SAINT BENEDICT TRAPPIST REFLECTIONS

Under this system, the reform which Robert had launched in the swamps of Citeaux a hundred and fifty years earlier, and had dedicated to poverty, prayer, and simplicity, had with its vast expansion grown over-rich and over-powerful. While its monks remained poor, and large numbers faithfully followed the Rule, its abbeys were rich with the land they had acquired and the industry with which it had been developed. Forests had been cleared, swamps drained, irrigation established, and vast areas lay under cultivation. Virtual feudal estates, many holdings were so large that it had become necessary to develop a system of "granges" in the remote sections and at considerable distance from the monasteries — shelters from which the lay brothers went forth every day to toil in the fields, returning to the monastery only at stated periods to observe their religious duties.



While within the monasteries the monks were busy illuminating beautiful manuscripts, and the abbot was engrossed in his extensive mercantile operations, the lay brothers in the fields were growing the produce he would sell, along with the wool which came from the monastery's numerous flocks and the wine which flowed from its vineyards. To be sure, the Cistercians were at the same time civilizing Europe. They had not only pushed back the wilderness and cultivated the waste places, but were teaching the peasantry the agricultural arts, and educating them.