 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Fountains Abbey: History
Fountains Abbey: Buildings
|
Origins (1/5)
Among his [Archbishop Thurstan’s] other
good works we must
above all attribute to his devoted enthusiasm and scrupulous
diligence the foundation and development of the most famous
monastery of Fountains … where continuously from that time
onwards so many have drunk, as it were, from the Saviour's
fountains the waters that leap up to eternal life. The foundation of Fountains was not planned. It was the consequence of an unforeseen chain of events in the early 1130s that forced a group of reform-minded monks of the Benedictine abbey of St Mary’s, York, to flee their house in search of a purer form of monastic life.
There are several contemporary or near contemporary accounts of the events that led to the foundation of Fountains, chiefly, the Narratio de fundatione Fontanis monasterii (the ‘Foundation History of Fountains’) and Archbishop Thurstan’s monumental letter to William, archbishop of Canterbury, explaining the crisis in the North of England and defending the monks’ desertion of their abbey.(17) The description of the flight from St Mary’s and the community’s foundation of Fountains bears considerable similarity to the story of the monks from Molesme who, seeking a simpler and more rigorous form of monastic life, left their Benedictine abbey and formed what would later be known as Cîteaux, the first Cistercian community and the mother-house of the Order. These parallels were seemingly deliberate, and were intended to reinforce Fountains’ links with the Cistercian Order and, more particularly, to portray it as the Cîteaux of the North.(18) |
