Description
Book SynopsisReveals the true story behind the growth of the Cistercian order.
Trade Review"An extremely important book, one that will redefine the ways we conceive of medieval religiosity and politics." *
Virginia Quarterly Review *
"A significant contribution to the study of the history of monasticism in the twelfth century." *
EHR *
"Stimulating, controversial, and compelling, Constance Berman's major revisions of early Cistercian history,
The Cistercian Evolution, should be read by historians of monasticism and will greatly interest scholars in the institutional and religious history of the twelfth century as well as those who study the experience of women in that period." *
The Medieval Review *
"An important and provocative book: important because it challenges scholars to rethink a central medieval theme, the creation and expansion of the Cistercian order in twelfth-century Europe; provocative because it brazenly upends received narratives, two generations of accumulated monastic scholarship." *
Speculum *
"This important work builds on and continues Berman's solid, indeed splendid, scholarship on the institutional history of the Cistercians in southern France. She explores and rejects much traditional thinking in fields as diverse as the supposed uniformity of Cistercian architecture and the propagation of the order through colonization or 'apostolic foundation,' pointing out that much Cistercian expansion was by incorporation of existing communities." *
Church History *
"[Berman's] book changes our understanding of the early Cistercians. It will shape our research for some time to come. Berman's questioning of Cistercian documents, her new picture of Cistercian growth, her warnings about reading thirteenth-century administrative structures and ideas back on to the twelfth, and especially, her insistence that we consider houses of both men and women, make this book an important contribution to the history of religious institutions in the central Middle Ages." *
Catholic Historical Review *
Table of ContentsList of Tables and Illustrations
Preface
1. Twelfth-Century Narratives and Cistercian Mythology
2. Charters, "Primitive Documents," and Papal Confirmations
3. From Citeaux to the Invention of a Cistercian Order
4. Charters, Patrons, and Communities
5. Rewriting the History of Cistercians and Twelfth-Century Religious Reform
Appendices:
1. Chronological Summary
2. "Primitive Documents" Manuscripts: Contents and Provenance
3. Southern-French Cistercian Abbeys by Province and Diocese
4. Calixtus II Documents from 1119 and 1120
5. Restored 1170 Letter from Alexander III
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
