Cistercian Abbey Research Articles

Spregledani skladatelj Jožef Robert Zupan (1760–1819) in njegovo glasbeno delo

Jožef Robert Zupan was born in Kamnik in 1760 as the son of the well-known composer Jakob Frančišek Zupan. He joined the Cistercian Abbey in Kostanjevica na Krki (Landstraß), studied theology in Graz, and, following the dissolution of the abbey in 1786, remained in the Styrian capital until his death in 1819. There, he worked as a private teacher, moved in eminent social circles, and dedicated at least part of his time to composing music. His preserved and fairly modest compositional oeuvre comprises five works, which were published in Vienna and Graz at the end of the eighteenth century. The discussion at hand offers the first public presentation of the composer and his work.

The Dark Trophies of The Battle of Evesham, the Northumbrian Cult of Simon de Montfort and the War of the Welsh Marches (1264–1265)

Abstract At the Battle of Evesham (4 August 1265) the army of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, was annihilated and his body dismembered, his head, testicles, a hand and a foot taken as ‘dark trophies’ by his enemies. The battle ended the ‘first English revolution’, in which a party of barons and bishops seized control of government from King Henry III and established a council to rule England. This article addresses the treatment of Simon’s remains. First, it considers critical evidence, the Opusculum de nobili Simone de Monte Forti, a tract produced in support of Simon’s cult at the Cistercian abbey of Melrose. Revealing how the Opusculum was researched and sponsored, it roots the vitality of Simon’s cult in the Anglo-Scottish borders, in the affinity with ancient Northumbria of the cross-border network that contributed to the tract. Secondly, it deploys the Opusculum to examine the Evesham dark trophy process, locating it within the socio-military culture of the Anglo-Welsh marches. Thirdly, it shows how the treatment of Simon’s body was implemented in response to a Montfortian policy of expediency that attempted the takeover of the Welsh Marches in alliance with the Welsh. It was not only England’s constitutional future at stake in August 1265, but also the balance of power in the British Isles. The first English revolution should thus be placed in the context of a British, rather than an English, war.

An Englyn on the Wolf from the Hendregadredd Manuscript

A hitherto undeciphered englyn in the early fourteenth-century Hendregadredd Manuscript is here edited and argued to contain a reference to an incident involving a wolf attacking sheep. The englyn is probably contemporary with the writing and provides rare evidence for the survival of the wolf in Wales in this period.<br/> The Hendregadredd Manuscript (Aberystwyth, NLW MS 6680B) of medieval Welsh court poetry was first compiled around 1300 and supplemented through the first quarter of the fourteenth century. These two strata represent stages in the creation of the book which, as Daniel Huws argued, probably took place in the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida in Ceredigion. Soon afterwards, the remaining blank spaces in the book were filled with miscellaneous poems in a number of often informal hands: this phase constitutes the 'third stratum' in Huws's analysis. As much of the material in this stratum relates to Ieuan Llwyd of Glyn Aeron, not far from Strata Florida, it is generally assumed that the book had now left the scriptorium where it was made and had become the property of Ieuan. At his home it was used to record poems of various kinds, most likely by poets who visited the house, over an extended period. This is suggested not merely by the variety of the poems themselves but by the fairly informal nature of the writing, which contrasts with the neat scriptorium work of the first and second strata, around which these pieces were fitted.<br/> This article concerns one of these pieces added as part of the third stratum. On fol.95v, inserted between two poems from the earlier strata of writing, is a single englyn. The hand of the inserter is called 'k' by Daniel Huws and he did not identify it anywhere else in the book. 3 The text was transcribed in the notes to the diplomatic edition of the manuscript, where it is given as follows:<br/> Gwladeid oed yr lleidrvleid llwyt gwlangach cadyr vwbach coet da[ ]feit m[ ]rnddel demyl waet dena vu gwr yneveit.<br/> The poem was noted as an 'englyn proest anghyflawn' in the edition of poems from the third stratum of the Hendregadredd Manuscript by Ann Parry Owen and Dylan Foster Evans, and it was not edited there or discussed any further, presumably because the text was too incomplete to be interpreted.<br/> Now that there is a digital facsimile of the manuscript available online, it is possible to make another attempt to read the whole englyn. The writing is fairly legible on the whole but faded in places, and as there is so little of it, it is difficult to find comparanda for all the letter-shapes. Nevertheless, the previous transcript secured the first half of the stanza and some of the second and proved a great help to me in finishing the job. Below I provide a new transcript and edition.

Cistercian Adventures in Glass

Abstract Stained glass windows created by Jean-Pierre Raynaud and Pierre Soulages for the Abbeys of Noirlac and Conques employ a minimalistic style sensitive to their Romanesque contexts but also express qualities one might call Cistercian, even though only one of the commissions was created for an actual Cistercian abbey. As a form of monasticism, “Cistercian” signifies values of simplicity, poverty, and austerity presented by the founders of the Cistercian Order as essential to the monastic life and embodied in the rigor of their architecture. Natural light is a key element in Cistercian fenestration, differing significantly from the display of color associated with Gothic stained glass. I argue that a form of neo-Cistercianism is evident in and exemplified by the works of Raynaud and Soulages for their respective abbey commissions, in which an aesthetic of restraint and economy aims, above all, to treat the configuration of light as the primary consideration.

Data From “A Biocodicological Analysis of the Medieval Library and Archive From Orval Abbey, Belgium”

The dataset contains the first-ever comprehensive biocodicological analysis of medieval library books and charters using Zooarchaeological Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS). Here, we analyze 68 codices and 59 charters (1490+59 samples in total) from one single monastic institution, namely the Cistercian abbey of Orval in present-day Belgium. The data entails both peptide mass fingerprinting (using MALDI-ToF) and peptide sequencing (using LC-MS/MS) analysis of almost the entire library and all the preserved single leaf charters from the monastery. MALDI-ToF data is stored in Zenodo – a multidisciplinary open access repository while the LC-MS/MS data is deposited in ProteomeXchange Consortium via PRIDE – a publicly available repository for MS-based proteomics data. Mass spectrometric data generated from an entire monastic library and archive is of immense value to integrate with multiple case studies aiming at understanding parchment production and use in medieval Europe. Paper linked with data: Ruffini-Ronzani, N., Nieus, J.F., Soncin, S., Hickinbotham, S., Dieu, M., Bouhy, J., Charles, C., Ruzzier, C., Falmagne, T., Hermand, X., Collins, M.J. and Deparis, O 2021. A biocodicological analysis of the medieval library and archive from Orval Abbey, Belgium. <em>Royal Society Open Science, 8</em>(6), p.210210.

Father Hermann Kniebandl (1679–1745), lutenist, composer and scribe from the Cistercian Abbey of Grüssau, Silesia

Abstract This article is concerned with one of the largest surviving collections of 18th-century lute tablature manuscripts, from the Cistercian abbey of Grüssau in Silesia (now Krzeszów, Poland). The collection consists of 15 volumes of manuscript lute tablature, containing more than 2,000 pieces for Baroque lute. I focus on a group of otherwise unknown compositions from these sources, all connected with the entwined monogram ‘HK’. Contemporary sources, including previously unexplored correspondence, suggest that these initials can be associated with Father Hermann Kniebandl, who also seems to have been one of the scribes represented in the collection—the first to have been identified in the entire collection up to now. Furthermore, among the works copied in this hand are seven pieces identified with the ‘HK’ monogram which may be the first identified autograph compositions by Kniebandl. Until now, his name has been associated only with the title-pages of two manuscripts from the Grüssau collection, but both are dedications copied by other scribes (though the music that follows in one of these sources is copied in his hand).

A MYNACH BY ANY OTHER NAME . . . : THE ANTHROPONYMY OF THE WELSH CISTERCIANS, c.1300–1540

This paper analyses the forenames and 'surnames' of over 600 monks associated with Cistercian abbeys in Wales between c .1300 and c.1540 in an attempt to determine what these names can reveal about the ethnic identities or identifications of their individual bearers and of their respective houses. The names are compared with those of white monks and other religious in England during the same period, as well as with naming patterns among the laity of contemporary Wales and England. The names of the brethren at different monasteries could vary significantly, and it is argued that this was a result partly of the stronger Welsh identity of the monks at certain Cistercian houses, but was also because the practice of adopting 'monastic bynames' – common at monasteries in late medieval England – was followed at some Welsh abbeys but not all.

A Tale of Two (or more) Abbeys: The Welsh Cistercian Abbeys of Valle Crucis and Strata Florida and their Appropriated Churches

A Tale of Two (or more) Abbeys: The Welsh Cistercian Abbeys of Valle Crucis and Strata Florida and their Appropriated Churches

The Frisians as a Chosen People

Abstract Five late-medieval historical chronicles from Frisia present a series of legends about the Frisians, concerning their origin and the acquisition of their freedom. Each of these legends opens with a concrete parallel from the history of the Jewish people, making it clear that the Frisians, too, enjoyed God’s exceptional protection. This article tries to establish when and why these works were written. The many divergences between the five texts demonstrate that many more versions and copies were once in circulation. In particular, the chronicles were intended to reach the inhabitants of Frisia west of the Lauwers. It can be shown that the base versions of the vernacular editions were written between 1464 and 1479. One of the places where editing of these took place was the Cistercian abbey of Klaarkamp. However, the author of the Latin base text, the Historia Frisiae, does not seem to have been a monk given that his work has a more militant character than the popular versions. Nevertheless, all of the texts were intended to reinforce of the patriotic awareness of the Frisians at a time when their political autonomy was threatened by the dukes of Burgundy.

«Orgogliose come demoni»: le monache ribelli di Port-Royal

The text starts from the question posed by the nuns of Port-Royal: can the monastic condition ignore the voice of conscience? The dramatic results triggered by the questions had their roots in a book published in 1640: Augustinus by Cornelis Jansen who proposed uncompromising religiosity by appealing to the thought of the holy bishop. That book created around itself a spiritual movement that marked the seventeenth century with a brand of diversity and opposition to the ruling power, political and religious. But perhaps Jansenism would never have been such an attractive ethical reference without Port-Royal, which the king wanted to destroy precisely to disperse the movement.The Cistercian abbey, however, was first of all a community of women consecrated to prayer and yet, the extent of the theological controversies of which it became the center and the vast literary production that surrounded it, ended up eclipsing that primacy of the conversation with God that was the highest ambition of the religious group. On the other hand, it was difficult for a group of austere nuns who refused blind obedience not to cause scandal, in seventeenth-century France and beyond. However, the destruction of the abbey did not manage to silence the voices of its inhabitants and their behavior still challenges us.

På munkenes bord

På munkenes bord

Afviklingen af de middelalderlige klostre i Danmark og Nordtyskland

Afviklingen af de middelalderlige klostre i Danmark og Nordtyskland

History, Memory and Community in Cistercian Normandy (12th–13th Centuries)

While the textual production of Normandy’s Cistercian abbeys has not lacked for scholarly attention, a detailed study of Cistercian historical writing in the duchy remains to be written. This article looks in small part to fill this historiographical gap by examining those historical works produced in and copied by the Cistercian abbeys of Normandy between the beginning of the 12th and the end of the 13th centuries. In doing so, it aims to shed new light on the sorts of historical texts copied or written by Normandy’s White Monks. It contextualises these works within the historiographical culture of both the duchy itself and the wider Cistercian world, and shows how the Cistercians of Normandy played a distinctive role in the transmission of key historical texts, among them the universal chronicle of Sigebert of Gembloux (c. 1030–1112) and Einhard’s Vita Karoli Magni. It includes a ‘reconstruction’ of the so-called Chronicon Gofferni.

Retour sur la ‘crise du cénobitisme’: Émergence et expansion des Cisterciens et des chanoines réguliers en Normandie (xiie siècle-début xiiie siècle)

In the twelfth century, the religious Reformed Orders, Cistercians, and Regular Canons, settled in Normandy. The result, after two decades, is surprising: by 1146, there were seventeen communities of Regular Canons but only four Cistercian abbeys. In this essay the reasons for the discrepancy are investigated, including the role of the Archbishop of Rouen, Hugh of Amiens († 1164). The development of both Orders is then examined. Starting in the mid-twelfth century, the Cistercians began incorporating abbeys which were already in existence, as a way to foster growth, while for Regular Canons, the main question is that of choice between the orders of Saint-Victor and Prémontré.

Cistercian Abbeys in the Landscape: Settlements, Patrons and Visual Culture in Twelfth-Century Scandinavia

This article discusses the foundation process of the Cistercian monasteries in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway from the perspective of the contemporary cultural landscape, focusing on the location of the buildings in connection with communication routes, settlements, and power centres. Contrary to what has often been assumed, isolation and solitude were not the factors that determined the choice of location of the abbeys. The relationships between Cistercians and local authorities reflected in the material culture are also discussed. From the period in question, the number of preserved visual sources is considerably larger than that of remaining written records, thus providing valuable additional information about the early expansion of the White Monks on the edge of Europe.

An Abbey as a Stronghold

The main goal of this paper is to analyze the strategic role of Cistercian abbey of Blessed Virgin Mary in Topusko (medieval Toplica) in anti-Ottoman defense during 16th century, especially because it is rather exceptional of usage sacral complex in anti-Ottoman defense system in rather long period. In order to do so it is determined and analyzed strategic importance of the monastic complex in anti-Ottoman defense line and the change of it according to ever going Ottoman conquest of new territories, i.e. approaching of the bordering line. Furthermore, the organization of defense of the rather large estate of Topusko abbey as well as the changes of the monastic fortifications are addressed. Even more, the role of the commendatory abbots of the abbey, as well the serves of the abbey, in the larger efforts in composing and functioning of the anti-Ottoman defense line are analyzed. Finally, the proximate time and context of the final abandoning of the former Cistercian abbey is determined.

Identification multifactorielle du processus d’implantation des monastères cisterciens de Normandie par l’intermédiaire d’un protocole d’étude globale

After 1137, when the abbey of Mortemer, founded three years earlier, was incorporated into the Order of Cîteaux, twenty-three other Cistercian abbeys were created in Normandy, either as new foundations or through incorporation into the Order. Most notable is the incorporation of Savigny, with its numerous daughters. The abbeys were located in five dioceses, namely Rouen, Évreux, Bayeux, Sées, and Avranches but there were no Cistercian houses in the dioceses of Coutances and Lisieux. Thanks to topographical surveys, carried out during the past five years, it has been possible to draw precise maps which shed light upon the reasons of the choices made for the location of these abbeys, particularly as far as landscape and water-supply are concerned. Despite the fact that more than two thirds no longer possess an above-ground wing, it is still possible to draw conclusions about features of Cistercian architecture in Normandy, using as points of reference the sites of the abbeys of Mortemer, Bonport and Fontaine-Guérard.

The Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March: New Contexts, Studies, and Texts ed. by Ben Guy et al.

Reviewed by: The Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March: New Contexts, Studies, and Texts ed. by Ben Guy et al. Stephen J. Joyce Guy, Ben, Georgia Henley, Owain Wyn Jones, and Rebecca Thomas, eds, The Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March: New Contexts, Studies, and Texts ( Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 31), Turnhout, Brepols, 2020 hardback; pp. xvi, 455; 6 b/w illustrations, 20 b/w tables; R.R.P. €80.00; ISBN 9782503583495. Based on work undertaken by the Welsh Chronicles Research Group (founded in 2014 and hosted by Bangor University), editors Ben Guy, Georgia Henley, Owain Wyn Jones, and Rebecca Thomas have collated eleven articles as a culmination of the group collaboration, including five new editions and translations of select Welsh chronicles. The articles, from a range of impressive contributors, investigate questions of local and European contexts, reception and integrity, provenance and influences, as well as publishing editions of O Oes Gwrtheyrn, the Cardiff [End Page 217] Chronicle, the Chronicle of Gregory of Caerwent, Blwydyn eiseu, and Brut Ieuan Brechfa. Part I, 'Synopses', begins with Huw Pryce's overview of chronicle writing in medieval Wales. Charting activity from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, Pryce observes key movements in perspective: the shift from Latin to the vernacular; the continued importance of the 'master narrative' of the Welsh as dispossessed Britons; and the significance of monasticism in the chronicle tradition, particularly the Cistercians. Björn Weiler subsequently places Welsh chronicle writing within a European context. He argues that common tools and traditions connected Welsh chronicle writing to a 'trans-European framework', one where chroniclers were not just copyists but questioners and amenders of annalistic material. The notion of forging history from limited sources then segues into Ben Guy's discussion of forgery in the Welsh chronicle tradition. Noting the importance of these chronicles as historical sources, he charts the problems represented by 'romantic' emendations wrought by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century figures such as Iolo Morganwg and John Williams ab Ithel, and the evolution of robust modern frameworks for interpreting the chronicle tradition. In Part II, 'Detailed Studies', Henry Gough-Cooper examines the three principal Welsh Latin annalistic chronicles: the Harleian (c. 1100), the Breviate (late thirteenth century), and the Cottonian (late thirteenth century). He argues that the Cottonian chronicle, much understudied, is critical to establishing traces of earlier chronicles from the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. Barry Lewis examines the genealogical tract Bonedd y Saint, and its relationship with the Cistercian abbey of Valle Crucis in north-east Wales. In relating a genealogical entry with a similar entry in the chronicle Brenhinedd y Saesson, he posits that all extant versions of the Bonedd y Saint come from a version copied at Valle Crucis in the second half of the thirteenth century from an older clas church located further west. David Stephenson returns to Valle Crucis to propose the abbey as the site for the continuation of the chronicle of Brut y Tywysogyon in the later thirteenth century and into the fourteenth century. Part III, 'Editions', heralds the publication of five new editions and translations of select Welsh chronicles. Owyn Wyn Jones provides an edition of the O Oes Gwrtheyrn, the only chronicle to survive from medieval Gwynedd. He argues that it was composed in the second decade of the thirteenth century in the Cistercian monastery of Aberconwy and is a notable early example of the shift to the vernacular. Georgia Henley has produced a Latin edition of the early fourteenth-century CardiffChronicle and mapped its relationship with annals produced at Tewkesbury and Neath, providing an interesting map of transmission from the Welsh marches to south and north Wales. Joshua Byron Smith has constructed the first Latin edition of the Chronicle of Gregory of Caerwent, written down between 1237 and 1290 in a Benedictine abbey in Gloucester, and notable for its ambivalence to Edward's conquest of Wales. Rebecca Try has crafted an edition of a vernacular chronicle dated after 1321 (from older material), probably [End Page 218] from the Glamorgan area and termed by her as the Blwydyn eiseu. Ben Guy's contribution is a new edition of the vernacular chronicle Brut Ieuan Brechfa, written...

History and Hagiography: The Vita Sancti Servani and the Foundation of Culross Abbey

The Cistercian abbey of Culross was founded in 1217 on the site of an earlier church known locally to have been established by St Serf. This heritage was successfully appropriated by the new abbey through the adoption of the cult. As successors to the saint and his church, the monks were entitled to inherit their patron’s landed territories, but much of this property seems to have been in other hands. A comparison of the earliest landed endowment of Culross Abbey with the cult landscape presented by the Vita Sancti Servani reveals that certain alienated properties appear to have been reclaimed on this basis. For this reason, the Vita must be understood as a piece of history writing: it recorded past events as they were known locally to have occurred. The Vita is our window into what that version of history was.

The White Nuns: Cistercian Abbeys for Women in Medieval France by Constance Hoffman Berman

Reviewed by: The White Nuns: Cistercian Abbeys for Women in Medieval France by Constance Hoffman Berman Bruce L. Venarde The White Nuns: Cistercian Abbeys for Women in Medieval France. By Constance Hoffman Berman. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2018. Pp. xvi, 345. $89.95. ISBN 9780812250107.) With her excellent The White Nuns, Constance Hoffman Berman completes a trilogy of revisionist books on medieval Cistercians. Medieval Agriculture, the Southern French Countryside, and the Early Cistercians (1986), conclusively demonstrated that the standard account of early Cistercians as rural pioneers who settled in and cleared waste wilderness is a myth; The Cistercian Evolution (2000) showed that the Cistercian Order was not a spontaneous institution fully formed in its first decades but was invented gradually across the twelfth century. Here Berman expands upon her article-length work about Cistercian women going back thirty years. Part I asks, "Were There Cistercian Nuns in Medieval Europe?" The answer, debunking more myths of Cistercian history and historiography and looking across Europe, is a resounding "Yes." Berman's examination of official Cistercian statutes and evidence ranging from papal bulls to the nuns' own records means the burden of proof will hereafter be on scholars whose answers to the question have been "Maybe" or even "No." Part II, [End Page 620] almost four times as long, tightens the geographical focus. It decisively demonstrates the "economic success" (p. xi) of Cistercian nunneries in the Archdiocese of Sens—which reached from Champagne in the east to the Ile-de-France in the north and as far west as Chartrain in the west and the middle Loire Valley in the south—from the late twelfth to late thirteenth centuries. Berman examines some 3,000 charters, about half of them published, the others housed in fifteen repositories in four countries. In addition, an account book of ca. 1250 from the abbey of Maubuisson is beautifully analyzed. These documents demonstrate that patrons from bourgeois men and women to Blanche of Castile worked patiently and painstakingly, alone and in concert, to build and endow houses for Cistercian nuns. Subsequently, there is a repeated pattern in which, to quote the description of Cour-Notre-Dame, "charters … show abbesses acquiring lands at a variety of places and carefully consolidating these acquisitions into larger holdings" (p. 208). Cistercian nuns, then, relied on immense entrepreneurial skills to create agricultural and viticultural conglomerates, amass urban patrimonies, and acquire ownership and rights to mills and the industries they underpinned. The emphasis varied according to locale: houses in Champagne, for example, concentrated on vineyards, whereas Saint-Antoine-des-Champs, just outside the twelfth-century walls of Paris, owned scores of properties in the city. In addition to the general conclusions of Parts I and II that "Cistercian nuns were part of the order, and … they were rarely poor or ephemeral" (p. 30), Berman finds "considerable evidence about the activities of the great feudal dominae … of the thirteenth century, who were founders, patrons, and even occasionally abbesses of these communities of nuns" and furthermore that the patrons of Cistercian nuns considered these women's prayers highly effective (p. 223). Part III, "Comparisons and Conclusions," is comprised of one brief chapter, "Cistercian Nuns and Their Predecessors." Here Berman juxtaposes thirteenth-century Cistercian nuns to twelfth-century women's monastic federations, finding a great deal of similarity in both management of properties and recruitment of nuns. In conclusion, Berman notes that all too often, modern historians have taken at face value frequently misogynist medieval accounts of nuns, Cistercian and otherwise. That points to the immense value of this study: it examines thousands of records that show what these women actually did, as opposed to what men said they did (or didn't do). If you are interested in medieval monasticism, the Cistercian Order, or medieval women in general, please read The White Nuns. This long-awaited book does not disappoint. [End Page 621] Bruce L. Venarde University of Pittsburgh Copyright © 2021 The Catholic University of America Press