Cistercians by the middle of the 12th century rapidly spread to include hundreds of
houses across Europe. The monks’ agricultural organization via the grange system, which
produced compact estates; their reliance on conversi rather than tenant or hired labor; the
holiness and simplicity of their life, which attracted large numbers of gifts; and their
willingness to lend money against principal all made the Cistercians an extremely
wealthy order. The monks’ use of conversi was copied by other monastic orders, and
their annual visitation and chapter general were ordered established for all monks by the
Fourth Lateran Council of 1215.
As the Cistercians were becoming established, other new forms of monasticism, not
based on the Benedictine Rule, were arising in France. The most successful was the
Carthusian order, established in the 1080s by St. Bruno on a combination of eremitic and
cenobitic elements: each monk had his own cell, but the cells were grouped in a single
community. Other new orders of non-Benedictine monks included Grandmont, founded
on the principle of extreme poverty ca. 1100, and Fontevrault, founded at the same time
by Robert d’Arbrissel, with the purpose of combining apostolic preaching, monks, and
nuns in one house.
In the 13th century, monasticism, hitherto the preeminent form of the religious life,
began to receive its first serious challenge, in the form of the friars. The Dominican and
the Franciscan orders, both of which appealed especially to the culture of the newly
developing cities, soon outcompeted the monks. Although the monastic houses founded
before the end of the 12th century continued for the most part to flourish, there were far
fewer monastic foundations in the 13th century than in the 12th. Only houses of nuns,
rare throughout the early and high Middle Ages, multiplied during the late Middle Ages.
In this static period, many of the intellectuals who might once have become monks went
instead to the universities, and powerful members of secular society almost never sent
their sons into the cloister.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, French monasticism went into a slow decline. The
austerity that had been the goal throughout the Middle Ages was given up at more and
more houses; as one example, meat, earlier reserved for the ill, was eaten several times a
week. Communal property was increasingly replaced by the practice of allowing monks
and nuns to have a certain amount of money of their own, for their own purchases and
expenses. The close, fatherly relationship between an abbot and his monks became much
more distant, as the abbot usually left the monastery for a nearby establishment of his
own. Increasingly, abbots were not even elected by the monks but were appointed by the
popes; bishops and cardinals, even secular magnates, might become titular abbots. By the
time of the Reformation, many monasteries housed only a handful of monks.
Constance B.Bouchard
[See also: BENEDICT, RULE OF ST.; BENEDICT OF ANIANE; CARTHUSIAN
ORDER; CASSIAN, JOHN; CISTERCIAN ORDER; CLUNIAC ORDER;
DOMINICAN ORDER; FRANCISCAN ORDER; LÉRINS; MARTIN OF TOURS;
MONASTIC RULES AND CUSTOMARIES; NUNNERIES; REGULAR CANONS;
ROBERT D’ARBRISSEL; ROBERT OF MOLESME; SCHOOLS, MONASTIC;
WOMEN, RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE OF]
Bouchard, Constance B. “Merovingian, Carolingian, and Cluniac Monasticism: Reform and
Renewal in Gaul.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 41(1990):365–88.
——. Holy Entrepreneurs: Cistercians, Knights, and Economic Exchange in Twelfth-Century
Burgundy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.
The Encyclopedia 1193