Cîteaux Abbey

Cîteaux Abbey was a new monastery known for its austere discipline and hard conditions. In the book’s account of Bernard of Clairvaux, it is the institution he chose over more prestigious monastic options and the place from which he was sent to establish Clairvaux. Its significance lies in this conjunction of demanding communal life and expansion: Bernard entered its rigorous setting with a group of companions, underwent novice training, and then carried monastic foundations outward.

Austerity and Leadership

Around 1113, Bernard entered the new monastery at Cîteaux, bringing, according to the account, thirty friends and relatives. The choice was striking because his education and talent might have led to a promising future, and grander, more prestigious monasteries were available. Cîteaux instead represented a hard life of asceticism.

Stephen Harding, an Englishman, was abbot when Bernard arrived. The facilities were primitive, the land lonely, and the discipline severe; the account describes it as a place only strong men could endure. These circumstances make Cîteaux more than a setting for Bernard’s decision: they convey the material and communal demands of the monastic life he deliberately adopted.

Bernard and the Foundation of Clairvaux

At Cîteaux, Bernard went through novice training. He was soon sent from the monastery to establish a new house, Clairvaux. The book notes that starting a monastery was not easy, while also acknowledging that little is known about the work Bernard did there in the beginning. Cîteaux’s role in his story is therefore clear even where the details of the next foundation remain sparse: it was the community in which he prepared before undertaking that work.

Bernard’s entry also had a family dimension. He brought friends and relatives with him, and all four of his brothers would eventually become monks. The account does not say that his brothers joined Cîteaux, but their vocations place his decision within a wider family turn toward monastic life.

Monastic Life Across the Book’s Timeline

The book sets its medieval account alongside a twentieth-century encounter with Cistercian monastic practice at the Abbey of Gethsemani, a separate Trappist-Cistercian monastery. In the late 1950s, about 250 monks lived there. Visiting students attended the Divine Offices, shared meals in the guest house, toured the monastery, and heard a monk speak about monastic life. The author recalls white-cowled monks entering the church silently and singing the psalms in Latin Gregorian chant.

That later visit does not make Gethsemani the same institution as Cîteaux. Rather, it gives the book a present-day frame for its medieval material: monasticism is treated not only as a historical subject but as a functioning communal life that students could observe. Cîteaux’s austerity and Bernard’s departure to found Clairvaux belong to the medieval history; the visit to Gethsemani shows the author’s encounter with a later Cistercian setting.