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 g,S©6PIieR,HBB0¥, 
 
THE CISTEECIAN SAINTS 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 ^t Stepl[)eti, atiot 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 JAMES TOOVEY, 192, PICCADILLY. 
 
 1845. 
 
^S IH 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 Printed by S. & J. Bentley, Wilson, and Fley, 
 
 Bangor House, Shoe Lane. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The following pages were printed with the view of 
 forming one of a series of Lives of English Saints, 
 according to a prospectus which appeared in the course 
 of last autumn, but which has since, for private reasons, 
 been superseded. As it is not the only work undertaken 
 in pursuance of the plan then in contemplation, it is 
 probable, that, should it meet with success, other Lives, 
 now partly written, will be published in a similar form 
 by their respective authors on their own responsibility. 
 
 The Author wishes me to notice that since his Life 
 of St. Stephen has been in type, he has discovered that 
 he has partly gone over the same ground as the learned 
 Mr. Maitland in his Papers on the Dark Ages. In con- 
 sequence, as might have been expected, the same facts 
 in many instances occur in both. 
 
 J. H. N. 
 
 LiTTLEMORE, 
 
 January, 1844. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. Stephen in his Youth 1 
 
 II. Stephen at Molesme 12 
 
 III. Molesme degenerates 19 
 
 IV. Removal from Molesme 29 
 
 V. Arrival at Citeaux 35 
 
 VL Stephen as Prior 42 
 
 VII. Cistercian Usages 53 
 
 VIII. The Times of Alberic 70 
 
 IX. The Death of Alberic 77 
 
 X. Stephen as Abbot 81 
 
 XI. Stephen in Times of Want 89 
 
 XII. The Mortalit}^ at Citeaux 95 
 
 XIII. The Arrival of Novices 103 
 
 XIV. Citeaux edifies the World 116 
 
 XV. A Day at Citeaux 120 
 
 XVI. Stephen and Bernard 142 
 
 XVII. Stephen creates an Order ^ 150 
 
 XVIII. Abbot Suger 163 
 
 XIX. Troubles in the Church 174 
 
 XX. Death of Stephen 183 
 
LIFE OF 
 
 ABBOT OF CITEAUX, AB. 1066 — 1134, 
 
 And founder of tlie Cistercian Order, 
 
 CHAPTEK I. 
 
 ST. STEPHEN IN YOUTH. 
 
 Holy men of old who have written the lives of Saints, 
 universally begin by professing their unworthiness to 
 be the historians of the marvellous deeds which the 
 Holy Spirit has wrought in the Church. What then 
 should we say, who in these miserable times, from the 
 bosom of our quiet homes, or in the midst of our lite- 
 rary ease, venture to celebrate the glories of the Saints ^ 
 We have much that is amiable and domestic amongst 
 us, but Saints, the genuine creation of the cross, with 
 their supernatural virtues, are now to us a matter of 
 history. Nay, we cannot give up all for Christ, if we 
 would ', and while other portions of the Church can 
 suffer for His sake, we must find our cross in sitting 
 still, to watch in patience the struggle which is going on 
 about us. Yet while we wait for better days, we may 
 comfort ourselves with the contemplation of what her 
 sons once were, and admire their virtues, though we 
 have not the power, even though we had the will, to 
 
 imitate them. The English character has an earnest- 
 
 5 
 
2 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 ness and reality about it, capable of appreciating and of 
 following out the most perfect way. Not only was the 
 whole island once covered with fair monasteries, but it 
 sent forth into foreign lands men who became the light 
 of foreign monastic orders. Thus the Saint, whose life 
 we have undertaken to write, was one of the first foun- 
 ders of the Cistercian order, and the spiritual father of 
 St. Bernard. Little as is known of the early years of 
 St. Stephen, all his historians especially dwell on one 
 fact, that he was an Englishman. The date and place 
 of his birth, and the names of his parents, are alike un- 
 known ; but his name, Harding, seems to show that he 
 was of Saxon blood, and he is said to have been of noble 
 birth ; it also seems probable that he was born rather 
 before than after the Norman conquest. His earthly 
 parentage, and all that he had given up for Christ's sake, 
 is forgotten ; and he first appears as a boy, brought up 
 from his earliest years ^ in. the monastery of Sherborne, 
 in Dorsetshire. The rule of St. Benedict " allows parents 
 to offer up children under fourteen years of age at God's 
 altar, to serve Him to the end of their days in the 
 cloister. In those lawless times, when temptations to 
 acts of violence and rapine and reckless profligacy were 
 so great, holy parents thought that they could not better 
 protect the purity of their children than by placing them 
 at once under the shadow of a monastery. Just as they 
 had already in their name taken the solemn vows of 
 baptism at the font, so they brought their children into 
 the church of the convent, led them up into the sanc- 
 tuary, and wrapping their hands in the linen cloth 
 which covered the altar, gave them up solemnly to the 
 service of God. At the same time, they took an oath 
 never to endow them with any of their goods ; they then 
 
 ^ William of Malmesbury, Gest. Reg. Angl. lib. iv. ^ C. 59. 
 
l] STEPHEN IN YOUTH. 3 
 
 left them with perfect security in the keeping of the 
 superior, to follow their Lord with a light step, unen- 
 cumbered by worldly possessions. The discipline to 
 which St. Stephen was thus subjected from his earliest 
 years, was of the most careful kind. No prince could 
 be brought up with greater care in a king's palace, than 
 were these children offered up in the monastery, whether 
 they were noble or low-born. The greatest pains were 
 taken that the sight and even the knowledge of evil 
 should be kept from them; they were instructed in 
 reading, writing, and religious learning, but above all in 
 music and psalmody. But the greater portion of their 
 time was spent in the services of the Church, in which 
 various constitutions of the order appoint them a princi- 
 pal part. Stephen thus spent his childhood, like Samuel, 
 in the courts of the Lord's house, amidst the beauty and 
 variety of the ceremonies with which the peaceful round 
 of monastic life was diversified. About a hundred years 
 before his time, St. Dunstan had roused anew the spirit 
 of the Benedictines in England, which had in many 
 places fallen into decay ; and according to his consti- 
 tutions the monastery of Sherborne was governed. In 
 every part of his minute rules for the order of divine 
 service, the part of the children brought up in the con- 
 vent appears foremost; and there is a joyousness, and 
 at the same time a sort of homeliness in some of them, 
 which shows how much he consulted the English cha- 
 racter. All the uproarious merriment of the nation he 
 tames down by turning it into something ecclesiastical. 
 Bell-ringing, for instance, is ever occurring in his rule, 
 and in one place it directs that at mass, nocturns, and 
 vespers, from the Feast of the Innocents till the Cir- 
 cumcision, all the bells should be rung, as was the 
 custom in England ; " for the honest and godly customs 
 
4 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 of this country, which we have learnt from the wont of 
 our ancestors, we have determined hy no means to re- 
 ject, but in every case to confirm them^." Processions 
 also from church to church, when the weather was fine, 
 were frequent; and these were often headed by the chil- 
 dren of the monastery. Thus on Palm Sunday the 
 whole community quitted the convent walls, and walked 
 in procession, clad in albs, to some neighbouring church, 
 with the children at their head. On arriving at their 
 destination, the palms were blessed and the young cho- 
 risters entoned the antiphons, and all quitted the church 
 with palms in their hands. On returning to the church, 
 the procession stopped before the porch, and the chil- 
 dren, who walked first, chanted the Gloria Laus, after 
 which, as the response Ingrediente Domino was raised 
 by the cantor, the doors of the church were thrown open, 
 and the whole line moved in to hear Mass. Such scenes 
 as these must have sunk deep into a mind like Stephen's, 
 and he might have lived and died in the peaceful monas- 
 tery of Sherborne. But God had other designs for His 
 servant, and in his youth he quitted the convent for the 
 sake of finishing his studies. From the words of St. 
 Benedict's rule, it seems to have been intended that 
 children received into a monastery should be considered 
 as having taken the vows through their parents, and as 
 dedicated to GU)d until their life's end. Monastic dis- 
 cipline was not then considered so dreadful as it is now 
 thought to have been; nor was this world looked upon 
 as so very sweet that it was an act of madness to quit 
 it for God's service. Rather, they were thought happy, 
 to whom God had given the grace of a monastic vocation, 
 and they surely were called by Him to the happy seclu- 
 sion of the cloister, who were placed there by their 
 3 Reff. Cone. c. 3. 
 
I.] STEPHEN IN YOUTH. 5 
 
 parents' will ; just as now we find that the wish of a 
 father and mother decide on the profession or state of 
 life of their child. Besides, monastic vows are in one 
 sense only the completion of the vows of baptism; and 
 it was not thought unnatural that those who, while the 
 child was perfectly unconscious, placed him in the awful 
 contact with the world unseen, implied by baptism, 
 should also put him in the way of best fulfilling the 
 vows to which they themselves had bound him in his 
 infancy. This was probably St. Benedict's view; but 
 before Stephen's time, custom had in some cases relaxed 
 the rule. St. Benedict seems not to have contemplated 
 the case of a monk's ever leaving his monastery, except 
 when despatched on the business of the convent. Each 
 religious house was to be perfect in itself, and to contain, 
 if possible, all the necessary arts of life, so that its 
 inmates need very rarely go beyond its walls. Least of 
 all does he seem to have thought that a monk could 
 quit the cloister for the acquisition of learning ; the end 
 of monastic life was to follow Christ in perfect poverty 
 and obedience ; monks tilled the ground with their own 
 hands, and wrought their food out of the hard soil by 
 the sweat of their brow ; they were therefore in very 
 many cases what we should call rude and ignorant men, 
 unskilled in worldly learning, though well versed in the 
 science of divine contemplation. The natural force of 
 circumstances, however, made the cloister the rallying- 
 point of learning, and monks often quitted their own 
 convents in order to perfect themselves in the sciences ^. 
 
 ^ Instances will be found in Mabillon, Tract, de Studiis monas- 
 ticis, c. 16. In the Cistercian order Otto of Frisingen was sent to 
 Paris after his profession, and that from Morimond, a monastery- 
 founded by and under the control of St. Stephen. Manriquez, 
 1127. 2. V. also the case of St. Wilfrid ; Bede, Eccl. Hist. v. 20. 
 
6 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH, 
 
 The active mind of Stephen longed for more than the 
 poor monastery of Sherborne could afford him. He 
 first travelled into Scotland, which at that time was the 
 general refuge of all of Saxon race from the power of 
 the Conqueror. It was governed by Malcolm III., who 
 in 1070 married Margaret, a daughter of the English 
 blood royal, and the grand-niece of St. Edward the 
 Confessor. Her gentle virtues smoothed the rough 
 manners of the nation, and the Jioly austerity of her life 
 gave her such an ascendancy over them, that she banished 
 many horrid customs which Christianity had as yet failed 
 in uprooting. It was probably the peace which her 
 holiness shed around her in Scotland which attracted 
 Stephen thither; it formed a favourable contrast to the 
 distracted state of England, which was suffering from the 
 effects of the Conquest, and where a Saxon monastery 
 could not be safe from the aggressions of their Norman 
 lord. From Scotland he bent his steps to Paris. 
 
 Up to this time Stephen's life had been one of tran- 
 quillity, spent in the peace of a monastery or in the 
 acquisition of learning. But he seems now to be enter- 
 ing on the rougher portion of his career ; he had not yet 
 found out his vocation, and with that untiring energy, of 
 which his after-life showed so many proofs, was looking 
 out for it. He was the disciple of a crucified Lord, and 
 his brethren all through the world were fighting; how 
 then could he rest in peace 1 He left Paris and under- 
 took a pilgrimage to Rome, at that time a journey of 
 great danger and difficulty, when the roads were not 
 smoothed by all the contrivances of modern travelling. 
 Forests had not been cleared nor mountains cut through; 
 and the towns and villages were far distant from each 
 other, so that the poor pilgrims had often to depend on 
 the hospitality of the monks and religious houses to find 
 
I.] STEPHEN IN YOUTH. 7 
 
 food and a night's rest after a long day's journey on foot 
 or on horseback. A heavy rain was a most serious 
 inconvenience, for it converted the road into a deep 
 mass of mud^, flooded the rivers and broke down the 
 bridges. Another great danger was the bands of robbers 
 who infested the forests, and the frequent ware which 
 devastated the lands. The castle of a lawless baron or 
 an encounter with any of the numerous bands of soldiers 
 which crossed the country in every direction in war time, 
 was a most serious obstacle to the defenceless traveller; 
 no religious character could protect him, for we find 
 that monasteries were burnt and churches pillaged with 
 as little scruple as if the combatants were heathen 
 Normans instead of Christians. On one occasion all 
 the bishops and abbots of France were attacked on their 
 way from the council of Pisa, by some petty lord ; 
 some thrown from their mules, some detained prisoners, 
 and all rifled and plundered, notwithstanding their sacred 
 character, A lonely pilgrim like Stephen would not 
 be likely to find much mercy at such hands : unde- 
 terred by the dangers of the way, he set out with but 
 one companion, a clerk, whose name is unknown. Eome 
 was the bourn to which the heart of all Englishmen natu- 
 rally turned at that day across the wide tract of land and 
 sea which separated them. Stephen had the thoughts of 
 many illustrious examples before him to cheer him on 
 his way; many a Saxon king had laid aside his crown 
 and gone to assume the monastic habit at Rome. The 
 venerable Bede, in relating one of these events, says, that 
 it was only what many of the English, noble and low- 
 born, clerks and laymen, men and women, vied with each 
 other in doing^; and their enthusiastic feelings are 
 
 5 Petrus Ven. Ep. 6, 46. « Bede, Eccl. Hist. v. 7. 
 
8 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 recorded in that saying which occurs so strangely in 
 Bede's Collectanea^, or Common-place Book, " When the 
 Coliseum falls, Bome shall fall ; when Bome falls, the 
 world shall fall." England had never forgotten, that 
 whatever Bome might be to the rest of the world, it 
 was her mother church; from the earliest times there 
 was an English school in Bome, and some Saxon king, 
 tradition said Ina, had built a church dedicated to the 
 Blessed Virgin, which belonged to the English, and 
 where Saxon pilgrims who died at Bome were buried. 
 Stephen was therefore as much at home in St. Peter's 
 when once he got to Bome, as he would have been in 
 Westminster Abbey; recollections of his native kings 
 would meet him wherever he went : there he might 
 see the place where Alfred, when a boy of seven years 
 old, was anointed king by Leo IV. ; and in " the street 
 of the Saxons," where the English pilgrims lived, stood 
 St. Mary's church, in which was the tomb of Burrhed, 
 the last of the Mercian princes. Stephen, on his way to 
 Bome, never forgot that he was a monk ; it was no idle 
 curiosity which led him so far over the sea and across 
 the Alps. It was to imitate to the letter the life of Him 
 who came down from heaven to be a poor man, and who 
 had not where to lay His head ; he thus courted cold and 
 hunger and nakedness, that he might follow step by step 
 the Virgin Lamb, as a stranger and pilgrim upon earth. 
 In these times, an Englishman in quitting his country 
 finds, instead of the one home everywhere, altars at which 
 he can only kneel as an alien, and travelling is therefore 
 to us generally a source of dissipation. Stephen, how- 
 ever, found brethren wherever he went, from the parish 
 church and the wayside chapel to the cathedral of the 
 metropolitan city. 
 
 7 Bede, ed. Col. torn. iii. 483. 
 
I.] STEPHEN IN YOUTH. 9 
 
 ^Still the bustle of moving from place to place, and a 
 perpetual change of scene, are apt under the best cir- 
 cumstances to distract the mind from that state of 
 habitual devotion in which it ought to rest. Good 
 habits are very hard to gain, but very easy to lose ; 
 and nothing is so likely to destroy them as a mode of 
 life in which every turn of the road developes something 
 new. To guard against this danger, our pilgrims set 
 themselves a rule, which none but the most ardent devo- 
 tion could conceive. Throughout the whole of their long 
 journey, whether they were in a crowded city, in the wilds 
 of a forest, or clambering up the Alps, they recited toge- 
 ther daily the whole of the Psalter. At the same time it 
 is expressly said that they did not neglect the works of 
 mercy which God gave them an opportunity of doing. 
 Thus they went on their way chanting the praises of God, 
 and walking with a joyful heart over the thorns and briers 
 which obstructed their path ; doing good as they went 
 to their fellow-pilgrims, and to all sufferers, of whom in 
 those times of violence there was no lack. The road 
 which they travelled was not an unfrequented one ; and 
 they might have found much to distract their attention 
 if they had chosen to detach their minds from their holy 
 occupation. They not only met the lowly pilgrim who, 
 like themselves, had left his home out of devotion ; but 
 many a bishop and abbot, too often with a lordly train, 
 hastening to have his cause judged at Eome, would 
 overtake and pass them by; or else they would meet 
 the young clerk, high in hopes, going to seek his fortune 
 as an adventurer at the Roman court^. Many a more 
 congenial companion, however, travelled the same way; 
 
 ^ V. Hildebertus, Ep. 3, 24, for a specimen of a letter of recom- 
 mendation to the papal court. 
 
10 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 their alternate chanting of the Psalms was at least not 
 so singular as to be ostentatious ; at each of the hours, 
 the monk was bound to descend from his horse, pulled 
 off his gloves and his cowl, and, falling on his knees, 
 made the sign of the cross ; then, after saying the Pater 
 Noster, Deus in adjutorium, and Gloria Patri, he 
 mounted his horse and finished the office on horseback^ 
 English monks especially, when they travelled, said the 
 usual night hours during the day, so that other voices 
 besides those of our pilgrims were heard chanting in the 
 open air, as they journeyed to Rome. There were pil- 
 grims of another sort, who, unlike Stephen and his com- 
 panion, had undertaken the journey to expiate some 
 dreadful crime ; some even walked with small and 
 cutting chains of iron round their bodies^, in hopes of 
 obtaining absolution from the successor of St. Peter. 
 
 There was then many an object, both good and bad, to 
 arrest the attention of our pilgrims on the way, and to 
 call for their sympathy. The road to Rome was an 
 indication of what the city was itself; it was the head of 
 the Catholic Church, and, like the Church, had both a 
 heavenly and an earthly aspect. In one sense it was 
 Christ's kingdom, holding in its hands His interests, and 
 dispensing His mysteries ; in another sense it was an 
 earthly kingdom, with earthly interests and intrigues, the 
 rich, powerful, and intellectual thronging its gates and 
 endeavouring to gain the honours and the wealth which 
 it had to dispense : and then again through this motley 
 scene, it was Christ's kingdom working, and bringing 
 good out of the selfishness and the avarice of men, to 
 the wonder of the angels who look on. It was in this 
 twofold point of view that Rome was looked upon in 
 
 ^ Statuta Lanfranci, c. 15. ^ Ducange, Peregrinatio. 
 
I.] STEPHEN IN YOUTH. 11 
 
 Stephen's time ; thus, on the one hand, William of 
 Malmesbury^, a contemporary writer, speaks in bitter 
 terms of the Romans, as " the laziest of men, bartering 
 justice for gold, selling the rule of the canons for a 
 price;" and in the next page he goes on to enumerate 
 with enthusiasm its heavenly treasures, the bodies of 
 numberless martyrs, who rested in its bosom. If ever 
 there was a turbulent seditious populace, it was that of 
 Rome ; its nobles, fierce and bloody tyrants ; its cardinals, 
 too often purpled princes ; but then too it was the prin- 
 cipal treasure-house of Christ's blessings on earth, the 
 centre of Catholic communion, and the rallying-point of 
 all that was good ; and if sometimes the side of injustice, 
 amidst the multiplicity of causes which flowed into it, 
 triumphed, still there was a mighty energy in its good, 
 which at length brought good out of evil ; and at all 
 events there was ever room for the poor pilgrim to 
 kneel at the tomb of the Apostles, from whence he went 
 back on his way rejoicing. This was Stephen's object 
 in going to Rome ; he thought that his prayers would 
 be most likely to be heard if he knelt near that body 
 the very shadow of which healed the sick, and which 
 was often so close to our most blessed Lord ; and again 
 at the tomb which contained that precious body which 
 gave virtue to handkerchiefs and aprons, and which bore 
 the marks of the Lord Jesus, and by its suiFerings had 
 filled up what was behindhand of the afilictions of our 
 Lord for His Church's sake. How Stephen's prayers 
 were answered, we shall soon see. 
 
 2 Lib. iv. Gest. Reg. Angl. 
 
12 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 STEPHEN AT MOLESME. 
 
 Stephen was returning from his pilgrimage with his 
 faithful companion, probably on his way back to Sher- 
 borne, when God conducted his steps to the place which 
 was to be the scene of his labours. As he was travel- 
 ling through a dark forest in the diocese of Langres in 
 Burgundy^j he came to a poor monastery situated on 
 the side of a sloping hill, on the right bank of the little 
 river Leignes. It could hardly be called a monastery, 
 for it was a collection of huts, built by the monks them- 
 selves, of the boughs of trees, which they had cut down 
 with their own hands, surrounding a small wooden 
 oratory. Around this little knot of huts, more like an 
 encampment than a settled dwelling, was an open space 
 in the forest, which the monks had cleared, and which 
 had been given them by a neighbouring baron. The 
 brethren had no means of subsistence but the produce of 
 this piece of ground, which they tilled with their own 
 hands, and they were as much dependent upon it as the 
 poorest serf who gained his own livelihood by the sweat 
 of his brow; yet amongst this poor brotherhood were 
 men of noble birth and of high intellectual attainments. 
 The monastery had only been established a short time^ 
 and was struggling with all the difficulties which beset 
 an infant community. Its history is a curious one, 
 as showing how the reckless fury of the times was 
 
 ^ As late as Martenne's time, the road to Molesme was so intri- 
 cate, that he and his companions lost their way in the wood, and 
 only arrived at the convent-gate very late at night. Voy. Litt. 
 part i. p. 185. 
 
II.] STEPHEN AT MOLESME. 13 
 
 beaten down by an element of good even more energetic 
 than the evil which it had to encounter. Two brothers 
 of noble birth were one day riding through a solitary 
 place in a forest not far from Molesme, called the forest 
 of Golan ; both were armed, for they were riding to take 
 part in a tournament, — a species of festivity, which, with 
 all its pageantry, its flutter of pennons and glittering of 
 armour, was soon after condemned in strong terms by the 
 Church^. They were both worldly men, whose only object 
 was honour, in the pursuit of which they feared neither 
 God nor man. As they were journeying on, the devil, aided 
 by the solitude and darkness of the place, suggested horrid 
 thoughts to each of them — of murdering the other in 
 order to obtain his inheritance, and it cost them a strug- 
 gle to put the temptation down. Shortly afterwards, on 
 returning from the tournament, they passed through the 
 same place. The wicked thoughts which had attacked 
 them in that spot rose to the mind of each, and each 
 trembled secretly at the dreadful power which Satan 
 possessed over his mind. Without revealing to each 
 other their fears, they both hastened to the hut of a holy 
 priest, who lived a hermit's life in the depths of the 
 forest and separately confessed their sin. They then 
 revealed to each other the dreadful thoughts which had 
 crossed their minds, and recognizing that they could not 
 serve God and Mammon, but must either be like devils 
 in wickedness, or saints in holiness, they agreed to quit 
 the world with all its honours, and to live in the forest 
 under the direction of the holy hermit. The world soon 
 heard of the conversion of these noble youths, who had 
 quitted everything that it holds dear, to embrace a 
 voluntary poverty, and to live a life of painful disci- 
 
 ^ St. Bern. Ep. 3/6. Cone. Lat. ii. Canon 14. 
 
14 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 pline ; and a few others were induced to follow their 
 example. At first they lived the life rather of hermits 
 than of coenobites ; afterwards, as their number in- 
 creased to seven, they determined on adopting the rule 
 of St. Benedict, and looked around them for some one 
 to instruct them in it. They turned their eyes on 
 Robert, then Abbot of St. Michel de Tonnere, a monas- 
 tery near the town of Tonnere, on the borders of Cham- 
 pagne and Burgundy. Robert, however, was at that time 
 unable to leave his post, and the hermits of Colan were 
 disappointed in their hopes of obtaining him. Not long 
 after, however, he was compelled to leave St. Michel 
 by the incorrigibly bad lives of the monks, and to return 
 to Celle near Troyes, his original monastery, from whence 
 he was soon elected Prior of St. Aigulphus. At this 
 place the hermits again sought him, and this time they 
 applied to Rome for an order from the pope, command- 
 ing him to undertake the direction of them. Alexander 
 II., the then reigning pontiff, pleased with their per- 
 severing zeal, granted their request, and Robert quitted 
 St. Aigulphus to preside over this infant community. 
 Under his guidance they gained frequent accessions to 
 the brotherhood ; and when at last their numbers 
 amounted to thirteen, St. Robert saw fit to remove 
 their habitation from the forest of Colan to Molesme. 
 The new monastery was founded in honour of the 
 Blessed Virgin, on Sunday, the 20 th of December, a.d. 
 1075. It was here that Stephen found the community, 
 and he at once felt that he had reached the end of his 
 wanderings. The place certainly had nothing tempting 
 to common eyes. It is easy to conceive a person falling 
 in love with what may be called the romance of monas- 
 tic life : splendid architecture, a beautiful ceremonial, 
 and, above all, religious peace and an absence of worldly 
 
II,] STEPHEN AT MOLESME. 15 
 
 cares, are the legitimate compensations for all that 
 monks give up for Christ's sake. But at Molesme 
 even these attractions were wanting. The monks, like 
 St. Paul, worked with their own hands to get their daily 
 bread ; and so poor were they, that even this was often 
 lacking, and they were obliged at times to live wholly 
 on vegetables. They were visibly dependent on God's 
 providence for their daily bread ; and seeking first the 
 kingdom of God, they trusted that their scanty food and 
 raiment would be added to them. It was their poverty 
 which attracted Stephen ; these few men serving God 
 in the wild of the forest were the very realization of the 
 new order of things which was brought in by the cross 
 of Christ, by which weakness was made strength and 
 suffering sanctified to bring joy. They were the salt 
 of the earth, preserving it from corruption by their 
 supernatural virtues, and averting the anger of God 
 from the sinful world. Here he found St. Benedict's 
 rule carried out to the letter without any of the relaxa- 
 tions which had crept in through the lapse of time, and 
 this we know from every one of Stephen's subsequent 
 actions was the state of life at which he aimed in his 
 own person, and which he tried to establish in others. 
 This probably was the object of his prayers at St. Peter's 
 tomb, and now they were answered, for he had thus 
 lighted unexpectedly upon a place where he could follow 
 after that perfection, which he had already conceived in 
 his heart-^. 
 
 In thus quitting his original monastery and entering 
 another, he was in no way violating his rule, for St. 
 Benedict expressly allows an abbot to receive a monk 
 of any distant monastery which was unknown to him ; 
 
 5 Manriquez, Ann. Cist. Introd. c. 2, conjeptures that he made 
 a vow at Rome to embrace a more perfect mode of life. 
 
16 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 that is, as it is interpreted, he excludes monasteries 
 which are so near as to admit of intercourse. But there 
 was another difficulty, which it cost Stephen a painful 
 struggle with himself to overcome. The devil often 
 gathers all his powers to give battle to great saints, 
 when thej are on the eve of doing some action which 
 is to be the turning-point of their lives ; and so it was 
 with Stephen. He felt a most bitter pang at parting from 
 the clerk who had been the faithful companion of his 
 pilgrimage. His affectionate heart, which from his 
 early consecration to God's service at Sherborne, could 
 hardly have known the love of father, mother, brethren, 
 or sisters, had, it seems, fixed itself so firmly on his 
 friend, that now it was with great difficulty that he 
 could tear himself away. He, however, vanquished in 
 the struggle, and remained behind at Molesme, while 
 his friend passed on. For this one friend whom he 
 gave up, he at once found two others, in Kobert and 
 Alberic, the abbot and prior of Molesme. Both of 
 them were his companions in the more arduous strug- 
 gles of his after-life ; both have been, with him, held up 
 by the Church to the veneration of the faithful, among the 
 Saints ; and it was their joint work which he was after- 
 wards left on earth to complete. When, however, 
 Stephen joined them at Molesme, they were but sim- 
 ple monks unknown to the world. Robert, the spi- 
 ritual father of both Alberic and Stephen, was of one of 
 the noblest families of Champagne ; he had been a monk 
 from a very early age, and had been distinguished for 
 his adherence to the strict rule of St. Benedict ; he had 
 quitted the government of the abbey of St. Michel, as 
 we have said above, and retired into a private station 
 because of the incorrigible laxity of the monks. Alberic 
 was one of the original seven hermits of Colan j he is 
 
II.] STEPHEN AT MOLESME. 17 
 
 described in the early history of Citeaux, as " a man of 
 learning, well skilled in things both divine and human, 
 a lover of the rule and of the brethren^." These two 
 walked hand in hand with Stephen, in all the trials in 
 w^hich they soon found themselves involved. The 
 monastery at times suffered from actual want ; from the 
 loneliness of the spot and the fewness of visitors, they 
 were quite forgotten by the world, and the alms of the 
 faithful were turned into other channels. They con- 
 tinued however in cheerful faith, winning their liveli- 
 hood out of the hard ground, and feeling sure that God 
 would not desert them; and, indeed, they found that 
 their faith was not misplaced. One day, as they were 
 about to sit down to a scanty meal, after the hard labour 
 of the day, the Bishop of Troyes arrived at the monas- 
 tery with a considerable retinue. The poor monks felt 
 ashamed that they could so miserably supply the needs 
 of their illustrious visitor, but cheerfully divided with 
 him their hard-won meal. The bishop went away from 
 the monastery, wondering at the fervent piety of its in- 
 mates. For a long time nothing came of this visit, and 
 the monks had probably forgotten it. Meanwhile the 
 resources of the community became daily more straiten- 
 ed, till at last there were hardly provisions enough left 
 to serve them for a few days. The brethren applied to 
 St. Robert, and informed him of the state of the case. 
 He bade them quietly trust in God, who would not 
 leave his servants to perish in the solitude to which they 
 had retired to serve Him. He ordered some of them to 
 go to Troyes, which was much nearer to them than their 
 own episcopal city of Langres, and bade them buy food, 
 though he well knew that he had no money to give 
 
 6 Exord. Parv. Cist. c. 9. 
 
18 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 them. The exact conformity of their lives to the very- 
 letter of Scripture, made them look upon it as a solace 
 and a counsel in the minutest points, in a way of which 
 we have no conception ; thus the words of Isaiah rose to 
 St. Robert's mind, " Ye who have no money, hasten, 
 come, and buy7." Encouraged by the faith of their 
 abbot, the monks set out on their apparently hopeless 
 journey. So long had the good brethren kept away 
 from the world, that they forgot the singularity of their 
 appearance. They were therefore surprised on entering 
 the city that their naked feet, coarse habit, and features 
 so worn with toil and watching, that the fervent spirit 
 seemed to shine through the flesh, attracted general at- 
 tention. The news flew hastily round, till it reached 
 the Bishop's palace. He ordered them to be brought to 
 his presence, and as soon as they entered recognized his 
 hosts of Molesme. He received them with joy, took off 
 their tattered habits, and sent them back with his bless- 
 ing, and a waggon loaded with clothes and bread for 
 their poor brethren at home. We may fancy the joy of 
 the community when they saw their messengers return, 
 not empty-handed as they went, but laden with the 
 blessings which God had given them, as it were with 
 His own hand, to reward their faith. This seems to 
 h'dve been nearly the last of their struggles with pover- 
 ty, " for," says the monk who has written St. Robert's 
 life^, " from that day forth there never was wanting to 
 them a man to supply them with all that was necessary 
 for food and clothing. And as they endured with the 
 greatest constancy in God's service, many continually 
 were added to their number, fugitives from the world, 
 who leaving their earthly burdens, placed their necks 
 under the yoke of the Lord." 
 
 7 Isa. Iv. Vulg. 8 y^ BoUandists, April 29. 
 
III.] MOLESME DEGENERATES. 19 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MOLESME DEGENERATES. 
 
 The community of Molesme seemed now to be in a fair 
 way of becoming the head of a new and flourishing con- 
 gregation of the Benedictine order. It might even have 
 rivalled Cluny, for many abbots prayed St. Robert to 
 grant them some of his monks, by way of introducing 
 into their own monasteries the reform of Molesme. It 
 would have become what Citeaux was afterwards, had 
 not the folly of the monks frustrated the designs of God. 
 The various steps by which the change was effected in 
 the convent, are not marked in the scanty annals of the 
 time. The brethren appear at first in the story as 
 saints in perfection, and a little farther on are repre- 
 sented as degenerate. The change, however, took place 
 on an increase of numbers and of wealth in the com- 
 munity; it does not, therefore, at all follow that the 
 original monks degenerated ; it was rather the second 
 generation who broke in upon the strictness of the first. 
 Again, it must be remembered, that strong expressions 
 may be used, and rightly, about the corruption of monks, 
 without implying the existence of gross impurity. A 
 convent may degenerate into a lax and formal way of 
 performing its duties, or it may be ruined by internal 
 dissensions, without falling into vicious excesses. The 
 most common commencement of corruption was a viola- 
 tion of the rule of poverty, and this seems to have been 
 the case at Molesme. The wealth which had accrued 
 to them from the bounty of the faithful, had done away 
 
20 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 with the necessity of manual labour, and they refused 
 to obey their abbot, who wished to keep it up as a 
 portion of the discipline enjoined by the rule. Again, 
 they insisted on keeping possession of parochial tithes, 
 and they assumed habits of a richer and warmer sort 
 than the rule allowed. They grounded their arguments 
 on the general practice of monasteries about them, 
 though it was opposed to the rule which they professed 
 to follow. From the general state of monasticism at the 
 period, it was quite evident that these dispensations, 
 though sanctioned by precedent, and in themselves not 
 incompatible with strictness of life, led in most cases in 
 the end to laxity. On these grounds St. Robert op- 
 posed these innovations ; and his opposition led to far- 
 ther resistance from the monks ; they had first begun 
 by despising the poverty of Christ, and they ended by 
 disobeying their abbot. Poverty and obedience are the 
 very soul of monasticism, and a convent which has once 
 transgressed these two portions of the vow, is in a state 
 next to hopeless. St. Robert saw that his presence 
 only irritated his refractory children, and he deter- 
 mined on leaving them, as St. Benedict and other saints 
 had set him the example of doing, and retired to a 
 place called Aurum, the habitation of certain hermits 9. 
 This was a severe trial to Stephen; he had come to 
 Molesme, because there he could serve Christ better 
 than anywhere else, and he had for a time rejoiced in 
 being able to follow the steps of his Divine Master. 
 But he had gradually seen his brethren become worse 
 and worse, till at last through their misconduct he was 
 now abandoned by his spiritual guide. It is true, he did 
 
 ^ Mabillon, Ann. Ben. 69. 73, identifies this with a place called 
 Hauz, where three hermits are said to have lived, and which was, in 
 his time, a farm belonging to the monastery of Molesme. 
 
III.] MOLESME DEGENERATES. 21 
 
 not himself follow the laxity which he saw around him, 
 but this, though it might set his own conscience at rest, 
 could not restore the peace of the brotherhood. The 
 very object of the coenobitic life is, that all should obey 
 the same rule, and do the same things, so that the zeal 
 of one may kindle the other. The bond of charity 
 was now broken, and the convent was in effect ruined. 
 To add to his trial, he now found that a great portion of 
 the charge of this unruly community was on his hands, 
 . for Alberic, who as prior naturally took the government 
 of the abbey in the absence of the abbot, invested him 
 with a portion of his authority. He therefore set about 
 his hopeless task; but how far he succeeded we may 
 guess, from the treatment which the monks inflicted on 
 his colleague. They seized on Alberic, who still en- 
 deavoured to carry out Eobert's principles, beat him 
 severely, and thrust him into a dungeon. On his 
 release, Alberic determined to quit the monastery, and 
 he was followed by Stephen and one or two other 
 monks. Thus was Stephen cast upon the world, de- 
 prived of all the guides which Providence had put into 
 his way; so true is it, that we must not set our hearts, 
 in this world, even on the good which God allows us to 
 work. Good is to be loved, not because it is ours, but 
 because it is to God's glory; when He wills that it 
 should perish, we must not murmur, but keep our hearts 
 still fixed upon Him, ready to do His will. 
 
 Stephen was now, it may be said, his own master; 
 the authorities of his convent, by abandoning it, had 
 released him from his vow of obedience. He, however, 
 did not choose for himself an easy lot ; he again sought 
 the desert, and retired with Alberic and the other 
 monks to a solitary place called Yivicus, now Vivier, 
 
22 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 near Landreville, about four leagues from Molesme^. 
 God, however, did not leave His servant in this solitude. 
 After he had been there for some time, gathering 
 strength by prayer and fasting for the work which he 
 was soon called upon to perform, it pleased Him to call 
 him back from his retreat, to his old monastery. The 
 monks soon discovered that the flower of the community 
 was gone, and that they could not govern themselves 
 without Eobert. It is probable that they were not 
 thoroughly bad ; they did not wish to give up the strict 
 abstinence enjoined by the rule ; it was rather the 
 poverty which scandalized them ; they did not like the 
 coarse habit and the hard manual labour, and wished to 
 be like their neighbours. They therefore began to long 
 for Robert's return, and knew not how to win him back 
 from his retreat, after once driving him away by their 
 misconduct, and then grossly ill-treating their prior in 
 his absence. They at last determined to apply to the 
 holy see, and succeeded in obtaining an order com- 
 manding Robert to resume the command of the mo- 
 nastery. The holy see appears to have been the great 
 court of appeal of Christendom ; monks good and bad, 
 bearded hermits, and mitred abbots, all brought their 
 causes to Rome ; and if he could not aiford to travel in 
 any other way, the poor brother trudged manfully across 
 the Alps with his wallet on his back to obtain justice 
 from the papal court. The jurisdiction of bishops over 
 abbots was ill-defined, as may be seen by the indepen- 
 dent way in which superiors left their monasteries, with- 
 out apparently consulting their bishop. None, there- 
 fore, but a power, which held its seat at a distance from 
 
 1 Mabillon, Ann. Ben. 66. 100. 
 
III.] MOLESME DEGENERATES. 23 
 
 the scene of action, and could not be accused of selfish 
 views, was able to step in when ordinary authority 
 failed. A mandate from Rome Robert could not refuse 
 to obey, and he again put himself at the head of the 
 refractory monks. Stephen and Alberic, with the other 
 monks who had retired to Vivier, followed the example 
 of their abbot, and the whole brotherhood was again 
 united within the cloister of Molesme. The monks 
 who had before rebelled, had either grown wiser, or 
 been frightened into submission, and were ready to 
 obey their abbot ; on the other hand, Robert had learned 
 to deal more gently with them now that they were dis- 
 posed to be submissive. The command of the pope 
 had rendered it impossible to quit them a second time, 
 without permission from Rome itself, or from a legate ; 
 so that it was clearly his duty to manage their unruly 
 spirits as best he could, and by concession in some par- 
 ticulars to win them to keep the more essential por- 
 tions of the rule. The monastery began again to 
 flourish, and new convents were even placed under the 
 jurisdiction of the abbot, and filled by monks of his 
 choosing, who were to model the new community ac- 
 cording to the reform introduced by him. 
 
 Though, however, the harmony of the convent was 
 thus restored, and external decency preserved, yet it 
 was far from being a place where those who aspired 
 after perfection could rest in peace ; the charm of holy 
 poverty was gone, and many of the brethren of Molesme 
 in secret regretted the changes which had taken place. 
 The convent had ceased to be to them what it had been 
 before ; the alms of the faithful had enriched it, and they 
 regretted the wooden huts and oratory, and the poverty 
 which had obliged them to work in the heat and in the 
 cold, as is the appointed lot of poor men. The fore- 
 
24 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 most of their party was Stephen. Every morning the 
 rule of St. Benedict was read in chapter, and he 
 mourned in secret over the many departures from its 
 holy dictates, of which the convent was guilty. To the 
 generality of the world many of the commandments of 
 Christ are precepts of perfection ; but to monks who have 
 sworn to quit the world, they are precepts of obligation. 
 In token of this, a monk in some convents was buried in 
 his habit, with the rule of St. Benedict in his hand, to show 
 that by that rule he was to stand or fall at the last day. 
 For a long time, however, Stephen and his companions 
 made no formal complaint, but bore their sorrows in 
 silence. Much might be said against taking any steps 
 to remedy the state of things which they saw around 
 them. It was not by their fault that they transgressed 
 their rule ; besides this, peace had but lately been 
 restored to the monastery, and it was an invidious thing 
 again to disturb the consciences of their brethren, which 
 had so lately been set at rest. Again, each of them 
 might think that the feelings which actuated him were 
 merely the effect of his own restlessness, in which case 
 it would be a far greater merit to obey in silence, than 
 to afflict their bodies with fasting, and to walk about in 
 coarse garments. 
 
 Gradually, however, by comparing his views with 
 those of his neighbour, each man found that he was not 
 singular in thus feeling acutely the misery of their situa- 
 tion. Stephen is said to have been the first to break 
 the subject to Alberic^; his abhorrence of the dispen- 
 sations and indulgences which the other monks claimed, 
 
 ^ Cum verbum innovandse religionis in eadem domo motum fuisset, 
 ipse Stephanus primus inter primes ferventissimo studio laboravit 
 ac modis omnibus institit ut locus et ordo Cisterciensis institueretur. 
 — Exord. Mag. 
 
III.] MOLESME DEGENERATES. 25 
 
 may appear to be merely the restless feelings of one 
 accustomed to live in the wild solitudes of nature^ but 
 they derive a meaning from the state of monasticism in 
 his time. St. Benedict had in his rule left a power 
 with the superior of altering or tempering the rule 
 according to the circumstances of the convent. The 
 natural course of things had led abbots to take advan- 
 tage of this provision, and their alterations had in time 
 considerably changed the monastic state. It does not 
 at all follow that any one was to blame in this. An 
 abbot was at first the superior of a few poor brethren, 
 who worked for their own livelihood amongst the rocks 
 of some wilderness, or in some hidden valley, and who 
 only differed from common labourers in their singing 
 psalms day and night, in their fasting every day, and 
 praying every hour ; but the case was widely different 
 when the same abbot was ruler over two or three hun- 
 dred monks, and when the bounty of the faithful had 
 made him the steward of the poor, by giving him wide 
 lands and fair manors. The abbot became a temporal 
 lord, with vassals under his command ; he had, more- 
 over, to sit in councils, ecclesiastical and civil, besides 
 going to Rome on the business of the abbey, and making 
 a progress to visit his estates. Again, v my lord abbot, 
 leading a solemn service with music and chanting un- 
 der the canopy of his carved stall, or blessing the 
 people from the altar with a jewelled mitre on his head, 
 and a ring on his finger, was a very different person 
 from the poor lord of a few acres in a desert, ruling 
 over a few monks with a wooden staff like a shepherd's 
 crook. Another change in monasteries was their appli- 
 cation to learned purposes : St. Benedict's rule implies 
 that many of the monks did not know how to read, and 
 
26 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 learnt the Psalter and divine office by heart ^j but 
 monasteries, naturally, became the chief seats of learning, 
 and often contained two schools, one within the cloister 
 for the novices, the other without it, for secular pupils. 
 This involved a library and an establishment for copy- 
 ing manuscripts, so that manual labour might, in process 
 of time, with propriety give place to literary labours. 
 None of these changes involved a violation of the rule ; 
 the abbot often wore a hair shirt under his splendid 
 vestments, and slept upon a hard mattress of straw, 
 stretched by the side of the magnificent state bed in his 
 chamber. He was often really poor amidst the great 
 wealth of the abbey, because the whole of the revenues 
 which could be spared from the convent were given to 
 the poor. In this way Cluny, in St. Hugh's time, seems 
 to have been a wonderful and stately seminary, from 
 which proceeded the great men of the age, rulers of 
 churches, and even of the world, through their sanctity 
 of life. Still with its magnificent church, and great 
 revenues, it was not what it was before, the poor and 
 simple religious house. It would be absurd to depre- 
 ciate it on this account ; as well might one precious 
 stone be blamed for not being another ; still it was a fact 
 that it was changed ; there were dispensations from 
 manual labour, and pittances in the refectory, and a 
 stud of horses for the abbot and for the prior, even for 
 each dean to ride away when he would, to visit his 
 charge. Innocent as all this was, when such an abbot 
 as St. Hugh governed Cluny, still it was a dangerous 
 state ; a dispensing power is necessarily beside the law ; 
 its limits are undefined, for it quits the broad line of 
 
 3 Reg. St. Ben. c. 8. 57, 58, with Calmet's Comment. 
 
III.] MOLESME DEGENERATES. 27 
 
 fact and precedent, and introduces moral questions, in 
 which it is always difficult to determine the precise 
 point where good begins to mix with evil. Thus the 
 very next abbot to St. Hugh ruined Cluny for a time, 
 and in Stephen's time very many monasteries were in a 
 miserable state, on account of the laxity introduced by 
 abbots under the name of dispensations. Stephen lived 
 during the whole of the long struggle between the popes 
 and the secular power ; and we shall see proofs in the sub- 
 sequent actions of his life, that in the state of perplexity 
 and confusion which ensued during that most momen- 
 tous contest, pomp and luxury had power to invade 
 even the cloister. Many were the innovations intro- 
 duced under the name of dispensations, till hardly a 
 vestige of the monastic character remained. Simony 
 again brought with it intercourse with princes, pride, and 
 luxury. We must not, therefore, wonder at Stephen's 
 hatred of the very name of dispensation. 
 
 Furthermore, we must recollect that Stephen had been 
 a dweller in the wilderness and forest ; he aspired to 
 the highest Christian perfection, so that he would not 
 have been contented even with Cluny. Though a man 
 of learning, he wished to become foolish for Christ's 
 sake ; he wished to be perfectly destitute, and to depend 
 for his daily bread, and his coarse habit, on God's pro- 
 vidence. No record remains of any action or saying of 
 his against the stately order of Cluny, but his vocation 
 lay another way. God had kindled a divine love in 
 his heart, and it was fire in his bones, and would not 
 let him rest till he had accomplished the work which 
 he was sent on earth to perform. God's saints are 
 His workmanship, and the same Almighty goodness 
 which has made the lilies, and also given its own 
 beauty to the rose, which has created flowers, pre- 
 
28 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 cious stones, and animals, each with a different glory, 
 has also in the creation of His grace variously moulded 
 the souls of his saints. Stephen's lot was to be of 
 those who, by their utter destitution of human helps, 
 most of all illustrate the new order of things, which 
 our blessed Lady celebrated in the Magnificat. Out 
 of weakness he was to be made strong ; with his 
 perfect poverty, his coarse and tattered garment, his 
 body bowed down by labour and mortification, he was 
 to bring in an order of men into the Church, who beat 
 down pomp and luxury, intellect and power. His 
 wooden staff was more powerful than the sceptre of 
 kings, and his fragile frame was the centre, around 
 which the whole of the saintly prelates of the Church, 
 who fought against luxury and simony in the Church, 
 clustered and arranged their battle ; the pre-eminence 
 which Grod gave to His saint in after-life, is a full vindi- 
 cation of his conduct in these his first years, when he 
 was a poor despised monk, treated by his brethren as 
 an enthusiast and fanatic. 
 
IV.] REMOVAL FROM MOLESME. 29 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 REMOVAL FROM MOLESME. 
 
 The scanty chronicles of the time give but few par- 
 ticulars of the history of Molesme at this period ; all 
 that is known is, that the war of dispensations continued 
 for some time at Molesme, and that the greater part of 
 the brethren continued to scoff at Stephen's scruples. 
 His energetic words had, however, made a great im- 
 pression on many of the community, so that the number 
 of those who longed for a more perfect way began to 
 form by no means a despicable part of the monastery. 
 Seeing then that God had touched the hearts of so many 
 of his brethren, Stephen determined on attempting a 
 plan, out of which afterwards sprung the order of 
 Citeaux. He conceived the idea of a new monastery, 
 to be governed according to the very letter of the rule 
 of St. Benedict. The scheme was in many respects a 
 very bold one : in the first place, it involved leaving 
 Molesme, and retiring again to the desert or the forest ; 
 it was in fact beginning the world afresh, and exposing 
 himself naked and destitute to all the hardships which 
 beset an infant community. These, however, were 
 difficulties which he had already overcome, and which 
 his faith would teach him to treat as light afflictions. 
 But there was another point of view in which he was 
 running a risk in his new undertaking. We are far too 
 apt to look upon the middle ages as times to which ordi- 
 nary rules of prudence will not apply. It is quite true 
 that now, when all is over, we can look back and wonder 
 
30 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 at the superhuman deeds which faith then achieved ; 
 but we forget, that we now consider them as they are 
 lit up by the glory which a successful result has thrown 
 upon them. Many a man, whom we now revere as a 
 saint, was looked upon in his day as a fanatic. Stephen 
 had then to consider the chances of success, just as 
 we should do now ; he must have bethought himself, 
 whether his scheme was likely to answer, in modern 
 phraseology. The diiference between him and one of 
 us is simply, that he had the faith to throw himself 
 on a great principle, in spite of the chances of its 
 not answering. There was a great chance that the 
 opinion of even good men would condemn him ; he was 
 leading a number of monks into the desert, and that 
 from Molesme, a regular, and, in many respects, a flou- 
 rishing community. ^In returning to the letter of the 
 rule of St. Benedict, he was going back from the 
 twelfth century to the sixth, a leap almost as wide as 
 it would be in the nineteenth to go back to the twelfth. 
 He was moreover passing over the great precedent of 
 Cluny, then, as has been before intimated, in the height 
 of its splendour. On the other hand, the voice of his 
 conscience was loud within him, bidding him embrace 
 the most perfect way : and the sad state of a great many 
 monasteries, which had fallen into disorder from the 
 use of dispensations, was an external voice, hardly less 
 loud, warning him to avoid the rock on which they had 
 split.y His first care was to ascertain the will of his 
 superiors ; he therefore and his companions applied to 
 Robert, and stated their difficulties. Their faith in thus 
 throwing themselves on the will of their abbot was 
 rewarded, for he cordially entered into their schemes. 
 With a joyful heart, they then consulted with their 
 abbot on the best mode of effecting what they wished. 
 
n" 
 
 IV.] REMOVAL FROM MOLESME. T Tf TT* "^ '^^ T \ 
 
 feeling now sure that God was with them in the course vj^ 
 which they intended to pursue. --^ 
 
 They were obliged to proceed warily, for the monks 
 of Molesme, however unwilling themselves to follow 
 the rule of St. Benedict in all its strictness, were still 
 too well aware of the lustre which Robert, Alberic, 
 and Stephen cast upon the convent, to bear to part 
 with them easily. They did not therefore even apply 
 to their own bishop of Langres, but went straight to 
 Hugh, archbishop of Lyons and legate of the Holy See 
 in France. It was early in the year 1098 that Abbot 
 Robert set out from Molesme on his way to Lyons, 
 accompanied by Stephen, and five other monks, Alberic, 
 Odo, John, Lsetaldus, and Peter. The prelate to whom 
 they applied was one of the most distinguished ad- 
 herents of St. Gregory VII. and had even expectations 
 of succeeding to the popedom on his death. He was a 
 great friend of St. Anselm, and at the time that our 
 abbot came to Lyons with his companions, the illus- 
 trious exile had sought and obtained shelter there. 
 Hugh was therefore a man to appreciate their difii- 
 culties. He entered into their scheme, and on their 
 return to Molesme, sent them a letter authorizing them 
 to quit Molesme ; this document, as it distinctly states 
 the object for which they wished to leave their mon- 
 astery, shall be here subjoined at length. 
 
 " Hugo, Bishop of Lyons and legate of the Apostolic 
 See, to Bobert, Abbot ol' Molesme, and to the brethren 
 with him, who desire to serve God according to the rule 
 of St. Benedict. Be it known to all, who rejoice in the 
 advance of our Holy Mother the Church, that you, with 
 certain men, your sons, brethren of the convent of 
 Molesme, have stood in our presence at Lyons, and 
 declared that ye wished to adhere to the rule of the 
 
32 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 blessed Benedict, which ye had up to this time kept 
 in the said monastery in a lukewarm and negligent way, 
 henceforth more strictly and more perfectly. Which 
 thing, because it is evident that from many preventing 
 causes ye cannot fulfil in the aforesaid place, we, consult- 
 ing the salvation of both parties, that is, both of those 
 who go away and those who stay, have thought it best 
 that ye should retire to some other place, which the 
 bounty of God shall point out to you, and there serve the 
 Lord to your souls' greater health and quiet. To you 
 therefore who were then present. Abbot Robert, and bre- 
 thren Alberic, Odo, John, Stephen, Laetaldus, and Peter, 
 yea and to all whom according to rule and by common 
 counsel ye have determined to unite to yourselves, we 
 both then gave advice to keep this holy design, and there- 
 in now bid you persevere, and through apostolic autho- 
 rity and by the setting of our seal confirm it for ever." 
 
 On receiving this letter, Robert solemnly gave back 
 into the hands of the brethren who remained the vows 
 which they had taken of obedience to himself, at the 
 same time giving them liberty to elect a successor. 
 Twenty-one brethren, gathered together by Stephen's 
 energetic words, determined to take advantage of the 
 archbishop's permission and to follow him into the desert; 
 the others had not the courage to take this bold step. 
 A convent is a little world in itself, and has its mixed 
 characters and tempers, just like the world; the mass 
 of the community in such a convent as Molesme proba- 
 bly consisted of men who followed the leading of others, 
 and contented themselves with arriving at a certain 
 standard of holiness, without rising much above or falling 
 much below it. Let no one suppose that all is smooth in 
 a convent life ; it has temptations of its own, temptations 
 to rising only just in time for matins, to a love of such 
 
IV.] REMOVAL FROM MOLESME. 33 
 
 ease as the cloister will allow, to talking vain words at 
 recreation time, to a low standard of devotion ; tempt- 
 ations at which those who live in the world, exposed to 
 imminent danger of mortal sin, may smile ; and yet real, 
 because they argue habitual sloth. Those then who were 
 contented with this low state of religion, and yet were 
 incapable of open acts of disobedience and breaches of 
 conventual discipline, would be able to appreciate the 
 high character of Robert and Stephen, though they 
 could not follow them. Such men would be painfully 
 startled at finding that they must lose brethren beside 
 whom they had knelt at vigils, and to whose fervour in 
 singing God's praises they had been accustomed to look 
 as a flame whereat to kindle their own coldness. The 
 disobedient and rebellious, on the other hand, who con- 
 sidered the fervour of the saints to be a reproach on their 
 own evil tempers, were glad to be left to themselves with- 
 out the restraint which the presence of the strict party 
 imposed upon them. It was therefore with various 
 emotions that the monks of Molesme saw their brethren 
 set out on their expedition. As for the little band itself 
 who thus left their convent for the wilderness, nothing 
 could be more dreary than the prospect before them. 
 They were in every respect adventurers, and none ever 
 set out in quest of adventures across sea or land in a 
 more destitute condition than did these twenty-one 
 brethren. Robert took with him the ecclesiastical vest- 
 ments and vessels necessary for celebrating the holy 
 mysteries, and also a large breviary for the ordering 
 of the divine office. Except this, they had nothing : 
 two accounts are left us of their march ; one that they 
 left the convent gates, not knowing whither they were 
 going, and that they sought the wildest and most rugged 
 paths, and at last arrived at Citeaux, where a voice from 
 
 D 
 
34 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH 
 
 heaven bade them rest. Another account says, that 
 they had already pitched upon Citeaux, before they left 
 Molesme, as being the most lonely and uncultivated spot 
 that they could find. Either story gives a sufficiently 
 dreary account of their march, for a journey, undertaken 
 with the prospect of arriving at such a place as Citeaux 
 is then described to have been, is no less appalling than 
 one of which the end was altogether unknown. But 
 however naked they appeared to the eye of the worlds 
 the heavenly enthusiasm which prompted them to enter 
 on such a course was enough to buoy them up under 
 their difficulties. At all events, even this nakedness 
 was more welcome to Stephen, and such as he, than 
 the miserable uncertainty which had hung over him ever 
 since the degeneracy of Molesme. His conscience had 
 been hurt by his inability to keep the rule, according to 
 which he had sworn to live ; and no suffering can be so 
 dreadful as a state of doubt, whether we are in the place 
 in which God would have us be. Stephen was now 
 sure that he was right ; God had blessed his endeavours 
 after a more perfect way, by turning the heart of his 
 abbot, and of the legate of the Holy See : and now his 
 path was clear before him. He had entered in at the 
 strait gate, and now had only to pursue the way, into 
 which God had directed his feet. There are moments 
 when holy men feel that their crown is won ; such must 
 have been Stephen's thought as he left the gates of 
 Molesme. His Saviour had with his own hand put the 
 cross upon his shoulders, and he had now, with the same 
 Saviour's help, only to carry it with a stout heart to his 
 grave. 
 
v.] ARRIVAL AT CITEAUX. 35 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ARRIVAL AT CITEAUX. 
 
 Travellers are often struck with the picturesque 
 situations of ancient abbeys. The fact is, that those 
 parts which are now the most beautiful, were in former 
 times the wildest and most solitary. Little nooks, 
 which are even now so lonely that the relentless hand 
 of civilization has left them in their primitive beauty, 
 must have been mere wildernesses, far from human 
 habitation, in ages when so much of the earth was un- 
 cultivated. Besides which, rocks and mountains may 
 be very picturesque to look at, and yet very uncomfort- 
 able as dwelling-places ; and many a stream, the banks 
 of which are now visited for the sake of a beautiful 
 ruin, at the time when the monastery was built flowed 
 through pathless wilds and uninhabited forests. So it 
 was with Citeaux ; at the time when Stephen and his 
 companions first came to dwell there, it was a very differ- 
 ent place from what it was when the stately abbey was 
 built, which contained the tombs of all the dukes of Bur- 
 gundy. Citeaux was the name of a spot situated in the 
 midst of a wild wood, in the diocese of Chalons and 
 the province of Burgundy. It was only tenanted by wild 
 beasts, who found shelter in the thickets with which the 
 place was overgrown, and into which no one ever cared 
 to penetrate. A small stream ran through it which took 
 its rise from a fountain, about a league from Dijon, called 
 Sans-fonds, because it was so deep that no one had 
 ever found the bottom. This stream had also a strange 
 
36 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 peculiarity connected with it, that in the time of rain it 
 was languid and shallow, but when the heat had dried up 
 all other rivers, it ran merrily along in a copious stream, 
 as if it defied the power of the sun. The industry of 
 the monks in after-ages collected its waters into three 
 noble ponds, filled with fish j but at the time of which 
 we write, it was ever overflowing its banks, so that the 
 place is said to have derived its name from an old word 
 expressive of the flags and bulrushes which the marshy 
 soil produced in abundance. On the borders of the 
 wood were several scattered cottages, where dwelt the 
 peasants who cultivated the estate of the vi&count of 
 Beaune, to whom the place belonged ; and there was 
 also a rude and small church, for the use of this rustic 
 population. The lord of Beaune gave them leave to 
 take possession of this most unpromising tenement, and 
 they forthwith began to clear away the briars and the 
 sedge, and to cut down the trees, so as to leave an open 
 space for their habitation. They then rudely put 
 together the trunks of the trees which they had felled, 
 and constructed the monastery, such as it was. The 
 rudeness of their dwelling, however, raised for them a 
 most unexpected friend. Odo, the then duke of Bur- 
 gundy, had been originally one of the wildest of the iron 
 nobles who infested the land. A few months, however, 
 before their arrival at Citeaux,the majestic looks and bear- 
 ing of our own Anselm had cowed the ducal robber, who 
 had set out in full armour to seize upon what he con- 
 ceived to be the rich coffers of Canterbury, as the saint 
 passed through his dominions. The eye of the arch- 
 bishop seems to have converted him, for from that mo- 
 ment he became an altered man. Hearing from the arch- 
 bishop of Lyons that a number of holy men had come 
 to build a monastery in his territory, he inquired about 
 
v.] ARRIVAL AT CITEAUX. 3? 
 
 them. So miserable, however, was their dwelling-place, 
 that fearing lest thej should die from the roughnesses 
 which they had to bear in this barren and dreary spot, he 
 sent workmen to assist them in rearing their monastery. 
 At length all was ready for their reception, and they 
 chose the 21st of March, 1098, for the solemn inaugur- 
 ation of the new abbey. A double festivity in that year 
 fell on that day ; it was not only Palm Sunday, but also 
 the feast of St. Benedict. They canonically elected 
 Eobert as their abbot, and he received the pastoral 
 staff at the hands of Walter, bishop of Chalons, who 
 thus regularly erected the monastery into an abbey, 
 under the name of Novum Monasterium, or New Minster, 
 in honour of St. Mary, to whom, from this first wooden 
 edifice, all churches of the order were afterwards de- 
 dicated. The brethren then one by one vowed to pay 
 him obedience according to a form preserved in the 
 Exordium Parvum. " That profession which I made 
 in thy presence at the monastery of Molesme, that same 
 profession and stability I confirm before God and his 
 saints in thy hands, that I will keep it in this place 
 called New Minster, in obedience to thee and to thy 
 successors to be regularly substituted in thy room." 
 Odo of Burgundy and Rainaldus of Beaune had before 
 given them the allodium, or freehold estate on which 
 the monastery was built ; the serfs also who tilled the 
 ground were given over to them, as well as the church 
 in which they used to worship. It is characteristic of 
 these first Cistercian fathers, that they refused to receive 
 this church from the viscount of Beaune, as an append- 
 age to the estate, nor would they have anything to do 
 with it, unless it were given up entirely into their hands, 
 by his abandoning his rights in a separate act ; for " the 
 abbot and the rest of the brethren thought it by no 
 
38 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 means right to receive the church from his hands, be- 
 cause he was a layman^." This took place in the very 
 heat of the contest about investitures, and thus at the 
 very outset of their order, the Cistercians chose their 
 side in the momentous contest, though they could as yet 
 but show it in a small way. A few days before that 
 Palm Sunday, St. Anselm, whom they had left at Lyons, 
 had set out on his way to Rome, and on that very 
 Sunday, while Citeaux was being solemnly founded, the 
 same saint had left his train at a small town on the road 
 to Italy, and had gone with two monks to an unknown 
 monastery, to celebrate the feast of St. Benedict. The 
 simple brethren did not know who he was, and bade him 
 beware in his journey, because the lord archbishop of 
 Canterbury had, as was reported, been stopped on his 
 way to Rome, by the perils of the road. Anselm and 
 the monks of Citeaux were at the same moment, in 
 different parts of the world, fighting the same cause, 
 and yet neither party knew what the other was about ; 
 
 * Gall. Christ, torn. iv. Instr. p. 232. It is quite evident that 
 tliis act of the Cistercians was meant for a protest against lay 
 usurpation, but its precise bearing is not so easy to discover. It 
 seems that the Church property had in some way become a por- 
 tion of the allodium or freehold estate which had come to Rainaldus 
 through his wife. This appears from the phrase tenere ecelesiam, 
 which is of the same cast as redimere, recipere ecclesiam, where 
 ecdesia means the property belonging to a church. What the 
 Cistercians here did, i. e. receiving back ecclesiastical property from 
 a layman, (suscipere ecclesiam de manu laici,) was afterwards for- 
 bidden by the third Lateran Council and the Council of London 
 in 1200, unless the bishop consented to the arrangement. Though 
 these canons were not passed at this time, our Cistercians felt the 
 difficulty and refused to receive the church as a portion of the 
 domain. They required Rainaldus to make a formal renunciation of 
 the Church property by a separate act. V. Van Espen, Jus EccL, 
 pt. ii. sect, 4. tit. 2. c. 5, 
 
v.] ARRIVAL AT CITEAUX. 39 
 
 but true monks everywhere have a sort of instinct of 
 what is the good and the right side ; they have no 
 earthly interests to dim their vision of what is God's 
 cause, and we may trust a monk for being ever in his 
 place — for the Church against the world. 
 
 The officers of the New Monastery, thus quietly esta- 
 blished, were now appointed ; Alberic returned to his 
 old situation which he held at Molesme, that of prior ; 
 Stephen was made sub-prior. In this peaceable state 
 everything remained for a year under Robert's guidance, 
 but he was not destined to see the full fruit of his 
 labours. The monks of Molesme again found that they 
 could not do without him. It required a firm hand to 
 rule those refractory spirits who had once broken loose, 
 and could only be kept in order by an authority which 
 they respected. The secession also of such men as 
 Robert, Alberic, and Stephen, from the convent had 
 brought it into disrepute, and this could only be done 
 away by regaining their abbot. The authority of the arch- 
 bishop of Lyons, however, who had countenanced Robert's 
 departure for Citeaux, rendered it a difficult matter to win 
 him back. The only authority to which they could ap- 
 peal was Rome, and to Rome they went, nothing daunted 
 by the length of the way. A council was celebrated at 
 Rome in the third week after Easter, 1099 ; it was con- 
 vened by Urban II. for the condemnation of investi- 
 tures, and for devising means for carrying on the crusade. 
 Thither the monks repaired, and represented to the pope 
 the widowed state of the church of Molesme, deprived of 
 its first abbot and pastor. Urban seems to have sus- 
 pected them : he describes in his letter to Hugh, arch- 
 bishop of Lyons, the great clamour with which they 
 entered into the council, and seems rather to have yielded 
 to their importunity, against his own judgment. He did 
 
40 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 not directly command Robert to return to Molesme, but 
 he bade Hugh do his best to bring him back if it could 
 be done ; and at all events he orders him to take care 
 that the inhabitants of the wilderness of Citeaux (as he 
 calls it) should be left in peace, and that the monks of 
 Molesme be made to keep their rule. The legate held a 
 consultation on the subject at a place near Lyons, called 
 Pierre encise, and determined that the only way to restore 
 peace, both to Molesme and to the New Monastery, was 
 to give up Robert to Molesme, and to forbid the two 
 convents to have any further communication with each 
 other, except such as St. Benedict enjoins on houses, 
 between which there is no connection but the common 
 profession of religion. Gaufridus, the abbot who had 
 been elected in the room of Robert, was willing to yield 
 the government of the abbey, and nothing now remained 
 but that Robert himself should quit Citeaux, and return 
 to the post which he had so often quitted and resumed. 
 He again gave up his own will to obey his superiors, and 
 returned to the bishop of Chalons the pastoral staff, which 
 he had a year and a few months before received from 
 his hands. He then freed the monks of Citeaux from 
 the obedience which they owed to him, and went back 
 to his old charge at Molesme. He was indeed a perfect 
 pattern of obedience, and suffered himself to be bandied 
 about from one convent to another as the will of his supe- 
 riors directed; notwithstanding his aspirations for a more 
 perfect way, he abandoned them at the command of God, 
 knowing that no sufferings are acceptable to God, if not 
 undertaken according to His will in charity. Doubtless 
 he merited more in God's sight by giving up his 
 brethren at Citeaux for his refractory subjects at 
 Molesme, than he could have done by the most austere 
 life. His obedience was rewarded, for Molesme ap- 
 
v.] ARRIVAL AT CITEAUX. 41 
 
 pears to have flourished under his rule, if we may judge 
 from the fact that several monasteries were founded 
 from it. One nunnery, that of Juilly, in which St. 
 Bernard's sister afterwards took the vows, owed its 
 origin to St. Kobert. It is probable that he still assisted 
 Stephen and Alberic with his counsel, but his direct 
 connection with Citeaux ceased with his last departure 
 for Molesme. He died about the year 1110, and was 
 canonized by Pope Honorius III. 
 
42 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 STEPHEN AS PRIOR. 
 
 Robert left nothing behind him at Citeaux, but the 
 vestments and sacred vessels, which he had brought with 
 him ; these were expressly, according to the legate's 
 command, to belong to the New Monastery. The large 
 Breviary also was to remain there till St. John Baptist's 
 day, by which time the brethren were to have it copied out 
 and then to send it to Molesme. This, and the remem- 
 brance which they kept of his virtues, was all the vestige 
 which remained of his jurisdiction of Citeaux : he left 
 them as free as if he had never been their abbot, or 
 received their vows. They had therefore now to elect 
 a successor, and their choice fell upon Alberic ; under 
 him Stephen was naturally made prior. These two had 
 worked hand in hand from the first commencement of 
 Molesme, and remained together even when Robert 
 seceded from them ; and now that he had finally left 
 them, the eyes of the whole community were fixed upon 
 them. Stephen had been in a manner the pupil of both, 
 and it seemed as if the virtues of each were necessary to 
 make up the defects of his original character. He had 
 left Sherborne, as we have seen, from a violent thirst for 
 knowledge, and had for some time roamed about the 
 world almost without an object, certainly without a clear 
 knowledge of his vocation. He had first learned obe- 
 dience under Robert, and the stability of his character 
 had been tried by the troubles which he had encountered 
 at Molesme ; and now he had a further lesson to learn 
 
VI.] STEPHEN AS PRIOR. 43 
 
 from Alberic, tliat of patient prudence. " Alberic/' says 
 the Exordium, "when he had received, though much 
 against his will, the pastoral charge, began to bethink 
 himself, as being a man of wondrous prudence, what 
 stormy troubles, coming to shake the house committed 
 to him, might annoy it." And troubles enough there 
 were about him. The post of abbot was at all times 
 one which involved great anxiety, from the absolute 
 powers which were vested in him. It was to him that 
 the strict obedience which formed so large a part of the 
 monastic rule was due, the deepest respect was paid to 
 him, even to bowing the knee, and profound inclinations^ 
 The officers of the monastery, from the prior downwards, 
 were removable at his will^. At the same time he was 
 to be in an especial way the chief spiritual guide of all 
 the brethren, and to temper the rigour of the rule for the 
 weak, without introducing irregularity into the convent. 
 To him the monks revealed all their sorrows, and recurred 
 for advice ; for which there was a place called the au- 
 ditorium especially set apart. Even here, however, they 
 could not speak without his leave ; on their appearance 
 he gave them the benediction ; but if after this he kept a 
 stern silence, the brother who applied for license left the 
 auditorium without speaking^. At the same time, the 
 regulation of the habits and of the food of the monks 
 was in his hands, so that the temporal and spiritual pros- 
 perity of the convent depended in a great measure upon 
 him alone. No stronger proof of the great power of the 
 abbot need be sought, than the fact that most of the later 
 monastic reformations attack at once the power of his 
 
 ^ Usus Cist. Notandum quia quando Monachi osculantur Abba- 
 tem, coram eo genua flectent et post osculum profunde inclinent. 
 P. i. c. 90. 
 
 ^ Reg. St. Ben. 65. 7 Reg. Magist. c. 9. 
 
it was) the abbot had ail the powers wiiich St. Bene 
 vested in the office. Alberic therefore had full need oi 
 the " wondrous prudence " which the old Cistercian his-« 
 tory celebrates. The abbot of Citeaux was not then the 
 magnificent personage who celebrated mass pontificallj 
 with the episcopal mitre, ring, and sandals, the lord oj 
 five military orders, sitting in a lofty chair, on a level 
 with the bishop, in the parliament of Burgundy^. Alberic 
 was but the head of a few monks in a marshy desert 
 where they had to struggle to win a hard subsistence froD 
 the barren soil : they were exposed to the oppressioni 
 of any baron who might take a fancy to molest them ; and 
 above all, they were treated as enthusiasts and fanaticj 
 by the monasteries around them. Their calumnies mighi 
 at any time alienate the favour of the duke of Burgundy 
 who as yet had protected them ; for the saintly boldnesi 
 with which they determined to keep the whole rule a 
 St. Benedict, had irritated not only their neighbours o: 
 Molesme, but even the German convents had had newi 
 of the fanaticism and disobedience of this New Monas 
 tery. 
 
 It was well for Stephen that he was brought close toF 
 Alberic, in these trying times of the Cistercian struggles 
 for existence : his office of prior linked him to the abbot, 
 and gave him an opportunity of watching the calm 
 wisdom with which Alberic warded off these difficulties. 
 
 ^ Innocent VIII. gave the abbot of Citeaux the privilege of cele- 
 brating pontifically, in a bull dated April 9, 1489 ; vide also Gall. 
 Christ. 4. 983. 
 
VI.] STEPHEN AS PRIOR. 45 
 
 The prior, according to St. Benedict's rule9, was to be 
 entirely the abbot's minister ; and the Cistercians kept 
 up this first notion of a prior. " Let the prior, within 
 and without, concerning all things and in all things, 
 act according to the will of the abbot." They even gave 
 less authority to the prior than was usual in other rules, 
 as may be seen by comparing Lanfranc's decrees, c. 3, 
 with the Usus Cisterciensis. The prior was thus the eye 
 and the hand of the abbot ; his office was to take the 
 abbot's place in all the common routine of the convent 
 when the abbot was engaged, and specially to keep up 
 the regularity of the brethren, by giving the signal for 
 labour and for the chapter. He also presided in the 
 refectory, and gave the signal by a small bell, when they 
 were to begin, and when to leave off eating ; for the Cis- 
 tercian abbot, as was prescribed in St. Benedict's rule, 
 always ate with the guests who happened to come to the 
 abbey. Stephen's principal duty, therefore, was to work 
 conjointly wi^ Alberic, and he profited by the office 
 which thus threw him in contact with that holy man. 
 
 Alberic's first care was to provide for the safety of his 
 abbey, " that it might for ever remain in quiet, safe from 
 the oppression of all persons, ecclesiastical or secular." 
 It appears from the archbishop of Lyons' letter to Pope 
 Pascal, that "the brethren of the Church of Molesme, and 
 some other neighbouring monks, did not cease to harass 
 and disquiet them, thinking that they themselves were 
 looked upon as vile and despicable by the world, as long 
 as these strange and novel monks were seen to dwell 
 among them." They endeavoured to entice away strag- 
 glers from the Cistercian brethren back to Molesme, and 
 even used violence and guile in order to disturb the quiet 
 of the New Monastery. Alberic's only place of refuge 
 9 Reg. St. Ben. c. 65, Usus Cist. p. i. 11 1. 
 
46 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 was the Holy See ; and at this moment two cardinals, 
 John and Benedict, were in France, for the purpose of 
 devising means to punish Philip, king of France, who 
 had divorced his own wife Bertha, .and was living in 
 adultery with Bertrada, wife of Fulke, count of Anjou. 
 The two cardinals held a council at Poictiers, and ex- 
 communicated the king ; but amidst the press of busi- 
 ness which this involved, they found leisure to attend 
 to the affairs of Citeaux. It appears that the fame of 
 the saintly inhabitants of this poor monastery had spread 
 all over France, and reached the ears of the legates. The 
 words which the cardinals use in their letter to the Pope 
 might almost seem to imply that they had been in person 
 to Citeaux : at all events, they must have seen some of the 
 brethren, whose appearance struck them with admira- 
 tion, and they willingly wrote to the holy father, begging 
 him to take the monastery under his special protection. 
 Alberic assembled the chapter, and with the concurrence 
 of Stephen and the rest of the brethren, two monks, John 
 and Ilbodus, were despatched to Eome, with letters from 
 the cardinal legates, from Hugh, archbishop of Lyons, and 
 from the bishop of Chalons. Pascal had been but a year 
 elected to the papal throne, and was then in the height 
 of his power ; his gracious demeanour and piety had 
 conciliated all about him, and his unanimous election 
 had brought to Rome a peace which it had not known 
 for a long time. The moment therefore which the Cister- 
 cians chose was a fortunate one. They found that Pascal 
 was absent from Rome, and they had to follow him as 
 far as Troja in Apulia. The warm expressions of esteem 
 which his letter to Alberic contains, prove that he re- 
 ceived the brethren with open arms. Himself a monk of 
 Cluny, and a disciple of St. Hugh, he could well enter 
 into their troubles ; and although he afterwards showed 
 
VL] STEPHEN AS PRIOR. 47 
 
 himself so very unable to comprehend the great cause for 
 which his predecessors had fought, yet his character was 
 such as to appreciate the motives which had driven the 
 brethren ofCiteaux into the wilderness. He immediate- 
 ly granted the request of the two envoys, and gave them 
 a letter by which he took the New Monastery under the 
 special protection of the Holy See. He calls them " his 
 most dear sons in Christ, whom he longed after very 
 much," and he concludes with a sentence of excommuni- 
 cation against any "archbishop or bishop, emperor or 
 king, count or viscount, judge, or any other person ec- 
 clesiastical or civil," who, being aware of the protection 
 granted by the Holy See, should molest the abbey. The 
 letter is dated April 18, 1100. The old Cistercian his- 
 torian, after giving an account of the protection thus ex- 
 tended by the Holy See, adds with a sort of melancholy 
 feeling, that it was granted and the messengers had re- 
 turned " before Pope Pascal had been taken captive by 
 the emperor and sinned." This privilege of protection 
 thus obtained from the Holy See was of the utmost con- 
 sequence to Citeaux. It is evidently not an exemption, 
 that is, it is not meant to exempt the abbot from epis- 
 copal jurisdiction, and to subject him immediately to 
 the Holy See, for the canonical obedience to the see of 
 Chalons is expressly mentioned. Its import must be 
 understood from similar documents granted by former 
 sovereign pontiffs. The jurisdiction of monasteries was 
 always a difficulty in the Church j it is generally be- 
 lieved that they were from the first subject to the bishop ; 
 so far is this from being the case, that during^ the first 
 150 years of their existence, that is, till the council of 
 Chalcedon, monks were no more under the bishop than 
 other laymen. As monachism developed into a system, 
 the bishops naturally became the ultimate authority to 
 
48 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 which convents were subject. Still it was necessary that 
 the abbot should have an authority next to absolute in 
 the internal management ] and according to the rule of 
 St. Benedict, he has the power to excommunicate the 
 monks who transgressed the rule. The bishop only ap- 
 pears as the abbot's assistant in punishing the brethren 
 who were priests^. Again, he blessed the abbot when 
 he had been chosen by the convent, and it was from him 
 that the abbot's authority was derived^. As time went 
 on, bishops encroached upon the convents ; they required 
 money for the benediction of the abbot, interfered with 
 the freedom of election, and took upon them the ad- 
 ministration of the temporalities. The poor of Christ 
 had no refuge but the Holy See^; and several letters of 
 Pope Gregory the Great are extant, in which he com- 
 mands bishops to respect the privileges of abbeys, and 
 takes them under the special protection of the chair of 
 St. Peter. In one case he even withdraws the sole 
 jurisdiction over an abbey from the bishop of the dio- 
 cese, and joins with him a council of six bishops. That 
 great pontiff knew that a monastery should be perfect 
 in itself; the very principle of obedience required it to 
 be subject to one head, and the authority of the bishop 
 was only necessary to constitute that head, that the 
 obedience might be canonical, as also to superintend, 
 not to interfere with, his authority. They were Christ's 
 spiritual army, ready at any time to assert the faith 
 against heresy, however powerful, and setting up the 
 light of heavenly purity when the profligacy of the world 
 had well-nigh cast away religion. In order to do this, 
 they must be a whole within themselves, and cut off 
 from worldly influence, and from interests without the 
 
 Vc 62. ^c.Q5. 
 
 3 Ep. lib. ix. Inst. 2. HI. lib. xiii. Inst. 6. 8, 9. 
 
VI.] STEPHEN AS PRIOR. 49 
 
 cloister. A bishop in most cases could not be a monk, 
 and therefore could not govern a convent ; he could only 
 come in at certain times as a remedy in cases beyond 
 the rule. Subsequent pontiffs followed St. Gregory in 
 jealously guarding the independence of monasteries ; for 
 instance, John IV. ^ even granted a formal exemption to 
 two convents, and subjected them immediately to the 
 Holy See. The primitive meaning of such extraordinary 
 privileges was to guard against the encroachments of 
 which bishops had been guilty, and to keep the internal 
 government of the abbey in the hands of the abbot ; they 
 were not, however, intended to separate monks from the 
 canonical obedience due to the bishop. It is true that after 
 the time of which we are writing, they came to be much 
 abused ; and St. Bernard complains of the ambition of 
 abbots, who endeavoured to avoid the authority of their 
 bishop, whilst he approves of the devotion of founders of 
 monasteries, who placed their houses under the protection 
 of Rome. Of this nature was the letter of Pascal to Al- 
 beric ; it was not, as we have said, an exemption from epi- 
 scopal authority, but it was a privilege, by which the de- 
 fenceless house of Christ's poor ones was taken under the 
 wings of the Apostolic See. Two things were especially 
 commanded by the pope ; one, " that it should be lawful 
 for no person whatever to change the state of their mode 
 of life." This left them full power to live as they pleased 
 according to the strict rule of St. Benedict ; a bishop 
 might do his best to oblige them to keep their rule, if 
 they broke it ; but he could not compel them to observe 
 the same customs as most other convents around them ; 
 to profess the rule of St. Benedict, but in effect to 
 relax it under pretence of dispensations. Again, it left 
 
 '* Mabillon, Ann. Ben. torn. i. Appendix, No. 17, 18. 
 
 E 
 
50 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 them free to establish what usages thej pleased ; every 
 monastery had many traditionary practices and cere- 
 monies peculiar to itself, in matters which the rule 
 had left open ; and Pascal by this provision exempted 
 the Cistercians from the usages of any other religious 
 house, and left them free to form their own customs. 
 Out of this permission arose the Usus Cisterciensis. 
 The other special provision made by the pope was, 
 " that none should receive the monks of your monastery 
 called the New Minster, without a commendation ac- 
 cording to the rule." This was in fact a confirmation 
 of the canonical authority committed by the bishop of 
 Chalons to the abbot of Citeaux by the delivery of the 
 pastoral staff; it was the act by which he had authority 
 over the monks, so that they could not leave the cloister 
 without his consent. Without vows, and those made to a 
 person vested with authority, monks are a mere collec- 
 tion of individuals, dissolvable at will ; the absence of a 
 canonical vow changes the whole idea of monastic life, 
 and none can hope for God's blessing on the most solemn 
 engagements which they form, unless the power in whose 
 hands they place themselves is the representative of the 
 Church. Otherwise they can never be sure that their 
 obedience is not self-will. These words of Pascal, 
 therefore, are like the recognition of a corporate body 
 by the law ; one Christian may any day that he pleases 
 make a vow that he will live in obedience to another ; 
 but, unless that other is recognized by the Church, the 
 ecclesiastical law cannot take cognizance of the trans- 
 action. Such is the explanation of this privilege given 
 by the pope to Citeaux, which at once raised it above 
 the calumnies of the monks, who felt their own lives to 
 be reproved by the holiness of their neighbours. 
 
VII.] CISTERCIAN USAGES. 51 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OISTEECIAN USAGES. 
 
 Albekic, now that he had obtained the sanction of the 
 Holj See, set forward with a bold heart in his strict fol- 
 lowing of St. Benedict's rule. In the execution of all 
 the reforms which distinguished what afterwards became 
 the order of Citeaux, Stephen as prior was necessarily- 
 foremost ; the whole movement indeed was but carrying 
 into effect what he had before conceived at Molesme. 
 The first alteration effected was the cutting off of all 
 superfluity in the monastic habit. The Church in the 
 beginning of the twelfth century had a hard battle to 
 fight with pomp and luxury within the sanctuary itself. 
 Courtly prelates, such as Wolsey in a later age, were not 
 uncommon, and this worldly spirit had invaded even the 
 cloister. A reformation, therefore, such as that effected 
 by Alberic and Stephen at the outset of the century, was 
 of the utmost consequence in deciding the struggle in 
 favour of Christian poverty. They were not as yet 
 conscious of the importance of wh-at they were doing; 
 they were but a few poor monks, serving God in the 
 midst of a marshy wild, in an obscure corner of Bur- 
 gundy, and only aimed at securing their own salvation. 
 But they arose in a critical time for Christendom, and 
 just turned the scale as it was wavering. Let us hear 
 the words of a good old monk, who wrote in another part 
 
52 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 of the world during the first years of Citeaux^. " How 
 shall I begin to speak 1 For on all sides is the sacred 
 end of monkish life transgressed, and hardly aught is 
 left us, save that, as our holy father Benedict foretold, 
 by our tonsure and habit we lie to God. We seem 
 almost all of us prone to pride, to contention, scandal, 
 detraction, lying, evil speaking, hurtful accusations, con- 
 tumacy, wrath, bitterness, despising of others, murmur- 
 ing, gluttony ;" and he winds up all by saying, " we are 
 seduced by a love of costly apparel." Bitter are the 
 complaints that we hear of one monk^ clad in rich 
 grey or party-coloured silks, and another ambling by on 
 a mule which cost 200 solidi. What shall we say to 
 the proud abbot with his train of sixty horse, riding 
 forth, not like the father of a monastery, but like an 
 armed castellan ? Or to another with his robe of costly 
 fur, and his sideboard of gold and silver plate, though 
 he rode but four leagues from home 3? And if the 
 abbot himself was in sober black, his secular attendants 
 rode behind him in gay clothing of scarlet or green, 
 the motley procession arresting the eyes of beholders 
 along the road, whilst it frightened the porter of the 
 poor monastery where they were to put up for the 
 night. It was high time for the Cistercian to step in 
 wdth his rough woollen stufi', and to return to St. Bene- 
 dict's rule. Alberic and his brethren rejected all habits 
 that were not mentioned in the rule^; they therefore 
 
 * Chronicon Vultumense, Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital. torn. i. p. 
 2. 343. 
 
 '' St. Bernard, Apol. ad Guil. 10, 11. ^ gtat. Pet. Yen. 40. 70. 
 
 '* " Rejicientes a se quicquid regula refragabatur, froccos videlicet, 
 et pellicias, staminias et caputia." Exord. Parv. 15. — Staminia 
 is described by William of Malmesbury as "illud quod subtiliter 
 texitur laneuin, quod nos staminium vopamus." Gest. Reg. Angl. 
 lib. iv. § 336. 
 
VII.] CISTERCIAN USAGES. 53 
 
 would not wear garments with ample folds, nor garments 
 of fur, shirts, nor hoods separated from the rest of the 
 habit. St. Benedict allows the habit to vary according , 
 to the climate ; but for countries of a mean temperature, 
 he gives it as his opinion that a garment called cucuUa, 
 a tunic, and a scapular are sufficient. At first these 
 were only the common habits worn by the peasants of 
 the country. The stern old Benedictine looked for 
 nothing picturesque ; he had made himself poor for his 
 Lord's sake, and he wore the dress of the poor among 
 whom he lived, and with whom he worked in the cold 
 and heat, in the rain and in the sunshine. Ancient pic- 
 tures are still seen of the monl^ in his tunic, and scanty 
 scapular, reaching down to his knees, without sleeves, 
 but with holes through which his arms were passed, and 
 with a pointed cowl enveloping his head. Over this, 
 which was his working dress, he wore in the choir, and 
 in the house, the cuculla, which was a large mantle, not 
 unlike a close cope, without sleeves, and enveloping the ) 
 whole person^. There was many a step between this 
 coarse garb, and the ample folds into which it had de- 
 veloped around the noble figure of St. Hugh of Cluny^. 
 In the Cluniac order the scapular was called cuculla, and 
 the upper garment was called froccus. Instead of the 
 pointed and almost conical cowl of the primitive Bene- 
 dictine, their scapular had a fair and ample cowl, and 
 the froccus had long and pendent sleeves two feet in cir- 
 cumference; again, their scapular covered not only the 
 shoulders, but it was also expanded into a covering 
 for the arms, so that it scandalized our simple Cister- 
 
 ^ See the cuculla of St. Remaclus, the oldest Benedictine habit, 
 existing in Martenne's time. Voyage Lit. ii. 154. 
 ® Martenne, Voyage Lit. i. 229. 
 
54 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 clans'^. The froccus whicli Alberic and Stephen rejected 
 was in fact the same garment as their own cuculla, as 
 worn "with a diiFerence" by the Cluniacs. They re- 
 I verted as far as they could to St. Benedict's pattern, 
 following the Italian rather than the French monks, 
 for their scapular had the same form as that of Mount 
 Cassino. With all their severity, there is a grace about 
 the Cistercian habit, from the fond associations with 
 which they connected it. In the black scapular worn 
 over the white tunic, broad about the shoulders, then 
 falling in a narrow strip to the feet, they saw the form 
 of our Lord's cross, and thus they loved to bear it about 
 with them even in sleeps. Their cuculla was com- 
 pared by pope Boniface VI. to the six wings of the 
 seraphim, for " it veils the head of the monk as it were 
 with two wings, and the arms as it were with twain, and 
 the body as it were with twain9." Another charac- 
 teristic of the Cistercian habit was its white colour. The 
 scapular, as we have said, was black, and when on a 
 journey, they might ride booted and spurred, with a 
 grey cuculla, so that they were called in Germany grey 
 monks; but their proper habit was white, and much 
 wonder it excited amongst the brethren of other orders. 
 
 ' That the froccus of the Cluniacs had sleeves, is plain from the 
 answer made by the Cluniac. Martenne, Thes. Anec. torn. y. p. 
 3649, 47. Their amplum caputium is mentioned in St. Bernard's 
 letter to Robert, his cousin. For the scapular, see Martenne, ibid, 
 p. 1639, 25. The difference between the Cluniac froccus and 
 Cistercian cuculla is said by Peter the Venerable, Ep. 27, to 
 consist in that the latter was " album et curtum." Again, the 
 cowl was detached from the froccus, as appears from Bernard, 
 Abbot of Cassino, quoted by Mabillon, Acta Sanct. Ord. Ben. Saec. 
 V, Preface, p. 44. 
 
 8 Martenne, ibid. 1650, 48. ^ Ibid. 1649, 46. 
 
VII.] CISTERCIAN USAGES. 55 
 
 The black monks meeting a white monk on a journey 
 would stop and stare, and point at the stranger, as if he 
 were a traveller in a foreign dress^. They reproached 
 the Cistercians with wearing a garment fit only for a 
 time of joy, whilst the monastic state was one of peni- 
 tence^ But the white monks answered, that the life of 
 a monk was not only one of penitence, but was like that 
 of the angels, and therefore they wore white garments, 
 to show the spiritual joy of their hearts. And notwith- 
 standing their coarse bread and hard beds, there was a 
 cheerfulness about the Cistercians, which may in a great 
 measure be traced to what we should now call a sympathy 
 with nature. Their life lay out of doors, amongst vine- 
 yards and cornfields ; their monasteries, as their names 
 testify, were mostly situated in sequestered valleys, and 
 were, by a law of the order, as old as the time of Alberic, 
 never in towns, but in the country. From their constant 
 meditation as they worked, they acquired a habit of 
 joining their recollections of Scripture to natural objects; 
 hence also the love for the Song of Solomon, which is 
 evident in the earlier ascetic writers of the order. We 
 shall see, in the course of this narrative, abundant proof 
 that Stephen's white habit did not hide a gloomy or 
 unfeeling heart. 
 
 The reason assigned for the change of colour in the 
 habit is the devotion to St. Mary, observable in the 
 order from the beginning. It was a standing law that 
 all Cistercian monasteries should be " founded and 
 dedicated to the memory of the queen of heaven and 
 earth, holy Mary^ ;" the hours of the Blessed Virgin 
 were also recited very early after the foundation of 
 
 • 1 Pet. Ven. Ep. iv. 17. 
 
 2 Martenne, Thes. Anec. torn. v. 1 649, 46. 
 
 3 Norn. Cist. Inst, Cap. Gen. p. i. c. 18. 
 
56 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 Citeaux ; and the angelic salutation* was one of the 
 common acts of devotion put into the mouth of even the 
 lay brethren of the order. The immediate cause of the 
 adoption of the white habit is mysterious ; it seems 
 difficult to account how it should all at once appear, 
 without the sanction of any statute of the order, espe- 
 cially as it was opposed to the custom if not to the rule 
 of the primitive Benedictines. A tradition is even cur- 
 rent in the order, that Alberic saw the blessed Virgin 
 in a vision putting upon his shoulders the white gar- 
 ment ; and that he changed the tawny colour of St. 
 Mary Magdalene to the joyful colour sacred to the 
 mother of our Lord, in consequence of the consolation 
 which the vision afforded him in the difficulties with 
 which he was then struggling. The vision has not 
 much historical authority, though the tradition of the 
 order, and the strange circumstance of the change of 
 colour itself, are in favour of its truth. The one thing 
 certain is, that it was assumed in honour of the spotless 
 purity of St. Mary, the special patroness of the Cister- 
 cians ; and the circumstance that she was chosen to be 
 the peculiar saint of the rising order is in itself charac- 
 teristic. One would have thought that the austerity of 
 Alberic and Stephen would have led them to choose 
 some martyr or some unbending confessor of the faith ; 
 but they rather raised their minds to her on whom the 
 mind cannot rest without joy, though her own most 
 blessed soul was pierced through with a sword. She 
 was the spotless lily of the valleys in which the King of 
 Heaven deigned to take up His abode ; and the Cister- 
 cians thought it well that she should protect by her 
 
 '* The latter part of the Ave Maria was not added till the six- 
 teenth century. Vide Mabillon, Acta Sane. Prsef. vol. v. 
 
VII.] CISTERCIAN USAGES. 57 
 
 prayers their lowly houses, which were hid from the 
 world in secluded vales, and make them also the dwell- 
 ing-place of her Son. 
 
 It was not, however, only in their habit that the Cis- 
 tercians imitated the primitive monks ; they returned 
 also to the scanty diet which St. Benedict prescribes. It 
 was most of all in this particular that the abuse of dispen- 
 sations crept in, for in this portion of the rule the abbot 
 was especially to exercise his discretion 5. A few years 
 after the time when the Cistercian reform was effected, 
 the Cluniacs degenerated, after St. Hugh's death under 
 abbot Pontius ; not only did they eat meat every day in 
 the week except Friday^, but they ransacked earth and air 
 for highly flavoured dainties. They kept huntsmen, who 
 searched the forest through for venison and wild-boars ; 
 their falconers brought them the choicest birds, pheasants, 
 partridges, and wood-pigeons. The province under the 
 archbishopric of Lyons seems at that time to have been 
 especially full of monasteries from which religion had 
 disappeared, inhabited by monks, " whose cloister was 
 the whole world, whose god was their belly 7." AVine, 
 well spiced, and mixed with honey, and meats highly 
 seasoned with pepper, ginger, and cinnamon, were then 
 to be found in the refectory of Cluny^ with all kinds of 
 costly spices, brought from beyond the sea, and even 
 from the East. Monks used also to retire to the infir- 
 mary under pretence of sickness, in order to eat meat ; 
 and strong healthy brethren might be seen walking 
 about with the support of a staff, which was the mark 
 of the infirm. The liberality of the faithful had also aug- 
 mented the evil, as might be seen from the necrologies 
 
 5 Reg. St. Ben. 41. « Pet. Yen. Ep. vi. 15. 
 
 7 Pet. Ven. Ep. ii. 2. « St. Bern. Ep. i. 1. Stat. Pet. Ven. 11. 
 
58 ST. STEPHE^f, ABBOT. ^ [CH. 
 
 of monasteries, in whicli certain benefactors were com- 
 memorated, who left sums of money to be laid out in 
 pittances or relaxations for the monks on certain days 
 beyond the rule. - St. Benedict gives his monks a pound 
 of bread a day, besides two cooked dishes ; and on days 
 when they had more than one meal, a few raw vege- 
 tables or fruits for supper. As far as the letter of the 
 rule went, these dishes might be fish, eggs, milk, cream, 
 cheese, roots, and vegetables of all sorts 9; even fowls 
 were not excluded ; but the custom of the primitive 
 monks of the order had banished all but the plainest 
 vegetables boiled with salt. Cluny, even in its best 
 times, had added to these frugal rules, and it is probably 
 against the Cluniac innovations that Alberic and Ste- 
 phen's regulations were framed. The Cluniacs divided 
 their messes into two sorts, one called generate, which 
 was allowed by the rule, another was pitantia, and be- 
 yond it. The regular cooks had nothing to do with 
 the pittance, which was always distributed by the 
 cellarer, the theory being that it was benevolently 
 allowed beside the rule ; again, it was never blessed. 
 The general was given separately to each monk j the 
 pittance was in one dish between two brethren. The 
 common food of the brethren were beans and other ve- 
 getables : minute directions are given " that the beans 
 be stirred from the bottom with a spoon," lest they be 
 scorched. Also they are to be boiled with grease; and 
 one of the cooks, it is especially provided, may taste " the 
 water of the beans, that he may prove if they be well 
 seasoned." On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the 
 general consisted of beans and vegetables ; besides which 
 there was a pittance, which might be four eggs, or cheese. 
 
 ^ Calmet. Com. Lit. ii. 32. 
 
VII.] CISTERCIAN USAGES. 59 
 
 On other days^ the general, besides the vegetables, might 
 be fish or ^ye eggs. No one can accuse this diet of 
 excess, and jet it was beyond the rule of St. Benedict ; 
 there is even a story to the effect, that St. Peter Damian 
 was shocked at the style of the refectory at Cluny, and 
 especially at their using grease with their vegetables; 
 and that he expressed his dissatisfaction to St, Hugh ^. 
 It is also quite true that amidst the marshy soil and 
 damp woods of Citeaux, and with much more manual 
 labour than was practised by the Cluniacs, Alberic and 
 Stephen succeeded in establishing a much more strict 
 system than that of Cluny. They rejected, says the 
 Exordium, "dishes of divers kinds of food in the re- 
 fectory, grease also, and whatsoever was opposed to the 
 purity of the rule." It is known that they did not 
 eat fish ; even eggs seem to have been excluded, and 
 milk was used only at the season of harvest, and that 
 not as a pittance, but as one of the two dishes allowed 
 by the rule 2. After half a night spent in singing the 
 divine office, in reading and meditation, and a day spent 
 in agricultural labour, they assembled to what w^as dur- 
 ing a great part of the year their single meal, which 
 consisted solely of what St. Benedict allowed, and that 
 procured by the sweat of their brow. Their fare was 
 the convent bread, and two messes of vegetables, boiled, 
 not with the culinary accuracy of Cluny, but in the 
 plainest way. It is instructive to observe the contrast 
 between St. Hugh and Stephen. The abbot of Cluny 
 himself lived a most austere life, but he was also a 
 
 » Bibl. Clun. 461. 
 
 ^ Vid. Us. Cist. 84. for the exclusion of fish and eggs, vid. Inst. 
 Cap. Gen. 49, ap. Nomas ticon Cisterciense, et Fastredi, Ep. ap. Op. 
 St. Bern. ed. Ben. 
 
60 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 builder of magnificent churches, and of ecclesiastical 
 ornaments 3. He also gave dispensations to weaker 
 brethren ; in one case allowing a nobleman, whose 
 dainty flesh had worn from his birth soft silks and 
 foreign furs, to wear for a time a less rough habit than 
 the rest of the brethren ; in another, increasing the daily 
 portion of the younger monks beyond what the rule pre- 
 scribed*. Stephen, on the other hand, was cast in ano- 
 ther mould ; he was made, not to bring on the weak, 
 but to lead the strong. All that belonged to earth he 
 looked upon as an encumbrance, even though it was 
 hallowed by consecration on the altar. He loved coarse 
 and scanty food, because it was a partaking of Christ's 
 sufferings ; and he clung to the rough monastic gar- 
 ment, because it was an imitation of Christ's poverty. 
 It was this love of poverty which also induced them 
 to make another regulation, widely differing from the 
 general practice of the monasteries at that time. " And 
 because," it is said, "neither in the rule, nor in the 
 life of St. Benedict, did they read that that doctor of 
 the Church possessed churches, or altars, or oblations, 
 or burial-grounds, or tithes belonging to other men, or 
 bakehouses, or mills, or farms, or serfs — therefore they 
 rejected all these things." They did not by any means 
 intend to do away with the lands or offices of the con- 
 vent ; on the contrary, they had already accepted a 
 grant of land with the serfs, and all that was upon it, 
 from the Viscount of Beaune, and we may be sure 
 that both mills and bakehouses were already in full 
 operation at Citeaux ; for St. Benedict's rule prescribes 
 "that all necessary things, such as water, a mill, a 
 
 3 Vit. S. Hug. ap. Bib. Clun. p. 420. * Ibid, et p. 432. 
 
VII.] CISTERCIAN USAGES. 61 
 
 garden, a bakehouse, should if possible be contained 
 within the monastery, and that divers arts should be 
 exercised there ^." Monks were to be their own millers 
 and bakers, farmers and gardeners : and doubtless such 
 strict observers of the rule as the brethren of Citeaux 
 had already sunk wells and enclosed a garden. Doubt- 
 less, too, they had erected a mill, though it may be 
 safely conjectured, that it was not so large as that of 
 Farfa, a convent which was built after the pattern of 
 Cluny, the mill of which was an edifice seventy feet 
 long, and twenty broad, with a tower over it ; nor had 
 it adjoining, as at Farfa, a manufactory where gold- 
 smiths and other artificers were at work 6. At Cluny, 
 the mill was an important place, where specially before 
 Easter and Christmas a servant of the abbey ground 
 the corn of which the altar-breads were to be made, 
 dressed in an alb, and with a veil enveloping his 
 head". The bakehouse, too, was not left without orna- 
 ment ; it was adorned with boughs of walnut-trees^ ; 
 many things connected with household affairs were at 
 Cluny consecrated with rites of an almost oriental 
 beauty, which reminds one of, patriarchal times ; thus 
 the new bread was specially blessed in the refectory, as 
 were the first-fruits of beans ; and again, the first grapes, 
 which were blessed at the altar during mass 9. Our 
 poor Cistercians were as yet struggling for existence, 
 and the place where they baked their coarse food was 
 not so picturesque as that of Cluny; but they did not 
 mean by the regulations above quoted, to make use of 
 mills and bakehouses out of the precincts of the abbey ; 
 and they expressly say, a little farther on, that "they 
 
 ^ C. 66. 6 Ann. Ben. torn. iv. p. 208. 
 
 '^ Udal. iii. 13. ap. D'Achery, Spicil. torn. i. 
 
 « Calmet. Com. Lit. ii. 428. ^ udal. i. 35. 
 
62 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 will receive lands far from the dwelling-place of men, 
 vineyards, and fields and woods, and water to make 
 mills, but for their own use." The wood of Citeaux 
 was, therefore, already an active scene, where the 
 monks might be seen working in silence, broken only 
 by the stroke of the spade, or the noise of the water 
 turning the wheels of the mill, or the bell calling them 
 from their labour. The meaning of the above regu- 
 lation, then, was, that they were not to possess large 
 domains, with wood and water, corn-fields and vine- 
 yards, which they did not cultivate themselves, but let 
 out to tenants. Many were the broad lands possessed 
 by the monks of Cluny, with vassals, and servants both 
 men and women. For the use of the three hundred 
 brethren, as well as of the poor and the guests of the 
 abbey, 560 sextarii of wheat, and oOO of rye monthly, 
 were stored up in granaries, from the various farms 
 which were within reach i. The possessions of the 
 abbey were divided into districts, over each of which 
 was a dean, appointed to take care that it sent in 
 the proper quantity of whatever was required of it^ 
 As for those lands, whiph were too far from Cluny to 
 send thither their produce, the corn and wine which 
 grew there was sold on the spot, and paid to the Came- 
 rarius, who procured clothing and all necessaries for the 
 brethren ^. Italy, Spain, and England, sent the pro- 
 duce of their lands to clothe the brethren ; one province 
 especially, from the Ehone to the Alps and the sea, was 
 appointed to this duty, and sent its treasures to the 
 camera of Cluny. An English manor, given by King 
 Stephen, usually furnished the monks with shoes and 
 
 ' Dispositio facta a D. Pet. Ven., Baluz. Miscel. torn. iii. p. 72. 
 " Udal. iii. 5. 3 jb.iii. 11. 
 
VII.] CISTERCIAN USAGES. 63 
 
 stockings ^. Such was Cluny, and that not in a time of 
 degeneracy, but under St. Hugh, and afterwards under 
 Peter the Venerable, when the monks fasted and prayed, 
 and rose in the night to sing psalms ; when its vast 
 revenues were not misspent, but daily fed a large num- 
 ber of poor. It was a vast kingdom where Christ reigned, 
 where its saints rested in peace, and which raised an 
 image of peace in a world of strife and bloodshed. 
 Happy were the vassals transferred from a secular lord 
 to the rule of the abbot of Cluny ; instead of being 
 robbed and harried two or three times a year, by exactions 
 over and above their rent, and bought and sold like the 
 cattle on the estate, they were treated as brethren and 
 sisters ^. A castle given to the Cluniacs, instead of a 
 den of thieves, became an oratory. If the brethren sold 
 the produce of the estates at a distance from the abbey, 
 their dealings were marked with a fairness and a gene- 
 rosity, which showed that they trafficked not for gain, but 
 for their own support and to feed the poor^. 
 
 Still, with all this, what our Cistercians said was 
 quite true; Cluny had, we will not say degenerated from, 
 but changed, St. Benedict's institution. The possessors 
 of these wide domains, though they lived a life of more 
 than ordinary strictness, never touching animal food, 
 and mortifying the flesh with watchings and fasts, jet 
 could not be said to be Christ's poor ones, in the same^^ 
 sense as men who had nothing to depend upon but 
 their own manual labour. It may be said that Cluny 
 was an ancient abbey, enriched by the bounty of kings 
 and bishops, and that Citeaux was but a poor monastery, 
 struggling into existence ; but it is also certain, that a 
 
 ^ Disp. facta, &c. ubi sup. ^ Pet. Ven. Ep. 28. 
 
 6 Udal. iii. 11. 
 
64 ST. STEPHEN^ ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 stricter profession of poverty was the very distinction 
 between Citeaux and other abbeys : if ever, therefore, it 
 became rich, it was because it broke through its original 
 institution, whilst the riches of Cluny were not neces- 
 sarily a mark of decline, but a legitimate development. 
 The idea of the monastic state in Stephen's mind was 
 quite different from that conceived by Peter the Vener- 
 able. 
 
 We have purposely put off the first part of Alberic 
 and Stephen's regulation as to the possessions of the 
 convent, because it forms the most striking contrast 
 with the spirit of Cluny. They would not possess any 
 of the property which had originally belonged to the 
 parochial clergy. The Church, about the end of the 
 eleventh century, was endeavouring to win back the 
 tithes and the revenues of livings from the hands of 
 their lay possessors ; but the iron gauntlet of the feudal 
 noble was found to retain as tight a hold as the dead 
 hand of the Church. The tithes had probably first 
 come into the possession of laymen by the gift of the 
 bishops themselves, in times of danger ; the system of 
 feudalism was extended even to Church property, and 
 the parish churches were put as fiefs into laymen's 
 hands, on condition that they would defend the Church. 
 Though they were never meant to be a perpetual gift, 
 yet the nobles who had them in possession would not 
 give them up ; they had won them by their good sword, 
 and keep them they would. Other nobles had simply 
 seized upon the tithes by violence, principally in the 
 lax times of the Carlovingian dynasty ; and the same 
 injustice which had at first robbed the Church, after- 
 wards resisted it. In vain did St. Gregory VII. and 
 Urban II. order the restitution of tithes, the nobles in 
 very many cases would not disgorge the spoil. The 
 
VII.] CISTERCIAN USAGES. 65 
 
 supreme pontiffs acted with tlie greatest moderation in 
 not pronouncing, though they often threatened the sen- 
 tence of excommunication. In the meanwhile, a middle 
 course was found ; laymen possessing tithes were allowed 
 to give them up to monasteries, or to found religious 
 houses with them, if the consent of the bishop of the 
 diocese was first obtained. In this way tithes first got 
 into the hands of monasteries ; and though this was not 
 the best possible course, as was afterwards proved, yet 
 ft was at the time a remedy for a glaring evil. Bishops, 
 who at one time vehemently opposed this transfer, were 
 led to sanction it by the necessity of the case. In other 
 instances, bishops themselves, with the sanction of their 
 chapter, gave parish churches into the hands of abbeys, 
 thinking that- they would exercise their patronage with 
 the greatest wisdom. The feeling which induced the 
 Cistercians to rule that their monastery should possess 
 no tithes, was probably rather a zeal for poverty, than a 
 notion that the thing was wrong in itself A monk, 
 according to the Cistercian idea, was not to administer 
 the holy Sacraments nor to teach, but he was to remain 
 within his cloister, in prayer and contemplation, in poverty 
 and mortification. In the regulation quoted above, tithes 
 and church property in general are classed with mills, and 
 bakehouses and lands ; all come under the same head, as 
 being possessions, and therefore opposed to poverty. 
 Stephen himself, when abbot of Citeaux, as will be seen 
 by and by, was present at the council of Troyes, where the 
 Templars were allowed to possess tithes, if the bishop 
 consented ; and St. Bernard, his disciple, himself wrote 
 to an archbishop, to exhort him to consent to the gift of 
 tithes, presented by a layman to a monastery 7 Their 
 argument, therefore, was not that monks, as being lay- 
 7 Ep. 316. 
 
 F 
 
66 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 men, cannot under any circumstances possess tithes, but 
 that, as cultivating lands of their own, they do not come 
 under the old distribution of Church property, one- 
 third to the bishop, another to the clergy, and the rest 
 to the poor, who have no means of earning their own 
 living. Their principal reason then was, that monks must 
 till their ground with their own hands, instead of living 
 upon property which belongs to the clergy. Very different 
 were the maxims of Cluny ; one bishop alone gave sixty 
 parish churches to different priories of the Cluniac 
 order s. Exclusive of the parish churches in and about 
 Cluny itself, more than 150 churches were at one time 
 in the gift of the abbot ^. It is easy from this fact, to 
 frame an idea of the almost pontifical power of the ruler 
 of this vast abbey ; and the whole of the affairs of the 
 house were conducted on a scale of corresponding gran- 
 deur. It was not in the person of the brethren that 
 this magnificence was seen, at least not in the good times 
 of Cluny, for the price which their habit was to cost was 
 fixed ^, and they were not above menial arts, such as 
 taking their turn in the kitchen as cooks ; but the Church 
 and the buildings of the abbey were in a style which 
 befitted its importance. So far, then, were they from 
 giving up tithes and church lands, in order to depend on 
 their own labour for daily bread, that manual labour 
 was very little practised at all. Udalric, the compiler 
 of their customs, says that he must ingenuously confess, 
 that their manual labour was confined to shelling beans, 
 weeding the garden, and sometimes baking bread. Their 
 time was occupied in long and splendid services in the 
 Church, in reading, praying, and meditation, and in the 
 usual routine of the abbey. They were even allowed 
 
 8 Pet. Ven. de MiracuUs, 1. 23. » Bibl. Cliin. col. 1753. 
 
 1 Udal. 1. 30. 
 
VII.] CISTERCIAN USAGES. 67 
 
 to write after vespers, when all were sitting in the 
 cloister in silence, provided the pen slipped so noise- 
 lessly over the parchment, that no sound broke the 
 perfect stillness I How is it possible, says Peter the 
 Venerable, for monks fed on poor vegetable diet, 
 when even that scanty fare is often cut oif by fasts, to 
 work like common labourers in the burning heat, in 
 showers of rain and snow, and in the bitter cold 1 Be- 
 sides, it was indecent that monks, which are the fine 
 linen of the sanctuary, should be begrimed with dirt, 
 and bent down with rustic labours I The good part of 
 Mary must not thus yield to that of Martha. And yet 
 Stephen and his companions found it possible to do all 
 this. Their poor worn-out bodies did not sink under 
 their heavy burdens, nor were the garments of their 
 souls less white because they were thus exposed to suf- 
 fer from the inclemency of the season. It was^ indeed, 
 inexplicable, even to their contemporaries, how they 
 thus could live ; but the secret lay in the fervency of 
 the spirit, which kept up the lagging flesh and blood ; 
 their lives were above nature, and because, for Christ's 
 sake, they gave up church-lands and tithes, in order to 
 be poor. He bore them up, so that they did not faint 
 under their labours. Besides, they were not the less 
 like the lowly Mary sitting at the Lord's feet, because 
 they worked in the fields ; suffering is not incompatible 
 with the better part. The order which produced St. 
 Bernard cannot be accused of not being contemplative. 
 While their bodies were bent in agricultural labours their 
 souls were raised to heaven. Again, they had an expe- 
 dient by which they were enabled to remain within 
 a short distance of the cloister, however scattered their 
 farms might be, and thus no time was lost in journey 
 2 Udal. 2. 24. ^ p^^. Ven. Ep. 1. 28. 
 
68 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH, 
 
 to and from the place of their labour, and they could 
 always return to the duties of the choir, and be within 
 the monastery at the times set apart for meditation. 
 Alberic at once felt the difficulty of keeping up the 
 choir service, when the monks might be obliged to 
 sleep in the farm-houses, or, as they were called, granges 
 of the monastery, and he determined on obviating it by 
 turning to account the institution of lay brethren, which 
 had subsisted for a long time in the Benedictine order. 
 It arose from the nature of things, and not by a regular 
 distinction into choir and lay brethren, at the time of 
 the taking of the vow, as it was afterwards to be. 
 Amongst a great number of monks, many could neither 
 read nor write, and had not faculties for learning the 
 choir services ; it was natural that these should be 
 employed in the many menial offices which a large mo- 
 nastery would require. Hence arose the institution of 
 lay brethren ; it however appears to have taken its most 
 systematic shape at the very beginning of the Cistercian 
 order. Some of them dwelt in the abbey itself, others 
 in the scattered and lonely granges around it ; they 
 kept the flocks and herds of the community, and were 
 its tailors, shoemakers, and blacksmiths. Those who 
 were in the granges were excused from the fasts of the 
 order, except in Advent, and on the Fridays from the 
 14th of September to Lent*. Whenever the bell of the 
 abbey rang for a canonical hour they fell on their knees, 
 and in heart joined the brethren who sang the office 
 in the abbey church. There were thus in every Cister- 
 cian abbey " two monasteries, one of the lay brethren, 
 another of the clerics 5." The choir brethren were thus 
 enabled always to work within a short distance of the 
 
 ^ Nomasticon, Inst. Cap. Gen. 1. 14. 
 5 Dial, inter Clun. et Cist. 3. 43. 
 
Vll.] CISTERCIAN USAGES. 69 
 
 abbey, and were strictly forbidden to remain a whole 
 night in any of the granges, without pressing necessity. 
 The relations between the choir and lay brethren were 
 of the closest kind ; instead of being treated as slaves, . 
 as they were by their feudal lords, these poor children 
 of the soil, and artizans, were looked upon as brothers, 
 and were by a special law of the order to partake in 
 all spiritual advantages as though they were monks, 
 which in fact they were, in all but the name, for they 
 made their vows in the presence of the abbot, like the 
 other brethren. Politicians, who love equality and 
 liberty, may thank the monks for placing on a level 
 the nobleman and the villain, and for ennobling the 
 cultivator of the soil by stooping down to his lowliness, 
 and partaking of his labours. The world may thank 
 Alberic for this scheme, by which the choir brother 
 imparted his spiritual goods to the poor lay brother, 
 who in turn by his labour gave him time for singing 
 the praises of God during the night, and for medi- 
 tating on his glories continually. The disciples of 
 Alberic and Stephen in after time followed their steps ; 
 and Alanus, one of the greatest of the schoolmen, finished 
 his life in the rough and lowly labours of a lay brother 
 of Citeaux, and was represented in a recumbent figure 
 on his tomb, in their habit, holding a rosary in his hand. 
 There are few more touching pictures in the annals of 
 Citeaux, than the story ^ of the poor lay brother sitting 
 to watch by night in the lonely grange, thinking of his 
 brethren in the abbey, while they celebrated the feast of 
 the Assumption, and repeating over and over again the 
 angelic salutation with such devotion, that the angels 
 brought news of it to St. Bernard, then preaching on 
 the subject of the feast-day at Clairvaux. 
 ^ Manriquez in ann. 1129, c. 6. 
 
70 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE TIMES OF ALBERIC. 
 
 The customs of Citeaux have been thus minutely 
 contrasted with the customs of other places, that the 
 reader might know with whom he had to do, what 
 Cistercians were, and why they were not Cluniacs, or 
 Carthusians, or simply Benedictines, though they so 
 strictly professed St. Benedict's rule. They are not an 
 order yet, but only a monastery, and that a very poor 
 one ; it was left to Stephen afterwards to constitute 
 them an order ; they were not even yet Cistercians, but 
 only the poor brethren of New Minster in the wood 
 of Citeaux, and we have called them Cistercians by 
 anticipation. Alberic's rules were very well kept by 
 his brethren ; so that the fervour of the monastery began 
 to be noised abroad. Their old patron, the Duke of 
 Burgundy, was astonished at them ; while some other 
 monks put themselves in the way of receiving the alms 
 of the faithful, these brethren hid themselves from the 
 world. It seemed wonderful how they could subsist in 
 such a damp, out-of-the-way hole as that in which they 
 had seated themselves. Nothing was heard of them, 
 except that day and night went their bells, first the bells 
 for matins, then the great bell tolling out for the lay 
 brethren to get up, and all day long for the hours, and 
 for vespers in the evening, and compline at night-fall. 
 Nobody knew how they lived, except that their white 
 habits were seen in the fields, as they worked j and yet 
 
VIII.] THE TIMES OF ALBERIC. 71 
 
 they asked for nothing. There they were, a wonderful 
 fact in the way of all irreligion and wickedness, men, 
 whose faith was not an abstraction, but who evidently 
 believed that Christ had come down from heaven to die, 
 since such was their love for Him, that they chose to 
 be like Him in all things, even in suffering. And there 
 was the prior Stephen, leading them out to work with 
 his sweet smiling face, notwithstanding all this suffer- 
 ing'. His spirit had continued unbroken through all 
 his trials, and well might he now be joyful in the Lord, 
 since God had so blessed him in them ; he had borne 
 the cross when it entered into his soul, and he now 
 tasted the joy which it always brings with it. Truly 
 " wisdom is justified of her children," and so thought 
 Odo of Burgundy, for he loved the poor monks, and 
 the forest of Citeaux, and he built him near the abbey 
 a lodge, which in after times was still called the palace 
 even in its ruins. At most of the principal festivals he 
 would come there with his court ; he would not cele- 
 brate them in the cathedral of Chalons, or in the 
 monastery of St. Benignus of Dijon, but he loved better 
 the brethren of the new monastery, for they sang the 
 praises of God so sweetly, and with such joy, that his 
 heart was touched, and caught fire at their devotion. 
 He found, in the same year as Alberic made the above 
 rules, an opportunity of assisting the monks 2. It will 
 
 * Guil. Malm. Gest. Reg. lib. iv. 
 
 ^ The Cistercian annalist places this gift in the year 1102, when 
 it could not have happened, for Duke Odo set out for Jerusalem 
 in 1101. The charter preserved in Du Chesne, Histoire Genealo- 
 gique des Dues de Bourgogne, says, that it was "post biennium," 
 that is, in the third year after the foundation of Citeaux, in March 
 1098. It would thus come into the year 1101. This charter also 
 proves that the author of TArt de verifier les Dates is wrong in 
 making him leave Burgundy in 1097. 
 
72 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 be remembered, that only a portion of Citeaux had been 
 given by the Viscount of Beaune ; the rest had been 
 given them by Odo of Burgundy, who agreed to pay 
 the lord of Beaune twenty solidi a year for the hire of 
 the land. The collectors of the revenues of the lord 
 of Beaune, however, found it a much easier matter to 
 get the money from the monks, who would bear pa- 
 tiently to be oppressed, than from the people of the 
 duke of Burgundy. They therefore applied to the 
 monastery for the twenty shillings, instead of applying 
 to the treasury of the duke. The monks paid the 
 demand in silence, though they could ill afford it out of 
 the poor returns which their lands yielded. At length, 
 Odo heard of the exaction, and determined to free them 
 from it for ever, by assigning a portion of his own 
 ground to the lord of Beaune, out of the produce of 
 which he was to help himself to his twenty shillings ; 
 and the viscount, in return, freed the monks for ever 
 from all claims which he himself, or his heirs, might 
 have upon them. This was indeed the last service 
 which the good duke rendered them, for he set out for 
 the Holy Land that very year in which he conferred 
 this benefit on the monastery. Jerusalem had not long 
 been taken by the crusaders, and Christendom was now 
 arming in support of Godfrey's new kingdom, which 
 was hemmed in on all sides by infidels. The crusaders 
 had obtained possession of the holy sepulchre ; but as 
 if to show that the keeping of this precious treasure 
 depended on the good behaviour of Christians, God 
 never permitted them to hold it by a firm tenure. Its 
 honoured guardians had to defend it at the point of the 
 sword ; the harness was hardly ever off their back, and 
 no crown could be less easy than that of Jerusalem. 
 Odo of Burgundy never reached the Holy Land j he 
 
VIII.] THE TIMES OF ALBERIC. 73 
 
 died in 1102, almost as soon as he had reached the 
 army of the crusaders. On his death-bed the sweet 
 song of the Cistercian choir rung in his ears, and he 
 desired that his body should not lie in a foreign land, 
 but should be carried across sea and land to be buried 
 at Citeaux. So his followers obeyed his dying request, 
 and brought his remains back to Burgundy. In dying 
 he gave the last proof of affection for the brethren of 
 Citeaux, by wishing to be buried among them. He 
 might have been buried beneath the walls of many a 
 cathedral or abbey church, better befitting the high and 
 puissant duke of Burgundy, but he chose to lie where 
 his faithful monks would watch around his body, and 
 say a prayer for his soul as they passed his tomb. 
 Times were indeed changed with the old wood of Ci- 
 teaux, which had a few years before been the habi- 
 tation of wild beasts ; and now the funeral procession 
 of a prince might be seen moving through it ; and it 
 was a strange meeting, that of the banners and coronet, 
 and the armour of the deceased duke, with the white 
 habit of the monks, who had renounced the world and 
 its honours. They had given up pomp and grandeur, 
 and now one of the highest princes in Christendom was 
 come to lie down at their feet, that they by their inter- 
 vention might assist his soul before the tribunal of Christ. 
 Truly many men would wish to live in a king's court, 
 but most would rather in death be with the monks. It 
 is not known in what part of the first Church of Citeaux 
 Duke Odo was buried ; indeed it is doubtful whether 
 his body did not lie in the cemetery among the monks. 
 In the magnificent Church afterwards built at Citeaux, 
 his tomb was under the porch of the Church, in a place 
 called the Chapel of the Dukes, where his two sons were 
 buried with him. 
 
74 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 /n^o be the burial-place of the princes of the earth was 
 not, however, enough for Citeaux ; and however regular 
 and admirable was his abbey, yet Alberic had one care 
 which pressed upon his soul. It seemed as if the very 
 existence of the convent was likely to pass away with 
 the present generation, for no novices arrived to fill up 
 the ranks of those who died. If matters did not mend, 
 Citeaux would return again to its former possessors, 
 wolves and wild-boars. Alberic's patience was sorely 
 tried; it was not only that their name would perish 
 from the earth, which would be but a light evil, but the 
 failure of Citeaux would be a proof to the world that 
 the monks of Molesme were right, and that St. Bene- 
 dict's rule could not now be observed to the letter. It 
 was too much for mortal man to bear, it might be said ; 
 and God had shown His disapproval of this over-strict- 
 ness, by depriving the monastery of spiritual children. 
 They passed many a long day in expectation of an in- 
 crease of numbers, but the monks who joined them were 
 far too few to give hope of the ultimate continuance 
 of the monastery. Alberic however persevered, feeling 
 sure that at all events it was God's will that he should 
 continue in his present position, and he left the future 
 in God's hands. Stephen and he had seen worse days 
 than this, when they were compelled to leave Molesme, 
 and to betake themselves to the solitude of Hauz, and 
 it might please God to reward them with the sight of 
 an increase of their spiritual children before they died. 
 Alberic certainly did die long before Citeaux became 
 what it afterwards was ; but our Lord is said to have 
 given him a supernatural intimation that his order would 
 one day flourish beyond his expectations. The vision 
 is mentioned by no contemporary writer, but we give it, 
 because nothing can be said against the truth of it, in 
 
VIII.] THE TIMES OF ALBERIC. 75 
 
 itself, and because it contains some remarkable circum- 
 stances. Considering the influence that Citeaux after- 
 wards had upon the fortune of the Church, there is no 
 improbability in the supposition that our blessed Lord 
 might, in his condescension, be pleased to console the 
 abbot, when his courage was flagging, by extraordinary 
 means. It is said, that one day, the community was 
 surprised by the entrance of a clerk, who offered himself 
 as a novice. The porch of the monastery at which the 
 new-comer knocked was not an inviting one; it was not 
 an imposing archway with a large gate, with bolts and 
 bars ; it was a poor door of wicker work, at which hung 
 a huge iron knocker, at the sound of which a porter 
 appeared with his usual salutation of Deo gratiaSj as if 
 he would say. Thanks be to God that He has sent us a 
 stranger to feed and entertain. This time, however, the 
 new-comer seemed to be no stranger ; he seemed to recog- 
 nize the porter, though the monk could not recollect ever 
 to have seen him before. When brought to the abbot, he 
 appeared to know him also, as well as the prior Stephen, 
 and all the brethren. At length he solved the mystery, 
 by relating his history. He was a clerk, who, when a 
 student of the schools of Lyons, saw in a vision a valley, 
 stretched at the foot of a mountain, and on the mountain 
 was a city of surpassing beauty, on which none could gaze 
 without joy, as its radiant towers crowned the eminence 
 on which it was built. The beholder felt a strange and 
 irresistible desire to enter its gates and dwell there. 
 Around the base of the mountain, however, was a broad 
 river, the waters of which flowed about it, and were too 
 deep for the traveller to ford. As he roamed about in 
 quest of a place where he might cross it, he saw upon the 
 bank, twelve or fourteen poor men washing their gar- 
 ments in the stream. Amongst them was one clad in a 
 
76 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CIL 
 
 white garment of dazzling brightness, and his counte- 
 nance and form were very different from the rest ; he went 
 about helping the poor men to wash the spots off their 
 clothes; when he had helped one, he went to help an- 
 other. The clerk went up to this august person and said, 
 "What men are jeV And he answered, " These poor 
 men are doing penance, and washing themselves from 
 their sins ; I am the Son of God, Jesus Christ, without 
 whose aid neither they nor any one else can do good. 
 This beautiful city which thou seest is Paradise, where I 
 dwell ; he who has washed his clothes white, that is, done 
 penance for his sins, shall enter into it. Thou thyself 
 hast been searching long enough for the way to enter into 
 it, but there is no other way, but this one, which leads to 
 it." After these words the sleeper awoke, and pondered 
 over the vision. Soon after he returned home from the 
 schools, and related to the bishop of Chalons, with 
 whom he was intimate, what he had seen in sleep. The 
 bishop advised him to quit the world for the cloister, and 
 above others recommended the new monastery at Citeaux. 
 Thither the clerk went, and he found everything un- 
 promising enough ; the place was barren and desolate, 
 and the brethren dwelling " with the wild beasts." The 
 gate of the monastery did not look a whit more inviting, 
 but what was his astonishment when he saw the porter 
 who answered to the sound of the rude knocker ; he im- 
 mediately saw that he was one of the men whom he had 
 seen washing their clothes white in the stream. On 
 seeing the abbot and the other brethren, he observed the 
 same thing, and he at once fell on his knees at the feet 
 of Alberic, and begged to be received as a novice. He 
 afterwards became a good monk, and succeeded Stephen 
 as prior. 
 
IX.] THE DEATH OF ALBERIC. 77 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE DEATH OF ALBERTO. 
 
 From the time of the admission of this monk, which 
 took place in the year 1104, there is a great gap in the 
 Cistercian annals. The greater portion of those chapters 
 in the greater and smaller Exordium of Citeaux which 
 relate to the abbacy of Alberic have been lost; and 
 nothing more is heard of Stephen till the year 1109, 
 when Alberic died. The Exordium simply mentions his 
 death in the following few words, "Now the man of 
 GoHf Alberic, after having exercised himself in the 
 school of Christ by the discipline of the rule, for nine 
 years and a half, departed to the Lord, a man glorious 
 in faith and virtue, and therefore to be blessed by God 
 in life everlasting for his merit." He died on the 26th 
 of January. St. Alberic has been canonized by the 
 veneration of the faithful, and many miracles are said 
 to have taken place at his tomb. Certainly, if any one 
 deserved well of the Church, it was St. Alberic. The 
 regulations which he passed into laws may be called the 
 first statutes of the order, and they first gave to Citeaux 
 a tangible form by which it was distinguished from other 
 monasteries. He worked on in faith, without seeing the 
 fruits of his labours, and he was called away from it 
 when the infant community was in great perplexity. It 
 seemed dying away as its members successively died, and 
 bade fair not to outlast its first generation. His death 
 was therefore a most painful trial to Stephen, who was 
 
78 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 thus deprived *of his friend and companion, whom he 
 had found at Molesme, when he first came there, and 
 who had shared with him all his hardships ; now he was 
 left alone when he most needed counsel and support. 
 Stephen's spirit seems, however, to have risen with the 
 thought that his dear friend already possessed his crown, 
 and might help him with his prayers even more than he 
 had done with his counsels when alive. He had as prior 
 to incense and sprinkle with holy water the body of his 
 friend, and to throw earth upon it, when it lay in the 
 grave ; and then the procession returned in inverse order, 
 the lay brethren and the convent first, and himself last, 
 with the cross borne before him ^, They then repaired 
 to the chapter, where he addressed them a discourse 
 which has been preserved. "All of us have alike a 
 share in this great loss, and I am but a poor comforter, 
 who myself need comfort. Ye have lost a venerable 
 father and ruler of your souls ; I have lost, not only a 
 father and ruler, but a friend, a fellow-soldier and a 
 chief warrior in the battles of the Lord, whom our vene- 
 rable father Eobert, from the very cradle of our monastic 
 institute had brought up in one and the same convent, 
 in admirable learning and piety. He is gone from us, 
 but not from God, and if not from Grod, then not from 
 us ; for this is the right and property of saints, that when 
 they quit this life they leave their body to their friends, 
 and carry away their friends with them in their mind. 
 We have amongst us this dear body and singular pledge 
 of our beloved father, and he himself has carried us all 
 away with him in his mind with an affectionate love ; 
 yea, if he himself is borne up to God, and joined with 
 Him in undivided love, he has joined us too, who are in 
 
 ' Usus Cist. p. i. 98. 
 
IX.] THE DEATH OF ALBERIC. 79 
 
 him, to God. What room is there for grief 1 Blessed 
 is the lot, more blessed he to whom that lot has fallen, 
 most blessed we to be carried up to such a presence, 
 for nothing can be more jojful for the soldiers of Christ, 
 than to leave this garment of flesh, and to fly away to 
 Him for love of whom they have borne so many toils. 
 The warrior has got his reward, the runner has grasped his 
 prize, the conqueror has won his crown, he who has taken 
 possession, prays for a palm for us. Why then should 
 we grieve ? Why mourn for him who is in joy *? W hy 
 be cast down for him who is glad 1 Why do we throw 
 ourselves before God with murmurs and mournful words, 
 when he, who has been borne up to the stars, is pained 
 at. our grief, if the blessed can feel pain ; he who by an 
 earnest longing prays that we may have a like consum- 
 mation. Let us not mourn for the soldier who is at 
 rest ; let us mourn for ourselves, who are placed in the 
 front of battle, and let us turn our sad and mournful 
 words into prayers, begging our father who is in triumph, 
 not to suffer the roaring lion and savage enemy to 
 triumph over us." Such were Stephen's words when he 
 had just parted with his dearest friend ; as usual he seems 
 to rise with his difficulties. Indeed he had full need of 
 this bold spirit, for he was about to succeed the sainted 
 Alberic in his most painful dignity. The monks una- 
 nimously elected him their abbot, and he found himself 
 with the whole weight of the spiritual and temporal 
 direction of the new convent on his shoulders. William 
 of Malmesbury says that he was absent at the time that 
 he was elected, and some suppose that he withdrew from 
 Citeaux for fear of being elected. It does not, however, 
 appear how his absence could have prevented his election, 
 unless he intended to leave Citeaux altogether, of which 
 there is no record whatever. Saints fly from dignities. 
 
80 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 which bring with them rank and splendour -, but the 
 poor abbey of Citeaux had nothing to recommend it but 
 hardship and labour, and these were a species of distinc- 
 tion from which Stephen was not the man to shrink. It 
 is therefore most probable that some other motive occa- 
 sioned his absence, though it does not appear what it 
 was. He elected Robert, the monk who saw the vision 
 which we have related, prior in his room. 
 
X.] STEPHEN AS ABBOT. 81 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 STEPHEN AS ABBOT. 
 
 Stephen found himself heir to all St. Alberic's diffi- 
 culties, as well as to his dignity. He received from him 
 a convent perfect in its internal arrangement, but one 
 which men seemed rather disposed to admire at a distance, 
 than to enter. The new abbot, however, felt certain that 
 the principle on which Citeaux had been founded was 
 right ; it was one which must in time catch all the 
 ardent spirits in the Church, who wished to be monks 
 in order to crucify the flesh, and not merely to seek for 
 peace. Hatred of poverty had been the great bane of 
 monasteries, and his aim was to restore the primitive 
 discipline of St. Benedict, which had well nigh been 
 forgotten. In order to do this, he must not only exhibit 
 it in his own person, but he must create, so to speak, 
 a monastery in full operation, one to which novices 
 crowded, and which was to last to the end of the world, 
 a school of Christian discipline. He took what would 
 appear a strange expedient to entice novices to Citeaux. 
 His first act was, to all appearance, the cutting off all 
 earthly support from the monastery. Hugo, the suc- 
 cessor of Odo, the duke of Burgundy, who was buried 
 at Citeaux, followed his father's example in frequenting 
 the church of the monastery on all great festivals. He 
 brought with him a large train of nobles, whose splendid 
 appointments were but an ill match for the simplicity 
 and poverty of the church. The presence of this 
 
 G 
 
82 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 brilliant array seemed to Stephen ill-suited to the place ; 
 the jangling of steel spurs, and the varied colours of the 
 dress of the courtiers, were a poor accompaniment to the 
 grave chaunt and the poor habit of the brethren. Every 
 one knows that the sight of a king's court is pleasing, 
 and men go a great way to see it ; now the echo of 
 earthly pleasure and the presence of earthly joy are in- 
 consistent with the profession of a monk, whose conver- 
 sation ought to be in heaven. Men may say what they 
 will about ideal perfection, but it is a sure fact, that 
 saints are very much nearer perfection than we may 
 think. Human frailties are on the long run unavoidable ; 
 but, at all events, the frailty of liking the vicinity of 
 princes and nobles in not one of these, for Stephen did 
 avoid it. He declared that no prince should henceforth 
 hold his court in the church of Citeaux. Apparently 
 this act was at once cutting himself off from all earthly 
 protection ; the presence of a ducal court was no empty 
 show, it was a guarantee that swords would be drawn 
 and lances put in rest to defend Citeaux. All this 
 Stephen, as it seemed, threw away ; he knew that God 
 specially guarded the destitute, and he preferred the 
 guardianship of saints and angels to that of an earthly 
 prince. Grod rewarded his faith, for he did not ulti- 
 mately lose the favour of Hugo, who after his death 
 rested side by side with his father in the chapel under 
 the porch of the abbey church. Before that time, how- 
 ever, the community had suffered many a hardship, 
 which might have been averted had the powerful duke of 
 Burgundy been as good a friend to the convent as here- 
 tofore. Stephen's next step was one with which modern 
 notions of monasticism are still more inconsistent. He for- 
 bade that, says the Exordium, " in the house of God, in 
 which they wished to serve God devoutly day and night 
 
X.] STEPHEN AS ABBOT. 83 
 
 any thing should be found which savoured of pride and 
 excess, or can in any way corrupt poverty, that guardian 
 of virtue which they had chosen of their own accord." 
 According to this, no crucifixes of gold or silver were 
 to be used ; one candlestick alone was to light up the 
 church, and that not branching with elaborate ornaments, 
 and studded with precious stones, but of iron ; censers 
 were to be of brass ; chasubles, not of gold and silver 
 tissue, or of rich silk, but of common stuff; albs and 
 amices of linen ; copes, tunicles, and dalmatics were 
 inexorably excluded. Even the chalices were not to be 
 of gold, but silver gilt, as was also to be the pipe through 
 which they received the blessed Blood of the Lord in 
 the Holy Eucharist. This was indeed a strange way 
 of attracting novices : the monastic j^hurches were fre- 
 quented by men on account of the splendour of the 
 services, for sacred vessels, and al&rs afforned with gold 
 and gems, for the number of ecclesiastics in splendid 
 vestments passing to and fro before their eyes in seemly 
 order. But by this act Stephen proclaimed to the world^ 
 that they did not wish their church to be crowded with 
 visitors ; they wished to remain known only to God, in 
 the heart of their marshy forest; but he knew that there 
 must be many in the Church who longed to serve Grod 
 in poverty and oblivion, and he reckoned upon receiving 
 them into Citeaux. The novice who came there must 
 come from the pure love of God, since he even gave up 
 what was considered the heritage of monks, and the 
 compensation for their toils, a striking ceremonial, and 
 solemn rites. This is indeed very different from the 
 notion which our fancy frames of monks, men of warm 
 imaginations, who retired to a cloister to wear a pic- 
 turesque habit, and to be free from toils ; and it reads 
 a salutary lesson to those whose Catholicism consists in a 
 
84 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 love of " aesthetic " religion. Stephen did not at all, by 
 rejecting these means of external devotion, intend to 
 pronounce against the consecration of the riches of the 
 world to the service of the sanctuary ; he was a monk, 
 and had to do with monks alone ; it was quite certain 
 that St. Benedict intended poverty to be an essential 
 feature of the cloister, and Stephen was determined to 
 prove that St. Benedict's rule might be kept in the 
 twelfth century as it had been in the sixth. The Church 
 was not in her dotage, and her children could do then 
 what they had done before. Another reason for the re- 
 jection of splendour of worship was, because it interfered 
 with meditation, properly so called, the contemplation 
 of heavenly things without the aid of the senses. Not 
 only were splendid vestments excluded from Citeaux, 
 but, as we learn from its early statutes ^ sculptures and 
 pictures were not allowed in the church, " because, 
 while the attention is given to such things, the profit of 
 godly meditation and the discipline of religious gravity 
 are often neglected." Without determining which of the 
 two is the better, it will at once be seen, that the devotion 
 which floats to heaven on the sounds of beautiful music, 
 and is kept alive by a splendid religious scene, is very 
 different from that which, with closed eyes, and senses 
 shutup, sings the praises of God, and at the same time 
 is fixed on the heavenly mysteries without any inter- 
 mediate channel. This latter species of devotion can 
 only exist without danger in the Catholic church, whose 
 creed is fixed and her faith unchangeable, while she 
 herself is an external body, the image of her Lord. 
 Stephen, therefore, could securely reject, to a certain 
 extent, the aid of external religion ; for his mind, trained 
 
 ' Inst. Cap. Gen. i. 20. 
 
N.] STEPHEN AS ABBOT. 85 
 
 in the Catholic faith, had a definite object to rest upon, 
 the Holy Trinity, with the inexhaustible and incompre- 
 hensible treasures of contemplation therein contained. 
 Though the chalice was not of gold, he knew what was 
 in it, even his blessed Lord ; and he could think upon 
 the saints, with their palms and crowns in heaven, though 
 their images were not sculptured about him. Again, 
 though sculptures and paintings were not allowed, yet 
 one image is expressly excepted ; crucifixes of wood, 
 painted to the life, were placed in the church, and these 
 must, from the colouring and material, have been much 
 more real than golden or silver figures, however well 
 sculptured, could have been. It should also be observed, 
 that architecture is not excluded from this list of prohi- 
 bitions ; the old church of Citeaux, built in Stephen's time, 
 still existed when Martenne^ came to visit the monastery ; 
 it stood in all its simplicity beside the vast and splendid 
 edifice, a strange relic of the ancient times of Citeaux ; 
 yet, notwithstanding the contrast, its beauty is praised 
 by the Benedictine. The line which Stephen marked 
 out for himself was therefore definite ; costliness, pomp, 
 and unnecessary ornaments were excluded, but beauty of 
 shape was kept. He would not have a misshapen chasu- 
 ble, though he eschewed cloth of gold, nor would he 
 have an unsightly church, though he loved simplicity. 
 It is scarcely possible to conceive a better type of Citeaux 
 than a great Norman church, such as is seen in the 
 abbeys of Caen, with its vast round arches and simple 
 
 2 Voy. Lit. i. 223. Martenne there incidentally says, that this 
 church was consecrated in 1106 ; if so, it must have been a different 
 church from that built by the duke of Burgundy. This event is not 
 recorded by the Cistercian historians ; no notice has been taken of it 
 in the text, because the Benedictine gives no authority for the asser- 
 tion, though it is exceedingly likely in itself. 
 
S6 ST. STEPHEN; ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 shafts clustering round a massive pier ; even its austere 
 capitals, looking like an imitation of the architecture 
 of the Roman empire, might come in as the counterpart 
 of Stephen's notion of going back to St. Benedict as his 
 model. 
 
 These new regulations of the abbot of Citeaux were 
 the more bold, because they were directly opposed 
 to what may be called the leading religious men of 
 the day. St. Hugh of Cluny died the very year that 
 they were put in force, and the state of things which 
 he had introduced at Cluny of course acquired a new 
 sanctity from the saintly memory which he had left 
 behind him. DiiFering as they did in other respects, 
 nothing can shew the difference of his spirit and that of 
 Stephen, more than the contrast between them in this 
 particular, St. Hugh had a great fondness for eccle- 
 siastical ornaments. " He said within himself," writes 
 his biographer, " with the Prophet : ^ Lord, I have loved 
 the beauty of Thy house and the place where Thine 
 honour dwelleth ;' and whatsoever the devotion of the 
 faithful gave, he entirely consecrated to adorning the 
 church or to the expenses of the poor 3." The vast 
 church which he built at Cluny, (as it is said, by the 
 Divine command conveyed in a vision,) was reckoned 
 the most beautiful of his time ; it contained stalls in 
 the choir for 220 monks. It had two side aisles and 
 two transepts, and two vast lanterns gave light" to 
 the whole. At the upper end was a beautiful apse sup- 
 ported by eight marble columns, each of which could 
 hardly be embraced by two men. All the precious 
 things of the world were consecrated to the adornment 
 of this splendid basilica : one beautiful corona of lights, 
 
 3 Hildebert ap. Bibl. Clun. 420. 
 
X.] STEPHEN AS ABBOT. 87 
 
 the gift of Matilda, queen of England, made after the 
 pattern mentioned in Exodus % especially caught the 
 eje of beholders, as it hung before the high altar : it 
 was made of gold and silver, and its delicate branches 
 blazed with crystals and beryls interspersed among its 
 beautifully wrought lilies^. Even the immense hall, 
 which was the refectory of the convent, had its own 
 religious ornaments ; it was painted all round with 
 figures of saints of the Old and New Testament, and of 
 the founders and benefactors of Cluny : but the prin- 
 cipal object was a large figure of our Lord, with a 
 representation of the terrible day of judgment. All 
 the ceremonies in the church were most solemn and 
 imposing, seen by the dim light of its narrow windows^ 
 cut through the thick wall, or with the sun shining 
 through the ample lanterns; or again with its blaze of 
 lights, and specially the seven before the holy Cross on 
 the night of our Lord's nativity, when the church was 
 adorned with rich hangings, and all the bells rang out, 
 and the brethren walked in procession round the clois- 
 ters, their hearts burning with the words of good St. 
 Hugh, spoken the evening before in the chapter 7. Who 
 could blame the holy abbot for enlisting the senses in the 
 service of religion ? he could not be accused of pomp or 
 pride, who in his simplicity took his turn in washi ng 
 the beans in the kitchen^; his heart, in the beauties of 
 the sanctuary saw but an image of the worship in the 
 courts of heaven, and was not entangled or brought 
 down to earth by the blaze of splendour around him. 
 Still all this, as we have said before, was a development 
 upon St. Benedict's rule and does not seem to have 
 
 * Exod. XXV. 31—39. ^ -q^-^i Q^n. 1640. 
 
 6 Ann. Ben. torn. v. p. 252. 
 
 7 Udal. 1. 11. 46. Bibl. Clun. 1273. « Udal. 1. 46. 
 
S8 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 been contemplated by him : if he had walked in a 
 Cluniac cloister, and had seen its grotesque ornaments, 
 with the apes and centaurs peeping out from the rich 
 foliage, the huntsmen with horns and hounds, and the 
 knights fighting together on the walls 9, he would 
 hardly have known where he was. Stephen's doubtless 
 was the original conception of monasticism, which time 
 had altered, if it had not corrupted. St. Hugh would 
 have the church all glorious within, and her clothing 
 without of wrought gold ; but Stephen wished her to be 
 like her Lord, in whom was found no comeliness that 
 men should desire Him ; but Stephen's pastoral staiF was 
 a crooked stick such as an old man might carry ; St. 
 Hugh's was overlaid with foliage wrought in silver, 
 mixed with ivory i : yet the souls of both were the work- 
 manship of that One blessed Spirit, who divideth to every 
 man severally as He will. Though the abbot of Cluny 
 took advantage of all the treasures of art and nature, 
 and turned them to the service of God, while on the 
 other hand Stephen in many cases rejected the help of 
 external religion, yet both could find a place in the 
 Catholic Church, whose worship is not carnal, nor yet 
 so falsely spiritual as to cease to be the body of the 
 Lord. 
 
 » St. Bern. Apol. ad Gull. ' Voy. Lit. i. 226. 
 
STEPHEN IN TIMES OF WANT. 89 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 STEPHEN IN TIMES OF WANT. 
 
 The consequence of Stephen's thus boldly casting off 
 the protection of the duke of Burgundy, and all that 
 could attract the world into the solitude of Citeaux, 
 soon began to be visible. In the year 1110 it was dis- 
 covered that the world was inclined to forget those who 
 had forgotten it ; for either from the failure of crops, 
 or from some other unknown cause, the convent was 
 reduced to a state not only of poverty but of beggary, 
 and no one was found to relieve it. Stephen's was but 
 a poor abbacy ; he had now been scarcely a year in his 
 new dignity, and he found himself lord of a starving 
 community ; but he had already counted the cost, and he 
 knew that his Lord would not leave his servants to die 
 of want in the depths of their forest. His countenance 
 was therefore not a whit less smiling on account of his 
 difficulties, and he cheered up his brethren by his 
 earnest words. At length the extremity of want came 
 upon the monastery, and one day the brother cellarer 
 came to the abbot and informed him that there was not 
 enough for one day's provision in the house. " Saddle 
 me two asses," was Stephen's only answer : when they 
 were ready, the abbot himself mounted one, and bade 
 a lay-brother mount the other. He then ordered his 
 Kjompanion to beg bread from door to door in a certain 
 village ; while he himself went to beg in another, and 
 he appointed a place where they should meet after 
 
90 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 making their rounds. To a passing stranger the holy 
 man must have looked very like one of those Sarabaitse 
 or wandering monks, of whom St. Benedict speaks, on a 
 voyage in quest of gain, so strange must have been his 
 figure, mounted as he was on the ignoble beast, in his white 
 habit, and his rough cowl over his shaven head ; but his 
 face was radiant with joy, for never was he more like 
 his blessed Lord, than when he was thus reduced to 
 beggary. After having gone through the village, beg- 
 ging as he went, he met this lay-brother returning 
 from his task ; on comparing notes the brother's wallet 
 was found to be very much more full than his superior's. 
 " Where hast thou been begging ^ " said the abbot, with 
 a smile ; " I see thou hast been gleaning in thicker 
 stubble than I. Where, prithee, hast thou been glean- 
 ing*?" The lay-brother answered, "The priest whom 
 you know full well filled my wallet," and he mentioned 
 the priest's* name. The abbot at once recognized the 
 priest to be one who had obtained his benefice by simony. 
 It was then in the thick of the contest about investitures, 
 and Stephen shuddered at receiving aught from hands 
 stained with such a sin; and he groaned aloud and said, 
 " Alas I for thee ; why didst thou receive aught there ? 
 thou didst not know, then, that that priest had been 
 simoniacally ordained ; and what he has accepted is 
 leprosy and rapine. As the Lord liveth, of all that he 
 has -given us, we will taste nothing. God forbid that we 
 should eat of his sin, and that it be turned into the sub- 
 stance of our bodies ! " He then called some shepherds, 
 who were near the spot, and emptied all the contents 
 of the wallet into their laps. This is but one instance, 
 which has been preserved almost by chance, of the 
 difficulties under which the convent laboured, and of 
 Stephen's unworldly way of meeting them ; the par- 
 
XI.] STEPHEN IN TIMES OF WANT. 91 
 
 ticulars of their daily life in these trying times have 
 been forgotten. Many other facts of the same sort 
 doubtless were handed down and told by the monks in 
 after-times, as this which we have mentioned was re- 
 lated by Master Peter, surnamed Cantor ; but the con- 
 vent traditions have died away, and the chronicles have 
 not recorded more, till we come to the last acts which 
 closed these times of difficulty. It was by what would 
 be called a strange coincidence that the wants of the 
 brethren were at last relieved. The monks called it 
 a miracle wrought by God at Stephen's prayers ; and 
 if the truth be told, we think they were right. It 
 seems to be but scriptural to believe that it happened, 
 as our Lord has promised, " He that believeth on Me, 
 the works that I do shall he do also ; and greater works 
 than these shall he do, because I go to the Fatheri." 
 However, the reader shall judge for himself. It was 
 a long dreary season, the time of this downright beggary 
 of Citeaux. It was of no great consequence during 
 Lent ; but Lent passed away, and Easter came without 
 alleviation. Still the monks, buoyed up by the cheerful- 
 ness of their abbot, did not allow their spirits to flag, and 
 only rejoiced the more because they suffered for Christ's 
 sake. At length Pentecost came, and it was found 
 that there was hardly bread in the house to last out the 
 day ; nevertheless the brethren prepared for the mass 
 of that great day with ecstacies of joy. They began to 
 chaunt the solemn service with overflowing hearts, and 
 before the mass was over God rewarded their faith, 
 for succours arrived at the gate of the monastery from 
 an unexpected source. " In these and the like events," 
 says the old monk who relates it, "the man of God, 
 Stephen, weighing within himself how true are those 
 ^ John xiv. 12. ♦ 
 
92 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 words of Scripture, ^ They who fear the Lord shall want 
 no manner of thing that is good,' looked with wonder 
 on the bounty and mercy of God on himself and his 
 brethren : more and more did he progress in holy 
 religion, and gloried in the straits of blessed poverty, as 
 in all manner of riches." At length the crisis came ; 
 even after the mercy of God on Whitsunday their suffer- 
 ings were not over, nay, they were at their height, and 
 with them proportionately rose the abbot's faith. He 
 called to him one of the brethren, and, as says the same 
 historian, " speaking to him in the Spirit of God, said 
 to him, ' Thou seest, dearest brother, that we are 
 brought into a great strait by want ; nay, well nigh are 
 our brethren's lives brought into peril by hunger, cold, 
 and other sufferings. Go then to the market of Vezelay, 
 which is very soon coming on, and buy there three 
 waggons, and for each waggon three horses, strong and 
 fit for draught, of which we are very much in need for 
 carrying our burdens. And when thou hast laden 
 the waggons with clothes and food and other necessaries, 
 thou shalt bring them with thee, and come back to us 
 in joy and prosperity.'" The poor brother was aston- 
 ished at the good abbot's command, and it probably 
 crossed him that he was sent on a fool's errand ; how- 
 ever, in the spirit of holy obedience he said, " I am ready, 
 my lord and father, to obey thy commands, if thou wilt 
 but give me money to buy these necessaries." The abbot, 
 however, had no such intentions ; he felt quite sure in his 
 royal heart that the crisis was come, and that God was 
 now going to help them. As a physician can see deeper 
 into a disease when it is at its height than the bystanders, 
 so can the spiritual man see into God's providence further 
 than other men. He issued, therefore, his orders with 
 a quiet tone, as if the wealth of Peru was at his com- 
 
XI.] STEPHEN IN TIMES OF WANT. 93 
 
 mand. Regardless of the monk's astonishment, he said, 
 " Be it known to thee, brother, that when, in care and 
 anxiety, I searched for means for relieving the wants 
 of our brethren, I found but three pence in the whole 
 house. Take them, if thou wilt. As for the rest, 
 whatever is wanting, the mercy of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ will provide it. Go then without fear, for the 
 Lord will send his angel with thee, and will prosper 
 thy way." It is not on record whether the monk took 
 the three pence with him ; but it is certain, whether he 
 did or no, that they would not help him much on his 
 mission. However, he started for the town which the 
 abbot had mentioned. When he got there, he went to 
 the house of a friend, and told him of his difficulties. 
 Now it happened that a rich neighbour of this friend 
 was on his deathbed, distributing alms to the poor. 
 Thither then the man went, and related in what straits 
 were the monks of Citeaux, whose holiness was well 
 known all over the country ; the dying man on hearing 
 this, sent for the monk, and gave him as much money 
 as would suffice to buy all that the abbot had ordered. 
 Away then he went, and bought his three waggons and 
 nine horses, and all the articles of which the brethren 
 stood in need, and then started merrily for Citeaux. 
 When he got near the monastery he sent word to the 
 abbot that he was coming, and how accompanied. 
 Stephen, in the holy rapture of his heart, assembled the 
 chapter and said, "The God of mercy, the Lord God 
 of mercy has frankly and bountifully dealt with us. 
 Yea, nobly indeed, generously indeed, hast Thou done, 
 Thou who providest for us, our Shepherd, opening Thine 
 hand and filling our poverty with plenteousnes." Then 
 the abbot put on his sacred vestments, and took his 
 pastoral staff in his hand, and with the whole convent 
 
94 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 in procession, the cross and holy water solemnly borne 
 before him, went to meet the brother and his convoy at 
 the abbey gate. This was the last of the trials which 
 Stephen had to undergo from the failure of the temporal- 
 ities of his convent. The alms of the faithful flowed 
 in apace, and the cellarer had never again to report an 
 empty granary to the abbot. 
 
XII.] THE MORTALITY AT CITEAUX. 95 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE MORTALITY AT CITEAUX. 
 
 All, however, was not over yet ; the sorest trial of all 
 was yet to come, far worse than the obstinacy of the 
 monks of Molesme, or the penury of Citeaux. In the 
 year 1111 and 1112, a mortality broke out amongst the 
 brethren ; and Stephen saw several of his spiritual chil- 
 dren dying off one by one before his eyes. In that year 
 the whole Church was sick, for it was then that pope 
 Pascal was held in captivity by the emperor Henry V., 
 and what was worse, gave up the right of granting 
 investitures. Then some bishops spoke harsh words 
 against the sovereign pontiff, that he should be deposed, 
 and the hearts of all men were failing them for fear. 
 But the repentance of Pascal and the firmness of the 
 bishops, and specially of Guide, archbishop of Vienne, 
 saved the Church after a season. It was during this time 
 of confusion for all Christendom, that Citeaux was in 
 mourning. First one brother went, and then another ; 
 independently of all other considerations, the loss of men 
 who had borne with him the burden and heat of the day, 
 must have been most painful to Stephen. The ties 
 which bound one member of a religious community to 
 another, in death as well as in life, were of the closest 
 kind. As in life they had helped one another on in 
 the painful task of crucifying the flesh, so in death they 
 who remained behind on earth helped their brother, who 
 was passing away before them from this world, by their 
 
96 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [cH. 
 
 prayers and by their presence. Though monks all their 
 lives through looked death in the face in frequent medi- 
 tations, yet they did not consider that they could ever 
 be too well prepared for that dreadful moment. It is 
 dreadful; not only because the soul is about to appear 
 before its God, but also because it is an hour of actual 
 conflict with the devil, who then often marshals all his 
 powers for a last effort, and endeavours to shake the faith 
 of the dying man. It was therefore the rule in a con- 
 vent, that all the brethren should come unto the death- 
 bed of a dying monk to help him against his spiritual 
 enemy. The death of a brother was thus a subject of 
 personal interest to each member of a convent, and in 
 this point of view alone, the successive deaths of his 
 friends must have been a bitter trial to Stephen. As 
 abbot, it was his lot to go, at the head of the brethren, 
 clad in alb, stole, and maniple, and with his pastoral 
 staff in his hand, to the chamber of the dying man, to 
 administer to him extreme unction, and to give him the 
 holy rood to kiss^. Again and again during those two 
 painful years he was summoned to the bedside of the 
 brother, to anoint his limbs before his soul passed away 
 from his body. And how often when the last agony 
 was actually come, did the harsh strokes of the wooden 
 mallet 2 which usually called the convent together, re- 
 sound through the cloister, together with the tolling of 
 the bell, to summon the community to the death-bed of 
 a brother ! Then all labour was hastily given up, and 
 even the divine office was broken off, and all went to 
 the dying man's room, repeating aloud the words of the 
 Creed. There they found him lying on ashes sprinkled 
 on the floor in the form of a cross, for that was the pos- 
 
 » Usus Ord, Cist. i. 93. ^ Tabula. 
 
XII.] THE MORTALITY AT CITEAUX. 97 
 
 ture in which monks died ; and then they commended 
 his soul to God with Litanies and the Penitential Psalms. 
 In all these mournful ceremonies, and in all those which 
 took place around the corpse before and at the burial, 
 Stephen as abbot had the chief place ; the crosses and 
 the graves silently multiplied before him in the church- 
 yard, and still no novices arrived to fill the empty stalls 
 of those who were dead. The cause of the mortality is 
 not known ; it may have been that the marshy soil of 
 the wood had not been properly drained, and that the 
 brethren sunk under the damp air, to w^hich, from their 
 long abstinence, their bodies were peculiarly sensitive. 
 It could not have been the austerity of their life alone, 
 for thousands afterwards followed their steps, and died 
 of a good old age ; still it was certain that the world 
 would put it down to that cause, and even the monks of 
 the day would look upon the convent as one cursed by 
 God on account of the fanatical austerities of its inmates. 
 Stephen's cares thus multiplied upon him, and he found 
 no consolation from them except in the time of the 
 divine office. It is recorded of him, that after the 
 evening collation was read, as he entered into the church 
 he used to pause at the entrance with his hand pressing 
 on the door. One of the brethren, whom he especially 
 loved, frequently observed this silent gesture as he went 
 into church, and ventured to ask him what it meant. 
 "The holy father," says the Exordium, "answered, ^I 
 am forced during the day to give free course to many 
 thoughts for the ordering of the house ; all these I bid 
 to remain outside the door, and I tell them not to 
 venture in, and to wait till the morrow, when I find 
 them all ready for me after Prime has been said.'" 
 However the abbot might manage to drive away dis- 
 tressing thoughts during the quiet hours of the night, 
 
98 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 while the monks were chaunting the office in church, yet 
 they recurred with tenfold force during the day, when 
 all the cares of the house came upon him, while his 
 spiritual children were dying about him. At times even 
 his faith all but failed; it crossed his mind that the 
 monks who scoffed at Citeaux might after all be right. 
 The Cistercian manner of life might be displeasing to 
 God, and the frequent deaths of the brethren and the 
 barrenness of the monastery might be a punishment for 
 their presumption in attempting to go beyond what God 
 allowed. Pain in itself is not pleasing to God, and an 
 austere life, unless it be joined by charity to Christ's 
 sufferings, becomes simple pain, for His merits alone 
 convert our sufferings into something sacramental, and 
 make them meritorious in the eyes of God. He might 
 therefore have been leading his poor brethren into the 
 wilderness, and have made them there perish with hunger, 
 and their blood would be required at his hands. These 
 melancholy thoughts tormented him, and at last they 
 broke out into words, when with the whole convent he 
 was summoned to attend the deathbed of another brother 
 who was about to follow the many inmates of Citeaux 
 who had already died. All the brethren wondered, as 
 he spoke the words, at the calm faith with which he 
 pronounced them, notwithstanding the deep anxiety 
 which they displayed. Thus then in the presence of all 
 he addressed the dying man. " Thou seest, dearest 
 brother, in what great weariness and failing of heart we 
 are, for we have done our best to enter upon the strait 
 and narrow way which our most blessed father Benedict 
 has proposed in his rule, and yet we are not well assured 
 whether this our way of life is pleasing to God ; espe- 
 cially since by all the monks of our neighbourhood we 
 have long been looked upon as devisers of novelty, and 
 
XII.] THE MORTALITY AT CITEAUX. 99 
 
 as men who kindle scandal and schism. But more than 
 all, I have a most piercing grief which cuts me through 
 to the heart like a spear, and that is, the fewness of our 
 members ; for one by one, and day after day, death 
 comes in and hurries us away. Thus I very much fear 
 this our new religious institute will perish with our- 
 selves, for God has not thought fit, up to this time, to 
 associate with us any zealous persons, who love the 
 lowliness of holy poverty, through whom we could hand 
 down to posterity the model of this our rule of life. 
 Wherefore, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, for 
 whose love we have entered upon the strait and narrow 
 way which He proposes to His followers in the Gospel, 
 and by virtue of thine obedience, I command thee, at 
 whatever time and in whatever way the grace of the 
 same our Lord may determine, that thou return to 
 us, and give us information touching this our state, as 
 far as His mercy will allow." He spoke these words 
 with a quiet confidence, which looked beyond the grave, 
 so that he appalled the brethren ; but the dying monk, 
 with a bright smile lighting up his features, said, " Wil- 
 lingly will I do, my lord and father, what thou com- 
 mandest, if only I, through the help of thy prayers, 
 shall be allowed to fulfil thy command." The result of 
 this strange dialogue, held on the confines of life and 
 death, was not long in appearing. The brother died, and 
 a few days after he had passed away, the abbot was in 
 the fields working with the brethren. At the usual 
 time he gave the signal for rest, and they laid aside 
 their labour for a while. He himself withdrew a little 
 way from the rest, and with his head buried in his cowl, 
 sat down to pray. As he was in this position, lo ! the 
 departed monk appeared before him, surrounded by a 
 blaze of glory, and, as it seemed, rather buoyed up in 
 
100 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 air, than standing on the ground. Stephen asked him 
 how he fared. " Well, good father abbot," he answered, 
 " well is it with me, and well be it with thee, for by thy 
 teaching and care I have merited to obtain that never- 
 ending joy, that unknown peace of God, which passeth all 
 understanding, to gain which I patiently and humbly bore 
 the hard toils of our new order. And now according to 
 thy bidding I have returned to bring news of the grace 
 and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to thee, father, and 
 to thy brethren ; you bade me certify you of your state, 
 and I say unto you. Lay aside all doubt, and hold it for 
 certain that your life and conversation is holy and pleas- 
 ing to God. Moreover, the grief at thy want of children 
 to leave behind thee, which gnaws deep into thy heart, 
 shall very soon disappear and turn to joy and triumph ; 
 for even yet the children, which thou who wast child- 
 less shalt have, shall cry in thine ears, ^ The place is 
 too strait for us, give place to us that we may dwell ^/ 
 For behold, from this time forth, the Lord hath done 
 great things for you, in sending many men unto you, and 
 among them very many of noble birth and learned. 
 Yea, and like bees swarming in haste and flowing over 
 the hive, they shall fly away and spread themselves 
 through many parts of the world ; and out of that seed of 
 the Lord, which by His grace has been heaped together 
 here, they shall lay up in the heavenly granaries many 
 sheaves of holy souls, gathered from all parts of the 
 world." On hearing these words the abbot sat wrapt in 
 joy at the favour which the Lord had shown to him. 
 Though the heavenly messenger had finished his task, 
 he still lingered and remained visible to Stephen ; he 
 had undertaken the mission while on earth, in obedience 
 
 * Isaiah xlix. 20 
 
XII.] THE MORTALITY AT CITEAUX. 101 
 
 to his superior, and lie must not go without the leave 
 of him who had imposed the task upon him ; just as 
 he would have done had he been still a living monk, 
 speaking to his abbot in the little parlour at Citeaux, 
 the glorified spirit waited for the benediction of the 
 father. At length he said to Stephen, " It is now time, 
 lord abbot, that I return to Him who sent me ; I 
 pray thee dismiss me in the strength of thy blessing." 
 Stephen shrank back at the thought of assuming autho- 
 rity over that blessed soul, and at last broke silence : 
 " What is it that thou sayest ? Thou hast passed from 
 corruption to incorruption, from vanity to reality, from 
 darkness to light, from death to life, and thou wouldest 
 be blessed by me, who am still groaning under all these 
 miseries? This is against all just right and reason; I 
 ought rather to be blessed by thee, and therefore I pray 
 thee to bless me." But the glorified brother answered : 
 " Not so, father, for the Lord hath given to thee the 
 power of blessing, for He has placed thee on a pinnacle 
 of dignity and of spiritual rule. But me, thy disciple, 
 who by thy healthful doctrine have escaped the stains 
 of the world, it befits to receive thy blessing ; nor will 
 I go hence till I have received it." Stephen, though 
 confused and filled with wonder, did not dare to refuse, 
 and lifting his hand, he blessed him, and the happy soul 
 immediately disappeared, leaving him in a transport of 
 wonder at the favour which our Lord had accorded to 
 him. It required a holy daring at first to seek for 
 this mysterious meeting ; and none but one who, like 
 Stephen, had from dwelling alone with the Lord, in the 
 wilderness and forest, realized the unseen world, could 
 have behaved with calmness and presence of mind, 
 when that world was so suddenly opened upon him. 
 A modern philosopher has in mere wantonness sported 
 
102 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 on the brink of the grave, and made such an agreement 
 as Stephen made with his dying disciple ; but this bold- 
 ness arose from infidelity, Stephen's from strong faith, 
 and God punished the infidel for thus tempting Him by 
 leaving him in his error, while He rewarded the holy 
 abbot by a vision 2. Let no one venture into the world 
 unseen, who does not live above the world of sense. 
 Stephen, however, was now rewarded for all his trials, 
 and for his confidence in God, who never forsakes those 
 that trust in Him. He passed at once from the dreadful 
 state of uncertainty which had harassed him, to one of 
 assurance ; he had still a long and dreary journey before 
 him, and his crown was not yet won, — nay it might still 
 be lost ; but at all events, he now felt sure that the path 
 on which he had entered was the very narrow way of 
 the Lord, and not one which he had chosen for himself 
 in self-will. 
 
 2 " Osborne went to the West Indies, where he became an emi- 
 nent lawyer, and made money, but died young. He and I had 
 made a serious agreement, that the one who happened first to die, 
 should, if possible, make a friendly visit to the other, and acquaint 
 him how he found things in that separate state. But he never ful- 
 filled his promise." — Franklin's Life, vol. i. p. 57. 
 
XIII.] THE ARRIVAL OF THE NOVICES. 103 
 
 > 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE ARRIVAL OF THE NOVICES. 
 
 The vision not only assured Stephen that the Cistercian 
 way of life was acceptable to God, but seemed also to 
 prophesy a speedy increase of numbers in the monas- 
 tery. Shortly afterwards another event occurred, which 
 the monks interpreted as pointing the same way. 
 Another of the brethren was dying, and on his death- 
 bed he told the abbot that he had dreamed that he saw a 
 vast multitude of men washing their clothes in a fountain 
 of most pure water near the church of Citeaux, and that 
 he heard a voice saying that the name of the fountain 
 was ^non. This it will be remembered was the name 
 of the place where the austere St. John baptized a mul- 
 : titude of men with the baptism of repentance. The 
 I dream then was taken to mean that a multitude would 
 1 come to Citeaux to wash their stained garments white 
 by penance. Whatever the vision portended, it is cer- 
 tain that the days of mourning for Citeaux were nearly 
 over. Fourteen years of widowhood and barrenness had 
 now passed away since its first foundation, and the fif- 
 teenth at last was to bring consolation with it. In the 
 year 1113, the iron hammer which hung at the lowly 
 gate of the monastery sounded, and a large number of 
 men entered the cloister, which was hardly ever visited 
 except by some traveller who had been benighted in 
 the forest of Citeaux. Thirty men entered, and coming 
 to Stephen, begged to be admitted as novices. There 
 
104 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 were amongst them men of middle age, who had shone 
 in the councils of princes, and who had hitherto worn 
 nothing less than the furred mantle or the steel hauberk, 
 which they now came to exchange for the poor cowl of 
 St. Benedict ; but the greater part were young men of 
 noble features and deportment, and well might they, for 
 they were of the noblest houses in Burgundy. The 
 whole troop was led by one young man of about 
 twenty-three years of age, and of exceeding beauty^. 
 He was rather tall in stature ; his neck was long and 
 delicate, and his whole frame very thin, like that of a 
 man in weak health. His hair was of a light colour, 
 and his complexion was fair ; but with all its paleness, 
 there was a virgin bloom spread over the thin skin of 
 his cheek. His face was such as had attracted the 
 looks of many high-born ladies 2; but an angelic purity 
 and a dovelike simplicity shone forth in his eyes, which 
 shewed at once the serene chasteness of his soul. This 
 young man was he who was afterwards St. Bernard, 
 and who now came to be the disciple of Stephen, bring- 
 ing with him four brothers and a number of young 
 noblemen, to fill the empty cells of the novices of 
 Citeaux. Well was it worth toiling all the cold dreary 
 night of expectation, if such was to be the ultimate re- 
 sult of the fishing. " On that day," says an old monk, 
 " the whole house seemed to have heard the Holy 
 Spirit responding to them in these words, ' Sing, bar- 
 ren, thou that didst not bear ; break forth into singing, 
 and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child, for 
 more are the children of the desolate than the children 
 
 ^ Vid. Description of St. Bernard's person .by Gaufridus, intimate 
 friend and secretary of the Saint, and afterwards abbot of Clairvaux. 
 St. Bern. Vit. i. lib. iii. 1. Ed. Ben. 
 
 2 Guil. i. 3. 
 
XIII.] THE ARRIVAL OF THE NOVICES. 105 
 
 of the married wife.' " Stephen's expectations were ful- 
 filled to the letter; those regulations which appeared 
 so little likely to attract novices to the convent, had 
 brought St. Bernard to its gates. If he had wished to 
 attract the lukewarm and indifferent, he would have 
 made rules of another kind ; so true is it that the chil- 
 dren of wisdom have a policy of their own, though it be 
 different from that of the world. St. Bernard would 
 have been received with open arms by the monks of 
 any order, — nay, he might have created an order for him- 
 self j but he preferred finding out the poorest and most 
 hidden monastery in the world, and he found that it 
 was Citeaux, just following the train of reasoning which 
 Stephen knew would be that of a saint-like mind. 
 During the whole time of the desolation of Citeaux, and 
 the internal conflicts of its abbot, the Holy Spirit had 
 been silently leading Bernard, and preserving him from 
 the world, that he might come pure and undefiled to this 
 poor abbey. All that concerns him is of such vital im- 
 portance to a clear understanding of the work which 
 Stephen was sent upon earth to perform, that the history 
 would be incomplete without an account of the steps 
 which brought him to sit at the feet of our abbot. It 
 was not without a painful struggle that he had been 
 brought there, as indeed such is God's way; all great 
 saints have had great trials, for there can be no cruci- 
 fixion without pain. After the death of his mother, 
 whom he loved tenderly, and to whom Grod entrusted 
 the forming of his holy mind, he began to think seri- 
 ously of becoming a monk. Though she died in his 
 youth, yet her sacred memory haunted him even in 
 manhood, and she is even said to have appeared to him 
 to beckon him on to the cloister. The beauty of his 
 person and the corrupt manners of the age, more than 
 
106 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 once at this critical time put his purity in danger, and 
 though through the grace of the Holy Spirit, he walked 
 through the midst of the burning fire even without feeling 
 it, yet he determined to shun a world where wickedness 
 so abounded. His noble birth would have opened his 
 way to the highest dignities of the Church ; " but," says 
 his historian, " he deliberated in what way he could most 
 perfectly leave the world, and began to search and to 
 trace out where he could most safely and most purely 
 find rest for his soul under the yoke of Christ. The 
 place which occurred to him in his search was the new 
 plantation of Citeaux, where monastic discipline was 
 brought anew to what it had been at first. There the 
 harvest was plenty but the labourers were few, on ac- 
 count of the exceeding severity of the life and of its 
 poverty, at a time when the fervour of the monks 
 at their first conversion was hardly at all on the 
 decline." Bernard had no intention of becoming a 
 monk, with a mitre and pastoral staff in reversion ; 
 his object was that his life should be hid with 
 Christ in God, and that his conversation should be 
 in heaven. His first step was, however, comparatively 
 easy : but much remained to be done before Stephen 
 received his illustrious disciple within the walls of 
 Citeaux. Bernard had gained a victory over the con- 
 cupiscence of the flesh, and over the pride of high-birth ; 
 military glory, which was the passion of all his brothers, 
 had no attractions for him, but he had still a weak side 
 on which the tempter could assail him, and this was the 
 pride of intellect. No one can read his writings with- 
 out seeing the wonderful genius which they show : the 
 same burning eloquence which made him a Christian 
 preacher, if it had been heard in kings' courts would 
 have carried all before it ; and the acuteness with which 
 
XIII.] THE ARRIVAL OF THE NOVICES. 107 
 
 he at once sees deep into metaphysical questions, would 
 have put him at the head of philosophical schools. 
 And was all this to go too 1 Was his tongue to remain 
 silent in Cistercian dreariness *? and his acuteness to be 
 buried with rude and unlearned monks 1 Yes, so it 
 was j all was to be sacrificed, beauty of form, noble 
 birth, quickness and depth of thought, brilliant elo- 
 quence ; all were to be nailed to the cross, and he was 
 to become a common labourer, planter, reaper, plough- 
 man, and if so be, hedger and ditcher, wrapped in a 
 coarse cowl, with low-born men for his fellows. We 
 have not yet spoken of one tie, perhaps the strongest of 
 all, and the one which cost the most pain to break, and 
 that was the love of friends and relations. The slightest 
 acquaintance with his life will show the painful struggle 
 of his aiFections, even when he was abbot of Clairvaux ; 
 how he mourns with passionate grief over the death of 
 his brother, or still more over the spiritual death of any 
 one whom he knew. Besides his kinsmen, his brilliant 
 and amiable qualities had endeared him to all the flower 
 of the nobles of Burgundy. As soon as the slightest 
 hint was known of Bernard's intention, all these were 
 up in arms ; there were his sister Humbeline, a noble 
 and beautiful young lady, his eldest brother Guido, 
 already a married man, and a good soldier of the duke 
 of Burgundy ; Grerard too, the accomplished knight, 
 the enthusiastic soldier, and the prudent leader, beloved 
 for his sweet disposition, and his friend Hugh, the lord of 
 Macon, all thinking his project absurd, and himself 
 half mad. Was he to throw himself at the feet of a 
 fanatic, like Stephen, and to bury himself in the corner 
 of an old wood ? The thing must not be. Impossible 
 indeed it was with man ; but very possible with God, 
 This was one of the wonders of the cross, going on 
 
108 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 about them, which was in time to shake the whole of 
 France, — nay, the whole world. Even they themselves 
 discovered that it was possible ; it was a dangerous 
 thing to come across Bernard in his vocation, as they 
 soon found to their cost. However, though they could 
 not move, yet they could cause much pain to Bernard. 
 As he acknowledged afterwards, his steps were well 
 nigh turned back, and the struggle was most painful. 
 If it had not been for his mother's memory he would 
 have fallen, but her sweet lessons were evermore recur- 
 ring to his mind and urging him on. One day, he was 
 on his way to see his brothers, who were then with the 
 army of the duke besieging the castle of Grancey; 
 these thoughts burst so forcibly on his mind that he 
 entered into a church which was open by the wayside, 
 and prayed with a torrent of tears, stretching his hands 
 to heaven, and pouring out his heart like water before 
 the Lord his God. From that hour the purpose of his 
 heart was fixed, and he set his face stedfastly to go to 
 Citeaux. " It was not, however," pursues his historian, 
 " with a deaf ear, that he heard the voice of one saying, 
 * Let him that heareth say, Gome.' Truly, from that 
 hour, like a flame which burneth the wood, and a fire 
 consuming the mountains, here and there, first seizing 
 on all about it, then going forth to things farther away, 
 thus the fire which the Lord had sent into the heart 
 bf his servant, and had vrilled that it should burn, first 
 attacks his brothers, all but the youngest, who could not 
 yet go into religion, and who was left to comfort his old 
 father, then his kinsmen, fellows, and friends, and all of 
 whose conversion there could be any hope." First came 
 his uncle Galdricus, a puissant noble and a valiant 
 knight, well known for feats of arms ; he quitted his 
 good castle of Touillon, his vassals and his riches, and 
 
XIII.] THE ARRIVAL OF THE NOVICES. 109 
 
 gave in to the burning words of his nephew. Then the 
 heavenly fire kindled his young brother Bartholomew ; 
 his heart gave way easily, for he had not yet been made 
 a knight, having still his spurs to win. Then came 
 Andrew, the fourth brother ; it was a sore trial to him to 
 give up the world, for he had just received his knightly 
 sword from the altar, at the hands of a bishop, and had 
 seen his first field ; but at last he yielded, for he saw 
 in a vision his sainted mother smiling upon him, and 
 he cried out to Bernard " I see my mother," and at once 
 gave in. But the trial was still sorer when it came to 
 the turn of Guy, the eldest of the brothers ; he was a 
 married man, and his young wife loved him tenderly, 
 besides which he had more than one daughter, with 
 whom it was hard indeed to part in the age of their 
 childhood ; and even after he had yielded to his bro- 
 ther's persuasions, and had broken through all these ties^ 
 a greater difficulty than all remained behind. It was a 
 law of the Church, that neither of a married pair could 
 enter a cloister without the consent of the other ; and 
 how was it possible that a delicate and high-born woman 
 could consent to part with her husband and enter into a 
 monastery ? Bernard, however, declared to Guy, that if 
 she did not consent, God would smite her with a deadly 
 disease ; and so it turned out ; she soon after fell ill, 
 and "finding," says William of St. Thierry, "that it 
 was hard for her to kick against the pricks, she sent for 
 Bernard" and gave her consent. None, however, clung 
 to the world with such deep-rooted affection as Gerard, 
 the second brother : as we said before, he was a frank 
 and high-spirited soldier, yet, withal, sage in counsel, 
 and he had won all about him by his kind-heartedness. 
 The world was all open before him ; his talents were sure 
 to raise him to high rank and honour ; and he was 
 
110 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 ardently fond of feats of chivalrous daring. To him 
 the conduct of his brothers seemed to be mere folly, 
 and he abruptly repelled Bernard's advice. But the 
 fire of charity was still more powerful than the young 
 knight's ardour ; " I know, I know," said Bernard, 
 " that pain alone will give wisdom to thine ears," and 
 laying his hands upon Gerard's side, he continued, " A 
 day will come, and that soon, when a lance, piercing 
 this side, will tear a way to thy heart for this counsel of 
 thy salvation which thou dost despise ; and thou shalt 
 be in fear, but shalt not die." A few days after this^ 
 Gerard had, in the heat of the battle, charged into the 
 midst of the enemy ; there he was unhorsed, wounded 
 with a lance in the very place where Bernard had laid 
 his finger, and dragged along the ground. His brother's 
 words rose before him, and he cried out, " I am a monk, 
 a monk of Citeaux." Little did Stephen think, in the 
 midst of his perplexities, that the name of his poor 
 monastery had been heard in the thick of a deadly 
 fight, and that a nobleman had chosen that strange place 
 to make his profession, with swords pointed at his breast, 
 and lances and pennons flying about him. Notwith- 
 standing Gerard's exclamations, he was taken captive, 
 and lodged in a dungeon within the castle of his ene- 
 mies ; he, however, soon after made his escape from 
 prison in a way which seemed perfectly miraculous, and 
 joined his brother Bernard. Now the whole band of 
 brothers had been won over ; but Bernard was not yet 
 satisfied ; the fields were white for the harvest, and he 
 went about collecting his sheaves, that he might lay 
 them all up in the garners of Citeaux. Hugh, the lord 
 of Macon, was also to be brought to Stephen's feet ; the 
 young nobles drew together into knots in self-defence, 
 whenever Bernard passed by, for fear of being carried 
 
XIII.] THE ARRIVAL OF THE NOVICES. Ill 
 
 away by his powerful word ; mothers hid their sons, 
 lest in the flower of youth they should hide themselves 
 in a cloister. All, however, was in vain ; " as many," 
 says the abbot of St. Thierry, " as were so pre-ordained 
 by the grace of God working in them, and the word of 
 his strength, and through the prayer and the earnestness 
 of His servant, first hesitated, then were pierced to the 
 heart ; one after another they believed and gave in." 
 Thirty men of the most noble blood in Burgundy were 
 thus collected together ; as many of them were married 
 men, their wives also had to give up the world ; all 
 these arrangements required time, and for six months 
 they put off their conversion till their affairs could be 
 arranged. The females retired to the Benedictine 
 monastery of Juilly, whence afterwards it is supposed 
 that many were transferred to the first Cistercian nun- 
 nery, the abbey of Tard, near Dijon. When the time 
 for proceeding to Citeaux was come, Bernard and his 
 four brothers went to the castle of Fountains, which 
 was their family place, to take leave of their father and 
 sister. This was their last glimpse of the world ; they 
 then left all and followed Christ. The little Nivard 
 was playing about with other boys as they passed. 
 Guy, the eldest brother, stopped his childish glee for a 
 moment, to tell him that all the broad lands of Foun- 
 tains, and many a fair portion of the earth, were to be 
 for him. " What," said the boy, " earth for me, heaven 
 for you ! the bargain is not a fair one." Probably he 
 knew not then what he said, but as soon as he could 
 he followed his brothers. Thus the old father was left 
 to sit alone in his deserted halls with his daughter 
 Humbeline ; he was now a barren trunk, with the 
 choice boughs lopped off; his noble line was to come 
 ^0 an end, and when he dropped into the grave, the 
 
112 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [cH. 
 
 castle of his fathers was to pass into the hands of 
 strangers. 
 
 Now, it may be asked, that Stephen has housed his 
 thirty novices, what has he or any one else gained by 
 it 1 what equivalent is gained for all these domestic 
 ties rudely rent, for all these bleeding hearts torn asun- 
 der, and carrying their wounds unhealed into the clois- 
 ter ? Would not rustics suit Stephen's purpose well, 
 if he would cultivate a marsh in an old wood, without 
 desolating the hearths of the noblest houses of Burgundy? 
 Human feeling revolts when high nobles with their steel 
 helmets, shining hauberks, and painted surcoats, are 
 levelled with the commonest tillers of the soil ; and even 
 feelings of pity arise when high-born dames, clad in min- 
 ever, and blazing with jewels, cast all aside for the rough 
 sackcloth and the poor serge of St. Benedict ; what shall 
 we say, when young mothers quit their husbands and 
 their families to bury themselves in a cloister'? There 
 are here no painted windows and golden candlesticks, 
 with chasubles of white and gold to help out the illusion ; 
 feeling an imagination, all are shocked alike, and every 
 faculty of the natural man is jarred at once at the thought. 
 Such words might have been spoken even in Stephen's 
 time, but " wisdom is justified of her children." One 
 w^ord suffices to silence all these murmurers ; Ecce Homo, 
 Behold the Man. The wonders of the incarnation are 
 an answer to all cavils. Why, it may as well be asked, 
 did our blessed Lord choose to be a poor man, instead 
 of being clothed in purple and fine linen ? why was His 
 mother a poor virgin 1 why was he born in an inn, and 
 laid in a manger 1 why did He leave His blessed mother, 
 and almost repulse her, when she would speak to Him ? 
 why was that mother's soul pierced with agony at the 
 sufferings of her divine Son ? why, when one drop of 
 
XIII.] THE ARRIVAL OF THE NOVICES. 113 
 
 His precious blood would have healed the whole crea- 
 tion, did He pour it all out for us ^ in a word, why, 
 when He might have died (if it be not wrong to say so) 
 what the world calls a glorious death, did He choose 
 out the most shameful, besides heaping to Himself every 
 form of insult, and pain of body and soul 1 He did all 
 this to show us, that suifering was now to be the natu- 
 ral state of the new man, just as pleasure is the natural 
 state of the old. Suffering and humiliation are the 
 proper weapons of the Christian, precisely in the same 
 way that independence, unbounded dominion and power, 
 are the instruments of the greatness of the world. No 
 one can see how all this acts to bring about the final 
 triumph of good over evil ; it requires faith, but so does 
 the spectacle of our blessed Lord, naked on the cross, 
 with St. Mary and St. John weeping on each side. 
 After casting our eyes on the holy rood, does it never 
 occur to us to wonder how it can be possible to be 
 saved in the midst of the endearments of a family, and 
 the joys of domestic life'? God forbid that any one 
 should deny the possibility ! but does it not at first sight 
 require proof that heaven can be won by a life spent in 
 this quiet way^ Again, let us consider the dreadful 
 nature of sin, even of what are called the least sins, and 
 would not any one wish to cast in his lot with Stephen, 
 and wash them away by continual penance? Now if 
 what has been said is not enough to reconcile the 
 reader's mind to their leaving their father in a body, 
 which looks like quitting a positive duty, it should be 
 considered that they believed themselves to be acting 
 under the special direction of God. Miracles were 
 really wrought to beckon them on ; at least they were 
 firmly convinced of the truth of those miracles, which is 
 enough for our purpose, and they would have disobeyed 
 
 I 
 
114 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 what they conceived to be God's guidance, if they had 
 remained in the world. Miracles, indeed, cannot be 
 pleaded to the reversing of commands of the Decalogue ; 
 but persons leave their parents for causes which do not 
 involve religion at all, as to follow some profession in a 
 distant quarter of the globe, or to marry ; and we may 
 surely excuse St. Bernard and his brothers for conduct 
 which was so amply justified by the event. One word 
 more ; every one will allow, that he who is continually 
 meditating on heaven and heavenly things, and ever has 
 his conversation in heaven, where Christ is sitting at 
 the right hand of God, is more perfect than he who is 
 always thinking on worldly affairs. Let no one say 
 that this perfection is ideal, for it is a mere fact 
 that it has been attained. Stephen and Bernard, and' 
 ten thousand other saints, have won this perfection, and 
 it may be and is won now, for the Church verily is not 
 dead, nor have the gates of hell prevailed against her. 
 All cannot attain to such a high state on earth, for it is 
 not the vocation of all. It was, however, plainly God's 
 will that all Bernard's convertites should be so called, 
 from the fact of their having attained to that state of 
 perfection. They were happy, for to them it was 
 given not to fear those words of our Lord, " Whosoever 
 loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of 
 me ;" or again, that terrible saying, spoken to one who 
 asked to go and bury his father, " Let the dead bury 
 their dead." Moreover, they knew that blessing, 
 " Verily, I say unto you. There is no man that hath left 
 house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or 
 wife, or children, or lands for my sake and the Gospel's, 
 but he shall receive an hundred-fold now in this time, 
 houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and 
 children, and lands, with persecutions ; and in the world 
 
XIII.] THE ARRIVAL OP THE NOVICES. 115 
 
 to come eternal life." Bernard did receive back both 
 father and sister, for his father died in his arms a monk 
 at Clairvaux, and his sister also in time retired to a 
 cloister. Let any one read St. Bernard's sermons on 
 the Song of Solomon, and he will not doubt that monks 
 have joys of their own, which none but those who have 
 felt them can comprehend. 
 
116 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE WORLD EDIFIED BY THE BRETHREN OF CITEAUX. 
 
 The times of refreshing from the Lord had indeed 
 come to the forlorn monastery ; the unheard-of conver- 
 sion of so many noble youths filled the world with 
 wonder. It was a proof that the Church was not only 
 not dead, but not even asleep. At the beginning of the 
 eleventh century, the heart of Christendom seemed to 
 have failed, and all men thought that the world was 
 coming to an end ; throughout the whole of the century 
 the Church was either preparing for, or actually engaged 
 in a deadly struggle with the civil power, and in that 
 miserable confusion men seemed to have lost their land- 
 marks, and not to know what was to come of all the 
 perplexity which they saw about them. Meanwhile, 
 the Church herself felt the deteriorating effects of the 
 struggle j men saw the strange spectacle of courtier- 
 bishops, acting as the ministers of kings, and behaving 
 in all respects like the wild nobles, from whom they 
 were only distinguished by wearing a mitre, and carry- 
 ing a crozier. Let any one think how bishops be- 
 haved in the contest between St. Anselm and the king, 
 or again in Germany, how many of them sided with the 
 emperor against the pope, and he will see how the feudal 
 system had worked upon the Church. In the begin- 
 ning of the twelfth century, the struggle seemed as 
 doubtful as ever, when the emperor Henry V., like a 
 loving son of the Church that he was, took Pope Pascal 
 
XIV.] THE WORLD EDIFIED BY THE BRETHREN. 117 
 
 prisoner in the very Basilica of St. Peter, and would 
 not let him go till he had given him a blessing ; that 
 is, till he had given up the question of investiture, 
 and acknowledged himself vanquished by crowning his 
 tyrant 1. This, however, was the last act of the great 
 struggle : three years after Bernard's entrance into 
 Citeaux, the Church resumed her former attitude, when, 
 in the Lateran council, the pope acknowledged his 
 error, and allowed the bishops to excommunicate the 
 emperor. The time of the triumph of the Church was 
 at hand ; but though she might conquer the powers of 
 the world, how was she to expel luxury from her own 
 bosom 1 Enough has been said in these pages to show, 
 that the cloister itself was deeply infected by a spirit of 
 worldly pomp. What was worst of all, even Cluny, the 
 nurse of holy prelates and of great popes, was degene- 
 rating : in St. Hugh's time, its vast riches had been 
 used in the service of God; but now that he was dead, 
 it became evident in how precarious a situation is a 
 rich monastery. One bad abbott is enough to spoil the 
 whole, and St. Hugh's successor, Pontius, was utterly 
 unequal to the task of governing this vast abbey. He 
 was a young, ambitious man, high in favour with popes, 
 emperors, and all great men, the go-between of high 
 personages in important matters, and withal specially 
 neglectful of the business of the monastery. For three 
 years he went on well enough; but just about the time 
 of the rising prosperity of Citeaux, he began to vex 
 the monks by his haughty conduct. To finish a melan- 
 choly story, after ten years of bickering he threw up his 
 abbey in disgust. After various acts of turbulence, this 
 accomplished and high-spirited man, who might have 
 
 * Baronius, in Ann. 1111. 
 
118 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 been one of the greatest personages of his day, died in 
 a prison, excommunicated. Out of reverence for Cluny, 
 he was allowed to be buried in consecrated ground, and 
 long afterwards his tomb was shown in the church, on 
 which lay is e^gy, represented with a cord round his 
 hands and feet. His mismanagement ruined Cluny for 
 a time, and threw the whole of its dependent priories 
 into disorder. When the monastic state was thus on 
 the wane, how could any improvement be expected in 
 the bishops, who were mostly supplied from the monks? 
 The Church might shake off the feudal yoke, but how 
 was the leprosy of pomp and luxury to be shaken out 
 of her own bosom, if her own rulers were tainted ? At 
 this juncture, the voice of one crying in the wilderness 
 is heard, calling to repentance those who dwelt in kings' 
 houses, clothed in soft raiment. Stephen's burning 
 love of poverty astonished the world, especially when 
 God set His seal upon His servant's work, by bringing 
 to his feet such a disciple as Bernard, with a train of 
 noble followers. It was a movement in favour of holy 
 poverty, which vibrated over the whole of Christendom. 
 Robert, Alberic, and Stephen had thus created a new 
 idea in the Church ; not that there ever were wanting men 
 who would be poor for Christ's sake, but the Cistercian 
 monk in his white habit, and his train of lay-brethren 
 working for him, that he might have time for contem- 
 plation, is a personage the precise likeness of whom has 
 never been seen brought out in a regular system before. 
 The institution of lay-brethren had always existed, as 
 we have said before, but it was more systematized in the 
 Cistercians, and had a more distinct object. The lay- 
 brethren took charge of the granges, which were often 
 at some little distance from the monastery. The choir- 
 brethren were thus enabled always to remain within the 
 
XIV.] THE WORLD EDIFIED BY THE BRETHEEN. 119 
 
 cloister, and had an uninterrupted time for spiritual 
 reading and prayer. Meditation had thus a marked 
 place in the system ; and it is more observable, because 
 the length and intricacy of the splendid services of 
 Cluny took up a very great part of the time of the 
 monks. The result of this system was, what may be 
 called a new school of ascetic writers, of whom St. 
 Bernard is the chief, followed by Gilbert of Hoyland, 
 abbot of Swineshed in England, ^Elred of Rievaux, and 
 William of St. Thierry. The science of the interior 
 man thus began to be more especially developed by the 
 Cistercian reform. Again, Stephen and his disciples 
 were destined to exercise a more direct influence on the 
 world than the old Benedictines ; from the fact of there 
 being a reform in the particular direction of a revival 
 of poverty, they occupied, so to speak, a more militant 
 position than the monks before them. They found 
 themselves at once opposed not only to monasteries, 
 but to all luxurious prelates, and secular churchmen 
 who were the favourites of kings, and so, indirectly, to 
 kings. We shall soon see, that all the reforms in the 
 Church naturally connected themselves with Citeaux, as 
 their centre. 
 
120 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A DAY AT CITEAUX. 
 
 : St. Robert and St Alberic had both a share in the 
 establishment of the new monastery ; it was Stephen, 
 however, exclusively, who framed the order of jthe Cis- 
 tercians. Before his time it was only a single convent ; 
 but under him it grew into the head of a vast monastic 
 federacy, extending through every country in Europe. 
 He was the author of the internal arrangement of this 
 large body ; and let no one suppose, that legislating for 
 many thousands of monks is at all an easier task than 
 settling the constitution of an equal number of citizens. 
 Before, however, proceeding to consider Citeaux in this 
 dignified capacity, as the queen and mother of an order, 
 it will be well to go through the daily exercises of a 
 Cistercian convent, that the reader may know what it is 
 that is growing up before him. Suppose the monks all 
 lying on their beds of straw, ranged in order along the 
 dormitory, the abbot in the midst. Each of them lay 
 full dressed, with his cowl drawn over his head, with 
 his cucuUa and tunic, and even with stockings on his 
 feet'. His scapular alone was dispensed with. Doubt- 
 less no one complained of heat, for the bed-clothes were 
 scanty, consisting of a rough wollen cloth between 
 their limbs and the straw, and a sort of woollen 
 rug over them 2. The long dormitory had no fire, and 
 
 * Us. Cist. 82. 2 Calmet on c. 55 of St. Ben. Reg. 
 
XV.] A DAY AT CITEAUX. 121 
 
 currents of air had full room to play under the unceiled 
 roof, left in the native rudeness of its beams. A lamp 
 lighted up the apartment, and burned all night long. 
 At the proper hour the clock awoke the sacristan, who 
 slept, not in the dormitory, but near the church. He 
 was the timekeeper of the whole community, and regu- 
 lated the clock, which seems to have been something of 
 an alarum 3, for he used to set it at the right hour over- 
 night. His was an important charge, for he had to 
 calculate the time, and if he was more wakeful than 
 usual, or if his clock went wrong, the whole convent 
 was robbed of a part of its scanty rest, and the last 
 lesson had to be lengthened that the hour of lauds 
 might come right again. The time for rising varied 
 with these strict observers of the ancient rule. St. 
 Benedict commands that his monks should get up at 
 the eighth hour of the night during the winter. In his 
 time, however, the length of the hours varied in sum- 
 mer and winter. Day and night were each divided into 
 twelve hours ; but as the day dawns earlier in some parts 
 of the year than in others, the twelve hours of night 
 would then be distributed over a less space of time at 
 one period than at another, and would therefore be 
 shorter. The eighth hour of the night would thus, 
 though always two hours after midnight, be sometimes 
 closer to it than at others. It, however, always fell 
 about two o'clock, according to our mode of reckoning"*. 
 In summer, the hour of matins was so fixed, that they 
 should be over a short time before lauds, which were 
 always at day-break. The sacristan, as soon as he was 
 up, trimmed the church lamp, and that of the dormitory, 
 and rang the great bell ; in a moment, the whole of this 
 
 ^ Us. Cist. 114. * Bona, Div. Psal. c. iv. 3. 
 
122 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 little world was alive ; the sole things which a minute 
 ago looked as if they were watching were the two 
 solitary lamps burning all night long, one in the dor- 
 mitory, the other in the church, as if they were ready 
 trimmed with oil for the coming of the Lord ; but now 
 every eye is awake, and every hand is making the sign 
 of the cross. Most men find it hard to leave even a 
 bed of straw, and the seven hours in winter and six in 
 summer were but just enough for bodies wearied out 
 with hard work, and always hungering ; doubtless the 
 poor novice often stretched himself, before the tones of 
 the bell which had broken his slumbers fully roused 
 him to consciousness ; but starting from bed, and putting 
 himself at once into the presence of his Lord, was but 
 the work of a moment for the older monk. The prayer 
 which they were to say in rising is not prescribed in the 
 rule ; it is probable, however, that after crossing them- 
 selves in the name of the Holy Trinity, they repeated 
 the psalm, Deus in adjutorium meum intended , and then 
 walked towards the church. One by one these white 
 figures glided along noiselessly through the cloister, 
 keeping modestly close to the walls, and leaving the 
 middle space free, where none but the abbot walked^. 
 Their cowls were drawn over their heads, which were 
 slightly bent down ; their eyes were fixed on the ground, 
 and their hands hung down motionless by their sides, 
 wrapt in the sleeves of the cuculla. The old Cister- 
 cian church, after the model of which was built even 
 the stately church which afterwards contained all the 
 brethren in the flourishing times of Citeaux^, was re- 
 markable in its arrangement. It was intended for 
 
 * Martenne, de Antiq. Mon. Rit. lib. i. 1. 27. 
 
 6 Rit. Cist. 1.5. "^ Rit. Cist. 1. 3. 
 
XV.] » A DAY AT CITEAUX. 123 
 
 monks alone ; few entered it but those guests who 
 happened to come to the abbey, and they were not 
 always allowed to be present^. It was divided into 
 four parts ; at the upper end was the high altar, stand- 
 ing apart from the wall : the sole object which Cis- 
 tercian simplicity allowed upon it was a crucifix of 
 painted wood ; and over it was suspended a pix, in 
 which the Holy Sacrament was reserved, with great 
 honour, in a linen cloth9, with a lamp burning before it 
 day and night i. There do not appear to have been 
 even candlesticks upon the altar, though two large lights 
 burned during the time of mass immediately before it 2. 
 The part in front of this most sacred place was called 
 the presbyterium, and there the priest, deacon, and sub- 
 deacon, sat on chairs placed for them when the holy 
 sacrifice was to be celebrated. Next came the choir 
 itself, where the brethren sat in simple stalls, ranged on 
 each side of the church. In front of the stalls of the 
 monks were the novices, kneeling on the pavement 3, 
 and sitting on low seats. The stall of the abbot was on 
 the right hand, in the lower part of the choir, and the 
 prior's place was on the opposite side, just where the 
 head of a college and his deputy sit^^ji^-€fflErT^-TMjr_own 
 collegiate chapels. Beyond thi^^^^e^'i'etrb-^r^S. 
 
 « Us. Cist. 17. 21. 55. fflT H T V ^^^- '^^- ' ' "^^ I 
 
 ^ V. c. 82, in the collection of fflafotea of the general chapters / 
 before his time, made by Stephen's^^ccessor. The words, " et 
 potest," show, that it was in a place mt^ accessible to all^^^^he 
 lamp is mentioned again in a later collection erf stiatutCs; Nom. 
 p. 277. Those who know the reverence of St. Stephen's age for 
 the Holy Sacrament will be at no loss to know where the lamp was 
 placed, though it is not expressly mentioned. For a contemporary 
 instance of a light before the high altar, yid. Matt. Par. Vit. Pauli 
 Abb. Sti Alb. 
 
 ^ Us. Cist. 55. 3 Fosbroke, Monachism, p. 203. 
 
124 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. • [CH. 
 
 which was not the Lady Chapel, but was at the other end 
 of the church nearest the nave, and was the place marked 
 out for those in weak health, but still well enough to leave 
 the infirmary \ Last of all came the nave, which was 
 smaller than the rest of the church^, unlike the long and 
 stately naves of our cathedral churches. Into this church, 
 called by the modest name of oratory, the first fathers 
 of Citeaux entered nightly to sing the praises of God, 
 and to pray for the world, which was lying asleep 
 beyond the borders of their forest. It had many sepa- 
 rate entrances, by which different portions of the con- 
 vent flocked in with a quick step to rouse themselves 
 from sleep ; but all in perfect silence : by one side en- 
 trance the brethren came in between the presbytery and 
 the stalls^, while the abbot and prior, and those about 
 him, entered at the lower end ; there was also a door 
 leading into the cloister 7^ through which processions 
 passed. Each brother as he came in threw back his 
 cowl, and bowed to each altar that he passed, and then 
 to the high altar. They then, except on Sundays and 
 some feast days, knelt in their stalls with their hands 
 clasped upon their breasts, and their feet close to- 
 gether, and said the Lord's Prayer and the Creed. In 
 this position they remained till the Deus in adjutorium 
 had been said, when they rose and remained standing 
 during the rest of the service, except where it was 
 otherwise especially marked. Matins lasted for about 
 two hours, during which they chanted psalms, inter- 
 spersed with anthems ; the glimmering light of the lamp 
 was not intended to do more than pierce through the 
 gloom of the church, for the greater part of the service 
 was recited by heart, and a candle was placed just in 
 
 * Us. Cist. 101. Rit. Cist. 1. 3. s Voy. Lit. i. •224. 
 
 6 Us. Cist. 68. Rit. Cist. 1. 5. 7 Us. Cist. 7. 21. 
 
XV.] A DAY AT CITEAUX. 125 
 
 that part where the lesson was to be read^; if it were 
 not that their lips moved, they might have been taken 
 for so many white statues, for their arms were placed 
 motionless upon their bosoms in the form of a cross 9, 
 and every movement was regulated so as to be as tran- 
 quil as possible ^ The sweet chanting of the early Cister- 
 cians struck some of their contemporaries as something 
 supernatural. " With such solemnity and devotion do 
 they celebrate the divine office," says Stephen of Tour- 
 nay, " that you might fancy that angels' voices were 
 heard in their concert ; by their psalms, hymns, and 
 spiritual songs, they draw men to praise God, and they 
 imitate the angels 2." Yet this effect was simply pro- 
 duced by common Gregorian chants, sung in unison ;. 
 as in the other parts of divine worship, the Cistercians 
 were reformers in church music. They sent, in their 
 simplicity, all the way to Metz to procure the antipho- 
 nary of that church, as being the most likely to be pure 
 from innovation, probably because Amalarius, a deacon 
 of Metz, was a celebrated liturgical writer in the time 
 of the son of Charlemagne ; but they soon found that 
 many ages had passed over the Church since the time 
 of the great emperor of the West. The book was very 
 defective, and was filled with innovations, and they 
 immediately set about correcting it-^. Monastic music 
 had suffered, as well as other portions of St. Benedict's 
 rule ; and our Cistercians speak with contempt of 
 womanish counter-tenor voices^, which they inexorably 
 banished from their churches. Their chanting was 
 especially suited for contemplation : they dwelt on each 
 
 8 Us. Cist. 68. 9 Rit. Cist. 1. 8. 
 
 ^ lb. 1. 6. 2 Bona de Div. Psal. 18. 5. 
 
 ^^ Tract, de Cantu. in St. Bernard's works. 
 
 * St. Bern, in Cant. 47. Inst. Cap. Gen. 71. ap. Nomasticon. 
 
126 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 syllable, and sucked in the honied sense of the Psalms 
 as they pronounced the words. It is not wonderful if 
 the men of that time believed that devils trembled, and 
 angels noted down in letters of gold^ the words which 
 dropped from their lips, as these grave and masculine 
 voices chanted through the darkness of the night the 
 triumph of good over evil, and the glories of the Lord 
 and of His Church. Few, indeed, are worthy to chant 
 the Psalms: who can repeat, for instance, the 119th 
 Psalm as he should? But Stephen and his brethren 
 might pronounce those burning words of the Spirit 
 without shame, for they had indeed given up the world. 
 " Ignitum eloquium tuum vehementer, et servus dilexit 
 illud." 
 
 After matins were over they never returned to sleep, 
 but were permitted either to pray in the church, or to sit 
 in the cloister. In summer, when the day dawned upon 
 the convent almost as soon as matins were over, the time 
 thus allowed was very short, for lauds followed close on 
 the first glimmer of morning light. In winter there was 
 a considerable interval between lauds and matins, and it 
 was during this part of the day that the monk was left 
 most to himself This was the time allotted to mental 
 prayer, and many a monk might then be seen kneeling 
 in his stall, occupied in that meditation which, accord- 
 ing to St. Bernard, " gathers itself up into itself, and 
 by Divine help, separates itself from earthly things, to 
 contemplate God^." It was one of the rules of the order 
 that they were not to prostrate themselves full length 
 on the ground in church 7, but should keep their souls 
 in quiet before God, without violent action. Others 
 
 5 Exord. Mag. 2. 3. « De Con. 5 2. 
 
 7 Inst. Cap. Gen. 86. 
 
XV.] A DAY AT CITEAUX. 127 
 
 again remained in the cloister, which, with all its strict- 
 ness and tranquillity, was a busy scene. Let no one 
 think of the cloister as it is now, in a state of desertion, 
 about our cathedrals, cold and comfortless, with all the 
 glass taken out of its windows ; its religious silence has 
 given place to the silence of the churchyard. It was 
 formerly the very paradise of the monk, from which all 
 the rest of the convent was named ^ ; it shut him out 
 from the world " with its royal rampart of discipline," 
 and was an image of the rest of heaven. It was the 
 passage by which every part of the convent buildings 
 were connected, and around which on Palm Sunday 
 they walked in procession, with green palms in their 
 hands. At the east end of the church, at right angles 
 with it, was the dormitory, opposite the church was the 
 refectory, and adjoining the church was the chapter- 
 house 9; in the centre was a cross. After matins, then 
 those of the brethren who were not in the church were 
 all together in the cloister. In one part was the cantor 
 marking out the lessons, and hearing some brother re- 
 peat them in a low suppressed tone ; or else a novice 
 would be learning to recite the psalter by heart. In 
 another part, ranged on seats, the brethren would sit in 
 unbroken silence reading, with their cowls so disposed 
 
 8 St. Bern. Serm. de Div. 42. 
 
 ^ Calmet, Regie de St. Benoit. ch. 66. The order observed in 
 processions falls in with Calmet's opinion, v. Us. Cist. 17. It is 
 there implied that the deacon, who went first, had at the last sta- 
 tion of the procession his face to the east and his back to the bre- 
 thren. The whole convent, therefore, after having made the round 
 of the cloister, and finished at the point where they began, looked to 
 the east ; they must, therefore, at first starting from the church, 
 have moved towards the east. And this fixes the position of their 
 first station, which is known to have been the dormitory, at the east 
 end of the church. 
 
128 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 about their heads, that it might be seen that they were 
 not Xsleep. It was here that St. Bernard gained his 
 wonderful knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, meditating 
 /Upon them before the morning light. In another corner 
 of the cloister, the boys of the monastery would be at 
 school, under the master of the novices. The library, 
 from which the monks took the books in which they 
 read, was between the church and the chapter-house, 
 and was. under the care of the sacristan : and let no 
 one despise the library of a Cistercian convent. St. 
 Augustine seems to have been a favourite author with 
 them^, and Citeaux itself had no lack of expositions of 
 Scripture by the Fathers 2. Shall we not be surprised 
 to find a copy of the Koran in the armarium of Clair- 
 vaux 1 and yet there it was, the gift of Peter the Vene- 
 rable, who had ordered it to be translated carefully ^. 
 Citeaux had its scriptorium as well as its library, where 
 manuscripts were copied by the brethren. It is true 
 that the antiquary would despise the handiwork of the 
 Cistercians, for no illuminated figures of saints, ela- 
 borate capital letters, or flowers in arabesque creeping 
 up the margin, were allowed ; jewelled covers and 
 gold clasps were also forbidden * ; but instead of this, 
 religious silence was strictly observed, and the scrip- 
 torium was a place for meditation as much as the 
 cloister itself^. Their labours did not consist in simply 
 copying the manuscripts ; they took pains to discover 
 various readings, and to compare editions. It might 
 have been supposed, that the cold winds of the forest, 
 with the burning sun and drenching rain, must have 
 
 * Mabillon de Mon. Stud. App. Art. 24. St. Bern, de Bapt. 
 
 2 St. Bern. Vit. Guiller. i. 24. ap. Ben. 
 
 3 Pet. Yen. Ep. 4. 17. " Inst. Cap. Gen. 13. 81. 
 
 * Inst. Cap. Gen. 87. 
 
XV.] A DAY AT CITEAUX. 129 
 
 fairly bleached out of Stephen's mind all the learning 
 which he had gathered in the schools of Paris. But 
 he left behind him a work, which proved that he kep 
 under his Cistercian habit the same heart which had 
 urged him to leave his old cloister of Sherborne to 
 study in Scotland and in France. A manuscript edition 
 of the Bible, written under the eye of our abbot him- 
 self, was preserved with great reverence at Citeaux up 
 to the time of the French Revolution. Not content 
 with consulting Latin manuscripts, he even had recourse 
 to the Rabbins, in order to settle the readings of the 
 Old Testament. In this way there could never be a 
 lack of books for the brethren to read in the cloister, 
 since there was at home a power of multiplying them 
 as long as there were friendly monasteries to lend them 
 new manuscripts to qo^j when the original stock of the 
 library had fail^. 
 
 As the Cirstercians followed the natural divisions of 
 the day, the hours in winter and in summer differed 
 considerably, as has been already mentioned ; again, the 
 ecclesiastical divisions of the year altered their mode 
 of living to a great degree. .From Easter to Holy Cross 
 day, that is the 14th of September, they broke their 
 fast after sext, and had a second meal after vespers, 
 except on Wednesdays and Fridays, which were fast- 
 days : during the rest of the year, from Holy Cross 
 day to Easter, they never had but one meal a day, and 
 that after nones, up to Ash Wednesday, but during 
 Lent not till after vespers. It will be necessary, there- 
 fore, to give a sketch of their mode of living, first in sum- 
 mer and then in winter. Lauds, as has been said before, 
 followed matins very soon in summer, after which an 
 interval was allowed, during which the brethren might go 
 to the dormitory to wash themselves, and change portions 
 
 E 
 
130 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 of the dress in which they had slept. As soon as the 
 day had fully dawned, prime was sung, and then they 
 went into the chapter. If ever there was a scene re- 
 volting to human pride, it was the chapter ; more than 
 any other part of the monastic life, it shows that a 
 convent was not a place where men walked about in 
 clothes of a peculiar cut, and spent their time in formal 
 actions, but a school of humiliation, where the very 
 last roots of self-love were plucked up, and the charity 
 of the Gospel planted in its stead. Humility was the 
 very soul of the cloister, and a great part of St. Bene- 
 dict's rule is taken up with an analysis of the twelve 
 degrees of humility, which form the steps of a Jacob's 
 ladder, leading up to perfect love, which casteth out 
 fear^. Our Cistercians had studied this part of the 
 rule well, and St. Bernard's earliest work is a sort of 
 a comment upon it. The chapter-house was the place 
 where this mingled humility and love was most of all 
 exercised. Around it were ranged seats, one above 
 another; the novices sitting on the lowest row, or rather 
 on the footstools attached to the seats ; in the midst was 
 the abbot's chair 7. The chapter opened with the mar- 
 tyrology, and with those parts of the service now attached 
 to the office of prime. Then followed the commemoration 
 of the faithful departed, and, in some cases, a sermon ; 
 after which a portion of St. Benedict's rule was read. 
 Then each brother, who had in the slightest way trans- 
 gressed the rule, came forward and confessed it aloud be- 
 fore the whole convent. He rose from his seat and threw 
 back his cowl that all might see his face, then he muffled 
 up his face and head, and threw himself full length on the 
 low stool of the lectern, without speaking a word. At 
 length the abbot spoke, and asked him, " What sayest 
 
 « Reg. c. 7. "^ Rit. Cist. 3. 8. 
 
XV.] A DAY AT CITEAUX. 131 
 
 thou f The brother answered, " Mea culpa/' " It was 
 by my fault f then he was bidden to rise in the name 
 of the Lord, and he again uncovered his features, and 
 confessed his faults, and after receiving a penance, if it 
 were necessary, he went back to his seat at the bidding 
 of his superior. When all had confessed their own sins, 
 then a still more extraordinary scene followed : each 
 monk accused his brother if he had seen or heard any- 
 thing amiss in him. He rose, and mentioning his name, 
 said, " Our dear brother has committed such a fault." 
 Happy they who could thus bear to hear their faults 
 proclaimed in the face of day, without being angry. 
 The angels are blessed because they cannot sin ; next 
 to them in happiness are those who are not wrathful 
 when rebuked. But what shall we say to the punish- 
 ments for greater offences against the rule ? The monk 
 who had grievously offended stripped himself to his 
 waist, and on his knees received the discipline at the 
 hands of a brother in the face of the convent. Blessed 
 again are they who thus are willing to suffer shame 
 on earth, if by any means they may escape shame at 
 the dreadful day of judgment. It was not, however, 
 only in public that they confessed their sins ; any mortal 
 sins against the rule were to be confessed over again to 
 a priest for the benefit of absolution, though they had 
 already been proclaimed in the chapter ; and during all 
 the intervals of work, before they had broken their 
 fast, the brethren might confess their sins in private in 
 the chapter. An instance is incidentally related, in 
 which a novice, on entering into Clairvaux, made a 
 general confession of the sins of his whole life^, and this 
 was probably a common practice, though not enjoined 
 
 8 vit. St. Bern. 7. 22. 
 
132 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 by the rule ; at least it had become common at the end of 
 the century in which Stephen lived 9. After the chap- 
 ter was over, the brethren went out to manual labour^ 
 this was one of the peculiarities which distinguished 
 Citeaux from Cluny. Their labour was good hard work 
 by which they gained their livelihood, and with the 
 help of their lay-brethren supported themselves, and 
 gave abundant alms to the poor. Few things are more 
 remarkable than this mixture of all the details of spades 
 and forks, ploughing, haymaking, and reaping, with 
 the meditation and constant prayer of the Cistercians. 
 During the harvest-time, the daily mass was, if the 
 abbot so willed, attended only by the sick and all who 
 were too weak to work, for the whole convent was in 
 the fields. And when mass was said, the priest put 
 off chasuble and stole, and with his assistants followed 
 the brethren who had gone before to work^. St. Ber- 
 nard put off the finishing of one of his wonderful 
 sermons on the Canticles, because the brethren must 
 go to the work which their rule and their poverty 
 required ^ It was a peculiarity of the Cistercians, that 
 they did not sing psalms, but meditated while they 
 worked ; again, no one was allowed to take a book with 
 him into the fields. This last regulation was probably 
 made by Stephen himself, for it is recorded of St. 
 Alberic that he took the psalter with him when he 
 worked. Field-work was not, however, it may be said 
 by the way, the only labour of the Cistercian ; he took 
 his turn to be cook, which ofiice went the round of the 
 convent, and was changed weekly. Again, he might 
 be cellarer, infirmarian, master of the novices, or porter, 
 
 ^ Vid. Adam, abbot of a Cistercian monastery, quoted by Calmet 
 on c. 58 of the Rule. * Us. Cist. 84. ^ Serm. i. 
 
XV.] A DAY AT CITEAUX. 133 
 
 with a variety of other offices, which would give him 
 employment enough. The cellarer, especially, was an 
 officer of considerable dignity in the community : he 
 had the whole of the victualling department under his 
 care ; cooks and lay-brethren especially referred to him 
 in all matters which came under his jurisdiction, and he 
 had to weigh out the proper quantity of food for each of 
 the monks. Prudence and experience were not, there- 
 fore, qualities thrown away in a convent, which, as has 
 been said, was a little world in itself, and even, in its 
 way, a busy world. But each servile occupation was 
 hallowed by obedience and religious silence, in which 
 the Lord spoke to the heart. 
 
 The brethren left the fields as soon as the first stroke 
 of the bell for tierce was heard. The early Benedic- 
 tines said tierce in the fields, and continued working 
 till near 10 o'clock, thus giving two hours and a half to 
 manual labour. The reason why the Cistercians worked 
 for a shorter time was, because mass followed immedi- 
 ately upon tierce. In St. Benedict's time there was 
 no daily mass ^, but since then a change had taken place 
 in the discipline of the Church, and the holy sacrifice 
 was offered up every day at Citeaux. At this mass 
 any one might communicate who had not communicated 
 on the Sunday, which was the day on which the whole 
 convent received the Body and Blood of our most blessed 
 Lord, who was at that time given to the faithful under 
 both kinds. After the celebration of these adorable mys- 
 teries, the brethren again retired into the cloister to read, 
 or went into the church for meditation. At about half- 
 past eleven the bell rang for sext, after which the convent 
 assembled in the refectory, for the first and principal 
 
 2 Martenne, de Ant. Mon. Rit. 2 — 4. 
 
134 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 meal of the day, except on the Wednesdays and Fridays 
 out of the Paschal time, on which days, as has been 
 said before, they had only one meal, and that after 
 nones. The Cistercian dinner, or breakfast, as it 
 might be called, needed the seasoning of early rising 
 and hard labour to make it palatable. It consisted of a 
 pound of the coarsest bread (one-third of which was 
 reserved for supper if there was one), and two dishes of 
 different sorts of vegetables boiled without grease. 
 Their drink was the sour wine of the country, well 
 diluted with water, or else thin beer^ or a decoction of 
 herbs called sapa^, which seems to have been more like 
 vegetable soup than any other beverage. Even fish 
 and eggs, which had always been considered to be 
 legitimate diet for monks, were excluded. Their con- 
 temporaries wondered at their austerity ; how, weak and 
 delicate bodies, worn out by hard labour and by night- 
 watching, could possibly subsist on such coarse food : 
 but St. Bernard tells us what made it palatable. " Thou 
 fearest watchings, fasts, and manual labour," he says to a 
 runaway Cistercian, "but these are light to one who 
 thinks on the eternal fire. The remembrance of the 
 outer-darkness takes away all horror from solitude. 
 Think on the strict sifting of thine idle words which is 
 to come, and then silence will not be so very unpleasing. 
 Place before thine eyes the everlasting weeping and 
 gnashing of teeth, and the mat or the down pillow will 
 be the same to thee." And yet theirs was not a service 
 of gloom or fear. Christ rewarded the holy boldness of 
 these noble athletes, who thus afilicted their, bodies for 
 His sake, by filling their souls with the joys of devotion. 
 
 * Sicera is mentioned, Us. Cis. 117. 
 
 * Sapa occurs Vit. St. Bern. 2 — 1. 
 
XV.] A DAY AT CITEAUX. 135 
 
 " Oh ! that by God's mercy," says St. Bernard to one 
 whom he was persuading to quit the world, "I could have 
 thee as my fellow in that school where Jesus is the 
 master ! Oh ! that I could place thy bosom, if it were 
 but once pure, in the place where it might be a vase to 
 catch that unction which teacheth us of all things — 
 Thinkest thou not that thou wouldest suck honey from the^ 
 rock, and oil from the rugged stone V Every action was 
 sanctified to the monks, even at their meals a strict 
 silence was observed, and one of the brethren read aloud 
 some religious book, during the time that they were in 
 the refectory. After it was over, according to the 
 custom' of hot climates, and in order to make up for the 
 shortness of the night in summer, they went into the 
 dormitory to sleep. After about an hour's rest the bell 
 rang to rouse them up, and in the interval between 
 nones, they washed themselves, and either sat in the 
 cloister or repaired to the church. Nones were said at 
 half-past two, after which they were allowed a draught 
 of water in the refectory before they returned to manual 
 labour, which lasted till half-past five, when they sang 
 vespers^. Tjie vesper-hour was especially the monk's 
 season of quiet, when the day was over with all its 
 work, and the shades of evening were closing about 
 him. St. Bernard interprets the evening in Scripture 
 to mean the time of quiet 7, and Cistercian writers, even 
 in late times, are fond of collecting together all the 
 mystical import of the time of vespers^. They went 
 into the refectory after returning from their work, and 
 partook of a slight repast, consisting of the remainder 
 of their pound of bread, with a few raw fruits, such as 
 
 6 Calmet, c. 48. ^ i^ Cant. Serm. 57, 
 
 8 Bona de Div. Psal. 10. 
 
136 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 radishes, lettuces, or apples furnished by the abbey 
 gardens. 
 
 Before we close the day with compline, it will be 
 necessary to mark the difference between the summer 
 and winter rule. Their seasons followed the eccle- 
 siastical division of the year ; summer was reckoned 
 from Easter to the middle of September, and the rest of 
 the year was called winter. The Church in winter sits in 
 expectation of her Lord's coming, and the Cistercians 
 redoubled their austerities during this long period of the 
 gloom of the year. They arose in all the cold and snow 
 of winter, in the dark and dreary night, to watch for 
 the coming of the Lord, and to pray for the world 
 which was lying without in the darkness and shadow of 
 death. As the world is engaged in turning day into 
 night, in order to have its fill of pleasure, so they 
 multiplied time for devotion, by stealing from the hours 
 when men are asleep. On Christmas night a fire 
 burned merrily in the calefactory, and all with glad 
 hearts might cluster around it ; but at other times no 
 fire is mentioned during the night hours, and it was in 
 cold and hunger that they waited for the nativity of 
 the Lord, and thought upon the cold cave at Bethlehem, 
 where the Blessed Virgin waited for the time when He, 
 who is the only joy of the faithful, came forth from her 
 to save the world. He was the centre of all their 
 exercises, and His holy fire burning in their hearts, gave 
 them heat and light in the dreariness of their watching. 
 Winter brought its compensation with it at Citeaux, 
 as well as to the rest of the world. It was then that 
 they had most time for meditation and prayer in the 
 cloister, or in the church after matins j for lauds were 
 never said till the early dawn, which would of course 
 be then much later than in summer. Prime followed 
 
XV.] A DAY AT CITEAUX. 137 
 
 immediately upon lauds, and would generally begin 
 about seven o'clock. Then came the mass, tierce, and 
 the chapter, so that they did not begin to work till 
 after the time prescribed by St. Benedict, which was 
 after tierce, or about half-past nine or ten. The 
 chapter is not here noticed, nor indeed is it mentioned 
 systematically anywhere in his rule ; it probably be- 
 came a system, and the hour for it was fixed, after 
 St. Benedict's time 9. From the time that they went 
 into the fields after the chapter, till nones, which were 
 said between two and three, they worked on without 
 breaking their fast till after the hour was said, that 
 is between half-past two and three i. After the meal 
 was over, they walked into the church two and two, 
 chaunting the Miserere, and there said grace. Vespers 
 followed soon after; for it seems probable that they 
 were said about sunset, but before the twilight had so 
 far faded away as to require candles. Such is Cardinal 
 Bona's opinion, himself a Cistercian, and the lighting 
 of lamps for vespers is not mentioned among the du- 
 ties of the servant of the church, as he was called-. 
 In summer, when a slight repast was allowed in the 
 evening, the quiet of the twilight hour was necessarily 
 interrupted ; but in winter, when nothing was per- 
 mitted after their one meal, but a draught of water, 
 nothing broke the repose of the monks after vespers 
 were said. The most breathless stillness reigned in the 
 convent. The brethren sat reading in the clois- 
 ter, and even signs were forbidden except on specj^l 
 occasions 3. The evening twilight between vespers and| 
 compline was the monks' sabbath. They were forbid-| 
 
 9 Reg. St. Ben. 46. » Calmet, c. 41. 
 
 2 Bona de Div. Psal. 10. Us. Cist. 105. ^ Ug^ qi^^^ 79^ 
 
138 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 den expressly to get into knots and talk together, and 
 almost the only sign allowed was when one brother 
 motioned to another to take care of his book, if any- 
 thing called him out of the cloister. Strange accidents 
 happened to books in those ages, which might have 
 made this precaution necessary, as when a bear swal- 
 lowed or at least sadly mangled the manuscript of St. 
 Augustine's Epistles at Cluny*; though it is true such 
 visitors would hardly enter a cloister full of monks. 
 During Lent, as their bodily labours were greater, so 
 a longer time was allowed them for meditation and 
 reading. As they did not break their fast till about 
 five o'clock in the evening 5, they said sext and nones 
 in the fields, or at least they returned to their work 
 as soon as they had said them, and continued working 
 till four o'clock^. But a longer time was allowed for 
 reading in the morning, and additional mental prayer 
 is especially enjoined at this season 7. The only reading 
 allowed seems to have been the Holy Scriptures ; and 
 on the first Sunday in Lent, the cantor distributed a 
 portion of the bible to each brother, which he was 
 to receive reverently, and stretching out both hands 
 " for joy at the Holy Scriptures." No greater proof 
 of their austere penitence in the time of Lent can be 
 found, than the way in which St. Bernard speaks of it. 
 Sweetly, and with the tenderness of a mother, does he 
 always speak to the brethren at that time. " Not with- 
 out a great touch of pity, brethren," he once said, " do 
 I look upon you. I cast about for some alleviation to 
 give you, and bodily alleviation comes before my mind ; 
 but if your penance be lightened by a cruel pity, then is 
 
 4 Pet. Ven. Ep. 1. 24. « Calmet, c. 48. 
 
 ^ " Usque ad deciraam horam," St. Ben. Reg. 48. 
 7 Us. Cist. 15. 
 
XV.] A DAY AT CITEAUX. 139 
 
 your crown by degrees stripped of its gems. What can 
 I do ? Ye are killed all day long with many fasts, in 
 labours oft, in watchings over much, besides your in- 
 ward trials, the contrition of heart, and a multitude of 
 temptations. Yea, ye are killed ; but it is for His sake 
 who died for you. But if your tribulation abounds for 
 Him, your consolation shall abound through Him. For 
 is it not certain, that your sufferings are above human 
 strength, beyond nature, against habit ? Another then 
 doth bear them for you, even He doubtless, who, as saith 
 the Apostle, beareth up all things by the word of His 
 
 power ^." 
 
 Two things alone remain to be noticed, which through- \ 
 out the whole year were the last events of a Cistercian 
 day, and those are the collation or the reading of the 
 collations of Cassian, and compline. At Citeaux these : 
 collations, which were a collection of the lives of the early i 
 monks, or else some of the books of saints' lives, was read ^ 
 aloud in the cloister. On the finishing of the reading, I 
 all turned their faces to the east, and the abbot said, 
 " Our help is in the name of the Lord ;" the convent re- 
 sponded, " Who hath made heaven and earth ;" and then 
 they proceeded into the church to sing compline, which 
 was the last office of the day. The time for compline 
 varied according to the hour when they retired to rest, 
 which in winter would be about seven, and in summer 
 about eight 9. As their motions were regulated according 
 to the duration of the light, an approximation only can 
 be made as to their hours of going to bed and rising. 
 After compline the abbot rose and sprinkled with holy 
 water each brother as they went out in order. They 
 then pulled their cowls over their heads and walked into 
 
 ^ Serin, in Psalm, xc. Preface. ^ Calmet, c. 8. 
 
140 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 the dormitory. Such was the Cistercian life in its first 
 fervour, as it was under Stephen and St. Bernard. Put 
 down upon paper it appears but a dead letter of out- 
 ward observances ; the spirit of obedience, humility, and 
 charity which animated the whole cannot be described 
 in words. The angelical countenances and noiseless re- 
 gulated motions of the monks, which had a certain 
 monastic grace of their own, are all missing to light up 
 the whole. The presence again of such an abbot as 
 Stephen must be taken into account, before a correct 
 idea can be obtained of Citeaux. He could modify the 
 rule to the weak, and direct the energies of the strong ; 
 he could call the faint-hearted into his presence in the 
 parlour, and give them words of holy counsel. Many 
 things are scattered up and down St. Bernard's writings, 
 which show that a rule without the living tradition is 
 not fully intelligible. For instance, from scattered hints 
 it appears, that the monks had sometimes a certain time 
 allowed them for conversing together, though that is not 
 mentioned at all in St. Benedict's rule. The fact is, 
 that silence was the general order of the day, but the 
 abbot might allow those whom he judged fit to converse 
 together i. In after ages, and not so long after Stephen's 
 time, these conversations were systematized, and placed 
 at set hours ; but before then they seem to have been at 
 the discretion of the abbot. How naked and dead are 
 the words of a rule without the living abbot to dispense 
 them, to couple together the strong and the weak, that 
 
 * V. Calmet, c. 6. St. Bern. Serm. de diversis, 17, and Benedictine 
 note ; also de Grad. Superbiae, 13. Also Speculum Monachoram, 
 in the Benedictine St. Bernard, written by Arnulfus, a monk of 
 Boheries, who flourished in the latter part of the twelfth century. 
 The master of the novices held frequent conversations with them, 
 vid. Adam of Perseigne, in Baluzius Misc. vol. ii. 236. 
 
XV.] A DAY AT CITEAUX. 141 
 
 the sturdy warrior might help on the trembling soldier, 
 and to mingle the roughness of discipline with the ten- 
 der hand which dropped oil and wine on the wounded 
 heart. Stephen, though God had removed the pains 
 which had so long afflicted him, had now an anxious . 
 charge upon his hands, no less than the training up of 
 St. Bernard. 
 
142 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH, 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 STEPHEN AND BERNARD. 
 
 The poor house of Citeaux was now, as we have seen, 
 perfect : it had not only a strict rule, and a ruler to teach 
 it, but it had also novices to whom it was to be taught. 
 It had now become too small for its inmates, and the 
 despised convent, which but lately was looked upon with 
 fear rather than admiration, had now the choice of all 
 the fair fields of France, and by and by of Europe, at 
 its command. Many were the children of her that 
 was called barren, and every year, band after band of 
 monks were sent out from the now teeming house to 
 form new monasteries, and these again increased and 
 multiplied, till every kingdom of Europe was filled with 
 the daughters of Citeaux. Soon after the arrival of 
 St. Bernard and his companions at the convent, Stephen 
 was summoned away from home for the purpose of 
 founding the new monastery of La Ferte in the diocese 
 of Chalons. Walter, bishop of Chalons, and two noble- 
 men of the country, on hearing that Citeaux was too 
 full, had immediately looked out for a place where they 
 might house the new colony, and proposed to Stephen to 
 found a convent on their ground. He gladly accepted 
 the offer, and himself accompanied the brethren whom 
 he destined for this service to their new abode. In a 
 few days he returned to his abbey of Citeaux. The 
 charge which God had intrusted to him, was the more 
 anxious, because St. Bernard's state of health was ex- 
 ceedingly precarious. The thinness of his slightly-built 
 
XVI.] STEPHEN AND BERNARD. 143 
 
 frame ^ "showed in what a frail earthen vessel that precious 
 soul was contained. His neck especially was very long 
 and delicate, so that when he threw back his cowl, none 
 could help remarking it, and the monks praised its snowy 
 whiteness and its elegance, like that of a swan 2. His 
 life was even endangered by the narrowness of his throat ; 
 but his most troublesome infirmity was the weakness of 
 his stomach, which rejected a great portion of the food 
 which he had swallowed. With all these ailments he 
 had entered the strictest order of the day, and now that 
 he had thus put his hand to the plough, he was deter- 
 mined not to look back. He had entered the abbey of 
 Citeaux in order to bury himself from the world, to 
 become a poor man and a rustic, not simply to hide 
 under a white cucuUa an ambitious heart, nor even to 
 give himself time to exercise a fine imagination on holy 
 subjects. Every day therefore he used to excite him- 
 self forward, by repeating to himself, " Bernard, Bernard, 
 wherefore art thou hereT' He earnestly set himself to 
 work on the rough occupations in which the Cistercians 
 passed their day. His attenuated frame was bent down 
 with the rude labours of the field, and his delicate skin 
 worn with holding the spade and the hoe. Nor did 
 he work listlessly like a man who takes up a fork and 
 makes hay on a fine sunshiny day, but he laboured with a 
 will in downright earnestness, as if it had been the 
 business of' his life. His weak body often sunk under 
 these labours ; and often the awkwardness of his hands, 
 which were used to far other work than digging and 
 mowing, and such like toils, obliged his superiors to 
 separate him from his brethren at the hours of manual 
 
 ^ " Corpus tenuissimum, statura mediocritatis honestse, longitudini 
 tamen vicinior apparebat." Gauffridi Vita, c. 1. 
 2 Exord. Mag. 7. 17. 
 
144 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 labour. He was, however, never happy on those occa- 
 sions, and if he could not work with the convent, he imme- 
 diately began cutting wood or carrying burdens on his 
 shoulders -K Stephen seems to have been especially careful 
 of him in this respect ; during the harvest he had made 
 many attempts at reaping, but was too weak and too little 
 accustomed to such work to succeed ; he was therefore or- 
 dered to lie by, and sit by himself, while, as says William 
 of St. Thierry, the brethren were reaping with fervour and 
 joy in the Holy Ghost. This was a sore trouble to him, 
 and in the simplicity of his heart he began to weep ; he 
 then prayed to God to give him grace, so that he might 
 be able to join his brethren in their labours. From that 
 day forward he became a most expert reaper, and the 
 same William, his personal friend, asserts, that even up 
 to the period when he was writing his account, St. Ber- 
 nard was wont to say with self-gratulation, and a sort of 
 joyous triumph, that he was the best reaper of them all. 
 This hard work, to which he subjected himself in order to 
 carry out his rule, was the more remarkable in him, not 
 only because of his extreme weakness, but from the ex- 
 ceeding austerity with which he lived. His very existence 
 was a miracle, for he hardly seemed to eat, drink, or 
 sleep, and his friends wondered how he could live. In 
 after times he himself severely taxed his own austerity, 
 which according to his own account had made him useless 
 to the church. It is not on record that Stephen checked 
 him in his mortification of the flesh ; he probably looked 
 upon his youthful novice with a saintly wonder, as one 
 whom God's Holy Spirit was leading according to His 
 own blessed will, and with whom he must not interfere. 
 Indeed so much had this severe way of life become the 
 
 3 Guil. Vit. 1. 4. 
 
XVI.] STEPHEN AND BERNARD. 145 
 
 habit of both body and soul, that he hardly could have 
 increased his diet if he would 1 St. Bernard is indeed 
 one who cannot be judged by ordinary rules. God has 
 set His seal upon His saint, by the wonderful things which 
 He wrought through him, and none must rudely venture 
 to blame his actions. He, in his white Cistercian dress, was 
 raised up, for the needs of the Church, just as was John 
 the Baptist in his garment of camel's hair ; and when he 
 'came forth from his monastery, and the world streamed 
 forth to view him, and kiss the hem of his poor monkish 
 habit, it was then seen that his. weak frame, with the 
 spirit of love and supernatural energy shining through 
 it, and the flaming words of divine eloquence bursting 
 from his lips, could serve God and His church to good 
 purpose indeed. But this is not the place to speak of 
 him as the companion of kings, the setter up of popes, 
 and the real governor of the Church ; it is only as a Cis- 
 tercian monk that he appears here, and in this capacity 
 his wonderful way of life was not thrown away. It 
 subdued his body to his spirit to such a degree, that he 
 seemed to live the life of an angel upon earth. His soul 
 was wrapped up in a ceaseless contemplation of God, 
 and he realized the crucifixion of the flesh of which 
 St. Paul speaks, and all things which belong to the 
 Spirit grew and flourished in him. His senses, from the 
 abstraction of his soul, seemed to be dead within him. 
 He did not know whether the ceiling of the novices' 
 cell was arched or flat, though he passed there every 
 day of his life. Again, the choir of the church of Citeaux 
 had three windows, but to the last he fancied it had 
 only one. So little conscious was he of the sense of 
 taste, that he more than once drank oil instead of water, 
 
 4 Guil. i. 4. . 
 
146 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 without perceiving it. It was this deadness to earth, 
 which made him see so far into heavenly things as he 
 did. Earnest as he was in working at the lowest manual 
 labour, this habit of praying always never forsook him. 
 It was this habit, which he acquired at Citeaux under 
 Stephen's discipline, which was the source of all his 
 power. The Holy Spirit filled him with rapturous 
 joys which only crucified souls can know ; and this 
 unction which anointed him from above, he poured back 
 upon the Church, and thus enabled her to resist the dry 
 and cold rationalistic heresies which then threatened to 
 overwhelm her with the maxims of worldly science. 
 It was this education, too, in the cloister of Citeaux, 
 before the morning light, and at the feet of Stephen in 
 the auditorium, which made him the great founder of the 
 science of the interior life of the Christian. He has been 
 called the last of the Fathers, and he thus stands on the 
 confines of the system of the early Church, which con- 
 templated God as He is in Himself, and that of the later 
 ages, in which the mysterious dealings of Grod with the 
 soul of the individual Christian were minutely analyzed. 
 It is not to be supposed that he was so abstracted from 
 the world, as to be either singular in his demeanour or 
 dead to earthly affection. He cast off a hair shirt which 
 he had constantly worn next to his skin, lest in a monas- 
 tery where all things were done in common it should be 
 observed. Though his habit was of coarse and poor 
 materials, yet it was always scrupulously clean. He 
 used to say that dirt was the mark of a careless mind, 
 or of one that cherished a fond idea of its own virtue, or 
 loved the silly praise of men. His motions were ever 
 regulated, and bore humility on the face of them, and 
 a sweet fragrance of piety was shed around his person 
 and his actions, so that all looked upon his countenance 
 
XVI.] STEPHEN AND BERNARD. 147 
 
 with joy^. His voice was singularly clear, notwith- 
 standing the weakness of his body, and in after times, its 
 very tones won even those who did not understand the 
 language which he spoke. In conversation, the spirit of 
 charity shone through all his words; and he always 
 spoke of what most interested his companion, making 
 inquiries about his trade or profession, as if he had espe- 
 cially studied it all his life. Stephen did not prevent 
 his seeing and conversing with his relations when they 
 came to Citeaux ; and on these occasions his courtesy 
 was such, that his exceedingly tender conscience would 
 sometimes prick him as though he had spoken idle words. 
 On one occasion, he devised a strange expedient ; when 
 summoned to see some of his friends, who had come to 
 visit him, he stopped his ears with tow, so that his deaf- 
 ness might give him an air of stupidity. Loud laughter 
 in a monk was an object of his special aversion, and he 
 has recorded it in one place of his writings, by a graphic 
 picture of the light-minded monk laughing to himself. 
 He describes him covering his face with his hands, com- 
 pressing his lips, clenching his teeth, and laughing as 
 though he would not laugh, till at length the suppressed 
 mirth burst out through his nostrils^. With all this hatred 
 of levity which thus appears in the almost ludicrous 
 vividness of his description, he would on occasion even 
 force himself to smile. Another characteristic of Ber- 
 nard's soul, was the wonderful strength of his affections. 
 Though he had torn himself thus rudely from all earthly 
 affections, yet the wounds which he had suffered in the 
 conflict did not close over a hardened heart, but he 
 carried them with him all bleeding to the cloister. Even 
 long after his novitiate was over, nay, to his last day, the 
 
 ^ Gauf. 2. 6 De Qj-^a. Hum. et Sup. 12. 
 
148 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 tenderness of this maternal heart cost him many a pang ; 
 chiefly if any one of his brethren went wrong, he 
 mourned over him with a passionate grief, with which he 
 in vain struggled, as though it were an imperfection. On 
 occasion of his brother Gerard's death, he endeavoured 
 to preach one of his sermons on the Canticles without 
 alluding to it, but it was too much for him : in the midst 
 of the sermon, his grief bursts forth, and down fall the 
 bitter tears which he had pent up so long, and he breaks 
 out into expressions of the most vehement and impas- 
 sioned sorrow. He kept to the very last the most vivid 
 recollection of his mother ; he carried it with him into 
 Citeaux, and every day before he went to bed, he recited 
 the seven penitential psalms for the repose of her soul. 
 This practice is connected with the only time on record 
 when Stephen reproved his illustrious disciple. One 
 night he went to bed without having repeated his psalms : 
 in some way it came to Stephen's knowledge that it was 
 his practice thus to pray for his mother, and that night 
 he knew that his novice had left that duty unfulfilled. 
 It may be that God revealed to him the whole matter, 
 or else by the strange spiritual instinct which those 
 intimately connected with others possess, he read in his 
 face that something had been left undone overnight. 
 Mothers possess this instinct, and why should not the 
 abbot, who watched over his young disciple with a 
 mother's love ? However it came into his mind, at all 
 events he did know it, and that in some uncommon way. 
 Next morning he called Bernard to him, and said. 
 Brother Bernard, where, I pray you, hast thou dropped 
 those psalms of thine yesterday, and to whose good 
 keeping hast thou committed them? Bernard, being 
 shy, as says the history, blushed, and marvelled much 
 within himself how the abbot knew that of which he 
 
XVI.] STEPHEN AND BERNARD. 149 
 
 alone possessed the secret. He perceived that he stood 
 in the presence of a spiritual man, and fell at Stephen's 
 feet, begging pardon for his negligence, which, as we may- 
 suppose, he was not long in obtaining. Such is one of 
 the few specimens of Stephen's way of guiding his novice, 
 which time has spared. The other circumstances of the 
 intercourse between these two elect souls are known 
 only to God and His angels. Historians mention but 
 slightly even the solemn ceremony by which St. Bernard 
 knelt at the feet of Stephen to take his vows on quitting 
 the novitiate, the year after his entering the convent. 
 This was the culminating point of the abbot's life ; his 
 great work was the training of St. Bernard ; hence- 
 forth the materials for his history become scanty, for 
 he appears only the administrator of his order, the 
 history of which is merged in St. Bernard. He had 
 passed the great trials of his life, and he now lived in 
 comparative peace, founding new abbeys every year, 
 and quietly watching the growth of the mighty tree 
 into which his grain of mustard seed had grown. 
 Doubtless he who had so often tried to hide his head 
 in the depths of a forest, did not now regret that his 
 light had waned before his illustrious disciple. And 
 let no one suppose that he is doing nothing, because his 
 name occurs but seldom ; every new monastery founded 
 year by year is his work, and he is gradually becoming 
 the head of a vast federacy of which he is the legislator, 
 as well as abbot of his own convent of Citeaux. While 
 St. Bernard is astonishing the world by his supernatural 
 power over the minds of men, every now and then, from 
 Citeaux, the central point in which these vast rays of 
 glory converge, some new act of monastic policy issues, 
 which is owing to its abbot. 
 
 y 
 
150 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 CHAPTER XYII. 
 
 STEPHEN CREATES AN ORDER. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Cistercian order was silently growing 
 up about him; in 1114, Hugh, once lord of Macon, 
 St. Bernard's friend, was sent to Pontigny with a colony 
 of monks from Citeaux ; in 1115, Morimond and Clair- 
 vaux were founded. And who was to be abbot of 
 Clairvaux ? Surely some brother of mature age, and 
 of tough sinews, and hardy frame, for the other three 
 abbeys were founded by special invitation of some 
 bishop, nobleman, or other holy person, but the colony 
 which peopled Clairvaux set out like knight-errants on 
 an adventure, not knowing whither they went. Yet to 
 the surprise of all, Stephen fixes on St. Bernard, though 
 he was hardly out of his novitiate, and was just twenty- 
 five years of age ; and though his weak frame was but 
 ill able to bear the exercises of Citeaux, far less appa- 
 rently to set out on a voyage of discovery, to find out 
 the most lonely forest, vale, or mountain-side, that the 
 diocese of Langres could produce. Twelve monks were 
 sent with this youthful abbot, to represent the twelve 
 Apostles ; he himself was to be to them in the place of 
 Christ. The usual form with which such an expedition 
 set out was characteristic. Stephen delivered to him 
 who was to be the new abbot a crucifix in the Church 
 of Citeaux, and then in perfect silence he set out, his 
 twelve monks following him through the cloister. The 
 
XVII.] STEPHEN CREATES AN ORDER. 151 
 
 abbey gates opened and closed upon them, and the 
 great world which they had not seen for many a day 
 lay before them. Forward they went, over hill and 
 down dale, St. Bernard going first with the holy rood, 
 and the twelve following, till they came to a deep glen 
 between two mountains, whose sides were clothed with a 
 forest of oaks, beeches, and limes ; between them flowed 
 the clear waters of the river Aube. The place was 
 called, for some unknown reason, the Valley of Worm- 
 wood, and had been the haunt of robbers. In St. Ber- 
 nard's hands it became Clairvaux, or the* Vale of Glory. 
 Here, then, with the assistance of the peasants round 
 they established themselves, and Stephen soon had the 
 consolation to hear, that the daughter of Citeaux was 
 rivalling her mother. These first four abbeys founded 
 by him, La Ferte, Pontigny, Clairvaux, and Morimond, 
 were the heads of what were afterwards called the four 
 filiations of Citeaux ; from each of them sprang a whole 
 line of monasteries. Stephen foresaw that this would 
 be the case ; in fact it could not be otherwise j the only 
 thing which in those ages of faith was required to found 
 a monastery was men, and those he had with him already. 
 There was no need of money, or of leave from king, 
 privy council, or parliament. All that was wanted was 
 an old wood or a wild waste, which the owner, if there 
 was one, would be glad enough to give up to any one 
 who chose to expel the wild beasts, and break it up for 
 tillage. The spiritual children of Citeaux were there- 
 fore sure to increase, now that four flourishing abbeys 
 had already sprung from it. The question, however, 
 was, how these were to be bound to the parent monas- 
 tery. In after ages, as soon as the first generation had 
 past away, they would become simply Benedictines, 
 with a white habit, and there was no guarantee what- 
 
152 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 ever that they would keep to the peculiar institutions of 
 Citeaux. Stephen's first step to remedy this evil was 
 the institution of the general chapter ; every year all the 
 abbots of monasteries descended from Citeaux were to 
 meet there on Holy Cross day, to confer on the afiairs 
 of the order ; and their first meeting took place in the 
 year 1116. Though only four abbots were present at 
 this assembly, it is an important event in the history, 
 not only of the Cistercian, but of every other order. In 
 the institution of the general chapter, Stephen had de- 
 vised an expedient, which went far to remedy the great 
 defect of the early monasteries — the want of a proper 
 jurisdiction. His idea was as yet imperfectly de- 
 veloped ; it was but the first germ of the government 
 which was to bind the Cistercian order together : but 
 it was a hint by which all Christendom profited ; for 
 so beneficially was it found to work, that Cluniacs, Do- 
 minicans, Franciscans, and the various congregations of 
 the Benedictine order, adopted it. Innocent III. seems 
 to have been struck with the profound wisdom of 
 Stephen's plan, for in the celebrated fourth Lateran 
 council, where he presided, it was the system brought 
 in to revive the monastic discipline, which in many 
 places had been ruined ; and the general chapters of 
 Citeaux are expressly taken as a model. 
 
 This assembly at Citeaux was remarkable also in 
 another respect ; it has been said that only four abbots 
 were present at it. Where then was my lord of Clair- 
 vaux ? Alas ! it is not hard to know what has become 
 of him. In the midst of the holy conference, an unex- 
 pected visitor comes into the chapter-house in the dress 
 of a bishop. The abbots ought to have risen to beg 
 the blessing of this prince of the Church, thus suddenly 
 appearing among them. Instead of this, he prostrated 
 
XVII.] STEPHEN CREATES AN ORDER. 153 
 
 himself on the ground in the presence of Stephen and 
 his brethren. This was no other than the celebrated 
 William of Champeaux, once the great doctor of the 
 schools^ now bishop of Chalons; in that lowly posture 
 he informed the abbot of Citeaux that Bernard was 
 hard at death's door, and would certainly die if he were 
 allowed to continue administering the affairs of his 
 abbey. On his knees, therefore, the venerable Bishop 
 begged of Stephen to transfer his authority over St. 
 Bernard to himself for the space of a year. The abbot 
 of course willingly acceded to his request, backed as it 
 was by the humble guise of William ; and St. Bernard 
 was accordingly, by virtue of his vow of obedience, 
 compelled to give himself up entirely into his hands. 
 For the space of a year, therefore, he was removed to a 
 habitation built for him outside the walls of Clairvaux, 
 and was put under the hands of a physician, whom he 
 was ordered implicitly to obey. 
 
 Stephen began about this time to enter into relation 
 with another illustrious personage, whose friendship 
 was afterwards of great use to the order. William of 
 Champeaux was not the only bishop who came to 
 Citeaux; in the year 1117 it received within its walls 
 Guido, archbishop of Vienne, then apostolical legate in 
 France, and afterwards destined, as Pope Calixtus II., 
 to close the great struggle which Gregory YII. began. 
 He had been to Dijon to celebrate a council, to which 
 it is probable that Stephen himself was summoned. 
 When the' council was over he repaired to Citeaux as 
 Stephen's guest, and there conceived an attachment to 
 the rising order, which he carried with him to the papal 
 throne. However different was the lot to which Guido 
 and Stephen had been called, one shut up in a cloister, 
 the other a powerful archbishop, and leader of a great 
 
154 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 party in the Church, yet there was something not uncon- 
 genial in their characters. The untiring and patient 
 energy with which Stephen had struggled through his 
 difficulties, and was now in fact reviving monastic dis- 
 cipline throughout France, was not unlike the quiet 
 firmness with which Guido was awaiting the conclusion 
 of the contest between Church and State. When Pascal 
 committed the unhappy fault which embarrassed the 
 cause of the Church, the archbishop of Yienne, as 
 legate of the Holy See, immediately excommunicated the 
 emperor, and then, though he did not join in the im- 
 petuous zeal of those who would have deposed the 
 pope, he waited patiently, without for a moment quitting 
 the position which he had taken up, till Pascal, the 
 year before this visit to Citeaux, confirmed the sen- 
 tence which he had pronounced. Before he left the 
 abbey, he begged of Stephen to send a colony of monks 
 into his own diocese of Vienne, promising to provide 
 them with all that was necessary. To this request 
 Stephen willingly acceded, and \yent thither in person 
 to found the abbey of Bonneval. 
 
 These few years which followed St. Bernard's en- 
 trance into the abbey, are quite a specimen of the 
 general tenour of Stephen's life. In 1118, the year 
 that Bonneval was founded, two more abbeys were also 
 peopled with Cistercian colonies, — Prouilly in the diocese 
 of Sens, and La Cour-Dieu in that of Orleans. At the 
 same time, two more monasteries were founded from 
 Clairvaux. Nine abbeys, therefore, had sprung from 
 Citeaux, in the short space of ^ye years, and it now 
 became needful to provide a constitution for the rising 
 order. This was effected by Stephen at the general 
 chapter, in 1119 ; and the means which he took to effect 
 this great object have a sagacity about them which 
 
XVII.] STEPHEN CREATES AN ORDER. 155 
 
 shows how deeply he had studied the wants of the 
 monastic body. They entitle him to rank amongst the 
 most illustrious of the many founders of orders, who 
 have in different ways given a new direction to the 
 enthusiasm of Christians, as the needs of the Church 
 required. He filled up a want which St. Benedict's 
 rule did not, and indeed was not intended to supply, 
 and that was the internfd arrangement of a body of 
 monasteries connected with each other. St. Benedict 
 legislated for a monastery, Stephen for an order. The 
 idea of the great patriarch of western monks was, that 
 each monastery was to be a monarchy under its abbot ; 
 no abbey, as far as the' rule of St. Benedict goes, is in 
 any way connected with another. In one extraordinary 
 case the abbots of neighbouring monasteries may be 
 called in to interfere in the election of an abboti; ]j^^ 
 in general each monastery was an independent com- 
 munity. This rude and imperfect system of govern- 
 ment was the ruin of monastic institutions ; the jurisdic- 
 tion of bishops was utterly inadequate to keep refrac- 
 tory monks in order, or to preserve monastic discipline 
 in its purity. So entirely had the rule of St. Benedict 
 at one time disappeared from France, that itsjrery 
 existence before the time of St. Odo of Cluny has been 
 questioned. In some monasteries lay abbots might 
 be found quietly established, with their wives and 
 children ; and the tramp of soldiers, the neighing of 
 horses, and baying of hounds, made the cloister more 
 like a knight's castle, than a place dedicated to God's 
 service. 2 A specimen of the way in which bishops were 
 treated when they undertook to reform abbeys, may be 
 found in the conduct of the monks of Fleury, on the 
 
 1 Reg. c. 64. 2 MabiUon. Pref. in Saec, 5. 
 
156 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 Loire, when St. Odo was introduced into the abbey 
 to tame them. Two bishops, and two counts, accom- 
 panied the abbot, but the monks minded them, says the 
 story, no more than pagans and barbarians; they fairly 
 buckled on the sword, posted themselves at the gates, 
 got a plentiful supply of stones and missiles on the roof, 
 and declared that they would rather die than receive an 
 abbot of another order within their walls. The bishops 
 might have remained outside the walls for ever, had not 
 the intrepid abbot mounted his ass, and quietly ridden 
 alone into the abbey, to the astonishment of the monks, 
 who were too much struck with his courage to oppose 
 him. Two general reformatipns_of monastic institutions 
 were effected before Stephen's time, and both were 
 directed at the evil which we have mentioned; ^t. 
 Benedict of Aniane, by his personal in%£n(>ev united all 
 the abbeys of the„ Carlo vingian empire into one congre- 
 gation; but after his death, they relapsed into their 
 former state. The other reform was much more per- 
 manent; it was effected by the celebrated congregation 
 of Cluny. When monasteries were in a state of the 
 lowest degradation, still there was vitality enough in 
 this mass of corruption to give birth to a line of saints, 
 such as that of the first abbots of Cluny. By the s ole 
 power of their holiness they bound into one a vast 
 numberof abbeys, all dependent upon their own. This 
 great congregation appears not to have been fully syste- 
 matized tij! *^^ *i^^ ^^ S** Hugh; before him, abbeys 
 seem in some cases to have become again independent, 
 when the abbot of Cluny died who had reformed them. 
 He, however, required it as a previous condition of a 
 monastery which joined itself to the congregation, that 
 it should become a priory, dependent on Cluny, and 
 that its superior should be appointed by himself and his 
 
XVII.] STEPHEN CREATES AN ORDER. 157 
 
 successors.^ A noble and a stately kingdom was that of 
 Clunj j 314 monasteries and churches were its subjects^; 
 its lord was a temporal prince, and in spirituals subject 
 to none but the Holy See ; he coined money in his own 
 territory of Cluny, as the king of France in his royal 
 city of Paris, and the broad pieces of the convent went 
 as far as the fleurs-de-lis of the Louvre. This spiritual 
 kingdom extended to Constantinople, and even to the 
 Holy Land. Great indeed it was; too great for any 
 man to possess, who was not as noble-minded as St. 
 Hugh, and as free from selfish feelings as the graceful 
 and loving soul of Peter the Venerable. At the time 
 when_Stephen completed the Cistercian order, Cluny 
 was in the hands of one who ruled it between the time 
 of St. Hugh and Peter, Abbot Pontius, who spoilt the 
 whole. He must needs be called by the proud name 
 of Abbot of Abbots, and assume a haughty superiority 
 over the abbot of Mount Cassino, the most ancient 
 Benedictine abbey. This was the fault of the system ; 
 one bad abbot ruined all; Pontius left to his successor 
 a house loaded with debt, with 300 monks to support 
 on revenues which were barely sufficient to maintain 
 100, besides a rabble of guests and paupers, who in- 
 fested the gates of the abbey. With these disorders 
 before his eyes, Stephen determined on instituting a 
 system of reciprocal visitation between the abbeys of 
 his order. He might, as abbot of Citeaux, have consti- 
 tuted himself the head of this increasing congregation ; 
 but his object was not to lord it over Christ's heritage, 
 but to establish between the Cistercian abbeys a lasting 
 bond of love. The body of statutes which he presented 
 
 3 Mabillon. Ssec. v. Pref. 56. 
 
 ^ Thomassin. de Nov. et Vet. Disc. 1. 368. 
 
158 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 to his brethren in the general chapter of 1119, was 
 called the Chart of Charity. In its j)ro visions, the whole 
 order is looked upon as . one family, united by ties of 
 blood; Citeaux is the_ common ancestor of the whole, 
 and the four first abbeys. founded from it, La Ferte, 
 Pontigny, Clairvaux, and Morimond, as its four eldest 
 daughters, respectively governed the abbeys sprung 
 from them. The abbot of Citeaux was called Pater 
 universalis prdinis ; he visited any monastery that he 
 pleased, and w^^h^reverjbie went Jhe abbot gave up. his 
 place to him. On t he ot her hand, the abbots of the 
 four filiations, as tliey were termed, visited Citeaux, be- 
 sides which each abbot went every year to inspect the 
 abbeys which had sprung from his own. Every year 
 a general chapter was held at Citeaux, which all the 
 abbots in the order, without exception, were obliged to 
 attend under heavy penalties. The chief abbot of each 
 filiation could, with the advice of other abbots, depose 
 any one of his subordinate abbots, who after admonition 
 continued to violate the rule ; and even_the head of 
 the whole order might be deposed by the four abbots, 
 though not without a general chapter, or in case^ of 
 urgent necessity, in an assembly of abbots of the filia- 
 tion of Citeaux. Each abbey was to receive with joy 
 any of the brethren of other Cistercian abbeys, and to 
 treat him as though he were at home. Thus the most 
 perfect union was to be preserved amongst the whole 
 body ; and if^ny discord arose in the general chapter, 
 the abbot_of Ciieaux might, with the help of pther 
 abbots, called in by himself, settle the question in dis- 
 pute. This is but a faint outline of the famous Chart 
 of Charity, which was copied by many other orders, 
 and in part even by that of Cluny. This ri^iAjJS^^^ 
 of mutual visitation might seem to have precluded the 
 
XVII.] STEPHEN CREATES AN ORDER. 159 
 
 visitation of the bisliop, and so in^ct the order became 
 in time exempt from episcopaJ^ju^erJjat^den^^ but 
 Stephen by no means intended that such should be the 
 case. Exemptions fr om the jurisdiction of the_ Vicar of 
 Christ, as St. Bernard calls the bishop of the diocese^, 
 formed ^ne_of the special grievances against which the 
 early Cistercian writers most loudly declaim. It was a 
 portion of the ambition of abbots of the day, and was 
 therefore classed by them with the assumption of the 
 pontifical mitre and sandals, which was such^a^candal 
 in Cistercian eyes. Exemptions , however, which were 
 not gained at the suit of the abbot, but conceded by,, 
 the Holy See to the piety of founders of monasteries, 
 are excepted from the censure of St. Bernard ; and, 
 notwithstanding Stephen's submission to diocesan au- 
 thority, he took care to secure his order against the 
 influence of secular bishops. Even from the time of 
 Hugh, the second abbot elected by Stephen^ the words, 
 " salvo ordine nostro," were added to the oath of canoni- 
 cal obedience, taken by every abbot on receiving the be- 
 ijediction from the bishop. Another important step was 
 taken by him to secure his order, and its new constitu- 
 tion, from undue interference. He determined to apply 
 to the Apostolic See for a confirmation (^^^ Charta 
 
 Charitatis; without this sanction it was a mere private 
 compact^ between^j^i^ then ruling Cistercian abbots, but 
 with thejgapal^sanctipn^ it became in some way a law of 
 the Church. Stephen was not obliged to send all the 
 way to Eome to obtain this confirmation from the pope ; 
 great things had been doing in Christendom all this 
 while that Citeaux had been flourishing. Pascal II. 
 had died, and, after one short j;earjj Gelasius too had 
 
 « De Off. Episc. 9. 
 
160 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 died, not_at ^Bome in bis own palace, but an exile at 
 Cluny. Into tbat year were crowded troubles, as great 
 as bad ever befallen tbe successor of St. Peter since 
 tbe days of martyrdom. A troubled life, indeed, bad 
 been tbe life of Gelasius, ever since be bad left bis 
 peaceful studies at Mount Cassino, and been made 
 Cbancellor of Rome, to amend tbe latinity of tbe papal 
 court, wbere, as says Pandulf, "tbe ancient style of 
 elegance and grace was almost lost^." Rougber tasks 
 be found tban tbis, for be sbared in all tbe troubles of 
 tbe popes during tbat long struggle, and at last be bim- 
 self from Cardinal Jobn Cajetan was made Pope Gela- 
 sius II. In tbe very ceremony of bis entbronement, 
 be was tbrown from bis seat by tbe emperor's party, 
 dragged by tbe bair out of tbe Cburcb, and at its very 
 door stamped upon, so tbat tbe rowels of tbe spurs of 
 bis persecutors were stained witb bis blood. Tben be 
 fled from Rome by water, amidst a tempest of tbunder 
 and wind, and wbat was worse, amidst tbe curses of tbe 
 Germans, wbo stood on tbe sbore ready to seize bim if 
 tbey could; and so tbey would, if it bad not been for 
 tbe fearful nigbt, and for Cardinal Hugo, wbo, wben 
 tbey landed, carried tbe boly fatber on bis back to a 
 safe castle. In exile be remained tbe rest of bis life, 
 witb but one sbort interval, wben be ventured to return 
 to Rome, and again tbe impious nobles rose, and swords 
 were drawn about bim, till at last be said, " Let us fly 
 tbis city, tbis Sodom, tbis new Babylon !" and all cried, 
 " Amen ! " and so be left Rome for ever, and came to 
 France, tbe general refuge of popes in tbose dreadful 
 times. His successor was cbosen in France, and tbis 
 was no otber tban Guido, arcbbisbop of Vienne of tbe 
 
 ^ Muratori, Scrip, iii. part i. p. 378. 
 
XVII.] STEPHEN CREATES AN ORDER. 161 
 
 noble house of Burgundj;, and the, firiend of Stephen 
 and of Citeaux, who now was called Pope Calixtus II. 
 He it was to whom God gave grace to finish the struggle 
 between the Church and the emperor, and to receive 
 the submission of Henry V. But this was not to be 
 till afterwards. During the year when the Chart of 
 Charity was framed, which was also the first of his 
 ruling the^Iairch„ofX[brist^ he remainedJ.n_Fmnce^ and 
 held a council ^t Rheims, where he excommunicated 
 the emperor. In December Stephen's messenger found 
 him at Sedelocum, a place supposed to be Saulieu, in 
 Auvergne, and with the consent of the bishops of the 
 dioceses in which the Cistercian abbeys were situated, 
 he fully confirmed all the measures which Stephen had, 
 with the consent of his brethren, determined upon for 
 the preservation of peace in his order. The Chart of 
 Charity was not a dead letter ; if the Spirit of Grod had 
 not been in that house, it would have been but so much 
 parchment. But that blessed Spirit was there in efiect ; 
 else how could so many men of different age, temper, 
 rank of life, and country, have lived together in peace ? 
 It is easy at times to make great sacrifices ; but it is 
 hard to keep up the intercourse of every day life with- 
 out jars and rents, and still harder, while the body 
 is suffering from fatigue and mortification, to preserve 
 the graceful and noiseless considerateness, which attends 
 without effort to a brother's little wants. The very 
 chapter where- the Chart was passed presents an instance 
 of the sort. It appears, that on occasion of the general 
 chapter, to mark the joy of Citeaux at the presence of 
 its sons, the stranger abbots were regaled with a pittance, 
 or addition to their frugal meal. But the fathers saw, 
 that in consequence of this additional mess, every thing 
 went wrong in the abbey ; the poor cooks were put out 
 
 M 
 
162 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 by the unwonted feast, and then when all was over, the 
 dishes had to be washed, and the servants had to get 
 their dinner, and so vespers were late 7, and the poor 
 monks robbed of a portion of their scanty sleep. The 
 abbots were unwilling that their arrival should give so 
 much trouble, and they begged of Stephen that the pit- 
 tance should no more be given ; and he, with the consent 
 of the brethren, acceded to their request. 
 
 7 Us. Cist. 108. 77. 
 
 I 
 
XVIII.] ABBOT SUGER. 163 
 
 CHAPTER XYIII. 
 
 ABBOT SUGER. 
 
 The administration of his order was quite enough to 
 occupy Stephen's time ; year after year new abbeys 
 were founded, and Cistercian monasteries rose up on 
 all sides to the astonishment of the world. He had 
 often to undertake long journeys for the foundation of 
 some new community ; and besides these toils, the 
 actual government of such a large body of men required 
 no ordinary attention. It is not to be supposed that 
 there were no dangers in the way of monks, or that 
 signal falls, even in his most promising disciples, did not 
 . at times happen to grieve his heart. For instance, in 
 the year 1 125, Arnold, whom he had made abbot of 
 Morimond, one of the four governing abbeys of the 
 order, suddenly grew disgusted with his charge, and 
 while Stephen was absent in Flanders, suddenly left the 
 cloister, carrying away with him several of the brethren. 
 His pretence was a pilgrimage ; but he never returned 
 to his abbey, and died soon after at Cologne, a runaway 
 monk. While, however, Stephen was thus busied in 
 managing his own abbeys, a reform was silently going on 
 in another, and a most important quarter, from the mere 
 increasing weight of the Cistercian order. It might 
 have been supposed that the Cistercian, occupied in 
 digging the soil, in draining marshes, and reducing waste 
 lands into cultivation, would certainly be a great comfort 
 
164 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 to the poor amongst whom he laboured, and whose life 
 he imitated ; but it could hardly be expected that 
 their influence could reach higher ; and yet so it was. 
 The bishop's palace and the king's court, unhappily at 
 this time too much allied, both began to feel the in- 
 fluence of the bold stand in favour of Christian poverty 
 which Stephen was making. About the year 1124, 
 Peter, abbot of La Ferte, had been chosen archbishop 
 of Tarantaise, and with the consent of Stephen and the 
 general chapter, had accepted it. Cistercian bishops 
 were still bound to keep the rules of the order ; they 
 did not wear the fur garments, with sleeves lined of a 
 blood-red colour i, which scandalized St. Bernard, but 
 they kept the abbot of the order covered with only a 
 poor mantle lined with sheep-skin 2. In the two fol- 
 lowing years France was astonished by the conversion 
 of three of the most powerful prelates of the country. 
 Henry, archbishop of Sens, Stephen, bishop of Paris, 
 and the celebrated Suger, abbot of St. Denis. By 
 conversion it is not meant that these men led vicious or 
 immoral lives ; on the contrary, they were men whom 
 it was impossible not to admire for the noble way in 
 which they led what was then the better party in the 
 state ; but they were ambitious and courtly men, half 
 soldier or statesman, and the rest churchman. It was 
 the time when the French royalty was, with the help of 
 the Church, rousing itself; the king of France had been 
 but a king in name, often pious and devout, but seldom 
 great or intellectual. In England our Norman lords 
 were the real heads of a feudal sovereignty ; they rule 
 by right of conquest, and the barons were kept undeij 
 by common fear of the Saxons. But the poor king ofl 
 
 1 St. Bern, de OfF. Epis. 2. ^ j^st. Cap. Gen. 59. 
 
xviil] abbot suger. 165 
 
 France, in his royal city of Paris, was hemmed in on 
 all sides by dukes of Normandy, and counts of Anjou, 
 Blois, and Flanders, a mere shadow of Charlemagne, 
 very different from his wily, unscrupulous, powerful 
 majesty of England, the fine clerk who held his brilliant 
 court at Westminster. In Louis VI.'s time, however, 
 the French monarchy began to develope itself ; he was 
 an energetic, and in many respects an estimable prince, 
 brought up in his youth in the abbey of St. Denis, and 
 even at one time inclined to become a monk. He made 
 common cause with the Church against the nobles, who 
 were wholesale robbers of Church lands, and respected 
 neither his royal crown nor the bishop's mitre. But 
 what had monarchy to do with Stephen, or Stephen 
 with monarchy, that his poor order should be brought 
 into the affairs of the kingdom ? And yet, strange to 
 say, it came across King Louis's plans by converting his 
 minister. The very head of the political movement was 
 won, when Suger's heart was touched by St. Bernard's 
 burning words, and when the royal abbey of St. Denis 
 was reformed by the example of the Cistercians. A 
 noble heart was Suger*s, even while the world had too 
 great a share in it. Nothing low or mean ever entered 
 into it ; all, as even St. Bernard allows, that stained it, 
 was too great a love of show and of worldly grandeur •'^. 
 Who but that man of little stature, of piercing eye, and 
 sagacious and withal upright heart, had, when provost 
 of Toury, broken the power of Hugh of Puiset, that 
 thorn in the side of the Church, who put lance in rest 
 against the king himself? In his monkish cowl he 
 rode into the town of Toury, even through the enemies 
 who besieged it, and saved it for the king. No busi- 
 
 3 St. Bern. Ep. 78. 
 
166 ^ ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 ness was safe unless Suger was in it ; his abbot Adam, 
 and the king, both loved him, and sent him more than 
 once even across the Alps ; and no wonder, for his elo- 
 quence and learning was so great, that not only could 
 he quote the Fathers, but even would repeat two or 
 three hundred lines together of Horace by heart. He 
 had once just quitted Pope Calixtus on one of these 
 expeditions, and was on his way back to France at an 
 inn, and had said matins at night, and had lain him 
 down again to sleep, when he dreamed a dream — that 
 he was at sea in a little boat tossed about by the waves, 
 but was rescued by the help of the blessed martyr St. 
 Denis. Then he went on his journey, and was pon- 
 dering what it all meant, when he saw coming towards 
 him a brother of the abbey, with a face of mingled sor- 
 row and joy ; and the brother told that Abbot Adam 
 was dead, that the monks had chosen him abbot of St. 
 Denis, even without waiting for the king's leave, and 
 that the king was very angry, and had put in prison 
 some of the brethren. At this news Suger's heart was 
 sad ; he loved his abbot dearly, and besides his brethren 
 were in prison for his sake, and worst of all, he foresaw 
 a contest between the king his master and the pope, 
 about the liberty of election. However, the blessed 
 martyr's prayers helped him through all, and the king 
 confirmed the choice of the monks, and he was installed 
 abbot of the first abbey in France. Then what a life 
 was his when he was thus raised on high ! If a turbu- 
 lent noble was to be put down, Suger was to be there ; 
 on one occasion, when he was riding at the head of a 
 body of soldiers to Orleans after his lord the king, he 
 fell in with an officer of Hugh of Puiset, whom he took 
 captive, and put securely into the abbey prison. Eome 
 saw him in 1123 at the Lateran council; next year the 
 
XVIII.] ABBOT SUGER. 167 
 
 Church of St. Denis showed a memorable scene. The 
 emperor, stung with the excommunication pronounced 
 against him at the council of Rheims, invaded France, 
 the constant ally of the Church. Then the royalty of 
 France plucked up heart, and the men of the country 
 gathered round the king, and all together went to 
 St. Denis, where Louis received the Oriflamme froni 
 the hands of Suger at the high altar, with all the chi- 
 valry of France standing around him. The cause of 
 God's Church prevailed, and the emperor took himself 
 back to Germany, without waiting to see the Oriflamme 
 unfurled. This was all very well ; Suger was on the 
 right side ; his policy was the best for France, which 
 was thus slowly finding a bond of union in the king, 
 and getting rid of the petty tyrants which disturbed it. 
 Again, he was on the side of the Church, for these no- 
 bles were its intolerable oppressors ; but still something 
 was wanting to the abbot of St. Denis. The concerns 
 of his soul were not prospering amidst this perpetual 
 tumult. Its wear and tear fretted his body down, and 
 " Abbot Suger," says a monk, " did not get fat as other 
 abbots did*." The prayers of the Cistercians, however, 
 were at work, and St. Bernard's words pricked his con- 
 science. Indeed, an honest mind like his, could not be 
 long in seeing that he looked very little like a churchman 
 and a monk, as he rode at the head of troops, or moved 
 in the brilliant train of a court. Besides, his own abbey 
 was in a most miserable state : without believing the 
 calumnies of Abelard, it is evident that it was as unlike 
 a monastery as it could well be. It was thoroughly se- 
 cularized ; this ancient sanctuary, once the very soul of 
 the devotion of France, and the burial place of its kings, 
 was now the centre of the business of the whole realm. 
 * Vit. Sug. 2, 3. ap. Du Chesne. 
 
168 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 " Deftly and faithfully did Caesar get his own there ; 
 but as for the things of God, they were not paid so 
 faithfully to God^" Posts came rushing in from all 
 quarters ; the cloister was often filled with armed men ; 
 monks might be seen lounging about, idly talking with 
 strangers, and even women were sometimes admitted 
 within its precincts. No wonder that this scene raised 
 Cistercian indignation ; but it was not long to continue 
 so. Suger's was an honest heart ; he had been entan- 
 gled by the force of circumstances, even from his youth, 
 in secular affairs, and the hurry of business had pre- 
 vented his looking about him. Now, however, that the 
 fearful responsibility of the government of the abbey 
 was upon him, it made him shudder. The Cistercian 
 reform was spreading with a wildfire speed about him ; 
 it was a declaration from heaven against his own most 
 criminal neglect of the important charge which God 
 had committed into his hands. His long troop of armed 
 retainers, and his sumptuous habits, formed but a poor 
 contrast to Stephen's paltry equipage, as he travelled 
 about in his coarse white garment, with a monk or two 
 and a lay-brother in his train. The soul of Suger 
 sinks within him at the thought of his danger, and he 
 determines to reform both himself and his abbey. If 
 Citeaux had never done more than turn to God this 
 noble heart, its labour would not have been thrown 
 away. By thus suggesting the reform of St. Denis, it 
 was conquering the very stronghold of worldliness ; it 
 was purging the Church from the thorough seculariza- 
 tion which a long mixture with the world had brought 
 on. Oh ! how must Stephen's heart have leaped within 
 him, when he thus saw his order doing his work. He 
 
 5 St. Bernard, Ep. 78. 
 
XVIII.] ABBOT SUGEB. 169 
 
 would most cordially have joined in the devout gush 
 of quiet joy with which Suger thanked God. " Amidst 
 the recovery of the ancient lands of the Church, and the 
 acquirement of new, the spread of this Church all around, 
 the restoration or construction of its buildings, this is 
 the chief, the most grateful, yea, the highest privilege 
 which God in His mercy has given me, that He has 
 fully reformed the holy order, the state of this holy 
 Church, to His own honour and that of His saints 
 in the same place, and has settled in peace the end 
 and object of holy religion, by which man attains to 
 the enjoyment of God, without causing scandal or 
 trouble among the brethren, though they were all un- 
 accustomed to it^." The conversion of Suger is in itself 
 the justification of Stephen, in the rigid rules of poverty 
 which he adopted at Citeaux ; it was the best way of 
 gaining an upright heart, like that of the abbot of St. 
 Denis, to put before him a clear and unquestionable 
 example of holy poverty, which must reach him even 
 in the whirl of secular business. France afterwards 
 called him the father of his country, and it is to the 
 influence of the Cistercian reform that he owed that 
 single-hearted conscientiousness, and that habit of devo- 
 tion, which kept him up, when he was afterwards regent 
 of the whole realm. 
 
 It is true, that in one particular he was not a disciple 
 of Stephen; he could not bear poverty in the adorn- 
 ment of churches ; it was not in his nature, and could 
 not be helped. He even seems evidently to aim at his 
 good friends at Citeaux, when he says, " Every man 
 may have his own opinion ; I confess that what pleases 
 
 ® Vit. Lud. Grossi ap. Du Chesne, torn. iv. 31 1. 
 
170 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 me best is, that if there be anything more precious than 
 another, yea most precious of all, it should serve to the 
 ministration of the blessed Eucharist above all things." 
 This difference between St. Denis and Citeaux was in 
 after days curiously illustrated ; for Abbot Suger was 
 pondering within himself how to get gems to adorn a 
 magnificent crucifix on the high altar of the abbey 
 church, when in came three abbots, among whom were 
 my lord of Citeaux (probably Stephen's successor) and 
 another Cistercian abbot, with such a store of jewels as 
 he had never seen before. Thibault, count of Cham- 
 pagne, another disciple of Citeaux, had out of love for 
 holy poverty broken up two magnificent gold vases, and 
 given them as alms to these abbots, and they came at 
 once to St. Denis, knowing that they should be sure to 
 find a market for them. Unlike the simple choir of 
 Citeaux, the sanctuary of the royal abbey blazed with 
 gold and jewels, with painting and sculpture ; there was 
 the cross worked by Eligius the goldsmith-saint, and 
 there were the jasper, the ruby, the sapphire, the eme- 
 rald, and the topaz, "yea," says Suger, "all the pre- 
 cious stones of old Tyre were its covering, save the 
 carbuncle." All the crowns of the kings of France 
 were there deposited after their death, on the shrine of 
 the martyrs. Yet the abbot's delight in thus adorning 
 the shrine of his Lord was utterly unmixed with selfish 
 feeling, " for," he says, "it is most meet and right that 
 with all things universally we should minister to our 
 Kedeemer, who in all things without exception has 
 mercifully deigned to provide for us, who has united 
 our nature to His own in one admirable never to be 
 divided Person, who, placing us in His right hand, has 
 promised us that we shall verily possess His kingdom ; 
 
XVIII.] ABBOT SUGER. 171 
 
 our Lord, who livetli and reigneth with the Father and 
 the Holy Ghost, One God for ever and ever. Amen 7." 
 It is instructive to see how the Cistercian influence ex- 
 tended to persons whose minds were of a texture so 
 diiferent from that of the abbot of Citeaux. However 
 Stephen might have been scandalized with the unmonastic 
 appearance of the high altar of St. Denis, he would have 
 found a kindred spirit in its noble-minded abbot, a 
 very Cistercian in simplicity, amidst all this splendour, 
 "This man shames us all," said of Suger a certain 
 abbot of Cluny, "he does not build for himself as we do, 
 but for God only." With all his love for architecture, 
 he built but one thing for himself, and that was a cell 
 ten feet broad and fifteen long. Here was his little bed 
 of straw, hid in the day time by handsome covering, 
 but during the few hours that he lay there at night, it 
 had nothing on it but the rough Cistercian Isena or 
 woollen rug, which St. Alberic substituted for the many 
 coverings of the Cluniac dormitory. Thus he lived, one 
 of the most noble .conquests of Citeaux, and through 
 whom, as he afterwards, when regent, had in his hands 
 the appointment of every bishop in the realm, Stephen's 
 love of poverty influenced most materially the whole 
 Church of France. 
 
 And what said King Louis, when this strange influence 
 appeared in his own palace"? He was doing his best 
 for the Church, and was the alliance between Church 
 and State to be broken up, and his ecclesiastical friends 
 to be taken from his very side, for the sake of a monk 
 like Stephen? The king had patronized the Cister- 
 cians, and, as appears from a letter written at this time^, 
 had at some former period joined himself in a fraternity 
 
 7 Adm. Sug. c. 32. « St. Bern. Ep. 45. 
 
172 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 of prayers with them ; but now that Henry of Sens, and 
 Stephen of Paris, left his court to govern their flocks 
 like good pastors, he began to think that Cistercian 
 prayers were very well in their way, provided they did 
 not convert his ministers. Annoyed by the conduct of 
 the bishops, he took occasion of some cabal in the 
 diocese of Paris, to seize upon the temporalities of the 
 see ; and when the archbishop of Sens, as metropolitan 
 of Paris, took the part of the bishop, he began also to 
 persecute him. It appears that the king had partizans 
 amongst the cardinals, and it was doubtful how the 
 matter would turn out ; the poor bishop knew not where 
 to find help, but he bethought himself that there was 
 then sitting an assembly of fearless men who had 
 nothing to expect from the world. He applied to the 
 chapter of Citeaux for letters to the pope to recommend 
 his cause. The abbots judged it best to write first to 
 the king himself, and St. Bernard composed a letter in 
 the name of the abbot of Citeaux, and his brethren 
 assembled at their annual meeting. Here then was 
 Stephen in direct opposition to kings and cardinals. 
 Strange is the style of the opening of this bold epistle. 
 "To the noble king of the Franks Louis, Stephen, 
 abbot of Citeaux, and the whole assembly of Cistercian 
 abbots and brethren, health, safety, and peace in Christ 
 Jesus." The wooden crozier of Citeaux against the 
 gold sceptre of the Louvre ! the match seems most 
 unequal ; but the wooden crozier won the day at last. 
 The cardinals hung back, and there came a decision 
 from Rome in favour of the king, and all seemed to be 
 prospering on his side. But there was still a party 
 unsatisfied, which had sprung up silently and impercep- 
 tibly around the king, and whose influence now began 
 to be felt across the Alps. Its wishes must henceforth 
 
XVIII.] ABBOT SUGEE. 173 
 
 form an item in the consultation of popes and kings. 
 St. Bernard and Hugh of Pontigny cry aloud to the 
 pope himself in spite of the murmers of some of the 
 cardinals, who loved not such importunate partizans of 
 justice. At last the Holy See interfered in the bishop's 
 favour, at or about the time of the council of Troyes, 
 1128, at vrhich Stephen and St. Bernard were both 
 present 9. Shortly afterwards, Stephen, with the abbots 
 of Clairvaux and Pontigny, wrote to the pope in favour 
 of the archbishop of Sens, whom King Louis was still 
 persecuting. They were an uncompromising set of men, 
 whom nothing could satisfy, till the oppressed was deli- 
 vered from the tyranny of his oppressor ; these Cister- 
 cian frogs would croak out of their marshes i^, and would 
 not hold their peace, for all the bitter complaints of the 
 cardinals, whose rest was sadly disturbed by their noise. 
 They must needs be at the bottom of every movement in 
 the Church, with their importunate poverty. Even the 
 warlike Templars felt its influence, and clothed them- 
 selves in their white cloaks " without arrogance or super- 
 fluity," and in plain armour, with horse-trappings 
 unadorned with gold and silver. They were first made 
 an order at the council of Troyes, in the presence of 
 Stephen, and each provincial master of the Temple took 
 an oath, that he would defend all religious, but, above 
 all, Cistercian monks and their abbots, as being their 
 brethren and fellows. 
 
 ^ Mabillon's notes on St. Bernard, Ep. 45. 
 10 St. Bern. Ep. 48. 
 
174 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [cil. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 TROUBLES IN THE CHURCH. 
 
 The Cistercian influence had, however, not reached 
 its height even at the council of Trojes : two years after 
 occurred the schism of Anacletus, the decision of which 
 in favour of Innocent II. was, under God, entirely 
 owing to St. Bernard. The question did not originate 
 in a mere quarrel between two parties amongst the cardi- 
 nals. The election of Innocent II. was a bold innovation, 
 by which the turbulent people of Rome were excluded 
 from any share in choosing the supreme pontiffs. 
 There were many wild and unscrupulous barons in 
 Europe, but a Frangipani, a Collonna, or a count of 
 Tusculum could match them all. The very last election 
 of Honorius II. had been brought about by a notorious 
 trick of a Frangipani ; and a short time before, Gelasius, 
 in leaving Rome, had said solemnly, that if so be, he 
 had rather fall into the hands of one emperor than of 
 so many. The cardinals, who in this case had elected 
 pope Innocent, met together without the knowledge not 
 only of the Roman clergy and people, but even of a 
 very large part of the sacred college. This they did, 
 says Suger, for fear of the turbulent Romans. Hence, 
 not only the election of Petrus Leonis the antipope, but 
 even of the real successor of St. Peter was informal ; it 
 required the subsequent voice of Christendom to consti- 
 tute Innocent the rightful pope. The impression left on 
 the mind by Suger's clear, statesman-like view of the 
 * Lupus, torn. V. p. 69. 
 
XIX.] TROUBLES IN THE CHURCH. 175 
 
 transaction is, that of the two elections that of Peter 
 was the more formal ; and he adds that the council of 
 Etampes in its decision inquired more about the cha- 
 racter than the election of the candidates. The cardinals 
 of Innocent's party had, however, another and a cogent 
 reason for proceeding thus surreptitiously in the election. 
 " They elected Innocent," says an old chronicler, " with 
 too great haste, as some think, in order to exclude Peter, 
 who seemed to aim at the popedom on secular grounds 2." 
 They were the religious party amongst the cardinals, 
 and they dreaded the election of Peter, who " placed 
 not God for his help, but trusted in the multitude of his 
 riches, in the power of his relations, and in the strength 
 of his fortifications." He was the head of the secular 
 party in the Church, and at a time when the struggle 
 with the emperor on the subject of investitures was but 
 just over, and when the pride and luxury which a long 
 sojourn in kings' courts had introduced were rampant 
 in the very sanctuary, his elevation might have been 
 productive of the worst results. He had at one time 
 been a monk of Cluny, but had been recalled to Rome 
 by Pascal II., who made him a cardinal. From that 
 time he had been actively employed as a legate by the 
 papal court, and in this occupation had added enor- 
 mous wealth to the already large property of his family, 
 originally of Jewish extraction. He was one of those 
 purple "satraps, lovers of majesty rather than lovers of 
 truth," whom St. Bernard calls "wolves;'* companions 
 not of the ^^ successors of St. Peter, but of Constantino," 
 followers of the pope in the time of triumph, when he 
 rode on a white horse, adorned with gems and gold, not 
 of " the vicar of Christ, the hammer of tyrants and the 
 refuge of the oppressed 3." The cause of Innocent was 
 ^ Chron. Maurin. ap. Du Chesne. ^ j)g Consid. lib. iv. 
 
176 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 therefore that of holy poverty, and it was taken up by all 
 the new monastic orders which sprang up about this time 
 to the edification of the Church, as also by the most 
 flourishing of the ancient convents. " The Camaldolese/' 
 says St. Bernard, "they of Vallombrosa, the Carthu- 
 sians, Cluniacs, and they of the Great Monastery, my 
 own Cistercians too, the monks of Caen, of Tiron, and 
 Savigny, in a word, all together and with one heart, the 
 brethren, whether monks or clerks, who lead a regular 
 life and are of approved conversation, all following the 
 bishops as sheep their pastors, adhere firmly to Inno- 
 cent." St. Bernard does not here say whom the pastors 
 themselves followed, but it was plain to every one else 
 that he himself led the Catholic world. All the bishops 
 of France, with king Louis, were assembled at Etampes, 
 to decide on this question of vital importance, even to 
 the existence of the Catholic Church ; but the abbot 
 of Clairvaux was not there, and nothing could be done 
 without him. He came at their bidding, trembling, and 
 with a heart beating with fear; but God reassured his 
 servant in a dream, showing him a vast Church with one 
 accord praising God. When he arrived, the whole 
 assembly with one voice declared that Bernard should 
 decide. Calmly, but still with trembling, the servant 
 of God examined the manner of the election, the merits 
 of the electors, and the life and character of the can- 
 didates, and then with a royal heart, trusting in the 
 help of God, he pronounced aloud that Innocent was 
 pope ; and the whole assembly received his decision 
 without any doubt, believing that he spoke by the Holy 
 Ghost. It does not come within our subject to say how 
 St. Bernard went about, and by his very presence and 
 energetic words turned the hearts of all the kings of 
 Europe to Innocent, the wily Beau Clerc Henry, the 
 
XIX.] TROUBLES IN THE CHURCH. 177 
 
 hesitating Lothaire, even at last the wild boar of Aqui- 
 taine, — how he bowed the soul of Christendom, as the 
 soul of one man, and placed the successor of St. Peter 
 in his rightful chair, in the teeth of Roger of Sicily, with 
 his new crown, and all his Normans. Stephen of course 
 followed his illustrious disciple j the success of Innocent 
 was the consummation of the triumph of holy poverty, 
 in which he had led the way; and he cheerfully and 
 gladly now gave up the cause into the hands of St. Ber- 
 nard. While the saint was travelling over land and sea 
 for the peace of the Church, and to his regret was obliged 
 to leave his beloved Clairvaux, Stephen remained quiet- 
 ly in his own abbey, continuing to rule his order. Inno- 
 cent, however, did not confine his love for Cistercians to 
 St. Bernard. He addressed to Stephen a letter, in which 
 he calls him "his dear son in the Lord^' and grants 
 to him and to his successors for ever two important 
 privileges. They appear from the terms of the grant 
 to have been given at Stephen's own request, and both 
 are certainly the result of the action of his own princi- 
 ples. His notion of a monastery was a place devoted 
 
 * This document is found in Manriquez, An. 1132. 1. 5; 
 it is dated Cluny, February 10 ; another, dated Lyons on the 
 17th of the same month, is found among St. Bernard's works. 
 They were given by Innocent on his way from France back into 
 Italy. It is singular that these two documents are dated accord- 
 ing to two different modes of calculation. The privilege granted 
 to St. Stephen, though it was prior to the other, is dated 1132, 
 whilst that granted to St. Bernard is dated 1131 ; the reason is, 
 because in the latter the year is reckoned to begin on the 25th 
 of March, in the former, on the 1st of January. Mabillon, over- 
 looking this, has given 1131 instead of 1132 as the date of the 
 privilege given to St. Bernard ; as Innocent dated his years from 
 his election, the 1 5th of February, 1130, a document signed on 
 the 17th of February, in his third year, must be referred to 1132, 
 according to our calculation. 
 
 N 
 
178 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [cil. 
 
 to contemplation, where the noise and the cares of the 
 world could not penetrate. He wished his monks to 
 know nothing of the bickerings, and the lawsuits, and 
 the selfishness, which were all going on beyond the 
 cloister ; a short time before he had himself been drawn 
 away from Citeaux, to settle a quarrel between the 
 abbeys of St. Seine and of St. Stephen of Dijon. One 
 privilege therefore, granted to all Cistercian abbots, was 
 concluded in these terms, "And because, where the 
 Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, that ye may be 
 able with the greater freedom to follow out the service 
 of God, and with the clear vision of the soul to dwell 
 at peace in contemplation, we forbid that any bishop or 
 archbishop should compel thee, or thy successors, or any 
 abbot of the Cistercian order, to come to a council or 
 synod, save on account of the faith." Stephen, however, 
 not only wished his monks to be out of the way of the 
 quarrels of their neighbours, but also to be independent 
 of worldly cares. The intention of St. Benedict was, 
 that a monk should be a poor man, living on the labour 
 of his own hands ; he did not, however, wish him to be 
 in abject penury ; the monastery was to possess all 
 necessaries within its walls, so that nothing need be 
 sought for out of the cloister. Stephen had more than 
 once been himself reduced to a state of real want, and 
 had stoutly braved it out, with a few energetic spirits 
 about him. Now, however, that Citeaux was a large 
 community, and the head of a flourishing order, the case 
 was widely different ; there are, comparatively, many 
 who can live on coarse bread and vegetables, but very 
 few have the heroic patience necessary to struggle under 
 the pressure of want. The soul of conventual life is 
 regularity, which must disappear when the brethren are 
 obliged to make shifts to obtain absolute necessaries. 
 
XIX.] TROUBLES IN THE CHURCH. 179 
 
 Though Citeaux was not now in danger of so sad a 
 plight, it was a hard matter for the brother cellarer to 
 make both ends meet. The Cistercians had renounced 
 most of the sources of revenue by which other convents 
 were maintained. There was nothing to attract seculars 
 into their churches ; no public masses, no shrines of gold 
 and silver. Their property consisted entirely in land, 
 of which they sold the produce ; before, however, it 
 could be brought into cultivation, granges were to be 
 erected, and live stock to be bought, and much hard 
 labour to be expended. Thus the more land was given 
 to them, the more their expenses increased ; and after 
 all there came round the tithe collector, claiming so 
 much for the parish priest or for the brethren, of a cer- 
 tain monastery, to whom the tithes of the parish belonged. 
 It should be remembered that they had themselves 
 renounced all tithes and ecclesiastical property, which 
 was the chief source of revenue in many monasteries, 
 where the brethren never worked with their own hands ; 
 besides which, the lands which were given to them were 
 often waste and uncultivated, covered with a rank 
 growth of entangled wood, or else mere marshy pools, 
 the haunts of the heron and the bittern, and which con- 
 sequently had never paid tithes at all. Considering the 
 poverty of the Cistercians, Innocent freed them from 
 the payment of all tithes. This was no new privilege ; 
 all the monasteries of Thuringia, and amongst them the 
 great abbey of Fulda, were at one time exempt from 
 tithes ; and the archbishop of Metz, though he claimed 
 tithes from them, allowed that such privileges were 
 granted to rising monasteries. A short time before the 
 rise of Citeaux, the same favour was accorded to the 
 Knights Hospitallers in consideration of their poverty. 
 Again, Peter of Blois, strongly as he reprobated the 
 
180 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [cH. 
 
 continuance of the privilege when the order had grown 
 powerful, and had been placed above all the diffi- 
 culties which its very fecundity, astonishing as it was, 
 at first entailed upon it, allowed that at first it was 
 necessary. Reasonable, however, as was Innocent's 
 grant it raised a tempest about Stephen and his poor 
 Cistercians, which it took many a long year to allay. 
 Enough has been said to show that the Cistercian 
 movement, being in all respects a reformation, would 
 be most likely to meet with opposition from the older 
 monastic institutions. There had long been heart-burn- 
 ings between Cluny and Citeaux ; an ancient and flou- 
 rishing order like that of Cluny, with all its imposing 
 dignity, and its religious magnificence, could not but 
 stand reproved before the elastic spirit and young life 
 which were developing from the obscure convent of 
 Citeaux. It might be venerable and beautiful, but 
 there was a vigour in the uncompromising fervour of 
 the new order, and an unencumbered grace in its holy 
 poverty, which was sure to attract all the ardent spirits 
 in the Church. Hence many a promising monk passed 
 over to the Cistercians, and left sore displeasure behind 
 him among his brethren, to whom his fervour seemed to 
 be a reproach. Around the ancient monasteries there 
 arose everywhere new institutions, not hallowed by time 
 and adorned by the piety of kings, but carrying with them 
 the hearts of the people by the sanctity of their inmates. 
 This new privilege granted by Innocent caused all this 
 smothered flame to burst out; a Cluniac monastery, 
 that of Gigny in Champagne, refused to allow its neigh- 
 bour, the house of Miroir, to take advantage of the privi- 
 lege, and still exacted the tithes in the teeth of the autho- 
 rity of the Holy See. It was for this contumacy put 
 under an interdict, in consequence of which the whole 
 
XIX.] TROUBLES IN THE CHURCH. 181 
 
 Cluniac order was up in arms. It was fortunate that Pon- 
 tius had ceased to be abbot of Cluny, and that Peter the 
 Venerable now ruled over the order. From his position 
 Peter was obliged to support the vast body of which he 
 was the ruler ; he therefore addressed a letter of sharp 
 remonstrance to the chapter of Citeaux, and did his best 
 to get the privilege reversed at the papal court ; he 
 however never for a moment lost the unbounded 
 love which he felt for the great men who were at the 
 head of this new movement in the Church. The next 
 year, fearing lest his former letter should have been too 
 severe, he wrote to the assembled chapter, to protest that 
 he had the real interests of peace in his heart, when he 
 wrote that letter, and concludes with saying, " I rest in 
 peace and I will rest on you. I rejoice and I will rejoice 
 in you, yea, though injured, I will not depart from you." 
 From the really Christian spirit of this noble minded 
 man, a real love was maintained among the higher 
 authorities of the two orders ; among the inferior mem- 
 bers there was, it must be confessed, on the Cistercian side 
 often a Puritanical adhesion to the letter of the rule, and, 
 on the Cluniac, a most unchristian tone of jealousy and 
 mistrust. But the most perfect harmony prevailed 
 between the abbot of Cluny and the ruling body of 
 Citeaux, with Stephen at their head. It was not that 
 Peter did not feel a most filial affection for the noble 
 monastery in which he had learned to know Christ, and 
 over which he now ruled ; nor did he fail to be really 
 and acutely pained when the force of circumstances 
 necessarily placed him in collision with the Cistercians. 
 But notwithstanding the blows which he thus received 
 in his most tender affections, he ever maintained an un- 
 bounded reverence for this new institution which God, 
 through Stephen s means, had raised in the Church. He 
 
182 ST. STEPIIEX, ABBOT. [cH. 
 
 was content that his light should wane while Stephen, 
 whom the world would call his rival, increased in power 
 and influence every day. Above all, he rejoiced with 
 enthusiasm in St Bernard's sanctity, and even kissed his 
 letters when they appeared, to gladden his heart ; he 
 seems to repose in perfect confidence, as it were on the 
 bosom of a friend, when he writes to the saint ; he ex- 
 ercises his playful and polished wit on these occasions, 
 professing that he feels quite secure, in thus giving loose 
 to his cheerfulness in his letters to his dear friend ; and 
 St. Bernard in return compliments him by saying, that 
 he at least could indulge his wit without sin. He 
 strenuously set about reforming his order ; and so far 
 from being angered by St. Bernard's indignant remon- 
 strances in his Apology, his new statutes adopt, as far as 
 possible, all the suggestions contained in that celebrated 
 treatise. Some of his reforms are evidently taken from 
 Cistercian regulations, and especially from those made 
 by Stephen himself. Crucifixes of wood were ordered 
 to be used instead of the precious metals, when the holy 
 rood was applied to the lips of a dying monk^ ; it was 
 not a cross of gold or silver, but a cross of wood which 
 redeemed the world. Again the magnificent candle- 
 stick of Cluny, which scandalized Cistercian simplicity, 
 was not to be lighted up except on the great festivals ; at 
 other times iron candlesticks were to be used^. Thus 
 did Stephen's influence extend even to Cluny, notwith- 
 standing the angry monks. The quarrels on the subject 
 of tithes lasted many years even after Stephen's death, 
 but it never destroyed the harmony which prevailed 
 between Peter the Venerable and his friends of the 
 chapter of Citeaux. 
 
 5 Stat. 62. 6 Stat. 52. 
 
XX.] DEATH OF STEPHEN. 183 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 DEATH OF STEPHEN. 
 
 Since the admission of St. Bernard into Citeaux, the 
 life of Stephen has been that of his order. History only 
 speaks of him occasionally as a monastic legislator, or as 
 the founder of some new convent. The lord abbot of 
 Citeaux appears sometimes amongst the signatures at- 
 tached to a council, or to some document which the 
 labour of the Benedictines has brought from the chartu- 
 lary of a convent. It is well that it should be so, for the 
 great order of Citeaux was Stephen's structure, and on 
 that his noble work his claims to the veneration of the 
 faithful rest. We now, however, come to a part where 
 he is put forward exclusively; his long and laborious 
 life is now drawing to a close. It comes suddenly upon 
 the reader of the Cistercian Annalist, and takes him by 
 surprise to find that the chapter to which Peter the Yene- 
 rable's letter was addressed was the last held by Stephen. 
 No data are given in his history to ascertain his age ; so 
 that his years go on silently, numbered by those of 
 Citeaux, and it seems strange that all at once, when his 
 order is in the height of prosperity, his life, which was 
 the moving principle of the whole, should come to an 
 end. Yet so it is even with the greatest saints ; man 
 goeth to his labour until the evening, and then leaves it 
 unfinished, and goes home to rest in the grave. At the 
 chapter of 1133, the year after the privilege was granted 
 to the Cistercians by Innocent, when, says the Exordium, 
 
184 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 "our blessed father, Stephen, had stoutly administered the 
 office committed to him, according to the true rule of 
 humility given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ, when he 
 was worn out with old age, and his eyes were blind, so 
 that he could not see, he laid aside his pastoral charge, 
 wishing to think in peace on God, and on himself through 
 the sweet taste of holy contemplation." This is the first 
 word that is said of Stephen's old age, and up to this 
 time we might have fancied him as vigorous as ever, with 
 his eyesight clear, and his faculties unimpaired. But 
 although his eyes had failed, and his body was in dark- 
 ness, yet the vision of his soul was as bright as ever ; he 
 was still to the last the Cistercian contemplative, who 
 had fled to the forest, and to the desert, to dwell with God 
 alone. Before, however, his soul was freed from its earthly 
 tabernacle, Stephen had still a trial to undergo; God 
 willed that his saint should die with his arms in his 
 hands. The electors to whose task it fell to choose a 
 successor, on Stephen's resignation, pitched upon a man 
 who was utterly unworthy to succeed him. Wido, abbot 
 of Three Fountains, had by some means deceived men 
 into an opinion of his sanctity, and though, as the Ex- 
 ordium calls him, he was but a whited sepulchre, the 
 abbots pitched upon him to govern the abbey and the 
 whole order. Stephen knew what sort of a man he was ; 
 it is even said, that God specially revealed to him the 
 wickedness of this new abbot. By that wonderful 
 inward vision which God sometimes grants his saints, he 
 could see his successor receiving the profession of the 
 monks, though his outward eye was blind ; when lo ! 
 God showed him the evil spirit entering in at his mouth, 
 as he sat on high amidst the brethren, coming one by 
 one to do him reverence. Stephen, however, remained 
 still ; he felt sure that God would not abandon the rising 
 
XX.] DEATH OF STEPHEN. 185 
 
 order, and he did not choose to take upon him again a 
 government which he had just laid down, by interfering 
 with the free choice of the monks. St. Bernard was ab- 
 sent in Italy, and therefore he could not apply to him ; 
 in full trust therefore upon God, he waited till the de- 
 signs of Providence should manifest themselves. With 
 this dreadful secret on his mind he held his peace. He 
 had not long to wait, for " scarcely had one month 
 passed away, when by the revelation of the Lord his 
 uncleanness was laid bare, and this bastard plant which 
 the heavenly Father had not planted was rooted out of 
 Paradise." What was the sin of Wido is not known, 
 and his name does not even occur in the common cata- 
 logue of Cistercian abbots ; the brethren seem to have 
 tried to sink his memory in oblivion. He was succeed- 
 ed by Eainaldus, a monk of Clairvaux, and a man in 
 whose hands Stephen rejoiced to leave his order. His 
 work was now done upon earth, and his strength was fast 
 sinking ; he did not live many months after Rainaldus 
 was elected. It is not known whether his illness was 
 short or lingering, but the Exordium gives the following 
 account of the death-bed of the man of God. " As the 
 time approached when the old man lying on his bed, 
 was, after his labours were over, to be brought into the 
 joy of the Lord, and from the lowest room of poverty, 
 which he had chosen in the world, according to the 
 counsel of our Saviour, was about to mount up to the 
 banquet of the Father of the family on high, there met 
 together, besides others, certain brethren, abbots of his 
 order, to accompany, by their most dutiful services and 
 prayers, their faithful friend and most lowly Father, thus 
 on his way to his home. And when he was in his last 
 agony and was near death, the brethren began to talk 
 together, and to call him blessed : being a man of such 
 
186 ST. STEPHEN, ABBOT. [CH. 
 
 merit, thej said that he could go securely to God, who 
 had in his time brought so much fruit to the Church of 
 God. He heard this, and gathering together his breath 
 as he could, said with a half-reproachful voice, What 
 is it that ye are saying ? Verily, I say to you, that I am 
 going to God as trembling and anxious as if I had never 
 done any good. For if there has been any good in me, 
 and if any fruit has come forth through my littleness, it 
 was through the help of the grace of God, and I fear 
 and tremble much, lest perchance I have kept that grace 
 less worthily and less humbly than I ought. Beneath 
 this shield of the perfect lowliness which sounded on his 
 lips, and grew deep in his heart, he put off the old man, 
 and putting aside in his might all the most wicked darts 
 of the enemy, fiery and sulphurous though they were, he 
 passed with ease the airy region of storms, and mounted 
 up and was crowned at the gate of Paradise.*' It was 
 on the 28th of March, 1134, that Stephen quitted this 
 weary life to join St. Robert and St. Alberic, whom he 
 had so long survived. The 17th of April, on which his 
 name occurs in the Martyrology, and which was his 
 festival, was probably the day of his canonization. His 
 day is not now remembered amongst us ; many will not 
 even have heard of his name, and those who have heard 
 of him, may possibly be surprised to find that he was an 
 Englishman. He eyes were probably never gladdened 
 with a sight of the green fields of merry England, ever 
 since he quitted his monastery of Sherborne to study 
 at Paris. Yet his country may be proud to own this 
 great saint. He was the spiritual father of St. Bernard, 
 and w^as, it may be said, the principal founder of the 
 Order of Cistercians. Before he died he had founded 
 twenty monasteries of the line of Citeaux ; the number 
 of houses of the whole order was upwards of ninety. 
 
XX.] DEATH OF STEPHEN. 187 
 
 St. Stephen was in character a very Englishman ; his life 
 has that strange mixture of repose and of action which 
 characterises England. Contemplative and ascetic as 
 he was, he was still in his way a man of action ; he had 
 the head to plan, and the calm, unbending energy to 
 execute a great work. His very countenance, if we may 
 trust his contemporary the monk of Malmesbury, was 
 English ; he was courteous in speech, blithe in counte- 
 nance, with a soul ever joyful in the Lord^. His order 
 seems to have thriven in St. Stephen's native air ; most 
 of our great abbeys, Tintern, E-ievaux, Fountains, Fur- 
 ness, and Netley, which are now known by their beau- 
 tiful ruins, were Cistercian. The Order took to itself 
 all the quiet nooks and valleys, and all the pleasant 
 streams of old England, and gladdened the soul of the 
 labourer by its constant bells. Its agricultural character 
 was peculiarly suited to the country, though it took its 
 birth beyond the seas. Doubtless St. Stephen, when he 
 was working under the hot sun of France, often thought 
 of the harvest moon and the ripe corn-fields of his native 
 land. May his prayers now be heard before the throne 
 of grace, for that dear country now lying under the 
 wrath of God for the sins of its children. " Pray ye 
 for the peace of Jerusalem, they shall prosper that love 
 thee." Oh ! Lord, our " eyes long sore for Thy word ; 
 oh 1 when wilt Thou comfort " us ! " Comfort us again 
 now afier the time that Thou hast plagued us, and for 
 the years wherein we have suffered adversity." " Then 
 shall the earth bring forth her increase, and God, even 
 our own God, shall give us his blessing." 
 
 ^ Gesta Reg. Angl. lib. 4. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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