Introduction: Reform and renewal

Summary

In 1098 a small band of monks established themselves in a spot which became known as Cîteaux, just a few kilometres from the ducal centre of Dijon in Burgundy. Over the half century that followed the way of life that developed there spread to all parts of Christendom, and the Cistercian Order became a powerful congregation. This book seeks to explore the dynamics of the phenomenon that was the Cistercian Order. But Cîteaux was not unique; indeed, it did not appear from nowhere. Cîteaux was but one experiment – a highly successful one – in a series of attempts to find the most perfect form of monastic life and observance. The context out of which Cîteaux and similar movements emerged was one of intellectual ferment, in which the very nature of the monastic life was investigated and debated. It was also one of increasing wealth and prosperity, which provoked among many a desire for the simpler life of their forbears. An understanding of this context is a necessary prelude to a discussion of the Cistercians and the Cistercian Order.

All accounts of forms of monastic life in the medieval West, however, must begin with that great written monument, the Rule of St Benedict, the ‘little rule for beginners’ compiled by the Italian abbot in the first half of the sixth century for his monastery at Monte Cassino. Although Benedict envisaged a wider circulation for the Rule than just this one abbey, it was not for over two centuries that political ambition, harnessed to the Rule’s own intrinsic merits, propelled it to the position of the pre-eminent monastic code in Europe. It was Louis the Pious (814–40), heir to the vast empire of his father, Charlemagne, along with his ecclesiastical adviser, Benedict of Aniane, who made the Rule of St Benedict the dominant code in Western Europe. Their promotion of the Rule at the councils of Aachen (816–17) reminds us that the importance of monasteries to medieval society stretched far beyond the communities that were housed within their walls. Benedict’s daily cycle of prayer, inspired by the verses from Psalm 118 (Vulgate) ‘seven times a day have I given praise to thee … at midnight I rose to give praise to thee’, was a corporate act of worship and, for individual monks and for the community, it was the spiritual pathway to God.