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Expansion: footnotes

1. Abbot Serlo of Savigny approached the General Chapter seeking the absorption of his congregation which was experiencing financial and administrative problems; his request was accepted in 1147, and this brought fourteen houses in England and Wales within the Cistercian family. Each of the newly affiliated houses was surveyed, checked and 'illuminated with the Cistercian way of life.'
2. J. S. Donnelly, ‘Changes in the grange economy of English and Welsh abbeys 1300-1540’, Traditio 10 (1954) pp. 399-458, at p. 409.
3. Brut Y Tywysogion, or, The Chronicle of the Princes, trans. and intro. T. Jones (Cardiff, 1955).
4. Bernard of Clairvaux, The Letters of St Bernard of Clairvaux, tr. B. S. James, rev. B. Kienzle (Stroud, 1998), letter 385.
5. Turning the monastery, the cloister as well as the church into a fortress against God, they stored thirty heads of cattle, slaughtered and salted down, under the dormitory. They fortified the dormitories both of the monks and lay-brothers with great stones, stakes, spades, spears and arms according to the custom of their people. They stored large amounts of grain, hay, flour and other necessities in the church and they placed vessels and containers adequate to hold water in the cloister; in addition they strongly fortified a shelter above the altar with provisions and weapons so that they could live in it as if it were their keep. Finally, they brought thirty head of cattle on the hoof into the cloister, grazing them on the grass there and on hay stored in the church … each one of the monks and lay-brothers equipped himself as best he could with weapons prepared especially for him, excepting the old monks and some of the more prudent who left the monastery lest they become involved in such crimes,
   [Stephen of Lexington, Letters from Ireland 1228-9, tr. B. O'Dwyer (Kalamzoo, 1982), ep. 89, pp. 188-91 at p. 188].
6. Letters from the English Abbots to the General Chapter at Citeaux (London, 1967), pp. 13-14; see ibid. ep. 89 ‘Memoranda of Marmaduke Huby, 1495’, pp. 181-3.
7. In the twelfth century a nun of the Gilbertine priory of Watton (who had been there since a girl, but was said to have had no vocation for the religious life) fell in love with a lay-brother of the community -or perhaps a canon - who had been sent to work in the nuns' quarters. The girl soon fell pregnant and was, as a consequence, beaten up and imprisoned by the other nuns. She was then forced to castrate her lover and once the drastic deed had been done one of the other nuns thrust the severed parts, 'befouled with blood', into her mouth. The nun was returned to her fetters. A miracle was then reported, and it was said that Henry Murdac (who had placed the girl in the community in the first place) appeared to the nun in a vision along with two women who cleansed her of any traces of her pregnancy, leaving her once again pure; one of her fetters then fell away. Aelred of Rievaulx was called to assess the authenticity of these reports and concluded that they were indeed, miraculous.
   See G. Constable, ‘Aelred of Rievaulx and the nun of Watton: an episode in the early history of the Gilbertine Order’, in ed. D. Baker, Medieval Women (Oxford, 1978), pp. 205-26; also see B. Golding, Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertine Order (Oxford, 1995), pp. 33-8.

Cistercians in Britain Bibliography