Exordium Parvum
The Cistercians’ own account of how the monks of Molesme founded the New Monastery at Cîteaux in 1098, with the letters and privileges that authorised it and the first rules they set themselves.
The “Little Beginning” opens in the first person plural: the Cistercians who first founded the church write so that those who come after may know how the monastery and its way of life began. It is a short narrative in eighteen chapters built around official documents quoted in full: letters of the papal legate Hugh of Lyon, of Pope Urban II and of local bishops, and a privilege of Pope Paschal II.
It is the Order’s account of itself, written to show that the departure from Molesme was lawful and that the customs of Cîteaux were a return to the Rule of Benedict. It presents itself as the work of the founders. Constance H. Berman, The Cistercian Evolution (2000), argued that it and the Charter of Charity took the form in which they survive only in the 1160s and 1170s; the dating remains debated.
Cited in
- 1098 to 1115, estimated date