received was organized into granges. The monks tried to practice direct cultivation of
their fields, rather than relying on the rents and dues of peasant tenants, and thus by the
1130s had established the institution of conversi, men without an educational background
who still wished to live apart from the world; these conversi worked the monks’ fields.
The Cistercians became the most influential of the new monastic orders of the 12th
century, due in part to the perceived holiness of their way of life and in part to the
charisma of their most famous member, Bernard, first abbot of Clairvaux (r. 1115–53).
Constance B.Bouchard
[See also: BENEDICT, RULE OF ST.; BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX; CARTA
CARITATIS; CÎTEAUX; CLUNIAC ORDER; FONTENAY; HAGIOGRAPHY; ISAAC
OF STELLA; MONASTICISM; PONTIGNY]
Bernard of Clairvaux. Sancti Bernardi opera omnia, ed. Jean Leclercq, C.H.Talbot, and H.Rochais.
8 vols. Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–78.
Bouton, Jean de la Croix, and Jean-Baptise Van Damme, eds. Les plus anciens textes de Cîteaux.
Achel: Commentarii Cistercienses, 1974.
Marilier, Jean, ed. Chartes et documents concernant l’abbaye de Cîteaux, 1098–1182. Rome:
Editiones Cistercienses, 1961.
Auberger, Jean-Baptise. L’unanimité cistercienne primitive: mythe ou realité? Achel: Commentarii
Cistercienses, 1986.
Berman, Constance H. Medieval Agriculture, the Southern French Countryside, and the Early
Cistercians: A Study of Forty-three Monasteries. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society,
1986.
Bouchard, Constance B. Holy Entrepreneurs: Cistercians, Knights, and Economic Exchange in
Twelfth-Century Burgundy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991.
Goodrich, W.E. “The Cistercian Founders and the Rule: Some Reconsiderations.” Journal of
Ecclesiastical History 35(1984): 358–75.
Lekai, Louis J. The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality. Kent: Kent State University Press, 1977.
CITÉ
. The word cité (Lat. civitas), or city, described the urban center of the administrative
districts of Gaul in the Roman Empire and the Frankish kingdom. The Roman civitas,
however, included the surrounding district, and the two formed a single administrative
unit. In the late Roman and Merovingian periods, the urban civitas capitals survived as
centers of royal and ecclesiastical administrations as well as the focus of commercial
activity, providing a framework for the unity of the heterogeneous population of the
Frankish kingdom.
The barbarian invasions of the 3rd and 4th centuries led to the rapid construction of
walls around the capitals of the civitates, and these walls gave security to the inhabitants.
The capitals continued to function as administrative headquarters for the civil
bureaucracy, and the church likewise took refuge behind the protective walls. The cities
became the residences of bishops and the cen-ters of diocesan organization. Thus, a
permanent and important population became fixed and protected in the civitas capitals,
and the cities survived. They also remained at the center of the network of roads and
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