Abbaye de Fontenay
By the
end of the eleventh century the life of a monk in the Duchy of Burgundy
was very different from what
St. Benedict had originally intended. The
thousand monasteries of the Cluniac order were rich and powerful;
the
mother house at Cluny included in its buildings the biggest church in
Christendom. The Abbot of Cluny,
who ranked as a Bishop and answered to
the Pope alone, never travelled without a suite of at least sixty
horsemen.
The monks ate off silver, their light came from golden
candlesticks. Wherever the wind blew, said the people,
the monks collected
rent.
ln the year lll2 a young man of 21 entered the Abbey of Citeaux. So
plainly out of the ordinary was he, that within
three years he was Abbot.
We know him now as Saint Bernard, and he founded the Cistercian order in
reaction
against the extravagances of Cluny. In the North of Burgundy he
founded new Abbeys, on barren sites, their buildings
of the most extreme
simplicity. Stone and wood and iron were his materials, and the monks did
their own building
and farming, dividing their work time between manual
and intellectual work They slept in a communal dormitory,
on straw
mattresses on the floor, without heating in winter, in the same rough
habits they wore in the daytime.
They ate boiled vegetables and drank
spring water. Each day brought seven hours of worship, seven hours of rest
and eight hours of work. The other two hours were for meals and meetings.
They vowed, like all monks, poverty,
chastity and obedience; but the House
itself was also vowed to poverty. A Cistercian Abbey was in theory
self-supporting; it collected no tithes, owned no land outside its walls,
accepted no rich gifts. Even the height of its
towers was restricted.
The Abbey of Fontenay was begun in 1118, massive, simple, beautiful. At
first it was a few simple buildings in
a green valley surrounded by
springs. The monks dug iron ore from a nearby hill and smelted and worked
the iron
in a vast forge. The forge is as big as the church, built in the
same solid, simple style. The streams of the area were
canalized for
water-power, and the waste water fed a series of trout ponds and fountains
which gave the Abbey its name.
After St. Bernard's death, human nature being what it is, his
Cistercians went the way of the Cluniacs before them;
they became richer,
fatter, lazier. The Abbeys decayed, and when they were dissolved at the
Revolution, few mourned
their passing. The land and buildings were sold to
finance the revolutionary wars.
In 1789, the Abbey of Fontenay was sold to a factory-owner, who turned
it into a paper-mill. He sold it on to the
Montgolfier family, inventors
of the hot-air balloon. The balloons, in fact, were constructed out of
paper made at Fontenay.
A branch of the same family still owns the place,
but in 1906 they closed the factory, pulled down the 19th-century
workshops, and began the work of restoration that continues to this day.
In 1981, when UNESCO was drawing up a list of World Heritage Sites,
Fontenay was among the first to be listed.
It is a very special place.
founded by a very special man and still permeated with his spirit.
