STEPHEN HARDING, St. — His date of birth is unknown, but he died on 28 March 1134. At the age of sixteen or eighteen, disillusioned, he left the abbey of Sherborne, to which his well-to-do parents, a family from Dorset, had entrusted him as an oblate. He visited Scotland, went to Paris to study, and made a pilgrimage to Rome.
He was said to have been a cheerful companion, yet the memory of the cloister never ceased to haunt him. On his return, passing through Molesmes, he stayed there until, in 1098, with Abbot Robert, Prior Alberic, and a few other monks, he abandoned the relaxed life at Molesmes and went to found a new monastery in the wilds of Cîteaux. When, the following year, the papal legate Hugh, archbishop of Lyon, in agreement with the bishops and abbots of the province, compelled Robert to return to Molesmes and Alberic became abbot, Stephen took his place as prior, pending his succession as abbot.
It was precisely during Stephen’s abbacy (1108–1134) that Cîteaux truly flourished. The beginnings had been difficult, for the extreme austerity of Cistercian life deterred young men; but everything changed on the day when a young man, Bernard of Fontaines, arrived with several relatives and friends, asking to be admitted to that life (1112). From that time, Cîteaux spread to La Ferté-sur-Grosne, Pontigny, Morimond, and Trois-Fontaines. By Stephen’s death, the Order numbered seventy-three abbeys (1134).
Stephen’s influence can be measured by the strictness with which the close observance of the Benedictine Rule was maintained at Cîteaux and its daughter houses. Hostile to all wealth and all worldly interference, he forbade the Duke of Burgundy from holding his court in the abbey, even at the risk of forfeiting his patron’s generosity and forcing his monks to beg. To Stephen also goes the credit for the strict poverty of the furnishings in the conventual church. Moreover, the early customs and usages of Cîteaux were described by him in the *Exordium parvum*, and the *Charter of Charity*, regulating the close and few relations among Cistercian abbots, likewise originated with him. If we further consider that, combining intellectual with manual labor, he produced for the monks a recension of the Vulgate, we gain a measure of the importance of his influence on the destiny of the Cistercian Order. Formerly celebrated on 17 April, since 1683 his feast has been kept on 16 July. It is not known whether he was formally canonized.