ROBERTO, abbot of MOLESME, saint. — Molesme (v.) Cîteaux (v.), b. in Champagne around 1028, d. at Molesme in 1111, apparently.
He entered the monastery of Moutier-la-Celle, near Troyes, at a very young age, and became its prior; around 1070 he was elected abbot of St-Michel of Tonnerre (diocese of Langres), but in 1072 he resigned this office because of the indiscipline of those monks. He subsequently governed the priory of St-Ayoul of Provins; meanwhile, the hermits of Colan, a deserted place near Tonnerre, who had already unsuccessfully asked R. to direct them, obtained from Alexander II that he be placed at the head of their small community. R. accepted, and shortly thereafter, judging the locality of Colan unhealthy, transferred the community to the forest of Molesme, settling (around 1075) on the banks of the Laignes, a left-bank tributary of the Seine. The first years at Molesme were extremely difficult, but, beginning in 1084, rich donations began to flow in, and the austerity of monastic life consequently experienced a decline; R. then left Molesme and took refuge with the hermits of Aulx, near Riel-les-Eaux, who chose him as their abbot. This occurred between 1090 and 1093, but by the Pope’s will he had to return to Molesme, where he was unable to lead the community to that intense religious life of which he was an advocate. This was the reason for his new departure from Molesme with about twenty monks, ALBERIGO (v.) Stefano Harding (v.), in order to go, with the approval of the papal legate Ugo, archbishop of Lyon, to the solitude of Cistercium, between Nuits and St-Jean of Losne in the diocese of Chalon-sur-Saône. On 21 March 1098 the monastery of Cîteaux began its life according to the ideals of the new reform, and R. became its first abbot, but only for a short time. In fact, he had to return to Molesme in 1099 by order of the papal legate; the Saint obeyed and directed the abbey until his death. He was buried in its abbey church. His cult was permitted for Molesme by Honorius III on 8 January 1222 (Bullarium Romanum, ed. Taurinensis, III, Turin 1858, p. 383), but in that same year the Cistercian General Chapter prescribed that the entire Order celebrate his feast « cum XII lectionibus » on 17 April; two years later it was transferred to the 29th of the same month. On this date it subsequently appears regularly in the Cistercian liturgical books (Sacramentaries, Missals « Missa sicut de s. Benedicto », Breviaries and Psalters: an addition in another hand in manuscripts from the first half of the 13th century) and in the Roman Martyrology.