sehepunkte 9 (2009), Nr. 5

Emilia Jamroziak: Rievaulx Abbey and its Social Context, 1132-1300

The Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx, founded in 1132 in Yorkshire, was foremost in wealth and influence among the Order's houses in the north of England. Its reputation increased particularly under its third abbot, Aelred (reigned 1147-1167), widely recognised as a spiritual writer and saint. Monastic life came to an end in 1538, when the abbey was dissolved and the buildings were partly demolished. However, since the nineteenth century, the picturesque abbey ruins in the Rye valley have attracted visitors and scholars. Peter Fergusson's and Stuart Harrison's recent monograph of the monastic buildings from the foundation until the twentieth century provides a conclusive analysis of the archaeological evidence, set in the context of the changing fortunes of the abbey. [1]

Given the importance of Rievaulx, it is surprising that relatively little attention has been paid to its history, with the notable exception of Janet Burton's work on the economy of the abbey. [2] This gap is now filled with Emilia Jamroziak's detailed and thoughtful study of Rievaulx in its social context. The chronological limits cover the period of the abbey's greatest expansion, between the foundation in 1132 and the start of economic decline around 1300. If Fergusson's and Harrison's study shows how, during the same period, the buildings of the monastery were adapted to the needs of the growing monastic community, Jamroziak demonstrates how those needs shaped and were shaped by the interaction of the community and its social environment.

Jamroziak's main source is the abbey's only surviving cartulary (London, British Library, Cotton Julius D.i). Unlike most English Cistercian cartularies which date to the thirteenth century, the Rievaulx cartulary was initially compiled in the late twelfth century and is thus contemporary with the phase of institutional growth that also saw the re-construction of the monastery. In fact, the manuscript played an important role in maintaining the abbey's interests. Its main purpose was to record donations, confirmations, or quitclaims given to the abbey and thus to provide a register of the abbey's landholdings. Moreover, instead of grouping the charters with reference to the geographical locations of the properties, a method commonly used in late medieval cartularies, this one arranges the charters according to the connections between the donors, including both family connections and tenurial ties. In this way, the Rievaulx cartulary served as an aid to collective memory by asserting the abbey's material claims and its place in society and it was used to rationalise the community's complex social network.

Based in part on the structure of the cartulary itself (discussed in chapter one), the six chapters of the book concentrate on different social groups interacting with Rievaulx: the founder, Walter Espec, and his family (chapter one), aristocratic and knightly families (chapters two, three, and six), other monasteries (chapter four), and the secular church, especially the archbishops of York and the bishops of Durham (chapter five). Each chapter takes us further into the realm of the shifting fortunes that characterised the relationship between the abbey and its neighbours and patrons.

The central issue at stake was landholding, the safeguard of the abbey's prosperity, if not survival. The foremost objective, the creation of a compact estate around the monastery, relied on the goodwill and generosity of the abbey's various lay and ecclesiastical neighbours. Each grant or exchange involved the monks not only with the individual patron, but also with the family or tenurial group, implicating the abbey in a labyrinthine system of obligations and dependencies. The need for a cartulary that presented a clear account of these social networks was probably first felt following the childless death of the abbey's founder in c. 1153. Bereft of a powerful protector, the community had to find other benefactors, none of whom, however, manifested a special attachment to the abbey.

Jamroziak gives a lucid account of how a "good" lay neighbour, a generous donor who was a protector of the abbey and its interests, could within a generation become a "bad" neighbour, often heirs who regretted their parents' generosity or had fallen into bad times. Neighbouring monasteries were often linked to Rievaulx by ties of friendship and cooperation. Nonetheless, when grants of land became rare in the thirteenth century, those monasteries could become dangerous competitors in the battle for donations. And while Rievaulx was careful to maintain an amicable relationship not only with the powerful archbishops of York and bishops of Durham, but also with the influential deans and chapters, the Order's privileges and wealth caused increasing tensions between Rievaulx and the secular church. However, as Jamroziak observes, the community was not the passive object of the secular church's and laypeople's benefaction or abuse. By avoiding reliance on a single benefactor, by maintaining a flexible and cooperative attitude, and by carefully managing the tangled webs of relationships, the abbey secured its fortunes into the thirteenth century, a fact also demonstrated by the continued building campaigns at the abbey.

While thus tracing the ups and downs of the abbey's social world, Jamroziak also paints a vivid picture of the various changes that affected the monastery, the order, and society as a whole. Most importantly perhaps, towards the end of the twelfth century, the amount of disposable land was shrinking and patrons became less willing to alienate their property. Increasingly, therefore, the Cistercians at Rievaulx and elsewhere accepted land with complicated secular obligations. Among contemporaries, the abbey came to be regarded more as a powerful landholder than as a sacred institution.

In discussing these and other issues, Jamroziak takes care to stress the complexity of relationships and motivations. She sees the interactions between the abbey and its neighbours occurring simultaneously at many levels: practical, economic, symbolic, and spiritual. Thus, she explains that increasing the abbey's wealth and expanding its properties not only made economic good sense, it was also part of the monastery's pious mission. And Rievaulx's rejection of tithes into the thirteenth century had probably less to do with a continued adherence to early Cistercian principles (already in the 1150s, the abbey accepted lands with serfs in contradiction to the Order's regulations), as with the fact that such an attitude would guarantee the support of the archbishops.

The question of the Order's strict interpretation of monastic life and the changes this attitude underwent is one of the central, overarching subjects of this study. In her introduction, Jamroziak summarizes past research, highlighting in particular the importance of the 'ideal versus reality' debate introduced by Louis Lekai. [3] The present microstudy offers a good test case for these debates, and Jamroziak agrees with scholars, such as Constance Bouchard [4], who have already challenged the bipolar view of an ideal early period and a corrupt later reality. In order to survive in a world where numerous monastic houses where vying with each other for patrons and donations, it was essential for a community to retain a flexible attitude and to react to local practices. Yorkshire was not Burgundy, and Jamroziak's research suggests that there was probably never an expectation for individual houses to impose a uniform ideal standard.

Reading Jamroziak's study, one is left with a powerful impression of how deeply Rievaulx was implicated in the social tissue of the local community. During a short period, in the mid-twelfth century, when Aelred was monk and later abbot of the house, the monastic community also claimed a role on the international stage of church affairs as defenders of church reform. In 1141, the monks, supported by Bernard of Clairvaux, were involved in the deposition of William FitzHerbert, elected archbishop of York. Only a few years later horizons narrowed and local considerations, especially the accumulation of estates, became of primary concern. This analysis has interesting parallels to Fergusson's and Harrison's interpretation of the monastic architecture. The church and the chapter-house reconstructed under Aelred, show links with Continental reform architecture, especially in Burgundy and Rome. The early thirteenth-century east end, on the other hand, uses local idioms to create an architecture of the highest quality. Fergusson and Harrison refuse to interpret the evidence as a decline of the Order's ideals, suggesting instead that we should see the richly articulated east end in the context of its function, the location of Aelred's shrine, in the same way that Jamroziak interprets the institution's conduct at that time as a response to the local situation. Clearly, Jamroziak's book makes a significant contribution to the study of Rievaulx that complements and supports the art historical evidence and has important implications for our view of the Cistercian Order as a whole.

Notes:

[1] Peter Fergusson / Stuart Harrison: Rievaulx Abbey. Community, Architecture, Memory, New Haven / London 1999.

[2] See esp. Janet Burton: The Estates and the Economy of Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire, in: Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses 49 (1998), 29-94.

[3] Louis J. Lekai: The Cistercians. Ideal and Reality, Kent 1977.

[4] Constance B. Bouchard: Cistercian Ideals versus Reality. 1134 Reconsidered, in: Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses 39 (1988), 217-231.