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6 - Constitutions and the General Chapter

from Part II - Structure and materiality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2012

Mette Birkedal Bruun
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
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Summary

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

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

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

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Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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References

Geary, P., Readings in Medieval History (Peterborough, Ontario, 1989)
McGuire, B.P., ‘Anders Sunesen og klostervæsenet: Kontinuitet eller brud?’, in Anders Sunesen: Stormand, teolog, administrator, digter, ed. S. Ebbesen (Copenhagen, 1985)Google Scholar
Leclercq, J., ‘Aspects de la vie cistercienne au XIIIe siècle: à propos d’un livre récent’, Studia Monastica, 20 (1978), 223–6Google Scholar
Canivez, J.-M. (ed.), Statuta capitulorum generalium ordinis cisterciensis ab anno 1116 ad annum 1786, 8 vols. (Louvain, 1933–41)
Lucet, B. (ed.), La codification cistercienne de 1202 et son évolution ultérieure (Rome, 1964)
Lucet, B.Les codifications cisterciennes de 1237 et de 1257 (Paris, 1977)Google Scholar
Waddell, C. (ed.), Narrative and Legislative Texts from Early Cîteaux, Cîteaux: Studia et Documenta 9 (Brecht, 1999)
Waddell, C., Twelfth-Century Statutes from the Cistercian General Chapter, Cîteaux: Studia et Documenta 12 (Brecht, 2002)Google Scholar

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