Synopsis
CISTERCIANS, a monastic order founded
by Robert, at Citeaux near Dijon, in Burgundy, on the Day of St. Benedict,
1098. Robert, who at an early, age had become Prior of the Monastery of St.
Michel de Tonnerre, but felt unable to reform the loose and frivolous life of
his monks, obtained dispensation from Pope Urban II., then travelling in
France, and preaching the first crusade, to retire, at the head of a small
colony of hermits, into the forest of Molesme, in the diocese of Langres, for
the purpose of leading a life of austere asceticism. The colony prospered; but
the reverence of the surrounding population, and the more substantial favors
which followed in its wake, brought vanity and irregularities into the
herrnits’ camp; and Molesme was soon as bad as St. Michel de Tonnerre. A
second time Robert tried a change, and retired to Haur, a desert in the
neighborhood. But the monks of Molesrne would not lose their abbot; and the
Bishop of Langres compelled him to return. Later on, however, he obtained
permission of the papal legate, Archbishop Hughes of Lyons, to retire to
Citeaux, in the diocese of Châlons, where he formed a settlement of
twenty hermits, who bound themselves to a strict observance of the rules of
St. Benedict. The undertaking proved eminently
successful. Count Odo built a monastery, and the Bishop of Châlons made
Robert abbot. Donations came in plentifully, and it was apparent that Robert
was destined to become an ornament to the diocese in which he lived. But this
roused the envy of the Bishop of Langres, so much the more as the rise of
Citeaux would surely become the fall of Molesme; and, through the Pope, he
compelled Robert to leave Citeaux in 1099, and return to Molesme, where he died
in 1108.
At Citeaux Robert was succeeded by Alberic, and
Alberic’s first great task was to make his monastery independent of
Molesme. Deleptes, with letters of recommendation from the Bishop of Langres,
the Archbishop of Lyons, etc., were sent to Rome; and in 1100, by a special
bull, Pasohalis II. placed the Monastery of Citeaux directly under the papal
authority. Shortly after, Alberic issued the Statuta Monachorum
Cistertiensium, in which a strict observance of the rules of St. Benedict
is adopted as the leading principle; and gradually the monks of Citeaux assumed
the position as the reformed, or as the only true Benedictines. They got a
costume of their own. At first they were gray or tan-colored, like the monks of
Molesme: but one night the Virgin descended from heaven, and presented Alberic
with a white garment, and from that moment the Cistercians always appeared in
white in the choir, and in black in the streets; hence the names of White-,
Black-, and Gray- Friars. Nevertheless, a strict observance of the rules of St.
Benedict may mean very much as a maxim of conduct, and very little as a
principle of life. The example set by the Cistercians was much admired, but it
was not followed. When Alberic died (in 1109), the ranks of his monks had been
fearfully thinned out; and his successor, Stephan Harding, an Englishman, was
in great fear that Citeaux should die out without having had one single novice.
Then came the living principle with St.
Bernard.
Instinctively the Monastery of Citeaux had.
formed itself as an opposition to Clugny. Clugny
was wealthy and magnificent: at Citeaux every kind of display was banished. The
crucifix was of wood, the candlesticks of iron, the censers of copper; no gold,
no silver. This austerity attracted St. Bernard. When he and his thirteen
friends determined to renounce the world, and devote their lives to the service
of God, they entered Citeaux, and not Clugny. But in St. Bernard, asceticism
was represented, not as a penance, but as an enthusiasm; not as a cross, but as
a glory; and the influence produced by this most extraordinary phenomenon was
at once instantaneous and overwhelming. Such a number of monks crowded to
Citeaux, that, within two years after the admission of St. Bernard (in 1113),
Abbot Stephan had to found four new monasteries, - La Ferté, Pontigny,
Clairvaux, and Morimond. In 1119 the number of Cistercian abbeys had increased
to thirteen; in 1151, to five hundred; in. the middle of the thirteenth
century, to eighteen hundred. In 1119 the constitution of the order,. the
Charta Caritatis, was issued by Abbot Stephan, and confirmed by Pope
Calixtus II. One of the principal points of this constitution was the
establishment of the order entirely independent of the episcopal power, and
directly under the papal authority; and the co-operation between the order and
the Pope was at times complete. Eugenius III. belonged to the order, and was a
pupil of St. Bernard. Led by St. Bernard, and following the Pope, the order
occupied one of the very first places in the Christian world. It crushed the
heretics, Abelard, Arnold of Brescia, the
Cathari, etc.; it preached the second crusade; it. called into life the military orders of
the Templars, of Calatrava, Alcantara, Montesa, Avis,
and Christ. In 1143 the kingdom of Portugal declared itself a fief of the Abbey
of Clairvaux; and in 1578 the abbey actually tried to make good its claims.
By the middle of the thirteenth century the
order had passed its point of culmination. It lost its historical mission,
which was inherited by the mendicant orders; and the internal decay of the rich
and proud institution soon became apparent. One of the first attempts of reform
was made by Martin de Vargas in Spain, supported by Pope Martin V. (1426); and
in 1469 an independent Spanish congregation was formed on the basis of extreme
asceticism. Similar attempts were made a little later in Tuscany, Calabria, and
the Papal States. In France, its home, the order suffered very much during the
wars with England; and all the attempts of reform which were made during time
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries failed. In the sixteenth and seventeenth
century, independent congregations were formed, - the Feuillants, the
Trappists, etc., which see. The first Cistercian nunnery was founded at Tart,
probably by Abbot Stephan; but the most famous was that of Port Royal.
Albrecht Vogel, "Cistercians,"
Philip Schaff, ed., A Religious Encyclopaedia or Dictionary of Biblical,
Historical, Doctrinal, and Practical Theology, 3rd edn, Vol. 1. Toronto,
New York & London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1894. pp.487-488.
 |
 Constance Hoffman Berman,
The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth
Century Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. Hbk.
ISBN: 0812235347. pp.382. Amazon.com |
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Caroline Walker Bynum,
"Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother: SOme Themes in Twelfth-century Cistercian
Writing," in Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle
Ages. Berkeley, 1982. pp.110-69. |
|
 Glyn Coppack, The White
Monks. Tempus Publishing, 1998. Hbk. ISBN: 0752414135. pp.159. Amazon.com |
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R.A. Donkin, The
Cistercians. Studies in the Geography of Medieval England and Wales.
Studies and Text, 38. Toronto, 1938. |
|
 Michael Gervers, ed., The
Second Crusade and the Cistercians. New York: Palgrave, 1992. Hbk. ISBN:
0312056079. pp.272. Amazon.com |
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Bennett
David Hill, English Cisterican Monasteries and Their Patrons in the Twelfth
Century. University of Illinois Press, 1968. Hbk. ISBN: 0252723112.
Amazon.com |
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 Beverly Mayne Kienzle,
Cistercians, Heresy and Crusade in Occitania, 1145-1229. The Boydell
Press, 2001. Hbk. ISBN: 190315300X. pp.288. Amazon.com |
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David Knowles, Great
Historical Enterprises: Problems in Monastic History. London: Thomas Nelson
& Sons, 1963. pp.198-222. |
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Bede
K. Lackner, The Eleventh Century Background of Citeaux. Cisterican
Studies, VIII. Washington, 1972. Hbk. ISBN: 0879078081. pp.309. Amazon.com |
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Louis .Julius Lekai, O.
Cist. The White Monks: A History of the Cisterican Order. Okauchee,
Wis.: Our Lady of Spring Bank, 1953. pp. vi + 328. |
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Louis
J. Lekai, Cistercians. Kent State University Press, 1992. Hbk. ISBN:
0873382013. Amazon.com |
|
 F. Donald Logan, A History of the Church
in the Middle Ages. London & New York: Routledge, 2002. Pbk. ISBN:
0415132894. pp.139-140. Amazon.com |
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B.W. O'Dwyer, "The Problem
of Reform in the Irish Cistercian Monasteries and the Attempted Solution of
Stephen of Lexington in 1228," The Journal of Ecclesiastical History
15.2 (1964): 186-191. |
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Basil
Pennington, OCSO. The Cistercians. Michael Glazier Books, 1993. Hbk.
ISBN: 0814657206. pp.136. Amazon.com |
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J.F. O'Sullivan, The
Cistercian Movements in Wales and Monmouthshire, 1140-1540. Fordham
University Studies, History Series 2. New York: D. X. McMullen Co., 1947. pp.
ix + 137. |
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David
H Williams, The Cistercians in the Early Middle Ages 1098-1348.
Gracewing, 1998. Hbk. ISBN: 0852443501. pp.352. Amazon.com |
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David
Williams, Welsh Cistercians. Gracewing, 2001. Pbk. ISBN: 0852443544.
pp.320. Amazon.com |
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