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Updated: May 13, 2025
He was therefore appointed, after three years' residence at Citeaux, to head a colony of monks which was to be fixed in the valley of Clairvaux a desolate though beautiful spot in the bishopric of Langres. The tears of their brethren accompanied the departure of Bernard and the twelve others who composed the band.
The abbess said carefully the short prayers appointed for certain hours of the day, and heard matins every morning at four and evensong every afternoon. After this was over, she did as she was bidden by her superior, the abbot of Citeaux, and took all her nuns for a solemn walk on the hills outside the abbey.
The Crusaders' Councils were stormy; for some of the nobles wished to save the Catholics, others cried out for the extermination of the whole rebellious place, and finally the choleric Legate, Armand-Amaury, Abbot of Cîteaux, could stand it no longer, and cried out fiercely, "Kill them all! God will know His own."
He had demanded and obtained from the great towns, churches, and universities more than seven hundred declarations of support in his appeal to the future council, and an engagement to take no notice of the decree which might be issued by the pope to release the king's subjects from their oath of allegiance. Only a few, and amongst them the Abbot of Citeaux, gave him a refusal.
I ask your Majesty's permission to retire to Citeaux, of which I am abbot, and where I may end my days in prayer and meditation." The King, irritated by some haughty expressions in this address, showed none of the signs of weakness which the Cardinal had expected, and which he had always seen in him when he had threatened to resign the management of affairs.
The arrival of Bernard and his companions was a turning-point in the history of Citeaux; and the monastery had to send out two colonies, to La Ferté and Pontigny, and in 1115 a third, under Bernard himself, to Clairvaux. Here, in a deep umbrageous valley, traversed by a limpid stream, the thirteen pioneers built a house little better than a barn. Their privations were great.
Two portraits in oval frames were fastened to the wall on each side of the bed. Small gilt inscriptions on the plain surface of the cloth at the side of these figures indicated that the portraits represented, one the Abbe of Chaliot, bishop of Saint Claude; the other, the Abbe Tourteau, vicar-general of Agde, abbe of Grand-Champ, order of Citeaux, diocese of Chartres.
To this Council a special invitation was sent to the great monk who for the next twenty years dominates the Western Church and completely over-shadows the contemporary Popes. We have of seen that it was the advent of Bernard and his large party at the monastery of Citeaux in 1113 that saved the newly founded Order from premature collapse.
Mathias wondered, but obeyed, entered the novitiate, and became a holy religious. St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, and the foremost man of his age, was so handsome and attractive in youth, that the evil-minded laid snares against his chastity. To escape their wiles he determined to enter the Cistercian monastery of Citeaux.
It seems that in the year 1204, just a year after he had given the manor of Faringdon in Berkshire to St Mary of Citeaux, and established there a small house of Cistercian monks, King John founded this great monastery of St Mary of Beaulieu for the same Order, making provision for not less than thirty brethren, and giving it Faringdon for a cell.
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