Stephen of Lexington and Cistercian University Studies in the Thirteenth Century

Abstract

‘On my side are St. Benedict and the whole of antiquity’, wrote Rancé to Mabillon in February 1693, ‘and what is called study has only been instituted when discipline has been lax’. However one may sympathise with his great adversary, it can hardly be denied that, at least so far as the Cistercian order was concerned, Rancé was historically justified. The transmission of new ideas depended on freedom of movement and this was not compatible with the monastic vow of stability. It was this, rather than any ingrained conservatism, that made the monastic orders so slow to adapt themselves to the new learning of the cathedral schools and the rising universities. The Cistercians in particular were seemingly committed by their founders to being, Like St. Benedict, scienter nescius et sapienter indoctus. It was the vocation of Cîteaux to recall men to the primitive observance of the Rule in which the essential tasks of the monk were liturgical prayer and manual labour. There was to be no school in the cloister. The only instruction provided for in the early consuetudines was training in the chant. The making of books, save by permission of the general chapter, was expressly forbidden.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.