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Updated: June 16, 2025
But he also lived a life of labour; he became the best gardener, the best farmer, and the best shepherd of the Middle Ages. Great monasteries were built for him, and great tracts of land were given him, by those who were anxious that he should pray for their souls. The monk who came to Wales was the Cistercian.
The White Abbey is a truly Cistercian building, a simple cross with a flat east end, no aisles to the nave, but chapels east of the transepts. It follows the usual law of Transitional buildings. The main constructive arches are pointed; the windows are round-headed in the eastern part, pointed in the western.
Archbishop Roger of York was at the opening of Henry's reign building his beautiful church at Ripon, of whose rich decoration traces still remain, while he gave scant sympathy and encouragement to the Cistercian monks still busy with the austere mass of buildings which they had raised at Fountains almost within sight of the Ripon towers.
They were designed by the same architect who built the Cathedral of Amiens, and ere long the graceful and beautiful structures were seen rising in the wilderness. The nuns belonged to the Cistercian order.
Cistercian, and as old as the tenth century, with a gatehouse of Richard the Second's day; bits of exquisite encaustic tiling from the demolished church, preserved religiously under glass; and a refectory roof to enchant artists and archæologists beautiful hammer-beams and carved angels of Spanish walnut wood, fifteenth century, I think; and some shadowy ghosts of frescoes.
About the same time the Pope took steps to strengthen the Catholics of Munster by appointing Maurice Fitzgibbon, commendatory abbot of a Cistercian monastery in Mayo, to the vacant See of Cashel. The new archbishop was in close correspondence with the Desmond party in Ireland, and with Philip II. of Spain.
The entire organisation of the Cistercian Order made it a strong contrast to the Cluniacs, both in the mode of life of its members and in the method of government. The Cluniacs had become wealthy and luxurious: their black dress, the symbol of humility, had become rather a mark of hypocrisy.
Upon the election of Otho as Emperor, in 1208, Germany and Rome were at peace, and Pope Innocent III. found himself at liberty to devote some attention to affairs in Southern France. He had already made some efforts to oppose the growth of heresy: his first emissaries were unable to produce the least effect and in 1208 he had sent Arnaut of Citeaux and two Cistercian monks into Southern France with full powers to act. Their efforts proved fruitless, because Philippe Auguste was no less indifferent than the provincial lords, who actually favoured the heretics in many cases; the Roman Catholic bishops also were jealous of the pope's legates and refused to support them. Not only the laity but many of the clergy had been seduced: the heretics had translated large portions of scripture (translations which still remain to us) and constantly appealed to the scriptures in opposition to the canon laws and the immorality of Rome. They had a full parochial and diocesan organisation and were in regular communication with the heretics of other countries. It was clear that the authority of Southern France was doomed, unless some vigorous steps to assert her authority were speedily taken. "Ita per omnes terras multiplicati sunt ut grande periculum patiatur ecclesia Dei." The efforts of St Dominic were followed by the murder of the papal legate, Pierre de Castelnau, in 1208, which created an excitement comparable with that aroused by the murder of Thomas
The work of S. Romuald was a reform of the Benedictine Order. The Order of Camaldoli which he founded was the second reform which had come out of the great brotherhood of S. Benedict; it was younger than the Cluniac but older than the Cistercian reform, and it was begun in 1012.
Agriculture seems first to have been lifted into respectability by the Cistercian Monks, while spinning, weaving, and almost every mechanic calling, if we except the scribe, the armorer, and the bell-founder, continued down to very recent tunes to be held in contempt among the Gael.
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