The Great Cistercian Mystics E-Book

Bernard McGinn

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 743

Beschreibung

The Great Cistercian Mystics is an in-depth analysis of the mystical theology of the major Cistercian mystics of the 12th century, Bernard of Clairvaux, William of Saint-Thierry, Guerric of Igny, Isaac of Stella, and Aelred of Rievaulx, as well as the continuators of Bernard's sermons on the Song of Songs. It also contains a survey of the Cistercian women mystics of the 13th century.

Leseprobe

A Herder & Herder Book

The Crossroad Publishing Companywww.crossroadpublishing.com

© 2019 by Bernard McGinn

Crossroad, Herder & Herder, and the crossed C logo/colophon are registered trademarks of The Crossroad Publishing Company.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, scanned, reproduced in any way, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company. For permission please write to [email protected].

In continuation of our 200-year tradition of independent publishing, The Crossroad Publishing Company proudly offers a variety of books with strong, original voices and diverse perspectives. The viewpoints expressed in our books are not necessarily those of The Crossroad Publishing Company, any of its imprints or of its employees, executives, or owners. Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. No claims are made or responsibility assumed for any health or other benefits.

Book design by The HK ScriptoriumCover design by George Foster

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Dataavailable from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-8245-5015-8 cloth

ISBN 978-0-8245-5016-5 ePub

ISBN 978-0-8245-5017-2 mobi

Books published by The Crossroad Publishing Company may be purchased at special quantity discount rates for classes and institutional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

Dedicated to the Memory of Two Cistercian Scholars

Chrysogonus Waddell, OCSO(1930–2008)

M. Basil Pennington, OCSO(1931–2005)

Contents

Prologue. Exordium Minimum:

On the Origins of This Book

Introduction

The Cistercian Miracle

Chapter One

Bernard of Clairvaux the Great Contemplative

Chapter Two

William of Saint-Thierry: Spirit-Centered Mysticism

Chapter Three

Other Voices of Twelfth-Century Cistercian Mysticism

Chapter Four

Thirteenth-Century Women Mystics in the Cistercian Tradition

Conclusion

Bibliography of Cistercian Mystics in Translation

PROLOGUE

Exordium Minimum: On the Origins of This Book

Cistercians love stories about beginnings, so it seems fitting that this book about Cistercian mysticism has its own brief exordium, or tale of its origin. The book has a longer story than its brevity might suggest. Given my name (and my father’s), I’ve long had an interest in Bernard of Clairvaux, but it was not until the early 1960s through reading Louis Bouyer’s fine summary, The Cistercian Heritage, that I was introduced to the rest of the great twelfth-century Cistercian mystics, such as William of Saint-Thierry, Aelred of Rievaulx, Isaac of Stella, and Guerric of Igny.1 The experience was transformative to the extent that in 1971 I wound up writing a dissertation on Isaac of Stella, one of the more neglected of the group.

Fast-forwarding to the 1980s, the revival of interest in the Cistercians, evident in growing publication series such as the Cistercian Fathers (begun in 1970) and Cistercian Studies (begun in 1969), as well as the success of the Classics of Western Spirituality (launched in 1978), began to turn the attention of scholars of medieval religion to the investigation of mystical sources. After some years working on medieval apocalypticism and Meister Eckhart, I felt a call to return to the Cistercians and to try to write a book that would bring Bouyer up-to-date on the basis of the new scholarly studies on the Cistercians published in the years since he had composed his survey, much of it produced by the great student of medieval monasticism and all things Cistercian, Jean Leclercq (1910–93). I had hoped to obtain a grant to spend a year researching and writing such a book, but, alas, it was not to be. The failure of my grant application, however, turned out to be a blessing, because it led me to the realization that perhaps something more than a new book on the Cistercian mystics was needed. Over the years of teaching mysticism I had come to realize that there was no adequate theological history of mysticism available. Maybe I was just foolish enough to undertake one.

I took on the task, not so much because I wanted to devote the rest of my life to such an effort, but because of my sense that both from the academic and the spiritual perspective, there was need for such a study. I mulled over the project, gave several tentative papers on its thesis and shape, and by the late 1980s felt ready to begin writing. With considerable naïvete, I planned for the three-volume history to be written perhaps in a decade. Libelli habent sua fata (perhaps to be rendered here as “Books can do you in”). The first volume in the projected trilogy was to deal with mysticism from its origins in the early church down to the end of the twelfth century, that is, patristic mysticism and the monastic mysticism that dominated in both the East and the West to 1200. As I began writing this book, I was invited to spend a half-year at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem (Fall 1988 to Spring 1989). I gratefully accepted. Not sure of what Christian library resources would be available in Jerusalem, I decided to bring along Bernard of Clairvaux’s texts, as well as those of some of the other twelfth-century Cistercians, in order to engage in intensive reading of the Latin originals before starting to write what was intended to come toward the end of Volume 1. I spent many months reading Bernard, William, and other Cistercians in a tall apartment on French Hill overlooking the Old City—an experience not to be forgotten.

When I returned to the United States in the middle of 1989, I realized that I had written so much on the Cistercians that what had been conceived of as one volume would have to be split in two. Thus, Volume 1 of the series I came to call The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism was published in 1991 under the title The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century. Volume 2, The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great through the Twelfth Century, was not published until 1994, although its three chapters on the twelfth-century Cistercian male mystics were the first written. Volume 3, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism, 1200–1350, published in 1998, contained accounts of some of the thirteenth-century Cistercian women mystics. As my research and writing have continued, the original three-volume plan for The Presence of God has grown into seven projected volumes, although now Volume 6, dealing with mysticism between ca. 1500 and ca. 1650, has had to be divided into three parts, two published and one in process.2

For several years Gwendolin Herder, the publisher of Crossroad-Herder, and Chris Myers, editor at the press, have talked to me about the possibility of using materials from these now seven volumes and four thousand pages to produce shorter books devoted to particular traditions in the history of Christian mysticism. That is the origin of the present book. There is a cohesion to Cistercian mysticism that renders it perhaps easier to present in a more reader-friendly format than some of the other significant mystical traditions. Another reason for choosing the Cistercians is that the revival of interest in the Cistercian tradition begun by Thomas Merton and his students in the 1950s and 1960s has become a permanent feature of the spiritual life of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I’m happy to try to make my modest contribution to this revival.

This book is thus not a wholly new venture, nor is it merely a reprinting of what can be found in Volumes 2 and 3 of The Presence of God. The core of the volume is the treatment of Bernard of Clairvaux, William of Saint-Thierry, and what I called “The Other Voices of Cîteaux” in Volume 2 (Chapters 5, 6, and 7). In addition, the book makes use of parts of Chapters 4 and 6 of Volume 3, dealing with the Cistercian women mystics of the thirteenth century. All these chapters from The Presence of God remain substantially the same, but I have revised them in many details by additions, corrections, and especially bibliographical supplements to the notes regarding newer literature. I was originally not sure what to do with the extensive notes for these chapters. Early on, I decided to shorten the notes by not citing Latin texts. The reader interested in the Latin can go back to the older volumes or use the references to the texts given here to find the sources. At first, I also thought of drastically reducing the number of notes; but I soon decided this was a bad idea. The book is meant to appeal to two kinds of readers. The first are those who want an overview of Cistercian mysticism in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the second are those who want to make a deeper study of these figures. I would advise readers interested in the big picture, or overview, to read the text itself and not worry about the many notes dealing with sources and modern studies. For the more interested, even scholarly, investigator, the extensive notes, with their references to modern studies, especially those published since these volumes first appeared in 1994 and 1999 will, I hope, provide resources for future work.

The book also makes two major additions to what can be found in the volumes of The Presence of God. The “Introduction,” though relatively brief, tries to present the history and intentions of the first Cistercian monks in a fuller and more up-to-date form than what was presented in my 1994 volume. The beginning of the Cistercian Order is a growing and contentious field of studies, and the summary contained in this “Introduction” tries to put the contribution of the Cistercians in historical perspective. The second expansion comes in Chapter Four, dealing with the thirteenth-century Cistercian women mystics. Here I have tried to say more about the role of Cistercian women and expanded my treatment in a number of ways beyond what appeared in The Flowering of Mysticism. More could certainly be done with the riches of the mysticism of the Cistercian women, but I hope this is at least a beginning.

I would like to include a few words of thanks and remembrance. Thanks are due to Gwendolin Herder and Chris Myers of Crossroad/ Herder & Herder for convincing me that this was, indeed, a book worth doing. I also owe deep gratitude to my friend Brian Patrick McGuire, the Dean of current Cistercian studies, for his encouragement over the years, and for his reading the new “Introduction.” As ever, thanks are especially due to my wife, Pat, for her care in reading these chapters and making so many helpful corrections and suggestions. In remembrance, the book is dedicated to two great Cistercian scholars whom I was privileged to have as friends, Chrysogonus Waddell of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, and Basil Pennington of Spencer Abbey in Massachusetts. This is not the place to make even a slight attempt to say what these two monks contributed to the study of the great Cistercian mystics, or how much their personal witness to the spiritual richness of the Ordo Cisterciensium meant for their many friends and readers. We know that they “have been called out of darkness into God’s marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).

It is personally welcome to me that a project that began almost four decades ago as an attempt to write a history of Cistercian mysticism is finally reaching an unforeseen, but I hope happy, conclusion. Let me end by quoting Bernard of Clairvaux’s words to Pope Eugene III, “Thus, let this be the end of the book, but not the end of the search” (Proinde is sit finis libri, sed non finis quaerendi: De consideratione V.32).

Bernard McGinnChicago, March 2018

Notes

1. Louis Bouyer, The Cistercian Heritage (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1958; French original, 1955). A subsequent attempt to survey the twelfth-century Cistercians was M. Basil Pennington, The Last of the Fathers: The Cistercian Fathers of the Twelfth Century. A Collection of Essays (Still River, MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 1983).

2. Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Crossroad/Herder, 1991–).

INTRODUCTION

The Cistercian Miracle

In the first of his Sermons for the Dedication of a Church, Bernard of Clairvaux exclaims:

What is more wonderful than that one who could scarcely for two days refrain from lust, from intoxication, from drunkenness, wantonness, impurity, and other similar and dissimilar vices, now refrains from them for many years, even for life? What greater miracle than when so many youths, adolescents, nobles—all those I see here—are bound, as in an open prison, without chains, riveted only by the fear of God …? What are these save evident proofs of the Holy Spirit living within you?1

A similar witness is found in Bernard’s friend, Aelred of Rievaulx. Addressing his monks in Sermon 1 On the Lord’s Advent, he takes a prophetic text from Isaiah 64:1–3 about God’s descent from heaven causing the mountains to melt as indicating the coming of Christ bringing the possibility of conversion and penance to the proud ones of the world. He continues by seeing Isaiah’s prophecy of the wolf and the lamb, and the lion and cow dwelling peacefully together (Isa. 11:6) as fulfilled in his audience of monks:

How great it would be if God were to do regarding the many beasts what people often do themselves through their cleverness, that is, bring beasts contrary in nature together? If we would look at and consider only this congregation, we can see this prophecy more beautifully and better fulfilled than if these beasts were all present at the same time.… See now, brethren, with what agreement and peace God has gathered all these people into one fellowship.2

The astonishing success of the Cistercian reform was a matter of wonder to Bernard and his contemporaries, and remains so today. A brief investigation of the story of the early Cistercians will help us to see what made the miracle possible and led to the Cistercians’ most lasting contribution—their teaching on the mystical life.

The twentieth century witnessed a series of upheavals in our picture of the historical development of the Cistercian order.3 A century ago a fairly straightforward account based on a number of “received” documents was accepted by all scholars, but a series of manuscript discoveries and radical new evaluations, beginning in 1947, led to debate, reconsiderations, and no little confusion about the origin of the Cistercians.4 Crudely put, there are now two approaches. The first maintains that the foundational Cistercian sources are later projections of interested institutional apologists to defend an order that never really existed until into the second half of the twelfth century.5 The alternative, and more accepted position, is that the early Cistercian documents are multi-layered historical artifacts developed over a half century (ca. 1113–1163) that witness to the early self-understanding of the “New Monastery” (as Cîteaux was called from 1098 to 1119).6 Careful attention to the context of the various layers tells us much about the developing identity of the spreading monastic houses of those who called themselves Cistercienses.7

The major documents of the early Cistercians are four and exist in several forms: two foundation narratives, the Exordium Cistercii (Exordium of Cîteaux) and the Exordium Parvum (Little Exordium);8 and two legislative texts, the Carta Caritatis (Charter of Charity) and the Instituta Generalis Capituli (Institutes of the General Chapter). According to their editor, Chrysogonus Waddell, in their surviving forms these were the work of Raynard de Bar, abbot of Cîteaux from 1134 to 1150. Raynard appears to have made two versions of the collected dossier. The first in the 1130s comprised the Exordium Cistercii (EC), the Summa Cartae Caritatis (SSC), and the early Capitula (Cap.). The second, updated and expanded version, made about 1147, included the Exordium Parvum (EP), the Carta Caritatis Prior (CCI), and the fuller Instituta Capituli (Instit. Cap.). Waddell also argues that the core of the two narrative exordia and the Carta Caritatis incorporate documents going back to Abbot Stephen Harding (1109–1133), who was among the original monks who left Molesmes for Cîteaux and whose reign as abbot has been traditionally seen as crucial in the development of the Cistercian Order.9 So, the traditional story still stands to a large extent, if in a more complex form.

It was in 1098 that a group of monks led by their abbot Robert left the Cluniac monastery of Molesme to establish a new house at Cîteaux south of Dijon in Burgundy. The eleventh century saw various kinds of monastic reform, and Molesme, founded by Robert of Molesme (ca. 1028–1111), was a reformed house.10 Nevertheless, the community experienced a split over how best to observe the Rule of Benedict (RB). The later Cistercian documents testify that Abbot Robert and a group of around twenty monks, including Alberic, the prior, and Stephen Harding, Robert’s secretary, felt a strong desire for a stricter (arctior) observance of RB, especially with regard to poverty and manual labor (which had been given over to serfs and hired workers in the Cluniac houses). Apparently, Robert and his followers also wanted a monastic life free from the numerous financial and liturgical demands of contemporary Cluniac monasticism, in which monasteries were given support in return for their incorporation in a social system in which their constant prayer helped protect their patrons. The implications of this break with the early medieval tripartite social model (those who fight; those who pray; those who work) may not have been obvious to Robert and his group of reformers, but they were real. Other members of the Molesme community were happy with their current observance and decided to stay put.11

With the approval of local ecclesiastical and lay leaders, including the papal legate, Robert and his group withdrew to Cîteaux, which is described as “a desert” (heremus: EP III), and “a place of horror and vast solitude” (EC I). This is actually a biblical topos, based on the account in Deuteronomy 32:10 about the advance of the Israelites through the desert. Such a withdrawal was an unprecedented break with the Benedictine vow of “stability of place” (stabilitas loci: RB 58; see also 4 and 61), so from the beginning the monks of the New Monastery seem to have been concerned to show that everything was done properly and under “apostolic authority.” The Prologue to the EP, though of a later date, makes this clear: “We Cistercians, the first founders of this church, by the present document are notifying our successors how canonically, and with what great authority, and also by whom and by what stages their monastery and tenor of life took their beginning.…”12

The situation at the New Monastery grew more difficult when Abbot Robert and some of the original group went back to Molesme due to the uproar in that monastery over his departure, which deprived the house of the much-needed support of the local aristocratic patrons. (Robert dropped out of Cistercian history in the twelfth century, only to be reinserted after his canonization in the thirteenth century.) Robert was succeeded by Alberic, listed as the first abbot (1099–1108), about whom we know very little, although he did send two monks to Rome in 1100 to gain apostolic approval for the new house from Pope Paschal II (EP X and XIV).13 There is no reason to doubt the later texts when they speak about the difficulties of the early days at the New Monastery. Very few recruits came to join their ranks “because of their unusual and, as it were, unheard of harshness of life” (vitae eorum asperitatem insolitam et quasi inauditam: EP XVI). Alberic was succeeded by Stephen Harding (1108–33), another member of the original band. It seems largely through the activities of this English monk that the practices and special characteristics of the New Monastery that allowed it to grow into the Order of Cîteaux are owed.14

Under Stephen’s leadership the New Monastery began to grow, so that by late 1112 the monastery was planning to create its first daughter house at La Ferté, a foundation that was consecrated on May 18, 1113. In Easter of that same year, the New Monastery received a considerable boost when a young Burgundian noble, Bernard of Fontaines, accompanied by about thirty relatives and friends, petitioned entry. This was a most important addition, though it is clear that the New Monastery was already taking off even before the arrival of Bernard and this band of recruits. According to Chrysogonus Waddell, it was also about 1113/14 that Stephen Harding drew up the initial lost form of the Carta Caritatis that became the basis for the surviving SCC and CCI, as well as the kernel of what became the EP. The “Prologue” to the EP gives us a good idea of the intention of Abbot Stephen and his monks at this important juncture. This is an exhortation addressed to the successors of the founding generation, not only notifying them of the canonical approval of the New Monastery, but also laying out their spiritual inheritance in four points. Stephen and the community are providing this information to their successors, first, “… so that … they may the more tenaciously love (ament) both the place and the observance of the Holy Rule there initiated.…” So, the New Monastery and the RB are not only to be obeyed, but also to be loved. Second, “… so that they may pray (orent) for us who have tirelessly borne the burden of the day and the heat” (Matt. 20:12). The duty of propitiatory prayer is incumbent on all monks, but the fathers of Cîteaux want to bind the generations of their house together in prayer in a special way. Third, “… [that they] may sweat (desudent) even to the last gasp in the strait and narrow way the Rule points out.” Again, we see the Cistercian emphasis on fidelity to the RB. Fourthly, “… until at last, having laid aside the burden of flesh, they happily repose (pausent) in everlasting life,” a phrase expressing the eschatological goal of the whole Cistercian enterprise.15

The growth of the monastery accelerated exponentially. In May 1114, monks from the New Monastery took possession of a monastery at Pontigny near Auxerre, under the leadership of Hugh of Mâcon, a cleric who was one of the group who had accompanied Bernard the previous year. In June of 1115 Stephen sent the young Bernard himself to be founding abbot of Clairvaux in the diocese of Langres. In the same year a fourth foundation was established at Morimond. Bernard of Clairvaux, of course, who remained as abbot of that house until his death in 1153, was the dominant figure in the history of the Order from the mid-1120s, so much so that some scholars would want to make him the real founder of the Cistercians. As a mystical writer, as an organizer, and as an ecclesiastical-political heavyweight, Bernard was unrivalled; but the burgeoning Cistercian Order was more than any one person.

The New Monastery did not cease from hiving off new houses under Stephen and his successor, but the four “first daughters” had a special role in the developing Cistercian order, because each of these was at the head of a lineage of monasteries.16 The proliferation of houses encouraged Stephen in his efforts to define the relations between the New Monastery and the four daughters and the foundations being made both from his house and the daughters. The result was the Carta Caritatis Prior (CCI), which seems to have taken form about 1118/19, though it survives in a later edition of about 1147. This remarkable constitutional document, the foundation of the new Cistercian order, sought to balance independence with uniformity through descending and ascending lines of authority by means of the integrating power of caritas, the supreme virtue. Although the “Prologue” was probably written for the 1147 version, it seems to reflect the intention of Abbot Stephen and the other leaders, the early Cistercienses. It states that now that the abbeys have begun to flourish, Stephen and his brethren decided that to avoid any possible conflict with bishops, no monasteries were to be founded in any diocese unless the local bishop had seen and approved the decrees set down in CCI concerning “… with what charity their monks throughout abbeys in various parts of the world, though separated in body, could be indissolubly linked in mind. They considered that this decree should be called the Charter of Charity, because, averting the burdensome levying of all exactions, its statute pursues only charity and the advantage of souls in things human and divine.”17

The stress here on not levying burdensome exactions expresses the Cistercian desire for the independence of the abbeys of the order. In the Cistercian constitution bonds are based on charity, not economy.18 Each house was to be run by its abbot (not a prior under the control of a single abbot, as in the case of Cluny and its dependents), and each house was responsible for its own upkeep without being subject to exactions by its founding house (CCI, Cap. I). These abbeys, nonetheless, were to constitute a true “order,” because the CCI, as well as the soon to develop capitular decrees, sought to guarantee a uniform observance regarding the major practices of monastic life.19 As Chapter II decrees: “We will and command them [i.e., new houses], that they observe the Rule of the blessed Benedict in everything just as it is observed in the New Monastery.”20 Chapter III says that the “usages, chant and books” necessary for the liturgy be uniform with those at the New Monastery, “… so that there may be no discord in our conduct, but that we may live by one charity, one Rule, and like usages” (una caritate, una Regula, similibusque vivamus moribus).21

Unity of monastic observance, as well as the bond of charity between the various houses of the rapidly expanding network, was strengthened by Abbot Stephen’s constitutional genius in setting up a line of descending authority that prescribed a yearly visitation of each “father abbot” to his daughter monastery (CCI, Cap. V),22 as well as a line of ascending authority expressed in the decree that all the abbots meet in General Chapter at the New Monastery once a year (CCI, Cap. VII).23 In the beginning the General Chapter should be seen not so much as a legislative body for making new laws (it did later acquire this function), but as a tool for establishing “among themselves the good of peace and charity.” Chapter VI explicitly mentions charitable correction of an erring abbot and the need for assisting any house that might be experiencing severe financial need. In such a case it says: “Then let the abbots, one and all, enkindled with the most intense fire of charity, hasten to relieve the penury of that church, according to their resources, from the goods bestowed on them by God.”24 To be sure, as the Cistercian Order began to spread widely outside France, it became more and more difficult for all the abbots to get to Cîteaux even once a year, but the principle was admirable.

Two other important innovations of the early Cistercians that contributed much to the success of the order should be mentioned. In Chapter XV of the EP, on “The Institutes of the Monks of Cîteaux,” great stress is laid on strict fidelity to the Rule of Benedict, particularly with regard to things like austerity of dress, freedom from outside possessions and feudal encumbrances, rejection of tithes, and the like. Having spurned the world’s riches, “the new soldiers of Christ, poor with the poor Christ” (novi milites Christi, cum paupero Christo pauperes) realized that they needed to take thought about how they would support themselves and the guests who might come to them for hospitality. “It was then that they enacted a definition to receive, with their bishop’s permission, bearded laybrothers (conversos laicos barbatos) and to treat them as themselves in life and death—except that they may not become monks.…”25 They also decreed that these lay monks should be in charge of the “farmsteads for agricultural development,” or granges, that were set up at some distance from the monastery. This adaptation of an earlier practice of the Vallombrosan monastic reform opened up the monastic life, albeit in a modified form, to a whole new social group, since the conversi came largely from the lower class of agricultural workers in distinction to the almost always aristocratic choir monks. The conversi were an important part of the economic success of the Cistercians.26

Although not mentioned explicitly in the EP or CCI, another significant change from the then-current Benedictine monasticism was the break with the oblate system, that is, the custom of offering young boys to the monastery to be brought up to join the community when they came of age. Jean Leclercq has pointed out how this practice changed the nature of the audience addressed in monastic teaching and preaching and therefore modified the way in which Bernard and other Cistercians conceived of and communicated the fundamental meaning of monastic life.27 The writings of the Cistercian fathers were meant for an audience whose members had shared the experience of lay Christians, at least for part of their lives. This was different from an audience in which almost all the monks had been raised within the monastery. Such a change helps explain not only significant innovations in Cistercian teaching but may also suggest why the Cistercian message proved so adaptable and powerful outside the monastery. The broadening of the Christian mystical tradition that became evident in the “New Mysticism” that began around 1200 was the result of many factors, but this Cistercian shift cannot be excluded from playing a preparatory role.

The insistence on fidelity to the Rule of Benedict set forth in EP XV and echoed in so many other early texts raises the question of just how faithful the new order was to Benedict’s foundational document. Many of the Cistercian practices, such as greater poverty and asceticism, more stringent separation from worldly involvement, the return of manual labor, and the like, do reflect things laid down in the RB. The Cistercians, however, were also great innovators, who introduced practices not found in the RB, and beyond anything that Benedict could have imagined. Benedict wrote for a single independent house. The Cistercians pioneered a new form, a monastic order of many monasteries. Although the Cistercians proclaimed their freedom from outside encumbrances, this was by no means total. The Cistercians might be described as literalists and rigorists who felt free to depart from the letter of the RB in order to fulfill what they saw as its spirit—not unlike the spiritual interpretation of the letter of scripture.28

According to the received account, which seems largely accurate, even if subsequently updated, Abbot Stephen decided to obtain the highest possible authorization for the new Cistercian order—papal approval. He inserted various documents of ecclesiastical approval into the narrative of the EP (Chaps. II, VI–VIII, X–XIV) and offered this collection, together with the CCI, to the current pope, Callistus II (reigned 1119–24). As Guy, Archbishop of Vienne, before his elevation to the papacy, Callistus would have already seen and approved some version of the CC when he sanctioned the seventh foundation of the New Monastery at Bonnevaux in his diocese. The pope was on a circuit of visitations through France when Stephen’s petition reached him. On December 23, 1119, he confirmed CCI, saying in part:

Therefore, rejoicing over your progress in the Lord, We confirm with our apostolic authority those articles and the constitution, and we decree that everything remain ratified in perpetuity.… Therefore, if any person, ecclesiastical or lay, presume by any kind of rash deed to oppose this our confirmation and your constitution, let him, as a disturber of monastic observance and quiet (tamquam religionis et quietus monasticae perturbatrix), by the authority of the blessed Peter and Paul, and by our authority, be struck with the sword of excommunication until he makes satisfaction. But may he who preserves these things obtain the blessing and grace of almighty God and of his apostles.29

Stephen Harding continued as abbot until 1133, and the Cistercian Order grew by leaps and bounds. In 1135, not long after Stephen’s death, the English chronicler Orderic Vitalis summarized the success of the Order as follows: “It is now almost thirty-seven years since abbot Robert, as was said, settled in Cîteaux and in so short a time such a crowd of men have converged on it that from it sixty-five abbeys have sprung up, all of them, with their abbots, subject to the governance of Cîteaux.”30 By the time of the death of Bernard of Clairvaux on August 20, 1153, there were about 350 Cistercian houses, although not all were direct foundations, since many established Benedictine monasteries sought entry into the Cistercian Order.31

Concern with identifying what is often called the “Spirit of Cîteaux” has been a feature of modern investigation of the early Cistercian Order.32 What did these new monks, often called “white monks” due to their undyed woolen habits, intend, especially in contrast to the older forms of Benedictine monasticism (the “black monks”)? How did the Order spread so rapidly and so widely? How did they produce so many authors?33 The extent to which early Cistercian identity was formed by opposition to traditional Benedictinism is controversial, but opposition there was, as reflected in Bernard of Clairvaux’s attack on Cluny in 1125, the Apology to Abbot William (Apologia ad Guillelmum abbatem). Perhaps we should not make too much of this, because the inner dynamism of the Cistercian experiment seems the paramount factor in its success rather than external quarrels.

Cistercian scholars have used different models to make sense of the history of the Order over its first century. The great historian of the Cistercian Order, Louis Lekai, set out a paradigm of the contrast between initial ideals and subsequent concrete realities as a dialectic tool for understanding Cistercian history.34 For Lekai, the ideals included “a search for greater solitude, poverty and austerity” according to “a return to the strict observance of Saint Benedict’s venerable code for monks.”35 Strict observance, however, soon turned out to be difficult, if not impossible, as the history of the Cistercians shows. R. W. Southern, in the brief section he devoted to the Cistercians in his influential Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, specified three characteristics of the new Order: the desire to return to primitive simplicity; the search for rational organization; and a spirit of aggressive expansionism.36 If some of these values reflect the uncompromising fixity of purpose that we sometimes sense in Bernard of Clairvaux and some other Cistercians, we must also remember how often the Cistercian authors tempered their rigidity with an emotional warmth and sensitivity to the feelings and needs of others.

Recent decades have seen continued pursuit of that elusive ghost, the Cistercian spirit. For example, Lekai’s essay, “Ideals and Reality in Early Cistercian Life and Legislation,” originally published in 1978, explained that “Cistercian ideals certainly included a greater degree of poverty, simplicity, and detachment from the world than were practiced elsewhere; but preconceived principles and rigid adherence to a dogmatic position that admitted no exception were far from the Cistercian mentality.”37 Writing in 1995, Brian Patrick McGuire identified the core of Cistercian spirituality according to a series of tensions between rival demands: “… the question of identity concerned with stability and the adoption of new ways, the question of the contemplative versus practical forms of life, the question of the importance of articulating one’s own personal or institutional history in terms of the meaning of monasticism.”38 In the recent Companion to the Cistercian Order a number of similar dialectical presentations of fundamental characteristics have been presented. Mette Bruun, for example, analyzes the tension between withdrawal and engagement, or desert and world, as a fundamental dialectic,39 while Wim Verbaal uses the model of three generations of dialogue between the twelfth-century Cistercians and other interlocutors to gain insight into the growth and later stagnation of the Order.40 Obviously, the debate is not ended. These contributions all have something to tell us about the genius of the Cistercians, but do not exhaust the topic.

Our concern here is not with the Cistercian reform as a whole, but with one segment of it—its contribution to Western mysticism. It has sometimes been said that the first two decades of Cistercian life were primarily concerned with monastic reform, so that it was not until the time of Bernard and his contemporaries (ca. 1125–1150) that we can speak of Cistercian mysticism. It seems to me an exaggeration to push this distinction too far, because there is evidence of a strong commitment to the contemplative life among the foundational documents, albeit these have been re-written in the decades after 1120. A singular feature of these documents helps to demonstrate this commitment to contemplation—the emphasis on quies, a word inadequately translated as “quiet,” and perhaps better understood as “contemplative atmosphere.”

The EP uses quies seven times. The letter of the papal legate Hugh of Lyon to Robert of Molesme in EP II mentions not only that Robert “wished to adhere more strictly and perfectly to the Rule of the most blessed Benedict,” but also that he sought “some other place [besides Molesme] which the divine bounty will designate, and to serve the Lord there more advantageously and in greater quiet” (ibique salubrius atque quietius Domino famulari).41EP VII, Pope Urban’s letter allowing Robert to return to Molesme, says that even if that does not happen, the pope hopes that the monks of Molesme will faithfully follow the RB, and that “those who love the desert [i.e., Cîteaux] live together there in quiet” (qui heremum diligunt conquiescant). EP X, discussing the Roman Privilege of Paschal, says that it was sought so that under apostolic protection the New Monastery “might sit quiet and safe from the pressure of all persons, ecclesiastic or lay, in perpetuity.” EP XII twice warns of the danger of inquietudo, and in EP XIII, Bishop Walter of Chalon, writing to Pope Paschal, says that the abbot and the brethren are soliciting a confirmation from the pope “as a safeguard of their quiet.”42 Then, Paschal’s Privilege, as given in EP XIV, decrees “… that the place you have chosen for monastic quiet (pro quiete monastica) is to be safe and free from all mortal molestation.”43 Finally, Pope Callistus’s 1119 “Confirmation of the Carta Caritatis” twice mentions quies. First, he says that the community had requested apostolic confirmation “for the greater quiet of the monastery and the observance of monastic discipline,” and then he warns against anyone seeking to disturb the monks’ religio et quies monastica.44

When we read the word quies in the Cistercian documents, we may be inclined to think, “Oh, how nice, the monks wanted the kind of quiet and silence we so lack today.” They did, of course, but they also desired much more. Quies, as Jean Leclercq has shown, is a rich term, deeply rooted in the mystical tradition.45 Leclercq identifies three different meanings of quies that can be distinguished, but should not be separated: quies claustri, that is, the solitude and monastic observances that foster the life of prayer; quies mentis, indicating silence, asceticism, and interior peace; and finally quies contemplationis, that is, the prayer, inner repose, and desire for God that leads to true contemplation.46 So, when the word quies is used in these founding documents it means that the New Monastery was meant to have a contemplative atmosphere, to be a place of contemplation and what today we would call openness to seeking mystical union with God. The first Cistercians wanted the opportunity to devote themselves to contemplative prayer in a way they had not found at Molesme. That they were to find such quies in their venture is evident in the outpouring of mystical literature by Cistercians over the half century between about 1125 and 1175.

That the early Cistercians saw their movement as defined by contemplation is not a new discovery, but it is worth emphasizing in the light of how much attention has been given, and rightly given, to other aspects of the early days of the Order.47 The emphasis on mystical contemplation has recently been stressed by a special witness, the Argentinian Cistercian, Bernardo Olivera, who served as the Abbot General of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance from 1990 to 2008. His little book, The Sun at Midnight: Monastic Experience of the Christian Mystery, is a study of the nature of Christian mysticism as “the fulfillment of the Mystery of Christ in us,” and also an able summary of the Cistercian theology of mystical experience.48 Olivera notes: “The purpose of monastic life is spiritual experience, the mystical experience of the Mystery. Monastic authors of the Cistercian school, both monks and nuns, besides being mystics, are mystagogues—that is, teachers who introduce us into the divine Mystery.”49

Many students of the Cistercians, like Abbot Olivera, have made use of the term “Cistercian school.” Others, such as Louis Bouyer, did not. I shall follow their lead and avoid the term, because I think it homogenizes the distinctive voices of the Cistercian mystics too greatly. The twelfth-century Cistercians did use the term schola, but they did not speak of a schola cisterciensium; rather, they used such phrases as, “school of the Spirit,” “school of Christ,” “school of love,” “school of dilection.”50 Even with regard to the overlapping lives and related teachings of the five major twelfth-century Cistercian mystics (Bernard, William, Aelred, Guerric, and Isaac), the term “school” has problems. When we broaden the scope of the Cistercian contribution to mysticism, not only by taking in some later white monks who never met Bernard, and especially when we include the Cistercian women mystics of later centuries, the term loses all meaning, despite the great appreciation that the later Cistercians had for Bernard of Clairvaux. It seems preferable, therefore, to talk about Cistercian mysticism as a series of variations on some common themes, or as a group of mystical spiritualities.51

What, then, were some of the common themes shared by the Cistercian mystics? Abbot Olivera has a helpful list of seven specifically mystical themes: sweetness, compunction, the desert, desire, spousal relationship, unity of spirit, and alternation. Each will be found in almost all the Cistercian authors, though in varying expressions and with different valences. I would like to suggest, however, that we avoid separating doctrinal from mystical themes. The mystagogical teaching of the twelfth-century Cistercians has its roots in their profound understanding of the mysteries of the faith.52 Unlike what we so often see in the modern period, for the Cistercians, as for so many of the ancient and medieval teachers of both Eastern and Western Christianity, there is no division between faith and experience. The Cistercians believed in “faith seeking understanding” (credo ut intelligam), if not always in the same way as some of their contemporary Scholastic masters (think Abelard); but they insisted that the goal of all understanding of faith was experiencing the presence of God (credo ut experiar). It is sometimes also said that the Cistercians were not interested in speculative theology in the sense of bold attempts to penetrate deeper into the doctrines of Christian belief. That too seems too simple, especially when dealing with thinkers like William of Saint-Thierry and Isaac of Stella. What the Cistercians were decidedly not interested in was speculation for the sake of speculation, unconnected with living the faith.

A number of theological topics often discussed by the black monks, such as the doctrine of creation, do not seem to have greatly interested the early Cistercians. They were, however, much concerned with many key theological doctrines treated by both the ancient Fathers and by the contemporary Schoolmen. One example is the relation of faith and reason. It may be said that Bernard’s quarrel with Abelard was really a misunderstanding about the nature of faith and reason. Both Isaac of Stella and especially William of Saint-Thierry explored the role of reason in thinking about belief. William’s notion of the ratio fidei, the grace that guides the human mind so that it can “think and talk correctly about what is rightly believed,” is an original contribution to this area of theology.53

Mystical teaching cannot be separated from the doctrine of God, although some mystics have much to say about the topic, while others rather presuppose it, or contain only implicit teaching. William and Isaac offer deep speculative explorations of the divine nature and God as Trinity. All the Cistercians, however, provide extensive reflections on the nature of God, following 1 John 4:16: “God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him.” Each of the five twelfth-century Cistercian mystics has a developed doctrine of God as love. Especially noteworthy is Aelred’s teaching about divine love as the friendship (amicitia) manifested in Jesus. The fact that we really can only know that God is a triune community of loving persons because the Son of the Father took on human nature in Jesus of Nazareth helps us to see the centrality of Christology for the Cistercians. The white monks, however, do not show much interest in investigating questions concerning the ontological relation of Christ’s human and divine natures. Rather, they focus on the theology of redemption, both with regard to the issue of Cur Deus homo? (“Why the God–man?”), and also concerning the way in which we come to participate in Christ and his saving activity. Bernard of Clairvaux is one of the major voices in the history of the doctrine of redemption on both these issues, but all the twelfth-century Cistercians contributed to the understanding of the role of Christ. The key to Cistercian Christology is the theological adage, first found in Irenaeus of Lyon and cited for centuries, “God became man so that man might become God.”

Closely joined to Christology is the role of the church as Christ’s body, what we today call ecclesiology. Due to his ecclesiastical-political concerns, Bernard has a rich ecclesiology; but he and the other twelfth-century Cistercians consider the church more as the “sacrament” of Christ, the instrument of his presence in the world, rather than as a juridical institution. In the same way, the sacramental theology of the Cistercians is integrated into their notion of participation in Christ through the liturgy of the year, rather than being an exploration of the nature and constitution of the seven sacraments in the manner of Scholastic theology. This is why much Cistercian Christology, ecclesiology, and sacramentology are found in liturgical sermons.

Where the Cistercians made their most distinctive contributions were in those aspects of theology that deal more directly with the person’s relation to God. In the twelfth century, this topic was often presented as the soul’s relation to God, but “soul” was a synecdoche for the whole human person, and some of the Cistercians, such as William, made it quite clear that both body and soul play a role in the return to God.54 The Cistercians were fond of citing the famous maxim of the Delphic oracle, “Know yourself (nosce teipsum).”55 But what did that mean for them? The answer was found in the biblical datum that humans were created in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26). This formed the foundation for a complex and wide-ranging exploration of the soul and its powers in their relation to the return to the union with God lost in Adam’s Fall. Imago Dei theological anthropology is, in many ways, the core theological contribution of the Cistercians and is the basis for their mystagogical teaching. Bernard was the pioneer in this regard, as will be shown in Chapter 2; but William of Saint-Thierry, Aelred, Isaac, and Guerric all took up the question of what it means to be made in God’s image and likeness. This central anthropological concern, rightly understood through the Christological axiom that “God became man so that man might become God,” brings us to the heart of the more specifically “mystical” themes of these Cistercian thinkers.

The list of themes given by Bernardo Olivera and mentioned above is helpful for identifying key Cistercian mystical teachings. Many of these are related to a broad theme in the story of Christian mysticism, the itinerarium mentis in Deum, the “mind’s journey into God,” as the Franciscan mystic Bonaventure was to call it in the thirteenth century. Presenting that journey was a central task of Cistercian preaching and writing. All the themes Olivera discusses are a part of the itinerarium, especially the centrality of desire, our spousal relation to God, union with God realized as an unitas spiritus (loving union of wills), and the alternation between experiences of presence and absence of God. Still, there are other themes implied in these fundamental categories that should be mentioned.

One is the “ordering of charity” (ordo/ordinatio caritatis), based on the text in Song of Songs 2:4, where the bride says of the divine Bridegroom, “He has ordered charity in me.” The ordering of our loves—love of God, love of self, love of various classes of other persons—a preoccupation of Christians since the time of Origen, the first great commentator on the Song of Songs, reached a fever pitch in the twelfth century. How could one truly enjoy loving union with God without having this love set all other loves in order? The second implied theme is that of contemplation. Contemplatio was understood by the Cistercians as concentrated attention on God, an attention usually understood in terms of the power of seeing, according to the text, “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). How did these Cistercians understand what it means to see God, imperfectly in this life and fully in the life to come? How does such spiritual “seeing” relate to the inner, or spiritual, senses? A third issue concerns union as deification. If our becoming God is, indeed, the purpose of the Incarnation, then the deified life expressing our union with God is fundamental to Cistercian teaching, as it is to almost all forms of Christian mysticism. One of Bernard of Clairvaux’s most noted texts is his description of union with God in the fourth degree of love in On Loving God, where he says, “To be drawn in this way, is to be deified” (Sic affici, deificari est).56 What does Bernard mean by this? How did the other Cistercians understood deification?

These and similar questions show us how difficult it is to speak of a single Cistercian school, but they also reveal some constant values, especially in how the Cistercians addressed these issues on the basis of their experience as monks and nuns, leaving a rich testimony that cannot be reduced to any single model but that needs to be savored author by author. The goal of the New Monastery was to create a school of love, one that would enable the humanity saved by Christ to regain its character as image and likeness and to flourish under the power of the Holy Spirit in a life of humility and charity for all. The realization of redeemed humanity had been central to the meaning of monasticism from the beginning. Here, as in so many areas, the Cistercians mixed the old and the new, or, perhaps better, were able to give new life to ancient Christian themes.

Notes

1. Ded 1.2 in Jean Leclercq et al., eds., Sancti Bernardi Opera, 8 vols. (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–77), 5:371–72). Translations from the Cistercian texts are my own unless otherwise noted.

2. Sermo 1.31–34 in Gaetano Raciti, ed., Opera Omnia: Aelredi Rievallensis Sermones I–XLVI. Collectio Claraevallensis Prima et Secunda (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989), 10–11.

3. The literature on the Cistercian Order is quite large, but a recent survey provides a good picture of current research and a useful bibliography; see Mette Birkedal Bruun, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). The most recent general history is Emilia Jamroziak, The Cistercian Order in Medieval Europe: 1090–1500 (London: Routledge, 2013).

4. Two major contributions to this debate were the various studies of J.-A. Lefèvre in the 1950s based on his 1947 dissertation, and the volume of Georges Auberger, L’unanimité cistercienne primitive: Mythe ou realité? (Achel, Belgium: Adminstration de Cîteaux, 1986).

5. A proponent of this view is Constance Hoffman Berman, The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).

6. These documents have now been given a critical edition by Chrysogonus Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts from Early Citeaux, IX (Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, 1999). A useful collection of translated documents on early Cîteaux from a variety of sources can be found in E. Rozanne Elder, ed., The New Monastery: Texts and Studies in the Early Cistercians (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1998).

7. Two helpful introductions to the question of the origins of the Cistercians are Brian Patrick McGuire, “Who Founded the Cistercian Order?,” in E. Rozanne Elder, ed., The Joy of Learning and the Love of God: Studies in Honor of Jean Leclercq (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1995), 389–413; and Martha G. Newman, “Foundation and Twelfth Century,” in Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order, 25–37 (see n. 3).

8. A later account of the origins of Cîteaux and the miracles of the twelfth-century Cistercians, called the Exordium Magnum, was composed by Conrad of Eberbach between 1180 and 1215. It contains some early traditions but has to be used with caution with regard to historical reconstruction of the beginning decades. For a translation, Benedicta Ward and Paul Savage, The Great Beginning of Cîteaux: A Narrative of the Beginning of the Cistercian Order. The “Exordium Magnum” of Conrad of Eberbach (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2012).

9. The traditional view is summarized by McGuire, “Who Founded the Cistercian Order?,” 402: “Robert of Molesme founded a monastery at Cîteaux, while Stephen Harding founded the order of Cîteaux.”

10. Bede Lackner, “Molesme, the Home of Cîteaux,” in Lackner, The Eleventh-Century Background to Cîteaux (Washington DC: Cistercian Publications, 1972), 217–74; and the documents in The New Monastery, 13–30.

11. For a sense of where the Cistercian reform fits into the wider picture of Western medieval mysticism, see Gert Melville, The World of Medieval Monasticism: Its History and Forms of Life (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2016).

12. EP Prol. I use the translation of Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, 417.

13. For the sparse documentation on Alberic, see The New Monastery, 31–46.

14. On Stephen Harding, see the documents and studies in The New Monastery, 47–123.

15. EP Prol. (Waddell, 417, slightly adapted). See the discussion of the authenticity of this text and the meaning of its spiritual program in Narrative and Legislative Texts from Early Cîteaux, 205–8, and 417.

16. There is a mass of information on Cîteaux and the “four daughters” in Archdale King, Cîteaux and Her Elder Daughters (London: Burns & Oates, 1954), though some of it is out of date.

17. CCI, Prol. (Waddell, 442).

18. Brian Patrick McGuire, “Constitutions and General Chapter,” in Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order, 87–99, especially 90 (see n. 3).

19. The Cistercian desire was for unity expressed in a measure of uniformity of customs and practices, but this should not be exaggerated—many differences were tolerated, because the deeper concern was for unanimitas, oneness of heart and mind. See Michael Casey, “Unanimity First, Uniformity Second,” in E. Rozanne Elder, ed., Praise No Less Than Charity: Studies in Honor of M. Chrysogonus Waddell Monk of Gethsemani Abbey (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2002), 123–40.

20. CCI, Cap. II (Waddell, 444).

21. CCI, Cap. III (Waddell, 444). See also Inst. Gen. Cap., II and III (Waddell, 458).

22. A later decree of the General Chapter (Instit. Gen. Cap., XXXIV; Waddell, 471) even says that the abbot of the daughter house should visit the mother house once a year, but we have no idea if this reflected actual practice.

23. On the General Chapter, McGuire, “Constitutions and General Chapter.”

24. CCI, Cap. VI (Waddell, 446).

25. EP, Cap. XV (Waddell, 435).

26. Historians have written a good deal about the economics of the Cistercians. For an overview, Constance Hoffman Berman, “Agriculture and Economies,” in Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order, 112–24 (n. 3). On the Cistercian brothers, see James France, Separate but Equal: Cistercian Lay Brothers, 1120–1350 (Collegeville, ΜΝ: Liturgical Press, 2012).

27. Jean Leclercq, Monks and Love in Twelfth-Century France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), Chapter 2.

28. In his essay “Ideals and Reality in Early Cistercian Life and Legislation,” Louis Lekai puts this point as follows: “If the founders of Cîteaux were indeed as devoted to the Rule as they proclaimed themselves to be, their adherence was certainly more to its spirit than to its letter” (in The New Monastery, 220) (see n. 6).

29. “Confirmatio Cartae Caritatis” (Waddell, 452). See the discussion in Waddell, 283–97.

30. Cited from the translation in The New Monastery, 193.

31. The geographical spread of the Order and a list of the houses up to 1390 can be found in “Appendix B. The Abbeys. A Gazeteer,” in Steven Tobin, The Cistercians: Monks and Monasteries in Europe (London: Herbert Press, 1995), 194–230.

32. See, for example, the first volume of the Cistercian Studies Series, M. Basil Pennington, ed., The Cistercian Spirit: A Symposium. In Memory of Thomas Merton (Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publication, 1970), especially the essays of Pennington, “Towards Discerning the Spirit and Aims of the Founders of the Order of Cîteaux” (1–26); and Jean Leclercq, “The Intentions of the Founders of the Cistercian Order” (88–133).

33. For longer lists and discussions of the early Cistercian authors, E. Rozanne Elder, “Early Cistercian Writers,” in Cambridge Companion to the Early Cistercians, 199–217 (n. 3), who lists 138 twelfth-century authors, and no less than 179 thirteenth-century authors.

34. Louis J. Lekai, The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality (Kent State OH: Kent State University Press, 1977).

35. Ibid., 23.

36. R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Baltimore: Penguin, 1970), 250–72.

37. I quote from the reprinting of the essay found in The New Monastery, 234.

38. Brian Patrick McGuire, “The Meaning of Cistercian Spirituality: Thoughts for Cîteaux’s Nine-Hundreth Anniversary,” Cistercian Studies 30 (1995): 91–110 (quotation at 107).

39. Mette Bruun and Emila Jamroziak, “Introduction: Withdrawal and Engagement,” in Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order, 1–22.

40. Wim Verbaal, “Cistercians in Dialogue: Bringing the World into the Monastery,” in Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order, 233–44.

41. EP II (Waddell, 419).

42. These texts can found in Waddell, 428.7, 430.14, 431.21, and 432.17.

43. EP XIV (Waddell, 432.10).

44. “Confirmatio Cartae Caritatis” (Waddell, 451.13–5; 452.21–23).

45. Jean Leclercq, Otia Monastica: Études sur le Vocabulaire de la Contemplation au moyen âge (Rome: Herder, 1963).

46. Otio Monastica, Chapter VI (84–133). Leclercq uses many Cistercian texts to illustrate the uses of quies.

47. For example, McGuire, “The Meaning of Cistercian Spirituality,” 101: “In the twelfth century as in the twentieth, Cistercians have defined themselves in terms of the contemplative quality of their lives in community. Everything they do is related to the life of prayer, the prayer of the community and the prayers of the individuals” (see n. 38).

48. Bernardo Olivera, The Sun at Midnight: Monastic Experience of the Christian Mystery (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2012), quotation at 33. “Chapter 5. Our Mystical Experience” (57–119) treats Cistercian mysticism.

49. The Sun at Midnight, 121.

50. Etienne Gilson in his classic, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard (London & New York: Sheed and Ward, 1940), appears to have been the first to highlight this aspect of Bernard’s teaching. See “Chapter III. Schola Caritatis” (60–84).

51. For a similar approach, David N. Bell, “Is There Such a Thing as ‘Cistercian Spirituality’?,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 34 (1998): 455–71, especially 470–71.

52. These themes are discussed more fully in Bernard McGinn, “The Spiritual Teaching of the Early Cistercians,” in Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order, 233–44 (n. 3).

53. William, Aen. 40–41. This issue will be treated more fully in Chapter 2.

54. William of Saint-Thierry, De natura corporis et animae