STEFANO HARDING, saint. — The date of his birth is unknown; he died on 28 March 1134. At about sixteen or eighteen years of age, disgusted, he left Sherborne Abbey, to which his parents, a prosperous 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 be a cheerful companion; but the memory of the cloister continued to haunt him. Therefore, on his return,
passing through Molesmes, he remained there until the day when, in 1098, together with Abbot Roberto, Prior Aubry, and a few other monks, they abandoned the relaxed life of Molesmes and went to found a new monastery in the wilderness of Citeaux. When, the following year, the papal legate Ugo, archbishop of Lione, in agreement with the bishops and abbots of the province, compelled Roberto to return to Molesmes and Aubry became abbot, S. replaced him as prior, awaiting his succession as abbot.
It was precisely during S.’s abbacy (1108–1134) that Citeaux truly flourished. The beginnings had been difficult, because the extreme austerity of Cistercian life kept young men away; but everything changed on the day when a young man, Bernardo di Fontaines, with several of his relatives and friends, asked to share that life (1112). From that time Citeaux sent out foundations to La Ferté-sur-Grosne, Pontigny, Morimond, and Trois Fontaines; at S.’s death, the Order numbered 75 abbeys (1134).
S.’s influence may be measured by the rigor with which strict observance of the Benedictine Rule was maintained at Citeaux and in its affiliated houses. Hostile to every form of wealth and to every interference by the world, S. forbade the duke of Borgogna to keep his court at the abbey, despite the risk of depriving himself of his patron’s generosity and obliging his monks to beg. The strict poverty of the furnishings of the conventual church also goes back to S.; moreover, he described the beginnings and primitive usages of Citeaux in the Exordium parum. The Carta Caritatis, a regulation governing the reciprocal relations among Cistercian abbots, likewise derives from him. If one adds that S., combining intellectual work with manual labor, prepared for the use of the monks a recension of the Vulgate, one obtains a measure of the importance of his influence on the destiny of the Cistercian Order. His feast was formerly celebrated on 17 April, and since 1683 on 16 July. There is no evidence that he was canonized.