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Were There Twelfth-Century Cistercian Nuns?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Constance H. Berman
Constance H. Berman
Affiliation:
Constance H. Berman is professor of history at the University of Iowa and University of Iowa May Brodbeck fellow in the Humanities for 1999.
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Extract

It has been a truism in the history of medieval religious orders that the Cistercians only admitted women late in the twelfth century and then under considerable outside pressure. This view has posited a twelfth-century “Golden Age” when it had been possible for the abbots of the order of Cîteaux to avoid contact with women totally. Only later did the floodgates burst open and a great wave of women wishing to be Cistercians flood over abbots powerless to resist it. This paper reassesses narrative accounts, juridical arguments, and charter evidence to show that such assertions of the absence of any twelfthcentury Cistercian nuns are incorrect. They are based on mistaken notions of how the early Cistercian Order developed, as well as on a biased reading of the evidence, including a double standard for proof of Cistercian status—made much higher for women's houses than for men's. If approached in a gender-neutral way, the evidence shows that abbeys of Cistercian women appeared as early as those for the order's men. Evidence from which it has been argued that nuns were only imitating the Cistercian Order's practices in the twelfth century in fact contains exactly the same language that when used to describe men's houses is deemed to show them to be Cistercian. Formal criteria for incorporation of women's houses in the thirteenth century are irrelevant to a twelfth-century situation in which only gradually did most communities of monks or nuns eventually identified as Cistercian come to be part of the newly developing religious order.

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Articles
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Church History , Volume 68 , Issue 4 , December 1999 , pp. 824 - 864
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Copyright © American Society of Church History 1999

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References

Parts of this paper were presented in 1995 and 1996 in Copenhagen, Lawrence, Kans., and Iowa City, Iowa; information on Jully and le Tart was used in a paper “Religious Women and the Earliest Cistercians,” presented to the Third History of Religious Women conference, Loyola University, Chicago, June 1998. The paper owes much to the author's continued relationship with the “Medieval Religious Women Communities and Lives, 500–1500” project, and to its founders, Mary Martin McLaughlin and Suzanne Fonay Wemple. I am grateful to NEH for support in 1988, to the president and fellows of Clare Hall, Cambridge, who appointed me a visiting fellow in 1994–1995, and to the University of Iowa for a Faculty Scholar Award in 1993–1996. Travel monies for research on early Cistercian documents conducted in May 1997 and in July 1998 came from the UI Vice-President for Research, the UI International Travel Committee, and the Dean of Liberal Arts. This article was originally submitted in 1997. The editors apologize for the delay in publication.

1. The findings of this paper constitute a separate topic for investigation, but also lie at the interstices of two long-term research projects. See Berman, Constance H., The Cistercian Evolution: Transformation of a Religious Order in the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming, 2000); eadem, Sisters in Wealth and in Poverty: Endowment and Administration of Cistercian Houses for Women in the Ecclesiastical Province of Sens, 1190–1350, a project still in preparation; and eadem,CrossRefGoogle Scholar“Abbeys for Cistercian Nuns in the Ecclesiastical Province of Sens: Foundation, Endowment and Economic Activities of the Earlier Foundations,” Revue Mabillon 73 (1997): 83–113, and related articles. Even standard accounts such as that of Louis J. Lekai, The Cistercians, Ideals and Reality (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1977), 347 ff., have moved in the direction of less rigid exclusions of women from any role in the Cistercian Order. Perhaps the most important work to date has been that of Jean-de-la-Croix Bouton, Les Moniales cisterciennes, vol. 1, Histoire externe (Grignan: Abbaye N.D. d'Aiguebelle, 1986), which has treated much of the evidence for nuns as if they were at least related to the order. It is now time to deconstruct the arguments which state that while imitating the order these women were somehow lesser Cistercians than were the order's monks.Google Scholar

2. Cartulaires de I'Abbaye de Molesme, ancien diocèse de Langres, 916–1250; Recueil de Documents sur le Nord de la Bourgogne et le Midi de la Champagne, publié avec une introduction diplomatique, historique et géographique, ed. Laurent, Jacques, 2 vols. (Paris: Picard, 1907, 1911), no. 126.Google Scholar

3. Laurent, Molesme, no. 135.Google Scholar

4. Laurent, Molesme, no. 79: “Et ipsa cum aliis mulieribus in loco eodem, post positis omnibus seculi curis, religiose viveret.”Google Scholar

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7. Jobin, Jully, no. 1 (n.d.): “Eaedemque mulieres sub ordinatione Molismensis abbatis, Deo servire quiete valeant. Quarum victus et conversatio, mea petitione, per domnum Guidonem Molismensem abbatem, et ejus conventum sic constituitur, ut de proprio nutrimento et labore, boumque suorum cultura et eleemosynis fidelium in commune victum vestitumque recipiant, servos vel ancillas, ecclesias aut decimas, villasque non habeant; sed, si ab aliquo vel aliqua haec eis data fuerint, Molismensi ecclesie permaneant; aliud sane mobile Juliacenses teneant. Terra etiam si eis data fuerit alia, quam propriis carrucis excolere non queant, Molismensi conceditur coenobio. Quibus ad regimen sui tarn corporum quam animarum, quatuor deputabuntur monachi per Molismensem abbatem, qui eas ob omni peculiaritatis vitio atque vagatione, secundum Dominum, tueantur.” Jean Leclercq has remarked on the similarities of economic regime between these nuns and the early Cistercians in “Cisterciennes et filles de S. Bernard à propos des structures variées des monastères de moniales au moyen age,” Studia Monastica 32 (1990): 139–56;Google Scholar and idem, “La 'Paternité de S. Bernard et les debuts de l'ôrdre cistercien,” Revue Bénédictine 103 (1993): 445–81. Additional information on what has historically been thought to have been the economic regime of these nuns, but also on how such communities of nuns were moved from one reformed practice to another, is suggested by Jully, no. 12 (1155), drawn from the history of the monks of Saint John of Reomaensi, who had property in the parish of Jully; obviously this is a very problematic text since it asserts that the women were associated with Fontevrault.Google Scholar

8. Jobin, Jully, no. 8 (1126–36), by Guilencus, bishop of Langres; Jully, no. 4 (1129), Guilencus, bishop of Langres, notes a gift by Lady Eluidis of Montregal and Ancericius her son; Jully, no. 5 (1130), Hato, bishop of Troyes, notes what was given for his daughter by Erlebaudus Goziaudus.Google Scholar

9. Jobin, Jully, no. 6 (1133).Google Scholar

10. Jobin, Jully, no. 3 (March 1128): “Quo defuncto, uxor ejus Aanolz, relinquens seculum et veniens Juliacum, eidem loco et sese conversam tradidit et predicrum casamenrum donavit.”Google Scholar

11. Jobin, Jully, no. 7 (before 1137). This charter seems to have been written and sealed by Bernard himself.Google Scholar

12. Jobin, Jully, no. 9 (1142).Google Scholar

13. Jobin, Jully, no. 10 (1145): “Eugenius, episcopus, servus servorum Dei, dilectis filiis Geraldo, Molismensi abbati, ejusque fratribus tarn presentibus quam futuris, regularem vitam professis in perpetuum. Sicut injusta poscentibus nullus est tribuendas assensus, sic legitima desiderantium non differenda petitio, quatinus et devotionis sinceritas laudabiliter enitescat et utilitas postulata vires indubitanter assumat. Ea propter, dilecti in Domino filii, vestris justis postulationibus, placido occurentes assensu, donationem Milonis, comitis Barri, Molismensi eccelesie de Juliaco factam, et Josceranni felicis memorie, Lingonensis episcopi, canonico munimine roboratam, vobis vestrisque successoribus, inconvulso jure, concedimus obtinendam, et presentis scripti suffragio roboram; statuentes ut ipsa Juliacensis et que, Deo favente, jam ex ea processerunt sanctimonialium ecclesie, quas propriis congruum duximus exprimendas vocabulis: in episcopatu Lingonensi, ecclesie Ose; in episcopatu Catalaunensi, ecclesia Vivifontis et ecclesia One; vel si que future sunt Juliaci propagines, arbitrio et ordinatione abbatis Molismi regulariter disposite, ad laudem et gloriam Dei, sub ditione Molismensis ecclesie jugiter perseverent. Quia vero predicte sanctimoniales, secundum Juliacensis institui proposirum, perpetua signate clausura ad secularia non declinant negotia, de monachis Molismensibus habebunt sibi spiritualium et temporalium bonorum provisores et ministros.”Google Scholar

14. Bouton, Jean-de-la-Croix, “L' Abbaye de Tart et ses filiales au moyen âge,” in Melanges à la mémoire du père Anselme Dimier, ed. Chauvin, B. (Pupilllin: Arbois, 1981–1982; hereafter Melanges Dimier), 2.3:19–61.Google Scholar

15. Patrologia Latina (1844–65; hereafter PL) 185:1409–1411, Fundatio Monasterii de Tart sanctimonialium diocensi Lingonensis quae intra muros urbis Divionis ex anno Christi 1623 sunt deductae. (Ex autographo archivi Tartensis) could have been written at any time, but the style of its opening suggests a considerably later date than the twelfth century: “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Benignus et omnipotens Deus, sanctae Ecclesiae caput et rector, ex quorumdam fidelium suorum abundantiis pauperum inopiam misericorditer supplet, ut in aeterna retributione, pauperum copia divitum penuriam mercede repleat. Sed modernae donationes ad delendam mortis similatricem oblivionem utiliter litterarum monimentis adnotantur, ut in hoc quoque misericordia et veritas quodammodo salubriter sibi et obviare videantur. Idcirco praesentibus et fururis notificamus quod tempore Guilenci Lingonensi episcopi, Hugone in Burgundia ducatum regente, sanctimoniales in loco qui dicitur Tart congregatae sunt; et concessione ac confirmatione Lingonensis capituli, abbatissa, nomine Elizabeth eis prelata est, sub qua quaedam Maria prioratum aliarum gessit. Rogatu ergo et etiam emptione ipsius ducis et Mathildis uxoris ejus, Arnulfus Cornutus quidam miles, cum uxore sua nomine Emilina, quae ibi postea tumulata est, ipsum locum ipsis sanctimonialibus, per manum domni Stephani abbatis Cisterciensis dedit, secundum determinationem prius factam domno Christophoro, sive domno Goceranno Lingonensi quondam episcopo, in silvis et aquis, gurgitibus, terris cultis et incultis. Testes hujus rei… Facta sunt haec anno Dominicae Incarnationis 1132, indictione xi, concurrente v, epacta 1.” Other charters follow in this publication, but the next is from the year 1142. The inclusion of a prioress in the discussion suggests drafting after the introduction of commendatory abbesses.Google Scholar

16. PL 185:1411.Google Scholar

17. Liber instrumentorum memorialium; Cartulaire des Guillems de Montpellier, ed. Germain, A. (Montpellier: Jean Marel Aine, 1884), no. 96 (1172), will of William VII of Montpellier.Google Scholar

18. Bouton, “Le Tart,” passim.Google Scholar

19. PL 180:1199–1200: “Eugenius episcopus, servus servorum Dei, dilectis in Christo filiabus Elizabeth abbatissae de Tart, ejusdem sororibus, tarn praesentibus quam fururis, regularem vitam professis in perpetuum. Desiderium quod ad religionis propositum et animarum salutem pertinere dignoscitur animos nos decet libenter concedere, et petentium desideriis congruum impertiri suffragium. Eapropter, dilectae in Christo filiae, vestris justis postulantionibus clementer annuimus, et praefatum locum in quo divino mancipate estis obsequio, sub beati Petri et nostra protectione suscipimus, et praesentis scripti privilegio communimus; statuentes ut quascunque possessiones, quaecunque bona idem locus in praesentiarum juste et canonice possidet, aut in futurum concessione pontificum, largitione regum vel principum, oblatione fidelium seu aliis justis modis, Deo propitio, potent adispisci, firma vobis vestrisque succedentibus et illibata permaneant: in quibus haec propriis duximus exprimenda vocabulis: Locum ipsum de Tart, et locum qui dicitur Marmot cum appendiciis suis, et plenarium usagium totius nemoris de Villers; grangiam de Lamblento cum appendiciis suis, quam Humbertus de Bisseio vobis libere dedit cum Patro majore et heredibus ejus, de assensu Hugonis de Bello-Monte, de cujus casamento erat et plenarium in campis et in silvis et in pascuis; et decimas quas possessores earum ante dedicationem ecclesiae illius grangiae in aspectu domini praesulis Cabilonensis verpierunt. Sane laborum vestrorum, quos propriis manibus aut sumptibus colitis, sive de nutrimentis vestrorum animalium, nullus a vobis decimas exigere praesumat.” Benoît Chauvin, “Papauté et abbayes cisterciennes du duché de Bourgogne,” in L'Église de France et la papauté (Xe-XIlle siècle); Die französische Kirche und das Papsttum (10.–13. Jahrhundert). Actes du XXVIe colloque historique franco-allemand organisé en coopération avec I'École nationale des chartes par I'Institut historique allemand de Paris (Paris, 17–19 octobre 1990), ed. Rolf Grosse, Études et documents pour servir à une Gallia Pontificia 1:326–62 (Bonn: Bouvier, 1993), 351, discusses the original of this papal bull of Eugenius III for le Tart.Google Scholar

20. Les Monuments primitifs de la Règle cistercienne, ed. Guignard, Philippe, Divionensia, Analecta 10 (Dijon: Rabutot, 1878), 643–49; Bouton et al. “Le Tart,” passim.Google Scholar

21. Statuta capitulorum generalium ordinis cisterciensis ab anno 1116 ad annum 1786, ed. J.-M. Canivez (Louvain: Bureaux, 1933), 1187. (In citations of Canivez, all numbers not otherwise specified are years.) See discussion of this filiation in Elizabeth Conner, “The Abbeys of Las Huelgas and Tart and Their Filiations,” in Hidden Springs: Cistercian Monastic Women: Medieval Religious Women 3:1, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1995), 29–48.

22. On nuns being sent from Saint-Antoine to Maubuisson to found the new house, see Anselm Dimier, Saint Louis et Cîteaux (Paris: Létouzey et Ané, 1954); see also references to nuns following the practices of Saint-Antoine in Gallia Christiana entries for La-Cour-Notre-Dame near Sens, and Iles-les-Dames, near Auxerre;Google Scholar see Constance Berman, H., “The Labors of Hercules, the Cartulary, Church and Abbey for Nuns of La-Cour-Notre-Dame-de-Michery,” Journal of Medieval History 26 (forthcoming 01. 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Such assumptions are present in unfounded statements such as, “Tart was established by dissident nuns from Jully with the help of Stephen Harding,” in Thompson, Sally, Women Religious: The Founding of English Nunneries after the Norman Conquest (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 95;Google Scholarcf. Venarde, Bruce, Women's Monasticism and Medieval Society: Nunneries in France and England, 890–1215 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), 73–74.Google Scholar

24. Gaussin, Pierre-Roger, “Les Communautés féminines dans l'espace languedocien,” in La Femme dans la vie religieuse du Languedoc (Xllle-XIVe s.), Cahiers de Fanjeaux 23 (1988): 299–332, esp. 307–308.Google Scholar

25. Cartulaire de I'abbaye cistercienne d'Obazine (Xlle–XIIIe siècle), ed. Barrière, Bemadette (Clermont-Ferrand: Université, 1989), provides no references to Stephen attending the purported 1147 meeting;Google Scholarsee also Barrière, Bemadette, “The Cistercian Monastery of Coyroux in the Province of Limousin in Southern France, in the 12th–13th Centuries,” Gesta 31 (1992): 73–75.Google Scholar

26. Buhot, Jacqueline, “L'Abbaye normande de Savigny, Chef d'Ordre et fille de Cîteaux,” Le Moyen Age 46 (1936): 1–19, 104–121, 178–90, 249–72, is the standard treatment; but see forthcoming work by Patrick Conyers.Google Scholar

27. Golding, Brian, Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine Order c. 1130–c. 1300 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 26 ff.;Google Scholarbut see also Elkins, Sharon, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 133 ff.; Thompson, Women Religious, 73 ff.Google Scholar

28. Knowles, David, The Monastic Order in Medieval England, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1949), 362, “Of the thirty-odd Cistercian nunneries which were in course of time established in England almost one-half date from the period 1175–1215,” glides over the fact that most of the other half were founded earlier;Google Scholarsee Gilchrist, Roberta, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (London: Routledge, 1994), 37, fig. 7.Google Scholar

29. These three houses are discussed in Brigirte Degler-Spengler, “The Incorporation of Cistercian Nuns into the Order in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century,” in Hidden Springs, 85–134, cited at 87 ff.;Google ScholarBoyd, Catherine E., A Cistercian Nunnery in Medieval Italy: The Story of Rifreddo in Saluzzo, 1220–1300 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1943), 78–81.Google Scholar

30. See Cartulaire de I'abbaye de Silvanès, ed. P.-A. Verlaguet (Rodez: Carrère, 1910); Cartulaire et documents de I'abbaye de Nonenque, ed. C. Couderc and J.-L. Rigal (Rodez: Carrère, 1955); the relationships are discussed at length in Constance H. Berman, The Cistercian Evolution; see eadem, “Men's Houses, Women's Houses: The Relationship between the Sexes in Twelfth-Century Monasticism,” in The Medieval Monastery, ed. Andrew MacLeish (St. Cloud, Minn.: University of Minnesota, 1988), 43–52; eadem, “The Foundation and Early History of the Monastery of Silvanès: the Economic Reality,” in Cistercian Ideals and Reality, ed. J. R. Sommerfeldt (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1978), 280–318; and Beverly M. Kienzle, “The Tract on the Conversion of Pons of Léras and the True Account of the Beginning of the Monastery of Silvanès,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 29 (1995): 219–43.Google Scholar

31. Lawrence, C. H., Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 2d ed. (London: Longman, 1989), gives nuns a separate chapter.Google Scholar

32. On these texts (described in note 37 for dating) see Knowles, David, “The Primitive Cistercian Documents,” in Great Historical Enterprises: Problems in Monastic History (London: Thomas Nelson, 1963), 197–222Google Scholar; Giles Constable, “The Study of Monastic History Today,” in Essays on the Reconstruction of Medieval History, ed. Vaclav Mudroch and G. S. Couse (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1974), 21–51; and Place, François de, “Bibliographie raisonnee des premiers documents cisterciens (1098–1220),” Citeaux 35 (1984): 7–54.Google Scholar

33. Dimier, Anselm, “Chapitres généraux d'abbesses cisterciennes,” Cîteaux 11 (1960): 268–75;Google ScholarFontette, Micheline de, Les Religieuses à l'âge classique du droit canon: Recherches sur les structures juridiques des branches féminities des or Ares (Paris: Vrin, 1961), 27–63; and Sally Thompson,Google Scholar“The Problem of Cistercian Nuns in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries,” in Medieval Women, ed. Baker, Derek (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), 227–52.Google Scholar

34. See Conrad of Eberbach, Exordium magnum Cisterciense, sive narratio de initio Cisterciensis Ordinis, ed. Griesser, Bruno (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1961). Internal evidence suggests a date no earlier than 1200. The earlier exordia are anonymous, as are some of the editorial revisions of the Vita prima of Bernard of Clairvaux; on the latter see Adriaan H. Bredero, Bernard of Clairvaux: Between Cult and History (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997), 6 ff. Translations of the Exordium Cistercii and Exordium parvum are found in the appendices of Lekai, Cistercians, 442 ff., and more recently in The New Monastery: Texts and Studies on the Early Cistercians, ed. E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1998); they are based on Les Plus Anciens Textes de Cîteaux: Sources, textes et notes historiques, ed. Jean-de-la-Croix Bouton and Jean-Baptiste Van Damme (Achel, Belgium: Abbaye Cistercienne, 1974). They have until recently been treated as accounts of circa 1120 found in manuscripts dated to the 1140s (see Constable, Reformation, 38 n. 171), but arguments for manuscripts before 1152 are incorrect. Despite being treated by pious admirers of the Cistercians as virtual eyewitness accounts, these “documents” are retrospective accounts filled with paraphrases of the Rule of Saint Benedict, Deuteronomy, and other standard monastic exemplars (see Jean-Baptiste Auberger, L'Unanimité cistercienne primitive: Mythe ou réalité? [Achel, Belgium: Abbaye Cistercienne, 1986], 109 ff.), which have rarely been subjected to codicological or literary scrutiny; relationships between various texts and manuscript contexts are not well established. I discuss the manuscript dating in n. 39.Google Scholar

35. But on this see Pacaut, Marcel, “La Filiation claravallienne dans la genèse et l'essor de l'Ordre cistercien,” in Histoire de Clairvaux: Actes du Colloque de Bar-sur-Aube/Clairvaux, 22–23 June, 1990 (Bar-sur-Aube: Némont, 1991), 135–47.Google Scholar

36. The arguments that follow regarding the institutions of the Cistercians and their dating are made in further detail in Berman, Cistercian Evolution.Google Scholar

37. There are two alternate versions of the Cistercian foundation story in the twelfth century, both dating to no earlier than the 1160s. The earlier Exordium Cistercii is very short, containing only a few paragraphs describing the departure from Molesme and the foundation, and is probably found in its earliest form in Paris, Sainte-Genevieve MS 1207. The longer, later narrative is the Exordium parvum, which contains a series of “documents” supposedly supporting its account; later manuscript versions of it (but still dating from the twelfth century) contain a papal confirmation purported to be by Calixtus II, usually immediately following the Exordium parvum. On the relationship of this forged papal bull to authentic confirmations for Bonnevaux, see below. The establishment of an accurate series of manuscripts for these exordia is based on making a series out of all the surviving twelfth-century manuscripts of the liturgical ordines known as the Ecclesiastica Officia, which are found in the same manuscripts along with all the exordia texts with the exception of that from Sainte-Geneviève. A primitive fragment of those liturgical ordines, found in Montpellier H322 in a book of Cistercian usages without any exordia texts at all, dates the entire group to after 1160. This is in accord with the evidence of the most-cited early manuscripts of the Ecclesiastica officia, Trent 1711 and Ljubljana 31, which have been dated incorrectly to before 1152 by Danièle Choisselet and Placide Vernet, Les “Ecclesiastica officia ” cisterciens du Xlle siècle: Texte latin selon les manuscrits édités de Trente 1711, Ljubljana 31 and Dijon 114, La Documentation Cistercienne 22 (Reiningue: Abbaye d'OElenberg, 1989), because they believed that the absence of a liturgical practice outlined in Canivez (1152), Statuta, vol. 1, no. 6, made those two manuscripts earlier; in fact, the statute in question cannot be definitively dated to before 1185, and dating for Trent 1711's exordium to before 1135 cannot be upheld once it is noted that this text has been added on as an additional opening quire plus one sheet surrounding the next quire. On the wholly hypothetical dating of parts of vol. 1 of Canivez's edition of the Cistercian Statuta to such years as 1134 and 1152, and for further discussion of these “Institutes” or Capitula in manuscripts such as Paris, B.N. Latin MSS 4221, 4346B, and N.A. 430; Ljubljana 31, and Trent 1711–which all date to between 1161 and 1185—see Berman, Cistercian Evolution.

38. See discussion at n. 86 ff.Google Scholar

39. Careful appraisal of the dating for the earliest Cistercian General Chapters in studies by Mahn, J.-B., L'Ordre cistercien et son gouvernement des origines au milieu du XIIIe siècle (1098–1265) (Paris: Boccard, 1945)Google Scholar; Hourlier, Jacques, Le Chapitre Général jusau'au moment du Grand Schisme: Origines, développement, étude juridiaue (Paris: Sirey, 1936)Google Scholar; and Sayers, Jane, “The Judicial Activities of the General Chapters,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 15 (1964): 18–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 168–85, suggests how often our attribution of these assemblies to an early date is based entirely on the misdated attribution of Cistercian statutes to the years 1134 and 1152. In published documents for Burgundian abbeys dated to before the 1170s, references thought to be to the General Chapter turn out to refer to internal chapters at Cîteaux; but cf. Chartes de Cîteaux, no. 90 (1132) (which turns out to be the interpolation of a Lucius III bull from the 1180s—the surviving copy still bears the 1180s rota), and Recueil de Clairvaux, ed. Waquet, no. 4 (1132), the original which the Cîteaux charter mimicked. The authentic Clairvaux tithe privilege does not mention an order but rather a congregation under Bernard of Clairvaux—a distinction I clarify below. The “original” cited in Canivez, Statuta, vol. 1 (1142), for a Charter of Peace between the Cistercians and the Praemonstratensians has dating clauses which suggest an interpolation from the 1160s. There are three references to a General Chapter, possibly none of these from before the 1150s: Chartes de Cîteaux, no. 128 (1146–53); Le Premier Cartulaire de l'Abbaye Cistercienne de Pontigny (xiie–xiiie siècles), ed. Martine Garrigues (Paris, 1981); no. 114 (attributed to 1156); and Recueil des pancartes de I'abbaye de la Ferté-sur-Grosne: 1113–1178, ed. Georges Duby (Aix-Marseilles, 1953); and no. 8 (from an act of 1158 describing earlier events). Later references to a General Chapter include one for the count of Macon: “cupiens fieri particeps orationum et spiritualium benefitiorum fratrum ordinis Cistercii, pro remedio anime mee et parentum meorum in generali capitulo abbatum ordinis Cistercii, dedi et concessi “(Chartes de Cîteaux, no. 222 [1173]); and, in recently edited charters for Vauluisant, the earliest reference to a General Chapter dating to 1176: “Alexander, dei gratia abbati cistertiensis, Willelmus de Firmitate, Henricus Clare Vallis, Henricus Morimondensis, omnibus ad quos littere iste pervenerint, salutem in Domino. Noverit universitas vestra quod Arduinus abbas de Ripatorio, consilio fratrum suorum et assensu tocius capituli sui, vendidit grangiam unam que dicitur Chevreium cum omnibus appenditiis suis et quicquid ex dono Anscheri Senonis habebant Petro, abbati Vallis Lucentis, et frarribus eiusdem domus pro sescentis et.L. marcis fini argenti ad pondus trecense. Actum est hoc in generali capitulo Cisterciensi, anno ab incarnatione domini M.c.lxx.sexto. Quod ut ratum omni tempore habeatur, sigillorum nostrorum attestatione roboravimus,” from Paris, A.N. AB XIX 1713; Cartulary of Vauluisant, ed. William O. Duba (master/s thesis, University of Iowa, 1994).

40. This suggests that J.-B. Van Damme, “La Constitution Cistercienne de 1165,” Analecta Cisterciensia 19 (1963): 51–104, actually concerns the earliest constitution, that approved by Alexander III, and the first Cistercian constitution submitted to any pope. More work on how this then parallels other statutes presented to that pontiff at similar dates would contribute largely to our understanding of an understudied pope. One later copy in a Dijon manuscript is dated to 1163. See Dijon, Bibl. Mun. MS 87, fol. 168v–169r.Google Scholar

41. This congregation might then be thought to include only those nine or ten houses each of whose sites were chosen by Bernard of Clairvaux or Stephen Harding, as shown in Auberger, L'Unanimité cistercienne primitive, esp. 395 ff.Google Scholar

42. Stock, Brian, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 88 ff., 405 ff.;Google ScholarNewman, Martha B., The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform, 1098–1180 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 10 ff.Google Scholar

43. On the more general trends toward use of written documents, written constitutions, etc., seeClanchy, Michael T., From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2d ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993); andGoogle ScholarKittel, Ellen, From Ad Hoc to Routine: A Case Study in Medieval Bureaucracy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. See Canivez, Statuta, vol. 1, for years 1179–1189; the issues addressed in those years concern the minutiae of creating an order, enforcing attendance and accommodating abbots at an annual, universal General Chapter meeting, size of abbeys, etc.Google Scholar

45. See de Fontette, Les Religieuses, 27–63; Degler-Spengler, “Incorporation,” 99 ff.

46. See accounts by Freed, John, “Urban Development and the ‘Cura Monialium’ in Thirteenth-Century Germany,” Viator 3 (1972): 311–327;CrossRefGoogle ScholarRoisin, Simone, “L'Efflorescence cistercienne et le courant féminin de piété au 13ème siècle,” Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 39 (1943): 342–378;Google ScholarGanck, Roger de, “The Cistercian Nuns of Belgium in the Thirteenth Century Seen against the Background of the Second Wave of Cistercian Spirituality,” Cistercian Studies 5 (1970): 169–187;Google Scholaridem, “The Integration of Nuns in the Cistercian Order particularly in Belgium,” Cîteaux 35 (1984): 235–47;Google Scholar and McDonnell, Ernst, Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture, with Special Emphasis on the Belgian Scene (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1954).Google Scholar

47. It is important not to lump them together as all alike; there were extremely wealthy communities of Cistercian women like that founded by Blanche of Castile at Maubuisson as describedGoogle Scholar by Dimier, Anselm, Saint Louis et Clteaux (Paris, 1954);Google Scholar there were also very poor ones like Netlieu as described by Rouquette, Daniel, “Note sur la date de fondation et l'emplacement de l'abbaye de Netlieu,” Mélanges Dimier 3.6:697–700.Google Scholar

48. Such issues about women's communities arose across the spectrum of new religious groups at this time, but the thirteenth-century history of many reform groups founded in the twelfth century, particularly of their “women's branches,” has been neglected until recently.Google Scholar

49. This means that explanations of aberrance, such as found in Lacger, L. de, “Ardorel,” Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique 7 (1924): 1617–1620, or of the introduction of decadence with incorporations, as found inGoogle ScholarHill, Bennett D., English Cistercian Monasteries and their Patrons in the Twelfth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1968)Google Scholar, or of a conflict between ideals and reality, as found in Lekai, Louis J., “Ideals and Reality in Early Cistercian Life and Legislation,” Cistercian Ideals and Reality, 4–29, are irrelevant.Google Scholar

50. Southern, R. W., Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1970), 317 n. 19, gives totals for the entire Middle Ages of 654 houses for women as against 742 for men, but admits his numbers for women's houses are low for some cases; more recent studies show even more houses included; for instance, Brigitte Degler-Spengler, “Die Zisterzienserinnen in der Schweiz,” Helvetia Sacra (Bern) 3 (1982): 507–574; Dominique Mouret, “Les Moniales cisterciennes en France aux Xlle et XIIIe siècles,” Mémoire de Maitrise, Université de Limoges, 1984; Elkins, Holy Women; ConstanceGoogle ScholarBerman, H., “Fashions in Monastic Patronage: The Popularity of Supporting Cistercian Abbeys for Women,” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 17 (1990): 36–45; Thompson, Women Religious; Venarde, Women's Monasticism.Google Scholar

51. On the dating of this phenomenon and its results in new religious houses, see for instance Leyser, Henrietta, Hermits and the New Monasticism: A Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe, 1000–1150 (London: MacMillan, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52. That a confirmation of Bonnevaux's properties of circa 1120 was used as the basis for an interpolated text dated to 1119 and turned into a papal confirmation of the order's practices is confirmed by the fact that only the last of the twelfth-century manuscript versions of the Exordium parvum contain this papal bull, that there are sentences out of order in all versions of it until the Exordium magnum, and that only the later manuscript versions contain its dating clause.Google Scholar

53. Such an account is in accord with the account of gradual regularization of women's houses in other reform groups, described by Gold, Penny Shine, The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 80–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54. Bredero, Bernard, 248 ff.; Pacaut, “Filiation”; Berman, Cistercian Evolution, pushes this explanation further in light of the new dating of the exordia.Google Scholar

55. PL 185:237, “Anno ab incarnatione Domini millesimo centesimo decimo tertio, a constitutione domus Cisterciensis quindecimo, virus Dei Bernardus annos natus circiter tres et viginti Cistercium ingressus, cum sociis amplius quam triginta, sub abbate Stephano, suavi jugo Christi collum submisit. Ab ilia autem die dedit Dominus benedictionem, et vinea ilia Domini Sabaoth dedit fructum suum, extendens palmites suos usque a mare, et ultra mare propagines suas. Quia vero ex predictis sociis ejus uxorati aliqui fuerant, et uxores quoque cum viris idem votum sacrae conversationis inierant; per ipsius sollicitudinem aedificat coenobium sanctimonialium feminarum, quod Julleium dicitur, in Lingonensi parrochia, Domino cooperante, magnifice satis excrevit usque hodie religionis opinione celeberrimum, et personis ac possessionibus dilatarum; set et propagatum jam per loca alia, et non cessans adhuc ampliorem facere fructum”; for date of William, see Bredero, Bernard, 285.Google Scholar

56. Cartulaire de I'abbaye de Silvanès, no. 470, 371 ff.; Kienzle, “The Tract,” passim; and La Vie de Saint Étienne d'Obazine, ed. Aubrun, Michel (Clermont-Ferrand: Universite, 1970).Google Scholar

57. Both Orderic and William, when they discuss Cistercians, discuss not the Cistercians as an order, but the monks of the abbey of Cîteaux itself; see The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis 8.26, ed. Chibnall, Marjorie (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969–1980), 4:322; andGoogle ScholarDe Gestis Regum Anglorum de Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Monachi, ed. Stubbs, William, 2 vols. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1887), passim. This is approximately the same with the De institutione clericorum of Philip of Harvengt, PL 203:836–37, from the 1140s. See relevant parts of the De miraculis sanctae Mariae Laudunensis of Herman of Tournai, PL 156:962–1018.Google Scholar

58. Herman, PL 156:1001–1002: “Haec itaque octo monasteria, tria quidem ex clarevallensium ordine monachorum, quinque verso ex Praemonstratensium clericorum, instar octo beatitudinum evangelicarum in dioecesi? sua domnus Bartholomaeus construens, et singulis proprium abbatem ordinans, ad ultimum ut compleretur numerus novem ordinum angelicarum virtutum, etiam novum monasterium sexus feminei in loco qui Monasteriolum dicitur, prope Clarafontanam superaddidit, abbatissamque ibi religiosissimam puellam, nomine Guiburgem, ordinavit; quo urto monasterio non immerito dixerim Laudunensem ecclesiam omnibus aliis debere praeferri. In nulla enim orbis parte antea vel lectum in codicibus, vel auditum fuit auribus, hujuscemodi religionis abbatiam feminarum exstitisse. Hae siquidem quasi illius Dominici dicti exsecutrices: ‘Regnum coelorum in patitur, et violenti rapiunt illud’ (Math XL12): ad idem regnum toto conatu ascendere nitentes, terrena funditus despiciunt; et non solum saeculum, sed ipsum quoque sexum vincere gestientes, ordinem Cistellensem, quern multi virorum et robustorum, juvenum aggredi metuunt, violenter, imo libenter, spontanee assumpserunt; depositisque omnibus lineis indumentis, atque pelliciis, solis tunicis laneis utuntur, et non solum nendo, vel texendo, quod femineum opus esse constat, sed etiam in agris fodiendo, et cum securi et ligone silvam succisam exstirpando, spinas et vepres evellendo, manibus propriis assidue laborantes, cum silentio victum sibi quaerunt; vitamque Clarevallensium monachorum per omnia imitantes in semetipsis ostendunt verum esse ilium Domini sermonem: quia omnia possibilia sunt credenti.”Google Scholar

59. De miraculis sanctae Marine Laudunensis of Herman of Tournai, PL 156:962–1018, cited at col. 996: “Praeterea in Cisterellensi coenobio soli viri suscipiuntur, domnus vero Norbertus cum sexu virili etiam femineum ad conversionem suscipi constituit, ita ut etiam arctiorem et districtiorem in ejus monasteriis videamus esse conversationem feminarum quam virorum.”Google Scholar

60. That Cîteaux was promoting a less syneisactic approach to the inclusion of religious women in its reform does not necessarily mean that its leaders were denouncing the inclusion of women altogether. Indeed, it even seems likely that it was only later Cistercian commentators who saw a denunciation of women or of syneisacticism in Bernard's famous sermon 65 from the collection of his homilies on the Song of Songs, parts of which were written after 1147. Perhaps that sermon should not be interpreted as anything more than a sermon on heretics who hypocritically called apostolic their living together with women.Google ScholarSee Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones super Cantica Canticorum, no. 65, in Opera Omnia, ed. Leclercq, J., Talbot, C. H., and Rochais, H. M. (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957), 2:172–77. The emphasis in the text is on heretics, not syneisacticism, although this is how it is often read by modern interpreters. My reading of this sermon suggests a reflection on Bernard of Clairvaux's anxiety about the hypocrisy of heretics who pretended to be true Christians, claiming among other proofs their apostolic lives in common with women. It became a convenient way to avoid the cura monialium to claim that Bernard had said that the care of religious women was heretical. Cf. Jo Ann McNamara, “The Herrenfrage: The Restructuring of the Gender System, 1050–1150,”Google Scholarin Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Lees, Clare A. et al. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 3–29.Google Scholar

61. “Tune adiit capirulum Cisterciense, ubi forte rune aderat bone memorie papa Eugenius, ut curam domorum suarum manciparet custodie monachorum Cistercie…Dominus autem papa et abbates Cistercie dixerunt sui ordinis monachos aliorum religioni, et persertim monialium, non licere preesse: et sic quod optauit non optinuit”Google Scholar(The Book of Saint Gilbert 5, ed. Foreville, Raymonde and Keire, Gillian [Oxford: Clarendon, 1987], 40–43); this book by an anonymous canon of Sempringham was written no earlier than 1205.Google Scholar

62. There is no contemporary evidence even for that meeting of a General Chapter supposed to have taken place at Cîteaux in 1147 (when Eugenius III is said to have been present and Savigniacs and Obazine were incorporated while Gilbert's nuns were rejected); Golding, Gilbert, 26 ff., finds no evidence before the Vita prima of Bernard.Google Scholar

63. On that charter see n. 39 above.Google Scholar

64. “Postquam autem premonstratensis ordinis uiri timorati et religiosi sapienter attendentes et familiari exemplo experti quam graue sit et periculosum ipsos custodes custodire, in domibus ordinis sui feminas iam de cetero non recipere decreuerunt, multiplicata est sicut stelle celi et excreuit in immensum cysterciensis ordinis religio sanctimonialium, benedicente eis domino et dicente: ‘Crescite et multiplicamini et implete celum,’ ” The “Historia Occidentalis” of Jacques de Vitry: A Critical Edition, ed. Hinnebusch, John Frederick (Fribourg, Switzerland: University Press, 1972), 117; dating, 6, 16.Google Scholar

65. Lekai, Cistercians, 347–49.Google Scholar

66. Dimier, “Chapitres généraux”; Degler-Spengler, “Incorporation,” 96 ff.; Canivez, Statuta, vol. 2, 1213, nos. 3 and 4; 1218, nos. 4 and 84; 1219, no. 12; 1220, no. 4; 1225, no. 1; 1228, no. 16; 1233, no. 12; and 1239, no. 7.Google Scholar

67. Krenig, Ernst Günther, “Mittelalterliche Frauenklöster nach den Konstitutionen von Cîteaux,” Anakcta Cisterciensia 10 (1954): 1–105, esp. 15 ff.Google Scholar

68. Lekai, Cistercians, 347 ff.; on Saint-Antoine, see Berman, Constance H., “Cistercian Nuns and the Development of the Order: The Cistercian Abbey at Saint-Antoine-des-Champs outside Paris,“ in The Joy of Learning and the Love of God: Essays in Honor of Jean Ledercq, ed. Elder, E. Rozanne (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1995), 121–56.Google Scholar

69. Degler-Spengler, “Incorporation,” 96 ff., lists all but ordo cisterciensis.Google Scholar

70. Graves, Coburn, “English Cistercian Nuns in Lincolnshire,” Speculum 54 (1979): 492–99, as discussed below.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71. My own early efforts in that regard are found in the footnotes to an early article; see Berman, “Men's Houses,” which is cited in the more recent work by Venarde, Women's Monasticism.Google Scholar

72. Mahn, L'Ordre cistercien, esp. 148 ff.Google Scholar

73. Cf. Thompson, “Problem,” 227–52.Google Scholar

74. Canivez, Statuta, vol. 1, passim.Google Scholar

75. The earliest annual statutes in a series are found in Montpellier, Bibliothèque de l'École de Médicine, MSS H322, dated in the manuscript to 1157–61.1 argue at length that this predates any other series of statutes—all the others contain no dates—because this is also the earliest manuscript for parts of an early liturgical ordo and the earliest Cistercian lay-brother treatises; see Berman, Cistercian Evolution. Cf. La Législation cistercienne abrégée du manuscrit de Montpellier H322, ed. Duval-Arnould, Louis (Paris: Champion, 1997), who contends that this is a truncated later text.Google Scholar

76. With the exception of a single statute attributed to 1152 in an 1185 manuscript (Dijon 114) none of the statutes dated in that publication to 1134 and to 1152 bear dates in any twelfth-century manuscript.Google Scholar

77. The prima collectio is dated in no twelfth-century manuscript.Google Scholar

78. Orderic Vitalis, ed. Chibnall, 6:424–27.

79. Statutes from before 1150 have not been lost, but were simply never made; the first distribution of statutes throughout the order only occurred in 1202; see Lekai, Cistercians, 75–76.Google Scholar

80. See n. 39 above.Google Scholar

81. Bouton, “L'Établissement,” 98, 115; and see n. 19 above.Google Scholar

82. Jennifer Carpenter, “Juette of Huy, Recluse and Other (1158–1228): Children and Mothering in the Saintly Life,” in Power of the Weak, ed. Carpenter, Jennifer and MacLean, Sally-Beth (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 57–93.Google Scholar

83. Roisin, “L'Éfflorescence cistercienne”; reference to imitation is found as well in the Herman of Tournai passage quoted at n. 58 above.Google Scholar

84. For instance, the references cited in a recent article by René Locatelli to a papal bull dated 1185 concerning nuns at Corcelles in the diocese of Besancpn describe nuns who were definitely Cistercian, reproducing what he describes as the standard formulation, “Ordinem monasticum qui secundum Deum et beati Benedictini regulam atque instirutionem Cisterciensium fratrum”; René Locatelli, “Papauté et cisterciens du diocèse de Besançon,” in Grosse, L'Église de France, 306.Google Scholar For monks at Silvanès, founded in the late 1130s, see the papal bull of Alexander III in Cartulaire de I'adbbaye de Silvanès, no. 1 (1162), “Ut ordo monasticus qui secundum Deum et beati Benedicti regulam et normam fratrum Cisterciensium”; see also a bull of Eugenius III for the monks of Chaalis, “Ut ordo monasticus qui in eadem ecclesia secundum beati Benedicti regulam et Cisterciensium fratrum observantiam auctore Domino institutus esse dinoscitur,” in Blary, François, Le Domaine de Chaalis: Xlle-XIVe siècles (Paris: C.N.R.S., 1989), no. 2 (1153).Google Scholar

85. Earliest references to an ordo monasticus at Cîteaux or to universus ordo Cisterciensis appear in papal bulls of Alexander III from 1163, Recueil de Clairvaux, nos. 92 (1163) and 97 (1163); this is confirmed by the following CD-ROM databases: Cetedoc: Library of Christian Latin Texts: CLCLT-2, published by Brepols; Cetedoc: Corpus Diplomaticorum: Belgium Latin Text, published by Brepols; and Patrologia Latina, CD-ROM index published by Chadwick-Healy.Google Scholar

86. Libellus de diversis ordinibus et professionibus qui sunt in aecdesia, ed. Constable, Giles and Smith, B. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), never discusses a Cistercian Order.Google ScholarConstable, Giles, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 174–76, stresses uniformity as the issue seen as creating orders by 1215, but this is not what ordo necessarily meant in the twelfth century.Google Scholar

87. Constable, Giles, “The Orders of Society,” in Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 251 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

88. For examples of early but ambiguous usage, see Chartes et documents concernant l'abbaye de Cîteaux: 1098–1182, ed. Marilier, J.-M. (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1961), no. 69 (1119), and no. 85 (1131), but see no. 90 (1132), which refers to both congregation and vestri ordinis abbatiis.Google Scholar

See Liber instrumentorum memorialium, ed. A. Germain (Montpellier, 1884), no. 95 (1146), for the will of Guillelm VI. The findings on this score for southern France are tabulated in Constance H. Berman, “From ordo monasticus to ordo cisterciensis in the Twelfth Century,” paper presented at the Haskins Society annual meeting, Houston, Tex., November 1997, forthcoming in volume in honor of Jaroslav Pelenski. Examples from the published cartularies for Cistercian houses in England are discussed at length in a paper presented at the 1998 meeting of the Haskins Society in Ithaca, N.Y., “The Cistercian Mystery: How Was the Order Formed and by Whom?” The Haskins Society Journal, forthcoming.

89. But see Berman, “Labors,” passim.Google Scholar

90. Promises of this sort to Jully are documented; see n. 7 above; Reinhard Schneider, Vom Klosterhaushalt zum Stadt-und Staatshaushalt: Der Zisterziensische Beitrag (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1994) provides the example of a count and countess of Flanders in 1238 who petitioned the General Chapter in the mid-thirteenth century to lend them three lay brothers. This evidence suggests that the precedents for such assignment of monks and conversi outside their own communities may well have been in the detailing of members of neighboring Cistercian men's houses to Cistercian women's communities.Google Scholar

91. See Ljubljana (Laibach), State and University Library, MS 30, for example.Google Scholar

92. Grundmann, Religious Movements, passim.Google Scholar

93. Southern, Western Society, 317, cites instances from Canivez, Statuta, vol. 2, 1242, nos. 15–18; 1243, nos. 6–8, 61–9, and 1244, no. 8, of nuns rebelliously locking out new abbot visitors; in this he mistook resistance to local visitors for resistance to being Cistercian.Google Scholar

94. Bouton, Jean-de-la-Croix, “L'Établissement des moniales cisterciennes,” Mémoire de la société pour l'histoire du droit et des institutions des anciens pays bourguignons, comtois, et romands 15 (1953): 83–116; Anselm Dimier, “Chapitres generaux.”Google Scholar

95. Krenig, “Mittelalterliche Frauenklöster,” passim.Google Scholar

96. On this see both Boyd, Rifreddo, and Roisin, “L'Efflorescence.”Google Scholar

97. Graves, “English Cistercian Nuns.”Google Scholar

98. “Venerabili et in Christo dllecto domino W. decano majori Linć ecclesie frater Johannus dictus abbas Cyster' salutem. Discrecioni vestre per presentes litteras intimamus quod abbatisse monialium de Stikeswolde, de Grenefeld, de Cotun, de Legburn', de Goukewell, de Sancto Michaele extra Stamf' licet habitum ordinis nostri portare videantur, non tamen sunt de ordine nostro nee eidem ordine incorporate propter quod nee gaudere debent privilegiis et libertatibus ordinis nee de nostro ordine reputari. Datum apud Cisters' tempore capituli generalis. Anno Domini m.cc. septuagesimo,” Calendar of Close Rolls, Henry III, 1268–1272, 301 (43 Henry III, 1270); the letter is accompanied by another item of business concerning the archdeacon, suggesting that he indeed had caused both to be enrolled, cited in Graves, “English Cistercian Nuns,” 496 n. 28.1 have translated ordo here as Graves apparently does to mean group—as in ordo cisterciensis, but there are other meanings, such as the ordo clericus, which might be at issue here, as discussed above.Google Scholar

99. Graves, “English Cistercian Nuns,” 499; we do not have today quite the same faith in the order's early record-keeping.Google Scholar

100. There was no reason for tax lists until the 1250s and none survive for another two centuries; those used by Janauschek to compile his list of abbeys in the order come from circa 1450;see The Tax Book of the Cistercian Order, ed. Johnson, Ame Odd and King, Peter (Oslo: Universitels Forlas, 1979), 9–17, esp. 17.Google Scholar

101. See Cardonna, Martin Aurell i, “Les Cisterciennes et leurs protecteurs en Provence rhodanienne,” Les Cisterciens de Languedoc (XIIIe-XIVe siècle), Cahiers de Fanjeaux 21 (Toulouse: Privat, 1986), 35–68;Google Scholarand Cartulaire de Notre-Dame de Voisins, ed. Doinel, Jules (Orleans: Herluison, 1887).Google Scholar

102. Berman, , “Labors”; Anne Bondéelle-Souchier, “;Les Moniales cisterciennes et leurs livres manuscrits dans la France d'ancien régime,” Cîteaux 45 (1994): 193–336; and next note.Google Scholar

103. Boyd, Rifreddo, esp. 95 ff, describes the “takeover” by Rifreddo and disputes over tithes; a reassessment of this evidence on Cistercian women's agriculture and tithes is found in Constance Berman, H., “Cistercian Women and Tithes,” Cîteaux 49 (1998): 95–128.Google Scholar