6

The Cistercians

Collegiality Instead of Hierarchy

Robert’s Path from Molesme to Cîteaux and Back

At that time another community had emerged from eremitical roots.¹ It not only served as a model of remarkable flowering and lastingly shaped the world of monasticism through its innovative organization. It also made the most of the need to combine reforming energy with institutional stability. That community came to be known as the Cistercians.²

In 1098, in a meadow called Cistercium, in the middle of a deep forest south of Dijon, in a “place of horror” (as in hindsight it would be called in the writing known as the Exordium Cistercii)³ and of “deserted isolation,” a place that was “quite unpleasant and inaccessible to men of the world,” a group of twenty-one men who had left the community of Molesme in northern Burgundy along with their abbot Robert (ca. 1028–1111) founded a settlement that they called the “new monastery” (novum monasterium). From there they would begin to build the largest alliance of monasteries that Christendom had yet seen. The Rule of Saint Benedict would be realized there in a way that would powerfully eclipse the Benedictine life of Cluny.

Such success, for what was at first a quite insignificant monastic foundation, had certainly not been foreseen from the beginning.⁴ The new monastery’s early days were quite different from those of Cluny, which from its very founding charter had enjoyed freedom from every lordship and thereby had the best chance for expansion; it was different too from the great number of new foundations discussed above, which had emerged under the pressure of or with the aid of representatives of the church hierarchy. The monastery in Cistercium—Cîteaux—at first knew nothing of such massive support, enjoying at best only a certain goodwill toward Robert himself on the part of the nobility of the region, by virtue of ties of kinship.

On the contrary, the foundation was judged a violation of the law. Ivo of Chartres had earlier designated those monks from Coulombs who wanted to flee from their monastery into the desert as “Sarabaites,” that is, as representatives of what the Rule of Saint Benedict called the “worst kind of monks” (1.6), and had accused them of wanting to live “in secluded places, according to their own law.” The group around Robert could now be accused of the same—and worse, since the head of a monastic community was himself among those who had fled. Hence there was deep ambivalence surrounding the name of their settlement. The designation new monastery expressed a vision that captured a sense of the abandonment of and separation from old ways, as well as the desire to venture out into novelty. An early Cistercian text, the Exordium parvum, saw this vision as already in the heart of the founder: “they rejoiced in setting aside the old man, and in having taken up the new.”⁵ The program was intelligible only to those who saw it in terms of renouncing “the old man” and who followed the path to that goal.

The monks of Cîteaux very soon captured their version of their early history in two texts—the Exordium parvum and the Exordium cistercii—in which they justified, from their point of view, the reasons for a new beginning. In addition, one particularly reliable external observer of all of the transformations of religious life in his day, the historian Orderic Vitalis, sought an explanation for the establishment of Cîteaux in the early history of the community and felt himself compelled to reflect on it in more detail.⁶

Orderic passed down the notable words of Robert from a time before the founding of Cîteaux, when Robert was still abbot of Molesme: there Robert had explained before his brothers that although they had all made profession to the Rule of Saint Benedict, they did not follow it fully (non ex integro) since they did not work with their hands, as the fathers Anthony, Macarius, and others had done—those whose inimitable life as Aegyptiorum patres Robert now remembered compellingly. The wealth of the monks of Molesme was abundant, drawn as it was from tithes, and they nourished themselves with the blood of men in whose sins they would thereby now have a share. So as not to be breakers of their oaths, they were now to follow the Rule of Saint Benedict completely (omnino); they should earn their food and clothing through their own work, give up their luxurious clothing, and renounce their incomes from tithes. And yet the monks of the now wealthy Molesme—so Orderic reported further—had for the most part abruptly rejected all of these impositions, asserting among other things that they well deserved their tithes, because they were members of the clerical estate and holders of clerical offices.

This struggle over tithes and matters of conscience had in a certain way been orchestrated by Ivo of Chartres and his adversary Rainald; it was also symptomatic of models of reform grounded in that era’s ideals of poverty. In the monastery of Molesme there had clearly been exceptionally difficult struggles over the matter, as the Exordium parvum reveals, mentioning among other things the sharp mistreatment and imprisonment of the prior Alberic, an ally of Robert’s. The later course of events has already been noted: Robert and his like-minded followers retreated from Molesme and, with the help of the Burgundian nobility, settled in Cistercium. There from 1098 on they lived in solitude and resolved (as Orderic put it) “to observe the Rule of Benedict to the letter, as the Jews followed the law of Moses” (regulam Benedicti sicut Judei legem Moisi ad litteram servare penitus).⁷

Robert’s renunciation of office and community was not his first:⁸ after becoming a monk in the monastery of Moûtier-la-Celle in Troyes in 1044, and prior there in 1053, in 1068 he was elected abbot of Saint-Michel de Tonnerre, a community shaped by Cluniac traditions. Yet already in 1071 he resigned from this post because he could not bind his monks to a strict observance of the Rule, and he returned to his home monastery. A little later he became prior of Saint-Ayoul de Provins, a dependent of Moûtier-la-Celle. Yet when he was asked around 1073/74 to lead a group of hermits in the forest of Collan near Tonnerre, he changed his mind again, took over the leadership of that group with papal permission, and with them founded the abbey of Molesme in 1075.

At the beginning life there was shaped by hard work and strict asceticism. Yet after 1080, in the wake of a chastening economic crisis, the abbey’s wealth grew considerably through donations and transfers of parishes and their tithes. The abbey became an owner of great estates and founded a number of granges and priories. Ignoring their eremitical origins, one faction of the community now looked to Cluny as the model of monastic life. At this very time, Bruno of Cologne came with his followers to Molesme, as was noted above, and Robert secured for them there a remote settlement suitable for their eremitical life. Yet Bruno could not find the isolation from the world he was looking for, and, as noted above, he did not stay long. Those monks of Molesme whose eremitical sympathies had not changed, and who perhaps found themselves encouraged by Bruno’s appearance, moved out under the leadership of Guérin, later bishop of Sion, and in 1094 founded the monastery of Aulps in upper Savoy.⁹ Already disturbed over the growing wealth of his house, Robert left Molesme, designated the prior, Alberic, as his acting representative, and retreated with the others to Aulps. As the tensions in the community of Molesme rose, however, he was forced by papal command to return there—and from that point the well-known story began to run its course.

Thus it should not seem surprising that one year after the settlement at Cîteaux, a charter of the apostolic legate and archbishop of Lyon, Hugh of Die, accused Robert of solita levitas, of an inherent lack of seriousness that threatened to lead to more unpredictability.¹⁰ Well into old age (he was already some seventy years old at the founding of Cîteaux), Robert, along with so many of his contemporaries, nonetheless remained filled with restless energy in the search for the best way to salvation—a search that clearly might require moving from place to place and the breaking of institutional boundaries whenever the demands of his inner life were not met. For Robert understood himself as being true to his vow to uphold the Rule of Saint Benedict, which stood higher than the obligation to discharge duties of an office according to church law. The vow alone showed the way to salvation.

In 1099 an assembly in Port-d’Anselle (on the Saône) called by Archbishop Hugh decided, with the approval of pope Urban II, to recall Robert from his new foundation and to compel him to return to his old position in Molesme.¹¹ The decision was reached at the instigation of the community at Molesme, faced after the loss of its leader with a suddenly waning influence. Robert’s followers were allowed to stay at Cîteaux if they wished and to be freed from their profession of obedience to an abbot who had been sent away. So it happened: Robert yielded and returned to Molesme. The majority of the community followed him. A faction that was deeply disappointed by Robert’s actions remained in the forest wilderness, ready to embrace manual labor, asceticism, and strict poverty, far removed from the secular world.

Already at the time of the implementation of the decisions of Port-d’Anselle, the legate Hugh had designated the settlement in Cîteaux as Novum monasterium, thereby recognizing its identity as an independent monastery.¹² In October of 1100,¹³ with the bull Desiderium quod, Paschal II finally recognized the community as a monastery under its abbot, Alberic (1050–1109), once prior in Molesme and successor of Robert in Cîteaux, thereby taking the community under papal protection and freeing it from any affiliation with Molesme. The new foundation now enjoyed legal recognition at the highest levels. Thus within a short time Cîteaux was no longer a locus privatus, where renegade monks lived proprio iure. It had become an abbey enjoying the privilege of papal protection, one that could now claim for itself the goodwill of the local nobility as well as the episcopacy.

After these troubled beginnings haunted by accusations of illegality, Cîteaux thus quickly acquired a recognized legal status. On this institutional basis could be built a combination of standards of conduct that Cîteaux, like no other religious community, understood itself to represent convincingly: the principle of rigorous poverty, upheld while following literally the Rule of Saint Benedict. Here lay the foundation for Cistercian success.

The Measure of the Pure Rule

As Orderic rightly observed, Cîteaux had in fact realized what in Molesme had remained only an elusive goal: a commitment to follow the Rule of Saint Benedict with adherence to its every word. In the Exordium parvum,¹⁴ the Cistercians underscored that the “rightness of the Rule” (rectitudo regulae) was to be the measure of their way of life, and they rejected all that was not to be found there¹⁵—tithes, parishes, villages, and bondsmen, for example. In a notable analogy to their contemporary Stephen of Thiers, with whose later congregation of Grandmont they would soon come into competition, the Cistercians emphasized that, “poor with the poor Christ” (pauperes cum paupere Christo), they renounced the riches of this world as well as all adornment, even of their churches, Mass vestments, and altar furnishings. Yet in contrast to the Grandmontines, they appealed in this regard not to the Gospel itself but to the Rule of Saint Benedict, a text that for the former had been only a branch, not the root of the true teaching of Christ.

Also in contrast to the essentially more rigid Grandmontines, the Cistercians resolved to accept goods, vineyards, meadows, and forests from their donors. For the administration of those estates they chose to take on conversi—laity bound to the monastery—both because the monks could not otherwise observe the prayer services prescribed by the Rule, and also because it was unfitting for monks to spend their time on granges beyond the monastery walls. But on the basis of their experience in Molesme, they well knew that with that kind of agricultural economy came considerable wealth, and with it the concern that their spiritual energy might wane. So also in the Exordium parvum, albeit in an extension written a few years later, they countered vehemently, “In that time the abbey’s ownership of land, vineyards, meadows, and farms grew, yet its discipline did not decline. The monks of Cîteaux fought well and bravely against their own mistakes and the temptations of evil spirits, and completed their race.”¹⁶ As will become clear, over the course of a century their combination of a strong economy and frugality would lead inevitably to considerable wealth, the effects of which could “tarnish purity,”¹⁷ as Pope Innocent III later warned.

But with poverty and strict adherence to the Rule, the Cistercians in those early days had managed to intertwine two ideals that the adherents of other religious movements in the era found incompatible. Both were highly charged with symbolic meaning. Across the whole eremitical movement, longing for poverty was a leitmotif, not only in practice but also symbolically, for retreat from the world and for justifying the turn from inherited institutional forms. Life in voluntary poverty could be understood spiritually as the imitation of the lonely Jesus Christ on the mountain, while the embrace of the outward appearance of poverty was sometimes attacked by contemporary observers as a retreat from the sensus communis. A retreat from institutional structures for the sake of poverty was in turn interpreted as a “life after one’s own law.” But it also informed a sharp and polemically articulated opposition to the following of monastic rules as they that been practiced in the old monasteries—a way of life now critiqued as formalistic and denounced as pharisaical quibbling over words. The dichotomy seemed impossible to reconcile and could be circumvented pragmatically only when new guidelines could be crafted either by calling on primordial norms—whether those of the Gospel, the early church, or the Desert Fathers—or by yielding to norms later introduced.

The cloister of the Cistercian abbey of Fontenay in northern Burgundy.

The Cistercians, however, were able convincingly to resolve this tension. They placed great worth on a strict following of the precept of poverty, for they also understood themselves as “poor with the poor Christ,” who had withdrawn from the world. Yet in order to realize their ideal, they did precisely what had been denounced in traditional monasteries: they obeyed an inherited rule, in the words of Orderic Vitalis, “as the Jews followed the law of Moses.”

The monks found success without contradicting their ideals, however, because they believed themselves able to discern in the Rule of Saint Benedict the model of poverty itself. One had only to follow the Rule purely and to the letter, and not to weigh it down with as many customs and usages, relaxations and exceptions, as were supposedly found in the old Benedictine monasteries, above all among the Cluniacs—a position no less full of polemic than had been encountered in other eremitical communities.¹⁸ The Cistercians thus brought together in a powerful way the tensions of two symbolic fields whose polarity had ignited the greatest minds of the day: they transformed the one field, observance of the Rule, into the guarantor of the other, renunciation of the world through poverty. It was already an attractive solution in principle, because it tied a structurally boundless search for salvation through poverty to the measure of an established order now lived correctly. In other words, it brought the renewing power of religious energy into harmony with institutional permanence in a way that did not give up one for the other. When the reconciliation of these two perspectives could be put into practice, it created a considerable advantage over whatever else competing forms of religious life might have to offer. The Cistercians could point to a program that they embraced not as willful innovators, as the eremitical movements had been accused of doing, but rather as the true followers and preservers of a truth that had been handed down to them. They were therefore not forced to abandon ascetic poverty as the spiritual stance of their movement.

In order to have credibility in practice, the Cistercians had to distinguish their observance of the Rule from that of other Benedictine monasteries and to formulate a distinct identity within their community.

On the one hand, they accomplished this task on the level of symbolic self-representation, as is demonstrated in the architecture of their monastic buildings and above all in churches closed off from all lay outsiders. Their churches were also characterized by a lack of adornment, recognizable in the absence of a tower and a preference for ridge turrets.¹⁹ The new color of their habit, too, was particularly well chosen to have a special impact, since it so notably set itself apart from the inherited style of the Benedictine monks. Of the Cistercian cloth’s color Archbishop Hugh of Rouen said, for example, that it was grayish white (it was, that is, neither bleached nor dyed), either because the Cistercians in the region simply could not have found anything cheaper (and thus could be identified as religious living in poverty) or because white was supposed to epitomize the monks’ “bodily purity” (castitas corporalis).²⁰

On the other hand, in differentiating themselves from other religious communities, it was vital that the Cistercians strengthen themselves organizationally and establish themselves as a distinct legal entity. In this regard, the young community now faced a great challenge. For even its lofty claims of pure adherence to the Rule—a core ideal formulated at the very beginning and imported from Molesme itself—should not conceal the fact that at first the little abbey was forced to fight for its very existence. In fact, it had no clear monopoly even on the ideal of adhering closely to the Rule. The hermit and wandering preacher Bernard of Tiron, who also enjoyed the church’s great respect, had a career that in many respects mirrored Robert’s—including his holding of leading offices in Benedictine communities. So, for example, at the same time as the New Monastery was begun, Bernard also founded a monastery in the wilderness to bring stability to his crowd of followers, and in 1109 he too prescribed for them the Rule of Saint Benedict.

The Charter of Charity and the Invention of the “Order”

In contrast to most of the other monasteries and congregations that had emerged from the new religious movements, after Robert’s departure the Cistercians could claim no founding charismatic whose word and deed could set the boundaries for everyday life and whose presence would provide the power needed both to hold the group together and to shape its identity. Yet this exceptional circumstance was also to prove a further decisive advantage for the Cistercians in their competition against so many other emerging religious communities. Since from the beginning the monks of Cîteaux were confronted with what charismatic-led bands only faced when their leader died—that is, the absence of norms that had been lived out in a model way for the community and that were thereby secure in their interpretation—as a community these new monks set down in writing how they wished to safeguard an observance of the Rule of Saint Benedict that would ensure the salvation of all of their members. Concretely this meant responding to the fact that after a few years of stagnation, Cîteaux had brought forth four daughter houses, later designated as “primary” abbeys: La Ferté (1113), Pontigny (1114), Clairvaux (1115), and Morimond (1115). The Rule of Saint Benedict had not been written for congregations, but for a single monastery. That it could nevertheless function as a general normative guide, however, had led large groups of monasteries to see themselves as a single “trans-local” community. The Cistercians rejected such a fiction from the beginning, however, because they had learned from the example of Molesme, a rich, well-endowed head of dependent houses. Their new houses were to be tied to one another in a different way.

Thus from 1115 onward they created a text whose renown was to be limitless and which was to augment the Rule of Saint Benedict to meet the demands of a family of monasteries. Under the direction of their third abbot, Stephen Harding, an Englishman remarkably skilled in organizational matters, they wrote the Charter of Charity, the Carta caritatis.²¹ No other monastic organization had yet possessed a text like this. More significantly still, it can well be understood as the first constitutional document of the Middle Ages.²²

In 1119, Pope Calixtus II approved the first version of the Carta caritatis, which included the provision that every local bishop, before the founding of a Cistercian abbey in his diocese, was to agree “to avoid every conflict between bishop and monk.”²³ This provision represented the basis for the future independence of Cistercian monasteries from episcopal control and jurisdiction.

The prologue to the document explained the core of the program, the unity that was to exist among all Cistercian abbeys:

In this decree the aforesaid brothers, in order to avoid a future disruption of mutual concord, explained and ordered and established for those to come afterward through what contract and by what means, and indeed all the more by what charity [qua caritate] their monks should remain inseparably united in spirit, in abbeys scattered across different parts of the world [in diversis mundi partibus]. They desired to call this decree the Charter of Charity because it excludes any burden of financial contributions and thus has as its goal only charity and the welfare of souls in things human and divine.²⁴

Only the statutes of the eremitical Vallombrosans from a few years before contained a similar thematization of brotherly love among those living in scattered communities. The Vallombrosans, however, had focused exclusively on maintaining a unity of liturgy among the various houses.²⁵ It is possible that Stephen Harding learned of those statutes during a trip through Italy.

With the Carta caritatis, the Cistercians had set in the place of an individual charismatic founder a comprehensive text whose contents expressed the community’s will as law. Here they captured all the validity that was otherwise to be found in the charismatic himself. The text was now the embodiment of the charismatic ideal. Those who were ready to follow could bind themselves to it by virtue of a contract (pactum)—one that in turn bound together all who committed themselves to it as equals in love. At the same time, the Carta caritatis was to be a guarantor of future concord as well as a means of securing salvation. Moreover, it evinced a stunning visionary power: it spoke of communities of monks scattered across different regions, thereby anticipating a potential development that, though hardly foreseeable at the time of the text’s composition, was in fact soon to be realized. The document looked consistently toward the future; it was a guide that promised posterity that they could not go astray in the future decisions they might face, whatever the circumstance.

In content, the Carta caritatis systematically and comprehensively encompassed all the needs for regulation faced by what was soon a community of abbeys that, though widely dispersed, had its own identity. First, it established that the mother abbey of Cîteaux was not to impose any burdens on its daughter houses but should nevertheless feel responsible for the welfare of the souls in each. It therefore denied any sort of the hierarchical or even proprietary and legal orientation toward a central authority that was true in the congregations of monasteries that already existed. A second aspect of the document concerned equality of life and a sense of unanimity (unanimitas). In the foreground stood the Rule of Saint Benedict, to be observed in all points and to the letter, according to the example of Cîteaux itself. Furthermore, patterns of daily life, all liturgical rites, and all of the hourly rhythms of prayer were to be the same in every abbey. A corresponding literature of instruction was to be made everywhere available, with identical content; a prime example of that literature was the “book of customs,” the Officia ecclesiastica (also called the Liber usuum),²⁶ composed in the 1130s.

The Carta caritatis turned next—in its most extensive passage—to matters of organization for the community of monasteries. Key topics included the relationships of the abbeys to one another as well as regulations regarding visitation. The latter were to proceed along lines of filiation and were not to become instruments of lordship but rather a service of love that was to regulate, correct, and improve the circumstances in each daughter house in the interest of the welfare of souls. A revised version of the Carta caritatis—the so-called Summa cartae caritatis (composed presumably around 1124)—wrote succinctly of the limited power of the abbot visitor: “He can determine or regulate nothing without the permission of the [visited] abbot, with the exception of those things which concern the care for souls.”²⁷ A few years before the composition of the Carta caritatis, a similar structure had already been established between the abbey of Aulps and its daughter house Balerne; it probably served here as a model.²⁸

Finally, the Carta caritatis turned to the establishment of a body that was truly an innovative achievement: the general chapter, the annual gathering of all abbots as equals and representatives of their houses. Its most important task was to care for the salvation of the souls of all of their members and in that spirit “to make arrangements whenever something concerning the observance of the holy Rule or the statutes of the order is to be improved or encouraged, as well as to reinvigorate harmony and mutual love anew.”²⁹ That is, the general chapter was to react with flexibility to new needs or deviations and, through correction, to preserve whatever seemed worthy of preservation. Regulations oriented toward the future had to be adaptable to new circumstances in a way that did not abandon original principles. Consequently the general chapter was further tasked with the punishment of abbots who broke either already established norms or the Rule. Furthermore, regular participation in the general chapter was required.

The revised edition of the Carta caritatis, from 1152, ends with an important stipulation. It can be seen as the capstone of the entire structure, because it not only defined in practice but also symbolized what was to become the Cistercians’ distinct way: no position of leadership was to be given to anyone who was not a Cistercian. The one great world of monastic life was no more.³⁰

In sum, the absence of a single head for the body of Cistercian monasteries required that the entire body provide balance. But the body allowed itself to take on any given burden only with the consent of all members. One such consensus had first been written down in a foundational contract, the Carta caritatis prior. It was first approved by Pope Calixtus II in 1119, and in 1152 the Cistercian pope Eugene III approved a second and definitive version, the Carta caritatis posterior, with the bull Sacrosancta Romana Ecclesia.³¹

By way of a most refined rationality, the Carta Caritatis established a constitution that ensured both cohesion among all Cistercian monasteries and the permanence of their consensus. The abbot of Cîteaux was no overlord of the other Cistercian abbots. Along with the abbots of the other primary communities (which Cîteaux had to visit regularly), he enjoyed a certain influential position of honor whose potential power might manifest itself (now more, now less) depending on circumstance.³² But the body that represented the community as a whole, legally and practically, was the general chapter.³³ Hierarchy and subordination among the Cistercians were replaced by the unifying bonds of mutual charity and unanimity. Legislative acts, necessary to adapt norms to needs and circumstances as they changed over time, were not decrees from above but measures produced through deliberation, called definitions (definitiones). These too were the written products of a continual process of legal refinement and adaptation, and they had to be made available equally to all. Legally binding codifications of chosen definitions, the earliest of which were already compiled in 1134 under the designation Instituta generalis capituli,³⁴ could be recognized as valid only if they had been approved by the general chapter.

On this foundation was built a new, more broadly defined understanding of the concept of ordo. It transcended the inherited meanings that had been limited to a common way of life, as in the case of the Ordo Cluniacensis. Observance of normative structures of behavior was now inseparable from the bonds of corporate law. This legislative structure opened the way to an independent institutionalization of religious life, one sharply differentiated from other forms of religious community. It is captured in the concept of order in the legal sense that is still in use today. The Cistercians invented the order as a form of religious organization.

Other monastic congregations, such as the Cluniacs, had accepted the leadership of a single head, whose position was legitimized by charisma of office or grounded in property rights; the houses in such congregations could differ dramatically in their customs or degrees of independence. With the Cistercians, however, the principles now shifted to collegial collaboration among all abbeys, which did not stand in direct dependence on a mother house, as well as strict unity in legal status, customs, liturgy, and so on. To safeguard these principles, the Cistercians turned to a meticulously enforced practice of visitation, which included Cîteaux and which was carried out autonomously along lines of filiation from Cîteaux and the four primary abbeys, as well as to the annual general chapter.³⁵

The Cistercians worked, moreover, to secure freedom for each of their abbeys by both rejecting advocates and restricting episcopal interventions (exemptions). They further rejected any reliance on incomes derived from leases or the work of day laborers. They concentrated their economic efforts on their own potential and in that regard made use of conversi, as these had been known among the monks of Hirsau, the Grandmontines, and the Carthusians. These laborers had to secure provision for their communities through work on outlying farms or granges, and from the middle of the twelfth century they had their own statutes, known as the Usus conversorum.³⁶

The early days of the Cistercians, from the second decade of the twelfth century down to its middle years, were also shaped by a figure who brought the young order a considerable degree of prestige. The Cistercians were able to promote his memory to such a degree that even the Franciscans³⁷ placed him alongside Augustine and Benedict. They traced the system of foundational norms at Cîteaux back to him as author, and in the Divine Comedy Dante³⁸ placed him as their leader in the highest spheres of heaven. The discussion now turns to Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153),³⁹ son of a nobleman from northern Burgundy, who while searching for a strict ascetic life entered Cîteaux in 1113 with thirty of his companions—the number of new members alone helped what was still a small community begin what was to be a remarkable flowering.

Bernard of Clairvaux, preaching a sermon in the chapter room, teaches his brothers. Manuscript illumination, around 1455.

Near the end of his life, Bernard described himself as the “chimera of the age.”⁴⁰ He was neither cleric nor layman, he insisted, and he had long since abandoned being a monk, if not a monk’s clothing, even though he had been abbot of Clairvaux continually from 1115. He saw himself, rightly, confronted with the fact that the world perceived him above all as the political conscience of his era, as a preacher of the crusades, as the persecutor of heretics, as a brilliant representative of theology, and even as an instructor of popes. His opponents, all of them more or less defeated, ranked among the greatest intellects of the day (and of the future): Peter Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers, for example.⁴¹ Bernard’s network of communication was formidable. Again and again he crisscrossed the lands of Latin Christendom, and he exchanged letters with meaningful personalities of ecclesiastical and religious life, including even Peter the Venerable, the exceptional twelfth-century Cluniac figure who was almost as important as Bernard.

Bernard was, in an essential way, the personification of the Cistercian Order. He epitomized a way of life that was attractive because it resonated with the time and met contemporary needs. Alongside the actual work that he did for the recognition of the Order, Bernard’s symbolic power led to an immense number of new foundations. At the same time, that power also kept the rapidly growing Order from flying apart. Bernard served as a kind of anchor for the Order’s identity, and he promoted that identity effectively as an author through his texts and letters. His early work On the Degrees of Humility and Pride (De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae) is an instructional work for a monk called to embrace contemplation and to lead the monastic life in ascetic discipline.⁴² In the text known as the Apologia,⁴³ written around 1124/25, he outlined and defended the most important core ideals of Cîteaux, often using strong polemic against the opulent lifestyle of the Cluniacs. Another treatise, On Precept and Dispensation (De praecepto et dispensatione),⁴⁴ from around 1140, concerns the validity of both the norms of a rule strictly observed and norms grounded in self-responsibility. Yet these works—as some five hundred of his letters⁴⁵ suggest—were certainly only the vanguard, so to speak, of the much broader influence of his teaching and persuasion.

Emerging from its once problematic beginnings at Cîteaux, the new Order now found itself, in an unexpected way, remarkably empowered, both in terms of its people and as an institution. This was true with respect to the establishment of its core spiritual ideals, which combined the new eremitic ideal of poverty with unadulterated Benedictine loyalty to the Rule. It was also true with respect to the rational arrangements of the Order’s legal and organizational affairs, which rested on caritas,⁴⁶ unanimity, and uniformity. As a consequence, some two decades after the founding of Cîteaux, the Order experienced explosive growth whose unparalleled example drew contemporaries along in its path.

The method of that growth was simple, but effective: if a monastery had grown to such a size that it could accommodate sending out twelve brothers and an abbot to found a new community, then, with the approval of the general chapter, it was expected to do so.⁴⁷ The new foundation was to be established in a remote location, with the local bishop recognizing the Carta caritatis and local nobility providing appropriate estates while receiving no rights of advocacy in return. When the new monastery in its turn grew large enough, it was expected to found its own daughter house. Adding to this dynamic was the fact that often the nobility transferred their proprietary monasteries to Cîteaux for reform and that sometimes already-established congregations of eremitical communities (after making an appropriate request) were accepted into the Order. So, for example, in 1147 the seven settlements that had been established by Stephen of Obazine and the thirty-two houses in the congregation founded by Vitalis of Savigny were incorporated into the Cistercian Order.⁴⁸

Around the middle of the twelfth century, not least as a consequence of the continued influence of Bernard of Clairvaux, the Order had come to number some 340 abbeys with around 11,000 members. A century later the numbers had doubled. Among the Order’s houses were those with more than a hundred monks and conversi (including Clairvaux itself, Rievaulx in Yorkshire, and Fontenay in Burgundy). The expansion in fact encompassed all of Latin Christendom and often extended far beyond its borders. The gaps were filled later,⁴⁹ and in contrast to the Cluniac expansion, here no region was neglected. The primary abbeys were the initial points of focus, and among them Clairvaux was by far the most successful, though Morimond had the strongest impact in the German realm.⁵⁰ The high point of the expansion was reached in the second half of the thirteenth century.

The Order was notably reluctant in its early years to accept women.⁵¹ In this regard it followed a particular tradition among the hermits, who strictly rejected women’s communities on principle—as did the Carthusians and Grandmontines, for example—although other eremitically inspired groups at first almost promoted women’s houses. The early community around Norbert of Xanten was notable in this regard, as was the congregation around Fontevraud and those groups around Stephen of Obazine, whom the Cistercians therefore only accepted with great reservations, as they were not prepared to take on the pastoral care of nuns (cura monialium).

But there were women’s monasteries early on that stood in a more or less close relationship with the Cistercians. So, for example, the women’s monastery of Le Tart was founded near Clairvaux in the 1120s with the help of Abbot Stephen Harding, and soon an entire congregation of monasteries grew from there. Yet until 1200, there was no discernible institutional tie between Le Tart and the Order. The same is true of many other women’s monasteries that stood close to the Cistercians in terms of their core ideals and normative foundations—for example, Jully, founded from Molesme with the aid of Bernard of Clairvaux, or the fifteen German convents known to have already been founded in the twelfth century. But in these cases the Cistercians limited themselves to providing hortatory instruction, leaving pastoral care to others.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, however, the stance of the Order changed, not least because of pressure from without. Through the legal process of affiliation and incorporation, such women’s monasteries with Cistercian ties finally gained access to the Order. As a consequence, their number grew, according to James of Vitry, “like the stars in heaven,”⁵² and in certain regions they overtook the number of male monasteries. But the opening of the Order to women soon again met sharp limitations. In 1220 the general chapter decided to limit future incorporations of women’s communities, so that the flood of women to monastic life soon had to be cared for by the emerging mendicant orders.⁵³

__________

¹ Gert Melville, “Die Zisterzienser und der Umbruch des Mönchtums im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert,” in Norm und Realität. Kontinuität und Wandel der Zisterzienser im Mittelalter, ed. Franz J. Felten and Werner Rösener (Berlin: LIT, 2009), 23–43.

² On the following, as an overview, Louis Julius Lekai, The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1977); Kaspar Elm and Peter Joerissen, eds., Die Zisterzienser. Ordensleben zwischen Ideal und Wirklichkeit (Cologne: Wienand, 1982); Immo Eberl, Die Zisterzienser. Geschichte eines europäischen Ordens (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2003); Felten and Rösener, eds., Norm und Realität; Mette Birkedal Bruun and Emilia Jamroziak, eds., The Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Emilia Jamroziak, The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe: 1090–1500 (London: Routledge, 2013); Jörg Oberste, Die Zisterzienser (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2014). Limited almost exclusively to English Cistercians: Janet E. Burton, The Cistercians in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2011).

³ “Exordium Cisterciensis coenobii,” in Narrative and Legislative Texts from Early Cîteaux, Latin Text in Dual Edition with English Translation and Notes, ed. Chrysogonus Waddell (Brecht: Cîteaux: Commentarii cistercienses, 1999), 179.

⁴ On the following, see Melville, “Die Zisterzienser.”

⁵ Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 253.

⁶ The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. Marjorie M. Chibnall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 4:310–26, and for the following especially 312, 314; Melville, “Die Zisterzienser,” 29–30.

⁷ Ecclesiastical History, 4:322.

⁸ On the following, see Eberl, Die Zisterzienser, 19–25; and Thomas Merton, “Saint Robert of Molesme, 1028 to 1111,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 46 (2011): 273–76.

⁹ Anselme Dimier, “Saint Guérin. Abbé d’Aulps et évêque de Sion,” in Mélanges à la mémoire du père Anselme Dimier, ed. Benoît Chauvin (Arbois: B. Chauvin, 1987), 689–92.

¹⁰ Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 242.

¹¹ On the following, see Eberl, Die Zisterzienser, 25–46.

¹² Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 139–42.

¹³ Chrysogonus Waddell, “Prelude to a Feast of Freedom: Notes on the Roman Privilege Desiderium quod of October 19, 1100,” Cîteaux 33 (1982): 247–303, here 267–69.

¹⁴ Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 235–59.

¹⁵ Maria Pia Schindele, “‘Rectitudo’ und ‘puritas,’” in Zisterziensische Spiritualität, ed. Clemens M. Kasper and Klaus Schreiner (St. Ottilien: EOS, 1994), 53–73; Guido Cariboni, “Il papato di fronte alle crisi istituzionale dell’ordine cistercense nei primi decenni del XIII secolo,” in Il nostro ordine è la Caritá. Cistercensi nei secoli XII e XIII, ed. Guido Cariboni (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 2011), 93–126, here 71–76.

¹⁶ “Exordium parvum,” in Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, chap. 17, p. 257.

¹⁷ Innocentii III Romani pontificis Regestorum sive epistolarum liber decimus sextus, PL 216:826; Cariboni, “Il papato,” 103.

¹⁸ Adriaan H. Bredero, “The Early Cistercians and the Old Monasticism,” in Cluny et Cîteaux au douzième siècle (Amsterdam/Maarsen: APA-Holland University Press, 1985), 351–72.

¹⁹ Matthias Untermann, “Gebaute ‘Unanimitas’: Zu den Bauvorschriften der Zisterzienser,” in Zisterzienser. Norm, Kultur, Reform. 900 Jahre Zisterzienser, ed. Ulrich Knefelkamp (Berlin: Springer, 2001), 239–66; Carola Jäggi, “Ordensarchitektur als Kommunikation von Ordnung. Zisterziensische Baukunst zwischen Vielfalt und Einheit,” in Die Ordnung der Kommunikation und die Kommunikation der Ordnungen, ed. Cristina Andenna et al. (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2012), 203–25.

²⁰ Giles Constable, “The Ceremonies and Symbolism of Entering Religious Life and Taking the Monastic Habit from the Fourth to the Twelfth Century,” in Segni e riti nella chiesa altomedievale occidentale (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 1987), 771–834, here 828.

²¹ “Carta caritatis prior,” in Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 274–82.

²² On the following development in constitutional history, see Jean-Berthold Mahn, L’ordre cistercien et son gouvernement, des origines au milieu du XIII^e siècle (1098–1265) (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1982).

²³ “Carta caritatis prior,” 242.

²⁴ “Carta caritatis prior,” 274.

²⁵ Nicolangelo D’Acunto, “Vallombrosani,” in Regulae—Consuetudines—Statuta, ed. Cristina Andenna and Gert Melville (Münster: LIT, 2005), 157–67, here 161–62.

²⁶ Les “Ecclesiastica officia” cisterciens du XII^ème siècle. Texte latin selon les manuscrits edités de Trente 1711, Ljubljana 31 et Dijon 114, ed. Danièle Choisselet and Placide Vernet (Reiningue: Documentation cistercienne, 1989).

²⁷ Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 183 [Summa cartae caritatis, chap. 3, “De generali statuta inter abbates”].

²⁸ Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 508–10.

²⁹ Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 278.

³⁰ Joachim Wollasch, Mönchtum des Mittelalters zwischen Kirche und Welt (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1973), 180.

³¹ Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 389–94. It is also necessary to note here the controversial book by Constance Berman, The Cistercian Evolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); see Chrysogonus Waddell, “The Myth of Cistercian Origins: C. H. Berman and the Manuscript Sources,” Cîteaux 51 (2000): 299–386.

³² Eberl, Die Zisterzienser, 129–30.

³³ Florent Cygler, Das Generalkapitel im hohen Mittelalter (Münster: LIT, 2002), 23–118.

³⁴ Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 319–68.

³⁵ Jörg Oberste, Visitation und Ordensorganisation (Münster: LIT, 1996), 57–159.

³⁶ Usus conversorum = Cistercian Lay Brothers. Twelfth-Century Usages, with Related Texts, ed. Chrysogonus Waddell (Brecht: Cîteaux: Commentarii cistercienses, 2000); see Guido Gassmann, Konversen im Mittelalter (Berlin: LIT, 2013).

³⁷ “Seculum perfectionis,” in Fontes Franciscani (hereafter Fontes), ed. Enricò Menestò and Stefano Brufani (Assisi: Ed. Porziuncola, 1997), 1961.

³⁸ Richard Kay, “Dante in Ecstasy: Paradiso 33 and Bernard of Clairvaux,” Mediaeval Studies 66 (2004): 183–212.

³⁹ Kaspar Elm, ed., Bernhard von Clairvaux (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1994); Adriaan H. Bredero, Bernard of Clairvaux between Cult and History (Edinburgh: Eerdmans, 1996); Peter Dinzelbacher, Bernhard von Clairvaux. Leben und Werk des berühmtesten Zisterziensers (Darmstadt: Primus, 1998); Brian Patrick McGuire, ed., A Companion to Bernard of Clairvaux (Leiden: Brill, 2011); Alice Chapman, Sacred Authority and Temporal Power in the Writings of Bernard of Clairvaux (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013).

⁴⁰ Bernard of Clairvaux, Ep 250; SBOp 8:147; The Letters of St Bernard of Clairvaux, trans. Bruno Scott James (Stroud, UK: Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1953; Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1998), #326.

⁴¹ Constant J. Mews, “Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Abelard,” in McGuire, A Companion, 133–68; Jean Leclercq, “Textes sur Saint Bernard et Gilbert de la Porrée,” Mediaeval Studies 14 (1952): 107–28.

⁴² De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae, SBOp 3:1–59; “The Steps of Humility and Pride,” trans. M. Ambrose Conway, in Bernard of Clairvaux, Treatises I, CF 13 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1973), 1–82. On Bernard’s theology, see Michaela Diers, Bernhard von Clairvaux. Elitäre Frömmigkeit und begnadetes Wirken (Münster: Aschendorff, 1991).

⁴³ Apologia ad Guillelmum abbatem, SBOp 3:61–108; “St. Bernard’s Apologia to Abbot William,” trans. Michael Casey, in Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, 1, Treatises 1, CF 1 (Spencer, MA, and Shannon, Ireland: Cistercian Publications, 1970), 1–69.

⁴⁴ De praecepto et dispensatione, SBOp 3:241–94; “St. Bernard’s Book on Precept and Dispensation,” trans. Conrad Greenia, in Works of Bernard 1, 71–150.

⁴⁵ SBOp 7–8; Letters of St Bernard.

⁴⁶ Mirko Breitenstein, “Is There a Cistercian Love? Some Considerations on the Virtue of Charity,” in Aspects of Charity, ed. Gert Melville (Berlin: LIT, 2011), 55–98.

⁴⁷ Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 330.

⁴⁸ See pp. 107, 111.

⁴⁹ Felten and Rösener, eds., Norm und Realität, 287–54 (with many essays on different regions of expansion).

⁵⁰ Nicole Bouter, ed., Unanimité et diversité cisterciennes (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne, 2000).

⁵¹ On the following, see Franz Felten, “Der Zisterzienserorden und die Frauen,” in Vita religiosa sanctimonialium, ed. Christine Kleinjung (Korb: Didymos, 2011), 199–274; Franz Felten, “Abwehr, Zuneigung, Pflichtgefühl. Reaktionen der frühen Zisterzienser auf den Wunsch religiöser Frauen, zisterziensisch zu leben,” in Female vita religiosa between Late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages: Structures, Developments and Spatial Contexts, ed. Gert Melville and Anne Müller (Berlin: LIT, 2011), 391–415.

⁵² John Frederick Hinnebusch, ed., The Historia Occidentalis of Jacques de Vitry. A Critical Edition (Fribourg: Fribourg University Press, 1972), 117.

⁵³ Brigitte Degler-Spengler, “‘Zahlreich wie die Sterne des Himmels.’ Zisterzienser, Dominikaner und Franziskaner vor dem Problem der Inkorporation von Frauenklöstern,” Rottenburger Jahrbuch für Kirchengeschichte 4 (1985): 37–50. See also Anne Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011).