The boundaries of charity: Cistercian culture and ecclesiastical reform, 1098-1180

Abstract

This work explores how twelfth-century Cistercian monks maintained their tradition of social withdrawal yet still played a pivotal political role in the world outside their monasteries. It argues that the Cistercians' political behaviour was neither a betrayal of their monastic ideal nor evidence of some inherent Cistercian paradox, but that such public involvement grew out of the monks' conception of their monastic life, notably the cluster of ideas associated with Christian love, or caritas. Skilfully integrating the religious, political, and economic components of Cistercian culture, the author shows that the boundaries of Cistercian monasteries were never impermeable to outside life. She reveals how Caritas provided an underpinning for the Cistercians' view of a Church bound by the spiritual progress of its members and explains the activities of those men who left their monasteries to enact this vision in the society around them.