The Cistercian order has been credited with any number of feats, from pioneering large-scale vaulting, to engineering northern Europe's first sophisticated plumbing, to spreading Gothic style throughout Europe. Hundreds of Cistercian houses and thousands of monks spread like wildfire across the length and breadth of Europe to form one of the first truly multi-national monastic orders. Incorporating local adherents as well as transplanted monks trained at and then exported from faraway monasteries, these houses, in the scholarly imagination, served as incubators for order-specific theological, artistic and architectural ideas. Doctrines, aesthetics and motifs imported in their germinal state could spring forth in their new environment altered subtly, or not so subtly, by the traditions that surrounded them.
Twelfth-century Cistercian library holdings are remarkably consistent; the order's artistic and architectural legislation appears coherent and at least sporadically enforced; and its surviving buildings, if not its manuscripts, are thought to betray a striking unity, as if architectural forms were transmitted in a handbook to each new Cistercian foundation by its mother house. The organizational format of the order and its massive scale have also made its material remains much more accessible to scholars than those of other famous, but less consistent, less well-documented, or less international orders and reform movements, like the Cluniacs, Carthusians, Franciscans, Dominicans, Premonstratensians, Gilbertines, Victorines, Augustinian canons or the Gorze-influenced reform movements. Even the Carthusians, whose anchoritic lifestyle engendered a curious hybrid monastery layout, in each foundation interpreted the cellular monastic plan through the lens of locally inspired style. Studies of the architecture of these groups tend to reveal how very little their churches and monastic buildings had in common, beyond the architectural skeleton, already almost universal by the ninth-century, demanded by the rigors of following a monastic rule. [[1]]
By contrast, Peter Fergusson's, Architecture of Solitude: Cistercian Abbeys in Twelfth-Century England (Princeton, 1984), served as a model for studies both of Cistercian architecture in other countries, and of Cistercian manuscripts, in that its goal was to establish systematically the commonalities between a body of Cistercian remains, and their origin. This festschrift, offered on the twentieth anniversary of its publication, is a testament to the enduring importance of Fergusson's work. Fergusson's Architecture of Solitude advanced the hypothesis that from the earliest inroads of Cistercianism into Britain, the order's architecture was fundamentally different from preexisting English architecture. According to his observations, from the foundation of the first house in 1128 until the end of the twelfth century, Cistercian monks in England repeatedly referred for inspiration back to the architecture of Burgundy, where the order was founded, and later to other French Cistercian foundations. Although their version of Cistercian architecture was inflected with English elements, its overarching "Frenchness" reveals that Citeaux exerted a lasting philosophical and aesthetic hold on its daughters. Thus while recent studies of Cluny have overturned the once fashionable view of ironclad and legally enforced supra-regional uniformity in observance among its daughter houses, Fergusson used material evidence to reinforce our impression that in contrast the Cistercians fostered perhaps the most consistent and widespread artistic aesthetic in Western Europe after the end of the Roman Empire: unlike the art of the Carolingians, for instance, whose classical revival had little impact on the art of Scotland, Ireland, southern Italy, Spain, Portugal or Eastern Europe, Citeaux had foundations in all of those places, all of which incorporated some aspect of the Cistercian aesthetic into their architecture.
Thus this festschrift's remarkable scope is a fitting tribute to Fergusson's benchmark study. The thirty-four contributions from Fergusson's students and colleagues include, of course, a number of articles on aspects of English Cistercian architecture, but also notes on the architecture of Ireland, Wales, Scotland, France, Spain, Germany and the Holy Land. While Fergusson's Architecture of Solitude was restricted to church buildings, like Fergusson's many articles these smaller studies explore grange chapels, cells, cloisters, and infirmaries. The authors have tracked the impact of Cistercian innovations on Premonstratensian, Augustinian, Benedictine, and cathedral architecture. In addition, Fergusson's model of a unifying Cistercian thread has been applied to choir stalls, stained glass and sculpture.
It is, of course, next to impossible to do justice to a volume incorporating so many and such divergent contributions. The book opens with a set of contributions about documents, both Cistercian and non-Cistercian. Conrad Rudolph, "Communal Identity and the Earliest Christian Legislation on Art: Canon 36 of the Synod of Elvira," addresses early church legislation on the depiction of art, a subject very dear to the hearts of Cistercian scholars in view of the fame of the order's own artistic legislation, not mentioned by Rudolph in this context. Christopher Norton's "Richard of Fountains and the Letter of Thurstan: History and Historiography of a Monastic Controversy, St. Mary's Abbey, York, 1132," is an atypically long and detailed (for a festschrift) exploration of the manuscript tradition, editions, and historiography of a letter concerning the founding of Fountains. An article by Janet Burton, "Rievaulx Abbey: The Early Years," reassesses the documentary evidence for Rievaulx's reputedly phenomenal early growth and influence. A pair of articles, Jens Ruffner, "Aelred of Rievaulx and the Institutional Limits of Monastic Friendship," and Emilia Jamroziak, "Making and Breaking the Bonds: Yorkshire Cistercians and their Neighbours," explore the creation of interpersonal bonds and bonds between people and institutions first inside, and then outside the monastery, using Cistercian evidence to make broader claims about societal practice.
The articles covering Cistercian architecture prove the endurance of Fergusson's assessment of the order's early constructions in England, that there was a conspicuous and institutionally mandated uniformity. Glyn Coppack's article, "'According to the Form of the Order;' The Earliest Cistercian Buildings in England and their Context," uses evidence from foundation narratives and letters to show that the Cistercians themselves believed they were following a Cistercian tradition, although the author then observes several times that the surviving archaeological remnants reflect layouts that were not unique to the Cistercians, and in fact were typically Benedictine. Alexandra Gajewski, "The Architecture of the Choir at Clairvaux Abbey: Saint Bernard and the Cistercian Principle of Conspicuous Poverty," maintains that the construction of Clairvaux's more lavish east end reflected not the spiritual decline of the order, but rather an increasingly sophisticated interpretation of the ideal of institutional poverty. The order acknowledged its practical needs by building larger and more elaborate architecture, but expressed symbolic rather than literal poverty by maintaining simplicity in form. Thus although the style of Cistercian churches was never legislated with any specificity, their quest to express their spiritual ideals gives them commonalities. This allows for Fergusson's observation that English architects apparently returned repeatedly to France for inspiration but copied a series of different Cistercian institutions, because no one, lasting norm had been agreed. Lindy Grant, "Savigny and its Saints," suggests that the rebuilt chevet of Savigny purposefully echoed Clairvaux, underlining the formerly separate order's incorporation by the Cistercians, and echoing the function of Clairvaux's chevet, as assessed by Fergusson, to provide a setting for the incipient cult of its resident saint. Stuart Harrison, "'I lift up mine eyes:' A Re-Evaluation of the Tower in Cistercian Architecture in Britain and Ireland," refines and broadens Fergusson's 1970 hypothesis that English Cistercian monasteries were generally planned without towers, by identifying isolated cases where towers must have been intended from the beginning, and other later monasteries where even low towers were not built. Similarly, Malcolm Thurlby, "The Crossing of Fountains Abbey Church," assesses the building sequence at Fountains based on physical remains and comparisons with other abbeys, and proposes that it had a wooden crossing vault with an oculus.
Later Cistercian art and architecture is not neglected in this collection. Michael T. Davis, "Cistercians in the City: The Church of the College Saint-Bernard in Paris," assesses the building process of that as church revealed by the ledgers of its chief builder, the equivalent of a modern contractor. He also notes that despite the multifarious influences and decorative detail recorded for the now destroyed building, it stayed true to some characteristics of Cistercian design. Thomas Coomans, "From Flanders to Scotland: The Choir Stalls of Melrose Abbey in the Fifteenth Century," attempts to reconstruct the historical context, physical environment and appearance of a set of Flemish choir stalls. Helen Zakin, "Stained Glass Panels from Mariawald Abbey in the Cleveland Museum of Art," reconstructs the original arrangement of a series of sixteenth-century stained glass panels from Mariawald and reassesses its iconographical sources. Christine Kratzke, "De laudibus Virginis Matris: The Untold Story of a Standing Infant Jesus, a Venerating Monk and a Movable Madonna from Dargun Abbey," surveys a variety of depictions of Mary, including a mid-fifteenth-century terra cotta relief and a mechanical statue of Mary used to influence sinners. Finally, Terryl N. Kinder, "Planting over the Past: An Unknown Episode in the Post-Monastic History of Pontigny Abbey," contextualizes an early-nineteenth-century plan to convert the grounds of Pontigny into a pleasure garden.
Nigel Hiscock, "The Two Cistercian Plans of Villard de Honnecourt," attempts to identify Villard's drawing of a church planned 'ad quadratum,' suggesting that Villard may potentially have seen such a church at Pilis in Hungary. He also concludes that this type of building would have appealed to Cistercians because of its symbolic significance. A series of articles explore Cistercian departures over time from the specifics of governing statutes in architecture. David N. Bell, "Chambers, Cells and Cubicles: The Cistercian General Chapter and the Development of the Private Room," surveys the repeated pronouncements from the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century General Chapters on the proliferation in Cistercian abbeys of cells, doors, locks and fireplaces and suggests that changing concepts of privacy led to an inexorable change in monastic spaces. Similarly, Jackie Hall, "East of the Cloister: Infirmaries, Abbots' Lodgings, and other Chambers," reexamines the assigned functions of a series of eastern complexesattached to British Cistercian foundations, and suggests that many rooms could have functioned as lodging for retired abbots or other high ranking monks. In addition, infirmaries may have come routinely to serve as lodging and refectories for elevated visitors. David H. Williams, "Cistercian Grange Chapels," reveals the heterogeneity of grange chapels, and also traces the gradual relaxation in their regulation by the General Chapter. Mark Horton, "A Bell-founders Pit at the Cistercian Abbey of Grosbot (Charente)," explains, on the other hand, that the monks of Grosbot apparently stayed within the statute governing the size of bells while casting a new and monumental bell around 1300.
Richard Fawcett, "Culross Abbey," explores the history and architecture of this poorly preserved church, the only example in the British Isles of an early Cistercian church with a square ended presbytery and eastern transept chapels (now destroyed) that is still roofed and in use. Lawrence Butler, "The Lost Choir: What Was Built at Three Cistercian Abbey Churches in Wales?" overturns the earlier assumption that three Welsh abbeys had the same truncated nave without apse or transepts because all lacked sufficient funds to carry out their original building plans. Jason Wood, "Furness Abbey: A Case Study in Monastic Secularization," provides a detailed survey of fifteenth-century Abbey Park Cottage and its surroundings, and speculates that it served as a dwelling for a lay officer.
Not all of the contributions deal with Cistercian monuments. Several articles explore wider Cistercian influence on Benedictine and cathedral churches. Jennifer S. Alexander, "Bardney Abbey, Lincolnshire: Benedictine with a Cistercian Flavour," is a detailed survey of the archeological remains, in the course of which the author suggests that the transept arrangement and many of the sculptural forms were influenced by English Cistercian architecture. James D'Emilio, "The Cistercians and the Romanesque Churches of Galicia: Compostela or Clairvaux?" outlines the history of Cistercian presence in Galicia, and posits that Cistercian forms had a lasting influence on rural Galician churches, but only where preexisting Galician forms had not gained a strong foothold. Furthermore, he suggests that foreign Cistercian craftsmen oversaw a variety of other projects in the region. Chrysogonus Waddell, "Cistercian Influence on the Abbey of the Paraclete? Plotting Data from the Paraclete Book of Burials, Customary, and Necrology," uses descriptions of burials both to chart the distribution of various classes of grave inhabitants around the monastery, and to reconstruct the architecture that contained them. Although he observes that Abbess Heloise borrowed extensively from Cistercian liturgy when formulating the early customs of the monastery, he acknowledges that there are too few comparisons available to determine if the nuns of the Paraclete favored a Cistercian style of building over something more local. Virginia Jansen, "Cistercian Threads in the Fabric of Canterbury and Salisbury Cathedrals," surveys the historical connections and possible architectural links between a variety of French and English leaders and sites. Likewise, Carolyn Marino Malone, "Cistercian Design in the Choir and Transept of Wells Cathedral," explores possible sources for the design of mouldings, transepts and ambulatory at Wells, concluding that Cistercian influence was far greater than originally surmised.
Other contributions are wholly unconnected to the Cistercians, but nonetheless are wedded to the theme favored by Fergusson: stylistic influence in architecture. Lisa Reilly, "Beating their Swords into Set Squares," frames the quest for stylistic sources historiographically, and argues for a more contextual reassessment of architecture (especially Norman architecture) that has traditionally been approached in an evolutionary manner. Nicola Coldstream "The Late Twelfth-Century Rebuilding of the Cenacle on Mount Sion and the Fortunes of a Style," studies the stylistic heritage of the Cenacle, the reputed site of the Last Supper, and the closely related cathedral of Saint Sophia in Nicosia, Cyprus. She concludes that a master mason who had worked at Laon Cathedral traveled to the eastern Mediterranean and inspired the foreign style seen in both, and thus that this style is unconnected with either the Augustinians who controlled Saint Mary's at Mount Sion or the homeland of the Champagnois Lusignan family, the patrons of Saint Sophia in Nicosia. Ellen M. Shortell, "Turris basilice innixe: The Western Tower of the Collegiate Church of Saint-Quentin," reassesses the changing functions of towers and their chapels over time, both in general, and in the specific case of Saint-Quentin, where the Romanesque tower became the locus of memories of their patron saint and glorious Carolingian past, and thus was not replaced with the rest of the church.
Sheila Bonde and Clark Maines, "Ne aliquis extraneus claustrum intret: Entry and Access at the Augustinian Abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, Soissons," uses space syntax analysis to examine 'permeability,' or access between spaces, and differentiate the different levels of access allowed to canons, conversi, lay visitors and women. In Danielle V. Johnson and Lore Holmes, "Fingerprinting stone from Saint-Remi in Reims," the authors use neutron activation analysis to link twelfth-century sculptures now scattered through various collections that were all originally intended for Saint-Remi. Donna L. Sadler, "Predictions, Prophecies, Prose and Poetry on the Reverse Facade of Reims Cathedral," explores the sophisticated narrative techniques used to transmit a series of prophecies and pronouncements on good and bad kingship to the newly crowned monarch as he exited Reims Cathedral.
The book does suffer from a few of the pitfalls that typically make festschrifts less useful than they could be. It is difficult to discern an organizational principle for the book, and no introduction draws together the findings of the contributions, thus despite their many discreet important observations, the articles don't easily build into a more global statement. There is no synthetic bibliography, and the index is restricted to a rather sparse index nominum. In addition, a majority of the contributions do not offer any perspective on an "Architecture of Solitude." They explore largely unrelated issues, and comment little on Fergusson's underlying hypothesis. The fact that the title of the collection is misleading, however, does not lessen its value as a group of important and interesting studies. As is the case with many festschrifts, the fact that so many scholars with such divergent interests dedicated so much energy to producing a very large collection of good articles is a testament in itself to the importance of the dedicatee's scholarly contribution.
NOTES:
[[1]] See, for instance, Joan Evans, The romanesque architecture of the order of Cluny (1938), A.R. Martin, Franciscan architecture in England (1937), Warren Sanderson, Monastic reform in Lorraine and the architecture of the outer crypt, 950-1100 (1971), Jean-Pierre Aniel, Les maisons de chartreux: des origines a la chartreuse de Pavie (1983) and Augustin Devaux, L'architecture dans l'ordre des Chartreux, 2 vols. (1998).