A Cistercian Monastery and its Neighbours
What did medieval monasteries mean to those living inside them, to those who founded and helped them with gifts or protection, and to those who lived near them? Professor Holdsworth examines these questions in relation to the Cistercian order.
Monastic history has sometimes been written as though the aim of monks – to cut loose from secular society, to be alone with God – had succeeded. In this tradition of historical writing, it has looked as though monasteries existed in a strangely de-secularised world, insulated from real life, so that one cannot blame the reader for imagining that the spread of the Pre-monstratensians, or the Franciscans, to take two examples, occurred with nothing more than the attractive power of Christian virtues being involved. But canons, friars or monks needed somewhere to follow their vocation. They could not exist for long without some kind of a base, and to have this they needed patrons and supporters. Once they had such a foundation, however careful they might be to try and restrict the relationship between themselves and the rest of the world, they ran into very real problems. It was then that they discovered how difficult it was to follow St. Paul's advice to some early Christians that they should be in the world but not of it.
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