Cistercian abbots met to hammer out legislation for all of them. Cistercian
monasteries held large and highly organized farms and grazing lands called “granges,”
and the monks spent much of their time managing their estates and flocks of sheep,
both of which yielded handsome profits by the end of the twelfth century. Clearly
part of the agricultural and commercial revolutions of the Middle Ages, the Cistercian
order made managerial expertise a part of the monastic life.
Yet the Cistercians also elaborated a spirituality of intense personal emotion.
Their writings were filled with talk of love. When we pray, wrote Saint Bernard, “our
breast expands.... our interior is filled with an overflowing love.”^13 The Cistercians
were devoted to the humanity of Christ and to his mother, Mary. While pilgrims
continued to stream to the tombs and reliquaries of saints, the Cistercians dedicated
all their churches to the Virgin Mary (for whom they had no relics) because for them
she signified the model of a loving mother. Indeed, the Cistercians regularly used
maternal imagery to describe the nurturing care provided to humans by Jesus himself.
The Cistercian God was approachable, human, protective, even mothering.
Were women simply metaphors for pious male monks? Or did they too partake in
the new religious fervor of the twelfth century? The answer is that women’s
reformed monasteries proliferated at the same time as men’s. Furthermore, monks
and priests undertook to teach and guide women religious far more fully than they
had done before. In the Speculum Virginum (Mirror of Virgins), written in the form
of a dialogue between a male religious advisor (Peregrinus) and a “virgin of Christ”
(Theodora), exhortations to virtue were complemented by images. Some presented,
as if in a “mirror,” vices that should be avoided. Others gave examples of female
heroines to be admired and imitated. In Plate 5.10, three tall and triumphant women
stand on dead or defeated enemies. On the left is Jael, who killed the Israelites’
enemy leader, and on the right is Judith, who did the same. In the middle, the model
for both, is Humility striking Pride in the breast. Clearly the cloistered twelfth-century
virgin was justified in considering herself, as Peregrinus said, “an example of disdain
for the present life and a model of desire for heavenly things.”^14
