The Charter of Charity
The constitution that bound the Cistercian abbeys to one another: one observance of the Rule in every house, yearly visitation of each daughter house by its mother house, and a yearly general chapter of all abbots at Cîteaux.
The Charter is written in the voice of the abbot and monks of the New Monastery, that is Cîteaux, and its prologue names Abbot Stephen and his brethren as its authors. It says that they drew it up before the daughter abbeys began to flourish, so that no abbey would be founded in a diocese until the bishop had approved the terms.
It survives in more than one version, and historians disagree about how much of the text goes back to Stephen Harding himself; see the note on Exordium Parvum. It is cited here for what its provisions say.
Cited in
- 1098 to 1115, estimated date