The Cistercians, who derived from Citeaux, in France, were alternatively styled “Bernadines.” They first established themselves in England in 1128: their first Abbey that of Waverley, near Guildford. They stood, originally, for simplicity, in life and worship. “They spent their life,” says Peter of Blois, “on slender food, in rough vesture, in vigils, confession, discipline, and psalms; in humility, hospitality, obedience, and charity.” We have also the testimony of St. Bernard’s words, that “in praying and fast, in study of Holy Writ, and hard manual labour” they occupied their time.
They were not so dour and solemn as some others of the monastic orders, and typified the spiritual joy that filled their hearts by the white habits they adopted; largely, however, as a protest against the penitential Benedictines. For harmony never did exist between the monks of different rules, who were jealous of some and despiteful to others, according to circumstances. Most orders, however, united in despising and ridiculing the Cistercians, who were in this, as in the simplicity of their rule, and in the severe, unornamental character of their original Abbeys, the Plymouth Brethren and the Presbyterians of their age. The first type of Cistercian house was almost as simple as a Dissenting Chapel of our own times. In the churches of other orders the Rood was made as ornate, and of as costly materials, as possible: often glowing with gold and silver and precious stones. The Cistercian monks, however, remembering that Our Lord died upon a cross of wood, placed a crucifix of plain wood in their churches, and throughout the whole of the establishment conducted themselves as the sanctified farmers they really were: not even scrupling to absent themselves from Mass at harvest-time. If it be true—and it is a noble belief—that “to labour is to pray,” then the early Cistercians prayed well; for with all their might they brought lands under cultivation, and tended and improved stock, and helped the world along toward the distant ideal.
But as time went on, and the order grew rich by dint of its own farming and wool-growing successes, and by a never-failing stream of benefactions, the Abbots and monks by degrees became arrogant and lazy. They no longer worked in their fields; leaving the practical farming to the lay-brothers and the horde of dependents they had accumulated. As landowners they were even more grasping than secular landlords, and, in common with other orders, were extremely tenacious of their rights of market and other monopolies; thus earning for themselves a hatred which was in course of time to sweep them out of existence. The Cistercians were not alone—nor perhaps even as prominent as others—in these worldly ways; but they shared in the growing arrogance and luxury of these bodies originally vowed to poverty and practising their vows because they did not own the wherewithal to do otherwise. Their churches and domestic buildings were rebuilt elaborately and their Abbots travelled en grand seigneur through the country; persons claiming great consideration.
ENTRANCE TO CLEEVE ABBEY.
Cleeve Abbey derives its name from the swelling hills in the recesses of this valley of the stream, called the Roadwater, i.e. the “Roodwater.” “Cleeve” indicates, in its old meaning, not only a cliff or cleft, but any bold hill. The word is found in the place-names of Clevedon, near by, and at Clieveden, on the Thames. There are no cliffs in this gentle vale nearer than the not remarkably large cliffs at Watchet. The valley is, indeed, more noted for its quiet pastoral beauty than for ruggedness, and was in olden times known as Vallis Florida, the “Vale of Flowers.”
Although only the ground plan of the monastic church remains, showing it to have been a building 161 feet in length, and of the transitional period between the Norman and the Early English styles, the domestic buildings are in very fair preservation, considering their use by so many generations of farmers as hay, corn, and straw lofts. The cloister-garth, now a lawn-like expanse, was, until Mr. Luttrell cleared it out about 1865, a typical farm-yard, rich in muck. At the same period, the pigsties and various farming outbuildings that had been added in the course of over three hundred years, were cleared away, and the place made more accessible to those interested in these relics of the past. The Luttrells, however, do not allow the place to be seen for nothing, and have indeed at least an adequate idea of its worth as a show; a notice confronting the pilgrim to the effect that Cleeve Abbey is shown on weekdays at one shilling a head: sixpence each for two or more: “special arrangements for Parties.”
Cleeve Abbey is not shown on Sundays and that traveller who from force of circumstances comes to it on the Sabbath must be content with a view of its entrance-gateway only. If he cannot contain his artistic or antiquarian enthusiasm, but must needs peer and quest about on the edge of the precincts, then the fury of the people who occupy the farm, and are at the same time caretakers of and guides to the Abbey ruins, and without whose unwelcome company you may not see the place at all, at any time, is let loose over him. Whether this be a respect for the Sabbath, or for the merely secular rules imposed by the Luttrells, or whether it is not more likely to be the rage aroused by the prospect of a stranger seeing for nothing that for which a fee is charged, I will not pretend to declare. You may come at any time over the ancient two-arched Gothic bridge from the road, and so through the gatehouse, and through that into the outer court, which is now a meadow, without being challenged: arriving at the further end at the farmhouse, beside which is a wicket-gate admitting into the cloister-garth. “Ring the Bell,” curtly says a notice-board, with a small “Please” added, in hesitating manner, for politeness’ sake; probably by some satirical visitor, wishful of imparting a lesson in manners.
The present explorer was one of those whom circumstances conspire to bring hither on Sunday, without the prospect of a return in the near future. He left a bicycle in the gatehouse and came across the meadow, where the base of the old Abbot’s market-cross stands with a sycamore growing in the empty socket of its shaft, to the wicket-gate. It being Sunday, he did not ring, but entered and sat down there in an ancient archway, in would-be peaceful and holy contemplation. What more Christian and Sabbath-like spirit than this would you have? Better, I take it, than the occupation of most of the villagers at that same moment, reading the Sunday newspapers, filled (after the manner of the Sunday newspaper) with the raked-together garbage of the last seven days.
But this holy calm was not to continue. It was entirely owing to that bicycle. A strategist would have concealed it. Its presence under the archway of the gatehouse brought the peaceful interlude to an abrupt conclusion, as shall presently appear.