Robert, Abbot of Molesme, Saint

ROBERT, Abbot of Molesme, Saint. - Founder of the abbeys of Molesme (v.) and Cîteaux (v.), b. in Champagne ca. 1028, d. at Molesme in 1111, it seems.

He entered as a very young man the monastery of Moutier-la-Celle, near Troyes, of which he became prior; ca. 1070 he was elected abbot of St-Michel of Tonnerre (diocese of Langres), but in 1072 he resigned from 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 in vain 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, he moved the community to the forest of Molesme, settling (ca. 1075) on the banks of the Laignes, a left tributary of the Seine. The first years of Molesme were extremely harsh, but, as rich donations began to flow in from 1084, the austerity of monastic life suffered a slackening; then R. abandoned Molesme and took refuge with the hermits of Aulx, near Riel-les-Eaux, who chose him as abbot. This happened between 1090 and 1093, but by the will of the Pope he had to return to Molesme, where he did not succeed in bringing the community to that intense religious life of which he was an advocate. Herein lies the reason for his new exodus from Molesme with about twenty monks, among them the prior Alberic (v.) and Stephen Harding (v.), to go, with the approval of the papal legate Hugh, archbishop of Lyon, into 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 his abbey church. His cult was permitted for Molesme by Honorius III, on 8 Jan. 1222 (Bullarium Romanum, ed. Taurinensis, III, Turin 1858, p. 383), but, in that same year the Cistercian General Chapter prescribed for the whole Order that his feast be celebrated « cum XII lectionibus » on 17 Apr., transferred two years later to the 29th of the same month. On this date it then appears regularly in the Cistercian liturgical books (Sacramentaries, Missals « Missa sicut de s. Benedicto », Breviaries and Psalters: added by another hand in manuscripts of the first half of the 13th century) and in the Roman Martyrology.

A. Pietro Frutza