6 - Constitutions and the General Chapter

Summary

The Cistercians created in the course of the twelfth century the first monastic Order in the Western Church. By ‘monastic Order’ I mean an institution with regularised contacts among the monasteries, following common statutes and identifying itself in a separate tradition from other monastic traditions. Since the time of Emperor Louis the Pious (d. 840) virtually all monasteries had followed the Rule of Benedict, but its provisions deal solely with the individual monastery and provide no constitutional structure for regular contacts among monastic houses.

After the foundation of Cluny in 910, however, there did appear groups of monasteries bound to each other by tradition or by singular personalities, but until the Cistercians one can speak only of monastic congregations, not of Orders. If we use the term ordo monasticus, before the twelfth century, it means the entire monastic body pure and simple; those monasteries that had chosen to follow Benedict’s Rule.

The Cistercians changed everything, and so their constitutions and especially the institution of the General Chapter deserve close attention. For the monks who in 1098 left behind Molesme in Burgundy and established what they called the ‘ New Monastery’ (Novum monasterium), which later took the name Cîteaux , there was no intention of starting a new monastic Order. Under Robert, who had been abbot at Molesme, the New Monastery’s monks intended to follow the Rule of St Benedict more faithfully and perfectly. Their departure from Molesme, however, led to a complaint by the monks who stayed behind. They appealed to the pope, an unusual step for any Church institution at the time. He recalled Robert to Molesme. The abbot returned, together with some of the monks who had accompanied him, but a number remained in the new foundation, headed by the former prior, Alberic.