n e 7 P am ier 146

INDEX

R o b e rt o f M o le s m e , S t 29 , 30, 33 ,3 6 , 37, 39, 4 1, 1 8 0 ,1 8 8 R o b e rtsb rid g e c.a. 6, 128

118

S ta ffa r d a c.a. 1 2 ;, 2 3 ;

V a lb u en a c.a. 36

S ta m s c.a. 6

V a l- D ie u c.a. 36, 18 7 , 2 3 2

S ta n le y c.a. 1 3 2 ,1 5 0

V a le R o y a l c.a. 6, 36, 2 32

Parad ies c.a. 36

R o ch e c.a. 13, 7 0 ,

Statutes of the Cenerai Chapter 133

V a lle C r u c is c.a. 6, 9 6 , /19, 1 4 J , 158, 235

P aris 7 , 60 , 61, 1 4 7 , 154, 16 7, 1 7 7 , 231

R o c o u r t, A b b o t o f C la ir v a u x 182

S tein b e rg 128

V a llis H o n e s ta c.a. 36

Peers. S i r C h a rle s 14

R o m a n ia 215, 2 2 3 (m a p )

S te n d h a l 14

V a llo ire s c.a. 170 , 2 3 4

Peter o f C a ste ln a u 146

R o m a n tic M o v e m e n t 12 —1 4 , 1 8 2

S te p h e n o f B lois, K in g o f E n g la n d 56

V a llo m b ro s a 25

P eter o f L u c e d io 1 4 4

R o m e 3 9 , 5 6 , 5 7 , 1 4 4 , 1 8 0 , 1 8 6 —8

S tic n a c.a. 159

V a im a g n e c.a. /6 4 , 233

Peter the Ven erable. A b b o t o f C lu n y

R o m u a ld , S t 25, 2 9 , 39

S to n e le igh c.a. 6

V a lp a ra is o c.a. 36

R o sières c.a. 6

S trad a, S . M a r ia in c.a. 7

V a lsain te, L a c.a. 1 8 2 , 1 8 2 —4 ,

S tra ta F lo rid a c.a. 36, 132

V aiseren a c.a. 14, 36, 7 6

29 , 4 3, 61

181

P ie d m o n t 125, 235

R o y a u m o n t c.a. 1 4 7 , /76 , 1 7 7 ,

P ie d ra c.a. 14, 166, 2 3 ;

R u e d a c.a. 10 4

S tra ta M a rc e lla c.a. 132

V a n d er M e e r, F. 7 8 , 1 3 9

P i ll s c.a. 136

R u ffo r d c.a. 7 0

S t r ic t O b se rv an c e, C iste rc ia n O rd e r

V a rgas, M a r tin o 166

P in , L e c.a. 7 0

R u h e k lo ste r c.a. 36

o f the (see also T r a p p is t s ) 17 4 , 175,

V a u celle s c.a. 6, 60

P isa, C o u n c il o f 57

R u sh e n c.a. 235

18 7

V a u c la ir c.a. 6 0

P iu s V I I , P o p e 18 4

R u sk in , Jo h n 15

S u lp ic e , S t c.a. 60

V a u x -d e -C e r n a y , L e s c.a. 14 . 60,

S w e d e n 139, 163, 2 18 , 2 2 8 (m a p )

P la to 4 9

S w ee th e art c.a. 36

P o b let c.a. 156, 170

V e n ice 1 3 2 , 1 4 4

S a g itta rio c.a. 6

P o n s o f M e lg u e il, A b b o t o f C lu n y 71

S a la d in 14 4

P o n tig n y c.a. 4 6 , 60, 85

Sala, S . M a r ia di c.a. 7 0

S w o r d , O r d e r o f K n ig h ts o f 1 4 7

V ig n o g o u l c.a. 6 , / 4 2

P o r t-d u -S a lu t c.a. 186

S a le m c.a. 17 0

S y r ia 2 18 , 2 30 ( m a p )

V ik t r in g c.a. 7 0

P o rtu ga l 21, 6 7 , 121, 139, 1 4 7 , 154, 170 ,

S alisb u ry, R o b e r t 158

S w itz e rla n d 60, 16 7, 170 , 18 2 , 18 4 , 188, 2 18 , 2 2 5 (m a p ), 235

San g a llo , G iu lia n o d a i;8

P ré b e n o it c.a. 233

S ard in ia 21, 2 2 0 (m a p )

P rem o n straten sian O rd e r 7 8 , 1 3 9

Sau veréal c.a. 2 3 4

P reu illy c.a. 4 6

S a v ig n y c.a. 60, 154

Prières c.a. 6

S a w le y c.a. 132

S ch lie rb ach c.a. 6 , 1 6 7

Q u in c y c.a. 6, 60 , 62

S c h ö n a u c.a. 7 0 , 1 3 7

Q u r a n (K o r a n ), the 2 9

S c h ö n ta l c.a. 16 7

R aiten h a slach 170 , 2 3 4

S e b astian o , S . c.a. 7 0

R a n c é , A r m a n d Jean le B o u th illie r de

S e d b e rg h , A d a m 158

31, / 2 3 ,1 8 7 , 2 3 4

Sé n an q u e c.a.

R eclu s, L e c.a. 6, 163

S e n s, C o u n c il o f 61

R e fo rm a tio n 158, 16 7, 183

S e p t -F o n s c.a. 186

R e ig n y c.a. 6, 1 1 7

S h e rb o rn e 3 3 ,3 9

R ein c.a. 132, 16 7

S ic ily 17, 7 3 , 2 3 4 ( m a p )

R e in fe ld c.a. 132

S ilv ac an e c.a. 7 0 ,

R e lig io n , W a r s o f 158, 163, 175

S ilv an è s c.a. 233

R en aissan ce 1 5 , 1 5 8 , 1 7 7

S ittich en b ach c.a. 132

R ev o lu tio n , F ren ch 12, 14, 139, 14 1, 154,

S lo v a k ia 2 16 , 2 2 3 ( m a p )

T h a m e c.a. 6 , 1 5 4

V o rle s, S t . P r io r y o f 4 8 V o s n e 180

T h o r o n e t , L e c.a. j o , 6 4 ,

iij, 14 9 ,

front cover

W a c h o c k 1 3 2 ,1 3 9 W a ld sa ssen c.a. 1 2 8 , 1 6 7

T i l t y c.a. 128

tjt, 235

T o m m a s o dei B o rg o g n o n i, S . c.a. 132 T o u lo u s e 1 4 7 , 1 5 4 , 1 6 7 18 7 T r a p p is t O r d e r 1 7 5 ,1 8 2 —4 , 1 8 6 —8 T r e Fo n tan e , L e c.a. 6, 60 , 6 0 , / j j T re n t, C o u n c il o f 171

8z

S lo v e n ia 158, 188, 2 16 , 2 2 2 ( m a p )

R e w le y c.a. 154

S o lo m o n , K in g o f Israel 6 1 , 1 9 1 , 1 9 2

R ic h a rd I, K in g o f E n g la n d 125, 128,

Song of Songs 61, 6 4 , 6 9

R ie l-le s -E a u x 33

V o lle ro n , g ra n g e o f 4 2

T r a p p e , L a c.a. 6, 6 0 , 1 7 1 , 1 7 5 , 1 8 2 , 1 8 4 ,

S e d le tz c.a. 132

R an ieri o f P o n za 146

R ich elie u , C a rd in a l 171

V io lle t -le - D u c , E u g e n e 13

T e r D o e st c.a. 163, 2 32

T in te r n c.a. 4 7 , 132,

(m a p )

141

V ille r s - la - V ille c.a. 1 2 5 , 1 2 8 . 2 3 2 V ite lli, G ir o la m o 166

T ig lie t o c.a. 5 9 , 6 0

S c o tla n d 1 7 , 1 0 0 , 1 3 2 , 1 6 3 , 2 15, 2 2 0

R ic h a rd s o n , W illia m 13

65, 6 9 , 1 4 7

T h ib a u t , C o u n t o f C h a m p a g n e 65

Q u a r r c.a. 1 3 2 ,1 5 0

163, 17 1, 1 7 ;, 180, 18 2, 18 4 , 186, 18 7

V ille n e u v e c.a. 233 T e m p la r, O r d e r o f K n ig h ts 52, 6 1, 6 4 ,

T e sc e lin , fath er o f S t B ern ard 4 8

S c a rb o ro u g h 125

1 6 7 , 1 7 1 , 17 4 ,1 7 5 , 18 2 ,18 3 ,18 6

V ille h a r d o u in , G e o f fr e y de 1 4 4

T e n n en b ach c.a. 2 3 4

S c an d in av ia 7 0 , 1 0 0 , 2 2 8 ( m a p )

V e ru e la c.a. 7 0 V é z e la y 2 9 , 7 2

S a m b u c in a c.a. 6, 7 0 , 139

P ragu e, Sta tu tes o f 188

68.

231, 233

P o la n d 132, 139, 16 7, 2 1 4 , 2 2 3 (m a p )

215, 2 2 6 (m a p )

‘ 86

So u ch iè re, Je ro m e d e la 171 S p a in 17 , 60, 7 0 , 7 3, 8 8 , 1 0 0 , 1 0 2 , 1 1 6 ,

T r in ità ^ i C o r to n a , L a c.a. 6 T r o is-F o n ta in e s c.a. 5 3 ,1 3 2 T r o u v é , F ra n ç o is, A b b o t o f G t e a u x 1 7 7 ,18 2

W a le s 12, 4 6 , 9 7 , 128 , 1 3 2 ,1 5 0 , 158, 2 19 , 2 2 0 (m a p ), 235 W a lk e n rie d c.a. 132 W a v e rle y c.a. 12 W e b ste r, J. 12 W e stm a lle c.a. 183 W e ttin g e n c.a. j