The Waters of Siloe
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29 Canivez, Statuta, 1134, No. 7. See also 1234, No. 1; 1235, No. 2; 1236, No. 3.
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30 M. Seraphin Lenssen, La Vénération des Saints Cisterciens dans l’Ordre de Cîteaux, Collectanea, O.C.R., vi, i, p. 24.
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31 Imbecillitatem suam ad tantum pondus sustinendam judicantes . . .” Exordium Parvum, 12, Guignard, p. 68.
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32 For instance, Bl. Helinand of Froidmont, Bl. Foulques of Marseille, Serlo of Wilton.
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33 In many passages of St. Bernard’s prose the lines may be broken down into complex and subtle metrical patterns, and even into standard verse-forms; cf. M. Anselme Dimier, “Les Amusements Poetiques de’S. Bernard,” Collectanea, O.C.R. xi, n. 1, Jan. 1949.
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34 Op. cit., p. 110.
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35 Cf. Serm. 53 In Cantica.
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36 Letter to the General Chapter of 1150, prefixed to St. Bernard’s Letter No. 273.
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1 Quoted by Mgr. Auvity, L’Abbaye de Bonneval (Rodez, 1947), p. 77 ff.
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2 De la Sainteté et des Devoirs de la Vie Monastique, p. 315.
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3 Ibid., p. 313.
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4 Ibid., p. 265
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5 Op. cit., p. 55.
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6 L’Ame Cistercienne, Les Cisterciens Trappistes (1931).
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1 The Carthusians returned to La Val Sainte in the nineteenth century, and now it is one of the most flourishing monasteries of that order. Pierre van der Meer de Walcheren’s book, Le Paradis Blanc, gives a good idea of the place in our day.
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2 The brief of Pius VI, dated January 27, 1792, was not an official approval of the Val Sainte reform. It was only issued in approbation of the foundation and was designed to encourage Dom Augustin and his men to persevere in their heroic work of rescuing the Trappists from the Revolution. The usages of La Val Sainte were not completed until the end of 1794 and were never approved by the Holy See.
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3 Father Urban Guillet was born at Nantes, in 1766, of a French father and a Creole mother. The title “Dom” in the Cistercian Order is given only to abbots, titular priors and definitors. “Dom” Urban was never, strictly speaking, a titular superior.
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4 Quoted from The Journal of the Senate and House by Fr. G. J. Garraghan, S.J., in “The Trappists of Monk’s Mound, ”Illinois Catholic Hist. Rev., Oct., 1925, p. 121.
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5 Pigeon Hill, known locally as Seminary Farm, is about a quarter of a mile from the Lincoln Highway, which runs between York and Gettysburg. On April 4, 1794, an exiled French Friar Preacher purchased the place and set up a school there. He later became a Sulpician. After the departure of the Trappists, the Sulpicians started a school on the property. This institution later moved to Emmitsburg, Maryland, and joined with Mount Saint Mary’s College.
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1 Shakertown lies between Lexington and Harrodsburg, in the Kentucky River Valley. It is in the heart of the Blue Grass country, the richest land in the State and one of its most charming regions.
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2 “Truly this is the generation of them that seek the Lord,” Ps. 13. The letter is quoted in La Vie du R. P. Dom Urbain Guillet, p. 211.
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3 From a letter to Bishop Plessis of Quebec, Dec. 14, 1809. Quoted in Garraghan, “The Trappists of Monk’s Mound,” p. 116.
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4 Garraghan, art. cit., 129.
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1 Dom Augastin christened his first convent of Trappistines with this name.
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2 I take this opportunity to thank the Rt. Rev. Abbot of Thymadeuc, in Brittany, for sending us the material in his archives. The monks of Thymadeuc used Petit Clairvaux as a refuge during the early part of the present century, and, before leaving, one of their number copied all the important documents in the archdiocesan archives at Quebec. Later, this material was supplemented by letters in the archives of La Grande Trappe and incorporated in a manuscript sketch of Fr. Vincent’s life, to which I am greatly indebted. Much of the same material has since been printed by the Augustinian fathers, who are the present occupants of Petit Clairvaux. Rev. Luke Schrepfer, O.S.A., Pioneer Monks in Nova Scotia (Tracadie, 1947).
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3 The Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith (De Propaganda Fide) is in charge of all the Catholic foreign missions and supervises all Church organization in mission territories.
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4 At Beagle Bay, New Caledonia.
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5 The first abbot, Dom Dominique Schietecatte, was installed by Dom Benedict Berger of Gethsemani on October 26, 1876. Pioneer Monks in Nova Scotia, p. 69 ff.
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1 There were still plenty of wildcats in Kentucky in 1848.
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2 Gethsemani Abbey, a Narrative of the Late Abbot Eutropius, O.C.R (1899), p. 34.
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3 Op. cit., p. 41.
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4 Acts ii:44. Cf. Gilson, Mystical Theology of St. Bernard, p. 75.
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5 One had been lost on the journey, when the aged Father Benezet died on the high seas. The 70-year-old monk, an Italian from Piedmont, had been a Christian Brother before becoming a Trappist and had traveled back and forth across the sea to Isle Bourbon. He had offered himself for the new foundation and had been accepted, although he was really too old.
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1 All monks who make vows according to the Rule of St. Benedict promise “stability.” That is to say, they vow to live and die in the monastery of their profession. However, they can be sent by their superiors to start another monastery or to help a struggling foundation elsewhere. In this case, they make a new vow of stability in their new home. The vow is violated by a monk leaving his monastery and going elsewhere of his own accord.
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2 In the Cistercian Order, an abbey is the highest of three kinds of religious houses. At the present day, permission of the General Chapter and of the Holy See are required before a foundation or a priory can become an abbey. Permission is granted only to well-established houses where all the elements of a complete monastery are found and where there is a definite chance that the regular contemplative life may be led in all its fulness. When a community is elevated to this dignity, it can elect an abbot, who has certain privileges and responsibilities that give him a high ranking among ecclesiastical superiors in the Church.
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3 M. Raymond, O.C.S.O., The Man Who Got Even with God (Milwaukee, 1941).
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1 See below, p. 249 ff.
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2 This foundation was a failure.
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1 I am greatly indebted to Rev. Father Maurice Molloy, O.C.R., the librarian of Our Lady of the Valley, for making available the fruit of his research into the archives of his monastery.
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2 See La Trappe in England, by a religious of Stapehill (London, 1935); reprint, Gethsemani, 1946.
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1 The question is much discussed by modern theologians, and a good summary of the discussion may be found in the appendix to Dom Vital Lehodey’s Ways of Mental Prayer. This appendix is found at least in the original French.
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1 All things work together unto good for them that love God. Rom. viii:28.
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2 Rerum Ecclesiae, February 28, 1926.
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3 Rule, ch. 72, ch. 33.
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4 On the first list were three French priests, fathers Stephen, William, and Alphonse, and one Chinese priest, Father Emile. The rest were brothers, all Chinese: brothers Conrad, Mark, Bruno, Aloysius, Bartholomew, Clement, Jerome, and Philip. On the second list were Brothers Anthony, Malachy and Amedeus, all Chinese. In October Fathers Michael (the prior), Bonaventure, Odilo (Chinese) and Aelred died. On the twenty-eighth of January, 1948, five others were horribly murdered—their brains dashed out by stones. They were Fathers Seraphin and Chrysostom, Brothers Alexius, Roch and Eligius.
Between February and May of the same year the following died or were executed: Fathers Maurus, Simon and Theodore, Frater Hugh, Brothers Irenaeus and Martin (all Chinese). There remain six whose death notices have not yet reached us at the time of this writing. This material is mostly based on an article by Rev. C. McCarthy, S.J., which gave a full account of the events at Yang Kia Ping, as told to him by Frater M. Joachim, O.C.R., one of the monks who was released. We saw the article in manuscript.
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1 Letter to Raoul de Verd, in Migne, P. L., Vol. 152, col. 421b. He gives a beautiful description of the view from the hermitage in Calabria, where he died, and admits that he found it helpful to relax his mind by gazing at the pleasant countryside when his spiritual exercises became too much for him.
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2 Quidquid in Scripturis valet, quidquid in eis spiritualiter sentit, maxime in silvis et in agris meditando et orando se confitetur accepisse; et in hoc nullos aliquando se magistros habuisse nisi quercos et fagos joco illo suo gratioso inter amicos dicere solet. William of St. Thierry, Vita Bernardi, I, iv, 23. St. Bernard wrote to Henry Murdach: “Aliquid amplius invenies in silvis quam in libris. Ligna et lapides docebunt te quod a magistris audire non posses.” Epistola 106, No. 2.
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3 Vie de Saint Bernard (Paris, 1895), p. 57.
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4 The words attributed by Fastrad to St. Bernard are: Nec sufficit monacho infirmitatem allegare. Sancti enim Patres, majores nostri, valles humidas et declives monasteriis exstruendis indagabant, ut saepe infirmi monachi et mortem ante oculos habentes securi non viverent. Among the letters of St. Bernard, Epist. 478, No. 4. From the same letter comes the famous quotation in which St, Bernard says that the monk would water every morsel of the bread he ate with his tears if he realized the obligations of his state. The tenor of the letter is given by Fastrad’s etymological definition of a monk as one dedicated to solitude and sorrow: Monachi etymon est solitudo et tristitia. He chides his young abbot friend for eating “fresh-caught fish” under pretext of being ill, when one of their companions in the novitiate had refused to ask for an egg to relieve his hunger until he was actually at the point of death. Fastrad closes by warning his correspondent that “if your soul were in God’s grace your body would not be so weak.”
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5 The real doctrine of St. Bernard is found in his sermons. This quotation comes from the third sermon on the Feast of the Circumcision, No. 11, in which he says that those who have reached the degree of the spiritual life in which penance is a pleasure to them, sometimes sin by excess and ruin their interior life by making themselves unfit to live as contemplatives: Timendum est ne . . . corpus destruat per immoderatam exercitationem; ac deinde necesse habeat, non sine magno spiritualis exercitii detrimento, circa debilitati curam corporis occupari. Cf. In Cant., Serm. xlix, No. 5. However, see his remarks on false “discretion,” which is only a disguise for the “wisdom of the flesh.” In Cant., Serm. xxx, Nos. 10–12.
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6 See Marcel Aubert, l’Architecture Cistercienne en France (Paris, 1946).
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7 Exordium Parvum, xiv, Guignard, p. 70.
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8 Ibid., xv, p. 71.
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9 Ibid., xii, p. 68.
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10 Tanto religioni . . . habiliorem, quanto saecularibus despicabiliorem et inaccessibilem. . . . Ibid., iii, p. 63.
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11 The first collection of statutes, the Instituta of 1134, begins with these words: “In civitatibus, castellis, villis, nulla nostra construenda sunt cenobia, sed in locis a corniersatione hominum semotis.” The same rule is found in the present Constitutions of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance.
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12 It is in the diocese of Rodez and the modern department of Aveyron. In modern times it has become a convent of Trappistines. See Mgr. Auvity, L’Abbave de Bonneval (Rodez, 1947).
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13 The beautiful fancy of monks of a later generation led to the in- scribing of these words of Genesis over the entrance gate: Spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas (“And the Spirit of God moved over the waters”). Gen. i:2.
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14 John iv:14.
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15 Ibid., vii:39.
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16 Institutiones 1240, d I, 2. (Nomasticon, p. 287.)
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17 The Cistercians were fond of treatises De Anima, which were, at the same time, tracts in mystical theology, or the psychology of mysticism. It has been remarked that St. Bernard’s De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio was in reality a De Anima, and it is certain that it lays the foundations for a psychology of contemplation. But all St. Bernard’s works do that. This was one of his predominant interests.
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18 William of St. Thierry, De Natura et Dignitate Amoris, I, i. On the cloister as school of charity, see also Gilson, Mystical Theology of St. Bernard, pp. 60 ff., 200.
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19 Ausculta o fili precepta magistri . . . ut ad eum per obedientiae laborem redeas, a quo per inobedientiae desidiam recesseras. . . . Rule, Prologue.
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20 Statuta, 1134, No. xx.
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21 St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, II, 12 and II, 3.
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22 Sic omnem in sanctis humanam affectionem quodam ineffabili modo necesse est a semetipsa liquescere atque in Dei penitus transfundi voluntatem. Alioquin quomodo omnia in omnibus erit Deus si in homine de homine quidquam supererit? St. Bernard, De Diligendo Deo, x, No. 28.
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23 Monacho in hyeme tribus tunicis induto liceat scapulare superinduere non tamen sine duabus cucullis. Consuetudines, lxxiv. Guignard, p. 176. The scapular was worn at work only in the twelfth century, and that is why it was permitted only with all these qualifications, as a last resort, when the monk had already exhausted the rest of his wardrobe trying to keep warm.
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24 The monks reckoned time according to the Roman system. The day was divided into twelve equal “hours” from sunrise to sunset, and the night was also divided into twelve hou
rs from sunset to sunrise. Hence, in winter the twelve hours of night were much longer, and in summer it was the other way round.
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25 The bell for Prime was rung at daybreak. Apparente die pulsetur signum, etc. Consuetudines, lxxiv. The Carthusians of La Grande Chartreuse knew the time for certain exercises by the way the sun struck the tops of the mountains in the various seasons of the year.
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26 Ps. 127:2. Labores manuum tuarum quia manducabis beatus es, et bene tibi erit.