Early Monasticism

The concept of monasticism is ancient and is found in many religions and philosophies. In the centuries immediately before Christ, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism all developed alternative styles of life which involved renouncing the world in some ways, in order to seek liberation or purification or union with God, sometimes as a solitary ascetic, sometimes in community.

Early Christian monasticism drew its inspiration from the examples of the Prophet Elijah and John the Baptist, who both lived alone in the desert, and above all from the story of Jesus’ time in solitary struggle with Satan in the desert, before his public ministry. Beginning with the Exodus and all through the Old Testament times, the desert was regarded as a place of spiritual renewal and a return to God.  Although there were ascetics, especially women ascetics, among the first generations of Christians, they generally lived in the towns and cities.

The Eastern monastic teachings were brought to the western church by Saint John Cassian (ca. 360 – ca. 435).  As a young adult, he and his friend Germanus entered a monastery in Palestine but then journeyed to Egypt to visit the eremitic groups in Nitria. Many years later, Cassian founded a monastery of monks and probably also one of nuns near Marseilles, and partly to counter what he felt were the abuses he found in Western monasticism, he wrote two long works, the Institutes and Conferences. In these books he not only transmitted his Egyptian experience (they are perhaps the oldest written record of the thought of the Desert Fathers), but he also gave Christian monasticism a profound evangelical and theological basis.

Cassian’s influence was enormous and lasted for centuries – even the smallest monastic library in Europe’s Dark Ages would have its copy of Cassian. Furthermore, St. Benedict incorporated Cassian’s thought into his monastic Rule, and recommended that his monks read Cassian’s works. Since the Rule of St Benedict is still used by Benedictine, Cistercian, and Trappist monastics, the thought of John Cassian, and the desert tradition behind him, still guides the spiritual lives of thousands of men and women in the Catholic Church.

St. Stephen Harding, an Englishman who succeeded Alberic as abbot, was the principal architect of the Carta caritatis, a kind of Constitution which bound all the monasteries of the Order to a common observance of rules and customs. This constitution provided for a system of visitation by an overseeing abbot who would ensure the fidelity of each monastery to the spirit and principles of Citeaux, at the same time respecting the autonomy of each house. Furthermore, the abbots of each monastery were required to come to Citeaux annually for a general chapter.

It was St. Stephen Harding who in 1112 received Bernard of Fontaines-les-Dijon and thirty of his relatives as monks of Citeaux. In 1115 the exceptionally charismatic and talented young Bernard was sent to begin a new Cistercian foundation, Clairvaux, in Burgundy. Hereafter he would be known throughout the Christian world as Bernard of Clairvaux. Spearheaded by St. Bernard the Cistercian movement began to spread quickly throughout Europe to include over 500 monasteries by the end of the 13th century.

The first Cistercian monastery for women was established at Tart in the diocese of Langres (now Dijon) in 1125, by nuns from the abbey of Jully, a dependence of Molesme, where St. Humbeline, sister of St. Bernard, lived and died. St Stephen Harding established Tart as Citeaux’s own daughter house and entrusted it to the pastoral care of the abbot of Citeaux. From then on individual monasteries of women as well as whole federations of nuns sought to ally themselves with the Cistercian monks first in France and then in Spain, where the royal monastery of Las Huelgas was founded in 1180.

From the very beginning Cistercian spirituality proved its fruitfulness in the witness of the saints and spiritual masters that emerged in our monasteries. The four “Evangelists” (spiritual theologians) of Citeaux are considered to be: Bernard of Clairvaux, William of St. Thierry (†1148), Aelred of Rievaulx (†1167), and Guerric of Igny (†1157). Their affective spirituality emphasizing the sacred humanity of Christ was also marked by a distinctive Marian orientation. These themes were further developed in the thirteenth century by the nuns of the Cistercian monastery of Helfta, which was known as “the crown of German convents.” Outstanding among these women were St. Gertrude the Great, St. Mechtild of Magdeburg and St Mechtild of Hackeborn.

Source: OCSO