The Great Beginning of Cîteaux: A Narrative of the Beginning of the Cistercian Order—The Exordium Magnum of Conrad of Eberbach ed. by E. Rozanne Elder (review)

What an unusual pleasure it is to be able to recommend a book unreservedly; yet that is what may be done here. The foreword by Brian Patrick McGuire, the preface by Sister Benedicta Ward, the informative introduction by Paul Savage, the lucid translation (from difficult Latin), the useful annotations, the glossary, the extensive bibliography, and the four indices (of scriptural references, classical references, patristic and medieval references, and the general index) are all admirable; Cistercian Publications can only be congratulated for making this important text available to us. The text is the Exordium Magnum of Conrad of Clairvaux and Eberbach, translated from the sound critical edition of Bruno Griesser (Rome, 1961). The work consists of a long series of miracle-stories strung, like pearls, on a historical thread provided primarily by the Exordium Parvum. The stories tell us how the Cistercian Order originated, how it was rooted in the teachings of Christ himself, how it became guilty of negligentia or “slackness,” and how this situation was to be remedied. The author was certainly a monk at Clairvaux in the 1170s, but had left—presumably for Eberbach—by 1195. Eberbach, near Mainz, was the first Germanic daughter-house of Clairvaux and, by Conrad’s time, the most important Cistercian abbey in the Rhineland. Conrad was elected abbot in May 1221, but governed the house for only a few months before his death on September 18 of the same year (see pp. 26–28). He compiled the Exordium Magnum over some three decades, from the 1180s (when he was still at Clairvaux) to about 1215. It cannot be called an original work (Conrad’s sources are discussed on pp. 17–24), although the way in which Conrad assembled his material and drew on oral traditions make it much more than a simple compendium.

The book is not, of course, history as we understand it today—we are somewhat reluctant to accept miracle-stories as documentary evidence—but it was certainly history to a medieval mind. For Conrad, history revealed the transforming presence of God in human affairs, especially human lives, and the Exordium Magnum reveals a God who was exceedingly busy. He establishes the tradition of the Common Life; he guides the first monks; he inspires St. Robert of Molesme to found the New Monastery of Cîteaux; he is ever present to St. Bernard and the early abbots of Clairvaux; he intervenes in the lives of illiterate laybrothers as well as monks; he reveals the dangers of disobedience, discord, negligence, and a variety of other vices; he shows what needs to be done to restore the Order to its pristine glory; and he leads the dying to a blessed death. If, like the White Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Alice through the Looking-Glass, we can believe six impossible things before breakfast (it just takes a little practice), Conrad’s compilation takes us into a wonderful world of miracles, visions, and splendid stories. Even if we cannot emulate the queen, this excellent translation still provides us with some remarkably entertaining reading and sheds a great deal of light on the Cistercian spirit and the nature of Cistercian spirituality in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.