The White Monks, or Cistercians, came into being at an important turning-point in the history of Western monasticism, when a wave of reform was sweeping across Europe. The founders of the order were a group of hermits living in the Forest of Colan in Burgundy. In 1075, under the leadership of St Robert, they settled at Molesme, where their way of life was similar to that of the Camaldolese. Although recruits flocked to the monastery, many of the monks grew dissatisfied with the lack of definition of the life. 21 of them, including some of the original hermits, finally left Molesme in 1098 to make a fresh start in Cîteaux, a remote and desolate spot south of Dijon. They chose a life of silence and seclusion in the exact observance of the Rule of St Benedict. To make this possible they dispensed with the embellishments that had gradually been added over the centuries. Simplicity and restraint in architecture and liturgy became the outward characteristics of the Cistercian tradition.
Life at the new monastery began to take shape under Robert’s successors, Alberic and Stephen Harding. In 1112 Bernard, later the founder and Abbot of Clairvaux, entered Cîteaux with a band of 30 young friends and relations.
With the accent on manual labour, the Cistercians undertook the cultivation of vast areas of hitherto untilled land, and to do this they instituted the life of the lay brothers. Another important innovation of the White Monks was their unified structure in the relationship between founding monasteries and daughter houses, described in a remarkable document, the Carta caritatis (‘Charter of charity’) of St Stephen Harding. All the houses were to remain in close contact with Cîteaux. The Abbot of Cîteaux was the representative head, although he had no personal right to exercise the power of government. The general chapter, meeting annually at Cîteaux, had the duty of maintaining uniform discipline. Every daughter abbey had an annual visitation by the abbot of its founding mother, and Cîteaux itself was to be visited by the abbots of its first four daughter houses. The Carta caritatis was approved by Pope Callistus II in 1119.
After a precarious start, the order developed rapidly, spreading all over western Europe. The first English house was Waverley (1128), soon followed by Rievaulx (1132). The order’s spiritual fervour and austere observance influenced other medieval orders, notably the Premonstratensians and the Dominicans. It was unable, however, to maintain its pristine vigour and a decline set in after the 13th century. This was followed by a series of partial reforms, then, in the closing years of the 16th century, the first move towards a ‘Strict Observance’ was made in France. During the 17th century the two Observances, the Strict and the Common, existed side by side. After the French Revolution a single house of the Strict Observance survived to perpetuate that reform: it was established in Switzerland just in time, a daughter house of La Trappe, that austere foundation of the Abbot de Rancé (1626–1700). From this single Swiss house descends the so-called Trappist Order. Today the Cistercians count various different groupings, or congregations, the most important being those of the Strict Observance, or Trappists, and those of the Common Observance.
Cistercian liturgical life began with an 80-year period of reform undertaken in three successive stages. The founders of Cîteaux naturally took as the basis of their daily Office the texts and music of the Benedictine service books used at Molesme. But the Office was purged of many accretions (psalms, prayers, litanies) not strictly in accordance with the prescriptions of St Benedict. Sometimes strict obedience to the letter of the Rule resulted in peculiar interpretations, such as the adoption of a single Lauds antiphon instead of the traditional five, the continuation of the alleluia after Septuagesima, or the singing of ferial instead of festal psalms on feast days. Through a misinterpretation of St Benedict’s terminology, the hymns were limited to a meagre selection from a Milanese source supposed by the reformers to have been written by St Ambrose himself.
In a similar quest for truth, the founding fathers sent scribes to Metz, which they considered to be the home of the most ‘authentic’, or authoritative, music for the Office – that representing the purest Gregorian tradition. What they brought back to Cîteaux must have sounded strange to Burgundian ears. The monks persevered in using the Metz version for some years, but shortly before 1147 it was decided to revise both texts and music. A commission of experts was set up under the leadership of St Bernard. Their reform consisted mainly in bringing the old Metz tradition more in line with the living chant tradition of the cultural background of the early Cistercians themselves. The results of their labours show that this living tradition carried more weight than respected theories about plainchant contained in the treatises of the order. Nevertheless, certain freer-ranging melodies, such as the mode-5 gradual Christus factus est, were to be strictly confined to the amibitus of the mode. The reformers introduced some new texts and melodies, including the incomparable Salve regina (ex.1). Many hymn tunes were revised and others newly composed, among them the splendid melodies Magnum salutis gaudium and Jam Christus astra ascenderat. A number of non-Milanese hymns were introduced, including Conditor alme siderum and Vexilla regis.
The new antiphoner was sent out to the houses in 1147, with a prologue by St Bernard and a little chant treatise Cantus quem Cisterciensis. The third and final stage of the reform followed between 1175 and 1182/3. Some further alterations were made, amounting to little more than minor textual emendations.
Although the reformed chant became compulsory, appeals for uniformity had sometimes to be made by general chapters. Performance was to be simple, with no falsetto, ornamentation or other extravagances; it is clear, however, that these injunctions were not always obeyed. Permission for installing organs had to be sought from the general chapter. Polyphony, until quite recently, was never tolerated by the order, although certain houses did sometimes try to introduce it, notably the British abbeys of Dore and Tintern, where three- and four-part singing had to be suppressed in 1217.
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C. Maître: La réforme cistercienne du plain-chant: étude d’un traité théorique (Brecht, 1995)
MARY BERRY/FRANKLYN GELLNICK