 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Fountains Abbey: History
Fountains Abbey: Buildings
|
The Narratio: content and structure The Narratio is in two parts: the first covers the period 1132 to 1139, closing with the death of the first abbot, Richard; the second continues Fountains’ history until c. 1220, when the work was completed. Book one describes how the early community faced and overcame great hardships, was welcomed within the Cistercian family, secured physical and economic stability and founded a number of daughter-houses - testimony to its growing success. The second book works chronologically through the rule of each abbot from 1139 until c. 1220, relating the trials and tribulations faced and overcome in the abbey’s attempt to secure internal stability. Recent scholarship has stressed that the focus here shifts from place to people, from the physical to the spiritual foundations of the abbey.(12) This second part ends with a series of exempla.(13)
It has recently been suggested that the Narratio was not simply intended as a chronological unfolding of the community’s history, and that it could function on an allegorical, as well as a literal level. Elizabeth Freeman has argued that the story of the foundation of Fountains deliberately echoes the early history of Cîteaux and incorporates Cistercian motifs such as allusions to the desert, to the vine, to fertility and fecundity, to create ‘a metaphorical link between Fountains and the two most important continental houses - Cîteaux and Clairvaux.’(14) In other words, the story of the Benedictine monks who fled from St Mary’s, York, and later formed the Fountains community, of the ideals that drove them and the hardships they overcame, mirrors the foundation story of the Cistercian Order and adopts traditional Cistercian metaphors to reinforce Fountains’ identity with the wider Cistercian family.
More specifically, it presents Fountains as the Cîteaux of the North, a metaphor used by Archbishop Thurstan in his letter to Archbishop William of York. It also emphasises Fountains’ kinship with the Order at large, giving a sense of continuity with the past and with the founding members of the Order.(15) Of course, this does not mean that the Narratio could not and did not function on a literal level - no doubt a number of monks simply interpreted it as the unfolding of events, a chronological narrative of the foundation and consolidation of their abbey – but rather, that these allusions and metaphors might provide a context in which the history of Fountains should be understood. In other words, there was an optional and higher level of understanding. |
