4 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 133 CISTERCIANS AND FELIDAUSM 5

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2 - 4 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 133 and secular estates", an attempt "to base monastic existente on an altogether different socio-economic system", and "to divorce Cistercian land cultivation from manorialism"." Put another way, "the basic iinorthodoxy introduced by the settlers at Citeaux was the rejection of the manorial system both as a way of life and as a source of inc~me".~ As a result of the emphasis placed on the economic side of monastic life by the founders of Citeaux, historians have tended to refer to their religious-economic precepts in order to assess the actual development of Cistercian abbeys. They have also judged whether the abbeys conformed or not to these ideals and, according to this, have identified stages of prosperity or decadeiice. The outcome of this close association between religious ideal and reality was a model, today regarded as "traditional", which describes how the Cistercians, in seeking places "far from human habitation" - and given that the better lands were occupied - settled in unpopulated and unclaimed areas, resorting to largescale land clearance and reclamation. The direct exploitation of monastic lands consolidated in compact granges practised by the monlrs and conuersi made their estates more productive. Savings derived from this racional organization and from their ascetic life could be used to extend and improve their patrimony. That is to say, these monks, by putting into practice the letter and the spirit of the Rule, iinintentionally obtained a certain amount o surplus production. Trade developed as a necessary way of dealing with this --- surolus. oroduce.. and this in turn provided further opportunity for territorial expan~ion.~ However, one consequence of this R. Roehl, "Plan and Reality in a Medieval Monastic Economy: The Cistercians", Srudzes in Medieval ond Renairsance Hist., ix (1972), pp. 84-5; Constance Hoffman Berman, Medieval.4gricuIture, the Soutliern Frrnch Coi<nrryside and the Early Cisrzrciaris' A Study o/ I;oriy-Threu Monosteries (Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc., Ixxvi, pt. 5, Philadelphia, 19861, p r -. V. Gnves. -..., "The - Economi' Activities of the Cisterdans in Medieval England ~~ ( )", Analecra sacri ord~nis Cisrerciensis, xiii (1957), p For David Knowles, this meant that "the wheel hadcome fullcircle": D. Knowles, The Monartic Order 8> England (Cambridge, 1940), p This is the circle that some liberal economists in our day would labrl as the "virtuous circle of wealth" in contrast to the "vicious circle of poverty". The norion of a circie to explain the logic of the Cistercian erowth has been adooted. by. many recent historians. IOiowles wrote about the "superior agricultura1 methods of the Cistercians, whase demesne organisation gave to their enterprises many of the advantages possessed in the modern world by the multinie-hranch concern or vertically contralled graup-industry over the small CISTERCIANS AND FELIDAUSM 5 involuntary economic prosperity was a growing deviation from their original principies, which led to a transformation in the religious quality of the monks' life. Eventually they became landlords in receipt of rent like other seigneurial groups and, at the same time, declined ec~nomically.~ Spiritual ideals have thus long been used to account both for the paradoxical success of the Cistercian monlts, who were "the voluntary poor", but became "the involuntary rich", aiid for their rapid expansion throughout Europe. This interpretation, which has generally portrayed the Cistercians as pioneers, labouring monks and reclaimers of waste, has been influenced by the "frontier thesis", which compares Cistercian monlts to the prairie settlers of the New World who derived unexpectedly large yields from rich soils which had never previously been culti~ated.~ According to this view, in seeking a life o asceticism and apostolic poverty the Cistercian monirs were twelfth-century predecessors of Weber's Puritans, and, like those later Protestants, ironically reaped a rich reward for their efforts. 1 believe this idealized picture to be important as an expression of the outlook and attitudes of a historiography originating in the nineteenth century. Such historiography seems, in this as in other fields, to have sought justifications and antecedents for its own political models in the Middle Ages. The past is interpreted according to certain nineteenth-century values - large and con- ' For an examole of the standard account which has had widesoread iníinence. see ibid., pp. 346 R.; 632 R. We can cansider L. Lekai, The Wkire ~ onhi: A ~ i ~ t o/ ~ r y che Cistercian Order (Okauchee, 1953) - which brings together and disseniinates what 1 believe to be the key elements of this traditional discourse - the paint of contact between the old and the new literature on the subject. Lekai, himself a Cistercian monk, asserts that his predecessors "turned their back ta the staggering system of feudal administration of monastic property... The manorial system divided the large feudal estates into isalated and virtually independent units, where the peasantry, handicapped by servility of status and tenure, was left alone to its own primitive devices withont any large scale planning or unifying organisation, for the lord's interest usnally was strictly Iimited to the collection of revenues". In contrast, for the Cistercians, "who rejected the traditional manorial system together with al1 sarts of incomes of feudal origin, there!vas certainly no other choice but ta organise a group of lay religious for agricultural work": ibid., pp , 230. There is another version of this book, L. Lekai, The Cisnraonr: Ideals and Rsolitj (Kent, Oh,, 1977), which Lekai himself laheis as a "new history of the Cistercian order". He has certainly used a "large number of recent studies" which, in his opinion, have "revoiutionized onr traditional views on Cistercian beeinnines": ibid.. o. ix. However. in mv view he

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