Clairvaux, Abbey of

CLAIRVAUX (Chiaravalle, Lat. Clara Vallis), Abbey of. - The famous abbey of C. is indissolubly linked to the name and glory of its abbot St. Bernard. Chosen by St. Stephen Harding to found a new monastery, he set out from Citeaux with twelve companions, and before long a valley hidden among the mountains appeared before his eyes, marshy, watered by the river Aube, thick with woods and brambles, called the valley of Wormwood or the bitter valley. Here the pious travelers fixed their dwelling: it was 25 June 1115. Situated in Champagne in the diocese of Langres, it was soon reduced, not without grave sacrifices on the part of those holy religious, to a pleasant and most fertile valley: Jongelin gives a vivid description of it in the Notitia abbatiarum S. Ord. Cisterciensis (Cologne 1640, pp. 20-22). There the monks built that famous monastery which, together with the valley, was called

C. (a place name thereafter very frequent: v. CHIARVALLE), a nursery of saints and scholars, of bishops and cardinals, among them Pope Eugene III (1145-53); the Grammarian calls it « the noble monastery of France » and Bernard himself « the heavenly Jerusalem ». Hugh I, Count of Troyes, contributed greatly to the endowment of C.; kings, nobles and bishops showed themselves munificent, especially Theobald, Count of Champagne, who, in 1135, given the enormous growth of the community, had almost the entire construction enlarged at his own expense. The King of Portugal Alfonso I in a letter of 27 Apr. 1142 offered his kingdom for the needs of C.

Between 10 Oct. 1118 and 11 Feb. 1154, C. alone founded as many as 67 monasteries, which in their turn multiplied prodigiously. At the death of St. Bernard, 20 Aug. 1153, the monastery counted more than 700 monks, devoted to contemplation and to work in the fields, to study and to the arts (v. CISTERCIANS).

Up to 1718 there are counted 49 abbots, under whom the fortunes of the monastery were varied (cf.

list, in Gallia Christiana, IV, Paris 1728, coll. 796-814). The abbey was sold for demolition in 1792 and its rich library dispersed; subsequently transformed into a glassworks, it is today a state penitentiary. The ancient enclosing walls measured about 2 km. in length.

Among the abbots are remembered: Robert of Bruges, Geoffrey, Pons of Polignac, Gerard I, Henry later cardinal bishop of Albano, Peter Monoculus, Conrad of Urach, Stephen Lexington.

ART

The small original monastery founded in 1115 by St. Bernard was enlarged in 1135.

The buildings were grouped into two complexes: the monks' dwellings, next to which stood the church, the library and the rooms for study, and the constructions intended for craft activities.

The church had a Latin-cross plan divided into three naves covered with groin vaulting, and a shallow apsidal choir flanked by two chapels on each side. At a later time the choir was demolished and replaced by 9 radial chapels with a trapezoidal plan, while part of the nave in front of the presbytery was instead used as the choir; the church thus enlarged was consecrated in 1174. Its characteristics left their stamp on the whole of Cistercian architecture (v.). The plan of 1667 reproduced by Viollet-le-Duc attests that the abbey preserved its original layout until that time, but in the following century it underwent considerable alterations. - See Pl. CXI.

Mario Zocca