The greatest and most famous of all the reformed Benedictine Orders was that which originated at Citeaux, in the diocese of Chalon-sur-Saone, Burgundy, in 1098. The house was founded by a group of monks who did not want to start a new Order but, rather wished to return to a full and strict observance of the sixth century Rule of Benedict of Nursia. The Englishman, Stephen Harding, third Abbot of Citeaux (1109-1133) framed its constitution, drew up its Rule of life and therefore announced the birth of the Cistercian Order. The body of statutes which he presented to his brethren in the general chapter of 1119 was called The Carta Caritatis "Charter of Charity" — charity, brotherly love and uniformity of observance were to be their bond, while simplicity in all things was to be their distinguishing mark. However, the main driving force in expanding the Order was to be found in the charismatic figure of Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux (1113-52), so that by 1128 the Order possessed thirty houses, by 1152, three hundred and thirty, and a hundred years later, it counted at least six hundred in Europe. It had fifty houses in England and Wales within fifty years of the founding of Citeaux, but the biggest concentration of Cistercian houses were founded in the North of England. What made this area hold such enormous ‘pulling power’ for Cistercianism ?

At the time of the Norman Conquest, the North of England - despite scantily populated areas to the north and east - was wealthy, and possessed in the town of York a city whose size was surpassed only by London. Opposition to the new King William tended to concentrate in this part of the country, which had a long tradition of independence. William paid two quick visits to York, building a castle there on each occasion, but in 1069, Danish invaders captured and destroyed the northern capital. The King took no more chances, and having broken the local resistance, he systematically wasted the north during the winter of 1069-70, to prevent further outbreaks. The devastation was brutal and effective, and Yorkshire bore the brunt of it. Even by the Domesday Book (1086) many manors were reported ‘waste’ or ‘largely waste’. As late as the 1130’s, William of Malmesbury states that sixty per cent of the area around York was waste. Symeon of Durham, writing at the same time says that between York and Durham no village was inhabited. The early Norman Kings - both Norman and French in temperament - spent very little time in England and almost none in the north, and consequently there was no great Southern control of Northern England.

This, then is the wild, desolate, sparsely populated area chosen by Bernard of Clairvaulx as the siting for the first northern Cistercian monastery. The region was not entirely devoid of monastic activity, there being Benedictine, Cluniac and (recently) Augustinian houses, though these were few and far between in such a large place. However, England as a whole was experiencing a religious revival coupled with a revival of national feeling. No doubt this news came to Bernard at Clairvaulx, and he sent some of his monks across the Channel carrying a letter from him to King Henry I saying "In your land there is possession of my Lord and your Lord... I have arranged for it to be taken back, and have sent men from our army who will (if it is not displeasing to you) seek it out, recover it and restore it with a firm hand". Henry received the Cistercians graciously; and the group lead by an Englishman, William, looking for somewhere to settle, chose the north. This is not surprising. The south was already well-furnished with religious houses, but the north, and in Yorkshire especially, there still remained vast solitudes, not yet recovered from the Conqueror’s harrying of the North, and there were great tracts of country, destitute of population, more lonely than the wildernesses in which Citeaux and Clairvaulx were established. This solitude would appeal to the Cistercian temperament, as the Simna Cartae Caritatis states (ix) "No monastery shall be constructed within cities, castles and manors".

There is a lack of precise detail about the foundation of the first northern Cistercian abbey, Rievaulx, in 1131-2. What is known is that four men share the credit for it- Bernard of Clairvaulx, Thurstan (Archbishop of York), King Henry I and the Lord of Helmsley, Walter L’Espec. Bernard’s ‘Court’ included Englishmen, some of whom were from York and in contact with Thurstan, who was known to be sympathetic to the Cistercian cause. Therefore, Bernard knew he would have strong support from the Archbishop in setting up a new monastery. What is less certain is when L’Espec became involved. He was a patron of religion who had already founded Kirkham Priory for the Augustinian Canons. William of Newborough states that it was L’Espec himself who invited the monks to come from Clairvaulx, but this chronicle is a local source and subject to bias. However,L’Espec could have met the monk William at the Royal Court in London, and whose preaching may have fired his imagination. The Fountains ‘Narrative’, written in the Cistercian tradition, emphasises the role of Bernard rather than L’Espec.

However, the role of the lay patron in the expansion of the Cistercian Order in the North is a vital one. In this region Norman lords held vast tracts of land, mostly wild, desolate arid (seemingly) uncultivateable. What could they do with it ? There was no great power or prestige in ruling over a wilderness. But the Cistercians could give them this and more. By donating a piece of veritable desert, a nobleman obtained atonement for his sins, a useful 'life insurance’ policy for himself and his family, recognition in an age of religious fervour (whether he was pious or not) and political clout in an area of England which had a significant power ‘gap’, (especially in Stephen’s turbulent reign).

If it were not for the lay patron, the Cistercians would never have accumulated such large areas of land. They were the ones who gave the initial gift (with the exception of Fountains, where the land was donated by Thurstan) and, if, as in several cases, it was found to be wholly unsuitable for settlement- the climate being too cold or wet and prospects for cultivation slim; (though the Cistercians wanted to settle In the ‘wilderness’ even for them there was a limit as to how desolate it could be!), the benefactor would give the monks some land somewhere else, the ideal site being one which was well wooded, with a good water supply, and stone nearby. The community at Fors was moved to Jervaulx, as a chronicler said "because of the intemperance of the air and the unfruitful environment".

Therefore, the Cistercian ‘plantation’ of the North was not centrally organised from Citeaux, but happened by chance rather than by design. They wanted to settle in places ‘away from the world’ but if, as happened. with Kirkstall’s first site at Barnoldswick, the land given was next to a hamlet or village, the Cistercians seemed to have no qualms in depopulating the settlement, and at Barnoldswick the Abbot even pulled down the peasants' church! Incidents like this rather sour the picture of the ‘Cistercian Ideal’ though they give a better indication of the single—mindedness of the Order, and it must be said that the Cistercians almost manic determination in getting the best site and making it work for them- by their heroic efforts in cultivating the seemingly wasted land- accounts for much of their success and growth in the North.

It may be rather cynical to think that these monks exploited their lay patrons, but in all fairness it seems that they did, and these Norman lords seemed only too willing to give them any land they wanted. A good example is the siting of Meaux Abbey. William le Gros let the monk Adam choose any land on his estate. Not surprisingly, he chose the best site, St. Nary’s Hill, richly wooded and watered. However, as luck would have it, William had already had this area earmarked as a hunting park, and had begun to enclose it with a dyke. Adam no doubt noticed that work had already begun (which would save the monks some time!) and therefore implored the nobleman to give it to them, saying that the finger of Divine Providence had brought him there. Adam, obviously an astute man, had touched a nerve with William le Gros, and he knew it. The noble had promised to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but was too old and fat to undertake the journey. It was Adam, a monk of Fountains, who had suggested to him that he would be absolved if he built another Cistercian house. Le Gros was a geniunely pious man, and he thought if Adam said this was the site, then the hunting park idea would be scrapped. The Cistercians had won.

Of course, not all lay patrons were as religious (or desperate!) as William le Gros, but, for all their traditional image as ‘hard men’ they seem to have been remarkably compliant to the wishes of the Cistercians. As mentioned earlier, they knew they would be rewarded spiritually for endowing the monks with land. Fear of the horrors of purgatory loomed large in their minds. In addition society at large, the Court, the Church and the peasants, would view the noble in a better light, which could only be for the good, as it could mask any other rather ‘unholy’ deeds these often brutal, grasping men performed. It became the latest ’fashion’ to endow a monastery, and what one man did, another had to go one better. Therefore, the Cistercians came to be positively inundated with gifts of land, often in ‘pure alms’, which became used as granges (outlying farms) and helped the economic expansion of the Order and made it achieve its goal of total self-sufficiency. Thus, the Cistercians profited, and so did the lay patrons. Both, it can be said, exploited the other.

However, there are more spiritual reasons why the Cistercians grew in the North. No doubt Bernard of Clairvaulx had heard of the great Christian tradition there, the ‘Golden Age’ of the seventh and eighth centuries- the monasteries of Whitby, Lindisfarne and Jarrow, St. Hilda and the Venerable Bede- the Viking destruction and the restoration of the Anglo—Saxon period. Bernard intended the new monastery of Rievaulx to be a mission centre, whion would recruit new monks from among the English, and which would also send out colonies to establish ‘daughter’ houses elsewhere In the North. Bernard knew there was very little Benedictine development in the region. However, in the 1110’s and 20’s, the Augnstinian Canons had begun to settle there, founding Bridlington and Bolton, Gisborough and Kirkham. But there was still a gap to fill. As Colin Platt states —"The Augustinians met a practical need. They were the ‘Marthas’ of the Holy Church, labouring in the parishes ... But their contribution to the life of the spirit was less apparent. It was the Cistercians, the ‘Nary’s’ -who mined that rich vein, and who carried off huge rewards as a consequence" .

The Cistercian Ideal seemed to touch a nerve in the North, (an inherently spiritual place?) and they were welcomed with open arms. As has been seen, noblemen and their families endowed them handsomely, out the Order also had support at the highest levels of the Church. Thurstan, Archbishop of York (1114—40), was a great supporter of the new reformed orders, and Bernard’s knowledge of this (through his wide circle of associates) in no small way contributed to his decision to chose the North as an area for the expansion of Cistercian monasticism. It is due to Thurstan’s intervention that the thirteen dissatisfied monks of the Benedictine abbey of St. Mary’s in York - disgusted with the ‘worldliness’ of their Order and inspired by the example of Rievaulx - were able to found Fountains Abbey, on land donated by the Archbishop himself rather than a lay patron . (A Fountains Abbot, Henry Murdac, later became Archbishop of York (1147—53).

Fundamentally the Cistercian houses could not survive without recruits. It seems, looking at chartularies, that the monks were Northern men from the gentry class (their surnames giving their place of origin away) and that Bernard’s idea of a mission centre was proving to be a success. However, one of the biggest factors in the success of the Cistercians' northern expansion is the Order’s concept of the lay brother (conversi). This was a monk not in holy orders, excused from intellectual duties (illiterate and discouraged from being literate), who spent most of his time in manual labour for the community, in the fields and workshops. For a peasant in the wilderness of the North, an area scarcely recovering from King William’s harrying of 1069, in a time of political and economic uncertainty, the life of a lay brother offered steady work with spiritual rewards.

At Rievaulx, in Abbot Ailred’s time (1147-67), the abbey enjoyed its greatest period. Many of the buildings had been constructed, daughter houses founded, more than 140 choir monks were in residence, and there were nearly 500 lay brothers to help them, Walter Daniel, Ailred’s biographer, says "…on feast days you might find the Church crowded with the brethren like bees in a hive". However, the surviving buildings of the West Range could not possibly have accommodated 500 lay brothers, and there may have been accommodation for them elsewhere, though some would have lived in the ‘granges’. The lay brothers were very useful in expanding the Cistercian Economy by managing these far-flung farmsteads for the monks, their hard work no doubt inspired by the ideals of Cistercianism — charity, piety and simplicity, which seemed to them to shine like a beacon leading them from a long dark tunnel. The nobles, the Church and the peasantry were all dazzled by this light which seemed to promise so much for an area of England which had suffered so greatly.

In conclusion, it can be seen that the North of England was a perfect place for the expansion of the Cistercian Order - a wild, uncultivated landscape, with a strong Christian tradition though comparatively free of monastic development, and possessing a ruling class comprised of ambitious men determined to ‘make their mark’ in an age of political uncertainty. Therefore, there was a potential gap to fill which the Cistercians capitalised upon. The Norman nobles saw the donation of a tract of desolate wasteland to the monks as fulfilling a two-fold objective- obtaining salvation for their souls and power points to fuel their ambitions in an area with no firm royal authority. The Cistercians found they could bargain with them to obtain the most suitable land which would fulfil their objective of a pure and simple, totally self- sufficient life, and their innovative policy of managing far-flung gifts of land as granges set the wheels of the Cistercians' subsequent economic success in motion. The Cistercian Ideal appealed to northern people , Churchmen (such as Thurstan), gentry (recruited as choir monks) and peasants (recruited as lay brothers)-as in an age of religious fervour, they were considered ‘top of the league’ for piety. Bernard’s decision was a wise and cunning one. The Cistercians tapped a vein of native northern spiritual feeling and, at the same time, exploited the religious fear and political greed of the Norman ruling class.

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Butler, Lionel and Given-Wilson, Chris - Medieval Monasteries in Great Britain (Michael Joseph, 1979)

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Fletcher, J.S. - The Cistercians in Yorkshire (S.P.C.K., 1919)

Fry, Plantagenet Somerset - Rievaulx Abbey (English Heritage, 1986)

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Gilyard-Beer, R. - Fountains Abbey (Department of the Environment, 1970)

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Little, Bryan - Abbeys and Priories in England and Wales (Book Club Associates, 1979)

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Vipont, Elfrida - The Story of Christianity in Britain (Michael Joseph, 1960)

Waites, Bryan - The Monastic Settlement of North-East Yorkshire (Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Vol. XL)

William of Malmsbury - Essay on the Cistercian Order contained in the 'Deeds of the Kings of the English' (translated by J.A. Giles, William of Malmsbury's Chronicle (1847) )

Early Cistercian Documents in Translation -Exordium Cistercii; Simma Cartae Caritatis et Capitula; Exordium Parvum; Carta Caritatis Posterior (by Bede K. Lackner from 'Les plus anciens textes de Citeaux' - by Jean de la Croix Brouton and Jean-Baptiste Van Damme) (Achel: Abbaye Cistercienne, 1974)

Bundle of Cistercian Foundation Documents -
Rievaulx (from Walter Daniel's Life of Ailred)
Coming of the Cistercians to England, foundation of Rievaulx and benefactions to it (from a Fountains manuscript printed in W. Dugdale's Monastican Anglicanum)
Extracts from the History of William of Newburgh (referring to Rievaulx, Fountains, Byland and the Archbishops of York)
Byland Cartulary (translated from Dugdale)
Kirkstall Abbey Foundation Chronicle

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