The holy fathers, our predecessors, sought deep damp valleys for their monasteries, so that the monks might be often ailing, and having death always before their eyes, should never live in security."[106]
ST. JOHN, BURGUNDIAN SCHOOL
It may be well imagined, that an order founding its houses upon such sites, and for such a reason, did not err upon the side of indulgence. The rule was more strict, even, than that followed by Cluny in early days, both as regards abstinence from food and the rigid enforcement of silence. Vegetables were not to be served with fat or butter; meat was absolutely forbidden, unless sometimes to the sick; and fish, except herrings during Advent and Lent, was allowed only on rare occasions. When Pope Innocent II. visited Clairvaux in 1131, the monks had a hard task to find a single herring for his table. In the matter of clothing, too, they were much more simple than the Clunisians, and closer to the Benedictine rule; for instance, the gloves, boots, and furred pelisses, permitted in the older abbey during the winter, were forbidden to monks of the rival order.
The whole secret of Citeaux's influence may be summed up in two words—simplicity and self-sacrifice. These principles extended right through the life of the order, even to its architecture and to its art. Already, at the time of the coming of St. Bernard, the Clunisians were beginning to lighten with sculpture the splendid severity of their Romanesque buildings, to deck their statues with precious stones, and with beautiful glass; to adorn with gilding and voluptuous colour the gray stones of aisle and nave.
St. Bernard, quick to see the danger, sent his masons back to the essential. Nave and choir were to be of low elevation, and without towers; within must be neither painting, nor sculpture, nor crucifix, nor colour, nor any other ornament. Even the tympanum of the porch, so richly carved in Clunisian churches, might show only a cross in bas-relief, sometimes surmounted by the Lamb of God. Any sculpture in the interior must be confined to simple flowers and foliage on the capitals, with perhaps a claw at the base of the pillars; the apse and chapels were to be square, not polygonal nor semi-circular, as in the work of the other school. Above all, the Cistercians banished from their churches the scenes from the Ancient and New Testaments, the symbolical figures and fantastic animals, of which the Clunisians were so fond. Their cloisters were low and heavy, and the windows of the monastic buildings were narrow, almost, as loopholes.
In ceremonial observances they were equally simple, and contented themselves with a monotonous psalmody, poor and thin compared with the melodious chants that rang down the aisles of Cluny. The manuscripts showed the same scorn of art. Cluny bound their parchments beautifully in gold and silver, and ornamented them with precious stones; Citeaux was content with a rough binding of pig-skin, decorated with nails, and fastened with copper bands.
It was inevitable that such vital difference of opinion should find contemporary expression in words, as well as deeds. Bernard protests vehemently against luxe. His correspondence on the subject with his friend, Pierre le Vénérable, is full of interest.