A Description of
Clairvaux (third daughter house of Citeaux)
Should you wish to
picture Clairvaux, the following has been written to serve you as a
mirror. Imagine two hills and between them a narrow valley, which
widens out as it approaches the monastery. The abbey covers the
half of one hillside and the whole of the other. With one rich in
vineyards, the other in crops, they do double duty, gladdening the
heart and serving our necessities, one shelving flank providing
food, the other drink. On the ridges themselves it is often the
monks' work (pleasant indeed and the more so for being peaceful) to
collect dead brushwood and tie it in bundles for burning, sorting
out the prickly brambles and cutting and tying only what is fit for
the fires. Their job too to grub out the briars, to uproot and
destroy what Solomon calls the bastard slips, which throttle the
growing branches or loosen the roots, lest the stout oak be
hindered from saluting the height of heaven, the lime from
deploying its supple branches, the pliant ash that splits so
readily from growing freely upwards, the fan-shaped beech from
attaining its full spread.
Farther on, the rear
of the abbey extends to the wide valley bottom, much of which lies
inside the great sweep of the abbey wall. Within this cincture many
fruit-bearing trees of various species make a veritable grove of
orchards, which by their nearness to the infirmary afford no small
solace to the brothers in their sickness: a spacious promenade for
those able to walk, an easeful resting-place for the feverish. The
sick man sits on the green turf, and, when the merciless heat of
the dog days bakes the fields and dries up the streams, he in his
sanctuary, shaded from the day's heat, filters the heavenly fire
through a screen of leaves, his discomfort further eased by the
drifting scent of the grasses. While he feeds his gaze on the
pleasing green of grass and trees, fruits, to further his delight,
hang swelling before his eyes, so that he can not inaptly say: 'I
sat in the shadow of his tree, which I had desired, and its fruit
was sweet to my taste.' A chorus of brightly feathered birds
caresses his ears with sweetest melody. Thus for a single illness
God in his goodness provides many a soothing balm: the sky smiles
serene and clear, the earth quivers with life, and the sick man
drinks in, with eyes, ears and nostrils, the delights of colour,
song and scent.
Where the orchard
ends the garden begins, marked out into rectangles, or, more
accurately, divided up by a network of streamlets; for, although
the water appears asleep, it is in fact slipping slowly away. Here
too a pretty spectacle is afforded to the sick, who can sit on the
grassy banks of the clear runnels watching the fish at play in the
translucent water, their manoeuvres recalling troops in battle.
This water, which serves the dual purpose of feeding the fish and
irrigating the vegetables, is supplied by the tireless course of
the river Aube, of famous name, which flows through the many
workshops of the abbey. Wherever it passes it evokes a blessing in
its wake, proportionate to its good offices; for it does not slip
through unscathed or at its leisure, but at the cost of much
exertion. By means of a winding channel cut through the middle of
the valley, not by nature but by the hard work of the brethren, the
Aube sends half its waters into the monastery, as though to greet
the monks and apologize for not having come in its entirety, for
want of a bed wide enough to carry its full flow. And should this
stream in spate surge forward in a tumultuous sally, repulsed by
the fronting wall under which it has to flow, it falls back into
itself, and the current* once again embraces the reflux. As much of
the stream as this wall, acting as gatekeeper, allows in by the
sluice-gates hurls itself initially with swirling force against the
mill, where its ever-increasing turbulence, harnessed first to the
weight of the millstones and next to the fine-meshed sieve, grinds
the grain and then separates the flour from the bran.
The stream now fills
the cauldron in a nearby building and suffers itself to be boiled
to prepare the brothers' drink (should husbandry have been
ill-rewarded by a poor vintage, and malt, in default of grape
juice, have to supply the want). Nor does it hold
itself acquitted yet. The fullers, next door to the mill, invite it
in, claiming with reason on their side that, if it swirls and
eddies in the mill, which provides the brothers with food, it
should do no less by those who clothe them. The stream does not
demur, nor indeed refuse any request made of it, Instead, raising
and lowering by turns the heavy pestles (unless you prefer the term
mallets or, better still, wooden feet - the expression which seems
most suited to the gymnastic occupation of the fullers), it frees
these brothers from their drudgery. And should their gravity be
broken by some jest, it frees them too from punishment for their
sin." O Lord, how great are the consolations that you in your
goodness provide for your poor servants, lest a greater
wretchedness engulf them! How generously you palliate the hardships
of your penitents, lest perchance they be crushed at times by the
harshness of their toil! From how much back-breaking travail for
horses and arm-aching labour for men does this obliging torrent
free us, to the extent that without it we should be neither clothed
nor fed. It is most truly shared with us, and expects no other
reward wheresoever it toils under the sun than that, its work done,
it be allowed to run freely away. So it is that, after driving so
many noisy and swiftly spinning wheels, it flows out foaming, as
though it too had been ground and softened in the
process.
The tannery is next
to capture the stream, and here it displays its zeal in the
fashioning of all that goes to make the brothers'
footwear.
Thereafter, its
water decanted into a succession of channels, it carries out a
dutiful inspection of each workshop, diligently inquiring where it
can be of service and offering its ungrudging help in the work of
cooking, sifting, turning, whetting, watering, washing, grinding
and softening. Lastly, to ensure that no cause for gratitude be
wanting, that its tasks be left in no respect unfinished, it
carries the waste products away and leaves everything clean in its
wake, and, while Clairvaux renders it thanks for all its blessings,
it courteously returns the abbey's greetings as it hastens away to
pour back into the river the waters siphoned off into the
monastery. The two currents are indistinguishably mingled and the
river, shrunken and sluggish since the diversion, surges forward
under the onrush of water.
Now that we have
returned the stream to its bed, let us go back to those rills we
left behind. They too are diverted from the river and meander
placidly through the meadows, saturating the soil that it may
germinate. And when, with the coming of the mild spring weather,
the pregnant earth gives birth, they keep it watered too lest
should I not think it wanted to be passed over in silence when it
secretes itself under cover? Like all good springs it sallies out
over against the rising sun, so that midsummer finds it greeting
the roseate splendour of dawn full in the face. A small but pretty
hut, or tabernacle to use a more reverential word, encloses it and
protects it from any dirt. It wells out of the hillside only to be
swallowed by the valley, and in the very place of its birth it
seems to die, nay, even to be buried. But do not look for the sign
of Jonah the prophet, expecting it to lie hidden away for three
days and three nights: at once, a thousand feet away, it rises
again in the abbey cloister, as it might be from the bowels of the
earth, and, as it were restored to life, offers itself to the sight
and use of the brethren, lest its future lot should be with any but
the holy.
