"There have been other men," says the Archbishop of Dublin, “Augustine and Luther for instance, who by their words and writings have ploughed deeper and more lasting furrows in the great field of the Church, but probably no man during his lifetime ever exercised a personal influence in Christendom equal to his; who was the stayer of popular commotions, the queller of heresies, the umpire between princes and kings, the counsellor of popes, the founder-for so he may be esteemed of an important religious order, the author of a crusade."

And Mr. Freeman (Norman Conquest, v. 231) calls him "the holy Bernard, the last of the Fathers, the counsellor of popes and kings." The event, it is perhaps just possible, they never heard of. The Cistercians were a strict order of reformed Benedictines. If we had never travelled in Yorkshire we might be inclined to dismiss them with the remark that they allowed no lofty towers to their churches and no grease to their vegetables. But when one has seen. Rievaulx and Byland, Fountains and Kirkstall, Jervaulx and Roche, one begins to suspect there is more to be said.

Our next half-dozen papers will be concerned with the work of these Cistercians, and we can hardly fail to gather, as we go, some knowledge of the men; it will be well, therefore, in this place briefly to explain their origin.

Towards the close of the eleventh century one

Robert was Abbot of Molesme, in Burgundy. The monks of Molesme, like many other Benedictines of their day, were lax in their discipline; and Robert, after trying in vain to revive among them in its literal strictness the rule of their founder, retired with a small following to Citeaux-then a wilderness of thorns. Here he founded a monastery in which were contained the germs of the great Cistercian order. Already the English Stephen Harding1 was there the future framer of the Cistercian system, and the destined master and instructor of that very "Barnard, Abbot of Clareval," whose brilliant and winning personal qualities were to be the special means of its diffusion. Hugh, Archbishop of Lyons and papal legate, sanctioned the movement in a letter which has been preserved. He solemnly notifies that Robert and certain of his sons-brethren of the monastery (cœnobium) of Molesme-had come before him and declared themselves anxious to keep more closely and perfectly the rule of the most blessed Benedict, which they had held in lukewarm and careless fashion; that, for many reasons, this was not possible without their removal, and that he, studying the welfare of both parties, advised the departure of the reformers to such new dwelling as the heavenly

1 66 Harding," says Mr. Freeman, "was doubtless his baptismal name, and Stephen the name which he took on entering religion.”

bounty should provide, and bade them persevere in their intention. In St. Stephen Harding we recognise, after five hundred years, something of St. Benedict's knowledge of men and power of organisation. But the latter, as has been truly said, “organised for a monastery," the former "for an order." In the ideal of St. Benedict each monastery was a kingdom under its Abbot. It is true the bishops were recognised as official visitors, but their jurisdiction was wholly inadequate to correct abuses or maintain discipline. And so it came to pass that in some monasteries “lay abbots might be found quietly established with their wives and children," and "the tramp of soldiers, the neighing of horses, and baying of hounds, made the cloister more like a knight's castle than a place dedicated to God's service." The attempt of St. Odo of Cluny to remedy this state of things was doomed to ultimate failure, because he still left everything dependent on the individual Abbots. Stephen's idea was to create an order which should be self-regulating and self-reforming. With this view he instituted a system of reciprocal visitation among the Cistercian houses and subordinated them all to the parent house of Citeaux. Here every year, on Holy Cross Day (14th September), a general chapter was to be held

1

1 The Cistercian Saints of England, edited by J. H. N.