The monastery of Citeaux was founded in Burgundy in 1098 by Robert of Molesme and twenty-one companions. Robert had been abbot of more than one house and was the founder of Molesme, itself the head of a prosperous congregation; but he and his companions now wished to attempt to keep the Rule of St Benedict even better than they had previously done. Subsequent Cistercian writings attempted to show that Citeaux was founded in reaction to the decadence of conventional Benedictinism, typified by Cluny; but although it is popularly supposed that the Cistercians attempted to follow the Benedictine Rule without the additional customs which had been developed in the tenth and eleventh centuries, it is now clear that they soon developed customs of their own which were partly based upon those of Cluny. By 1119, the Cistercian way of life had attracted new recruits, several new houses had been founded, and Pope Calixtus II approved legislation for an order as a whole. The Cistercians' originality lay in their rejection of tithes as a fitting source of monastic income; in their insistence on supporting themselves by agriculture and the labour of their own hands, and on only accepting donations of remote and unwanted lands to do this; and in their development of the use of lay brothers—already used to some extent in other new congregations— to help them.
The order was governed on federal lines, by visitation and annual assemblies of abbots in a General Chapter, set out in several versions of a document known as the Charter of Charity. The Cistercian habit was undyed (in contrast to the black robes of the earlier Benedictines) and their churches plain and unadorned with, eventually, their own architectural style—in the time of St Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), the famous Cistercian leader, mystic and theologian, they generally had a square and plain east end in contrast to the semicircular ambulatory with radiating chapels found in many other churches. The design of Cistercian monastic buildings became standardized and is remarkable both for the use of diverted streams for sanitation and mills, and also for the strict separation of the quarters of the monks and the lay brothers. The Cistercian use of lay brothers to till marginal land put them in the forefront of the process of land clearing and reclamation, particularly on the eastwards-expanding German frontier and in northern England. By the end of 1151, there were over 330 Cistercian houses; the next century saw a steady but less remarkable expansion. The map shows some of the most important houses, or the earliest in their region, or those which had many 'daughter' houses founded from them.
The Premonstratensians, founded in 1120 by the famous preacher Norbert of Xanten (d. 1134), were an order of regular canons who followed not only the Rule of St Augustine, which became the most popular rule for canons in the twelfth century, but also customs based partly on those of Cluny and an organization which derived from the Cistercian Charter of Charity. They too adopted undyed habits and used lay brothers to help cultivate marginal lands, and they expanded into the border lands of Germany, although the conversion of the chapter of Magdeburg also meant a succession of Premonstratensian bishops there and elsewhere in Germany. Their numbers and expansion were never as dramatic as those of the Cistercians, but they were known throughout Europe. Other important twelfth-century groupings included that of Savigny which joined Citeaux in 1147; the Order of Sempringham, a small English order founded in the 1130s by Gilbert for women and canons; and the famous house of Fontevrault, founded early in the century by Robert of Arbrissel, also for women. The Order of Grandmont, which grew up after the death in 1125 of its 'founder', Stephen of Muret, expanded considerably, but almost exclusively in France, in the twelfth century. It evolved its own Rule which stressed the need for communal poverty.
M. Dunn
World History
