Kinloss Abbey, 1229

Abstract

The Cistercians arrived in Scotland in 1136 when a colony of monks from Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire settled at Melrose under the patronage of David I. By the end of the thirteenth century they had become the richest religious order in the kingdom with eleven abbeys and extensive estates stretching from Galloway to Buchan. Their success in Scotland, as elsewhere in Europe, was founded on a constitution that not only encouraged a pioneering approach to estate management, but also ensured that the success of an abbey did not depend solely on the competence of its abbot. The heads of Cistercian houses were expected to attend an annual general chapter at Citeaux at which policy was discussed, legislation passed and discipline enforced. They were also obliged to make yearly visits to daughter houses, partly to reaffirm filial bonds and partly to confirm that the rule was being observed. To the early Cistercian fathers, this system of affiliation meant that ‘the abbeys in different parts of the world would be indissolubly united in soul, even though parted in body’. In practice it created ‘the first truly effective international organization in Europe’, the authority of which transcended political borders. This is evident in the early development of the order in Scotland: in 1148, for example, the abbot of Rievaulx deposed the first abbot of Melrose; while in 1235 the abbots of Dundrennan and Glenluce were deposed after the general chapter ordered an investigation by the abbots of Rievaulx, Roche and Sawley. The Cistercian quest for administrative and spiritual unity also opened up channels of communication along which information and personnel flowed freely from abbey to abbey. Its influence on the Cistercians in Scotland is evident in the Chronicle of Melrose, which records events from throughout Christendom, news of which appears to