against monastic degradation, rather than in favour of any special ascetic or ecclesiastic policy. The prevailing simony, the clerical concubinage, the rough and warlike ways of bishops and abbots were all corruptions standing in the way of any monastic or ecclesiastical improvement; and Cluny opposed them, in moderation however, and with considerable acquiescence in the apparently necessary conditions of the time.[1]
After the comparative strictness of its first abbots, Cluny's discipline moderated almost to laxity; and the interests of the rich and magnificent monastery became elegant and somewhat secular. It still maintained monastic decencies while not going beyond their demands. Its face was no longer set against comfortable living, nor against art and letters. And the time came when fervent spirits demanded a more uncompromising attack upon the world and the flesh.
Such came from Citeaux (near Dijon), where a few monks founded a struggling monastery in 1098. Its fortunes were small and feeble until the time of its third abbot, the Englishman, Stephen Harding (1109–1134), whose genius set the lines of Citeaux's larger destinies. Her great period began when, shortly after Harding's entrance on his abbacy, there arrived a band of well-born youths, led by one Bernard. Then of a truth the cloister burned with ardour. Its numbers grew, and Bernard was sent with a Cistercian band to found a daughter monastery at Clairvaux (1115).
Like Stephen Harding, Bernard was an ascetic, and the Cistercian Order represents a stern tightening of the reins which Cluny left lying somewhat slackly upon the backs of her stall-fed monks.[2] Controversies arose between the Cluniac Benedictines and the Cistercian Benedictines insisting on a stricter rule. Bernard himself entered into heated controversy with that great temperate personality of the twelfth century, Peter the Venerable, Cluny's revered lord.
