On this page: Meals // The prohibition of meat // Relaxation of the rules
Wine and white bread, honeyed wine and rich foods cater to the body, not the soul. The body, but not the soul is fattened by frying pans.(1)
The Cistercians objected to the laxity and gluttony of other orders and ruled that, in accordance with chapter 61 of the Rule of St Benedict, the monks should eat once a day. In summer, however, a light supper was served to sustain the monks during the longer days and the extra time spent working. As stipulated in chapter 59 of the Rule of St Benedict only two dishes were to be served at meals and meat forbidden to all save the sick. The Cistercians’ diet largely consisted of coarse bread (a finer quality bread was given to the ill, the bloodlet and guests), vegetables, herbs and beans, but on special occasions, such as feast days or anniversaries, they might be served fish, eggs and other delicacies, known as pittances. Treats of this kind might be served once a week or more, although the General Chapter stipulated that pittances should not be served on three consecutive days.
The monks drank ale or wine, and whilst the amount was restricted additional drinks were served during the long hot summer days, to prevent dehydration. Salt and home-grown spices were used to flavour and season foods; luxury condiments such as pepper and cumin were discouraged.
For food, besides what the Rule specifies about the pound of bread, the measure of drink and the number of cooked dishes, this too is to be observed: the bread should be coarse, that is made with bran. But where there is no wheat rye bran is permitted. Those who are ill will not be bound by this rule. Moreover, for guests for whom it is so ordered, bread of finer quality is served; no less for those who have been bled (they shall have) a pound of white bread – once during each bleeding.
[Capitula XII, in Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, p. 409]
The meals
Breakfast (the mixt)
A light breakfast, the mixt, which consisted of a morsel of bread dipped in wine ( 1/4 lb bread and 1/3 hemina of wine), was permitted at first only to younger members of the community, the sick and infirm.(2) It was also given to those whose duty it was to serve in the refectory, to tide them over until dinner since they only ate after the rest of the brethren had dined.(3) Nobody received the mixt during Lent, for at this time the monks observed a more abstemious diet. Whilst breakfast as a meal for all was not introduced until the seventeenth century, during harvest-time, when all the monks laboured in the fields, laws of fasting were suspended and additional drinks were served to sustain the brethren whilst they worked.(4)
Dinner (prandium)
In accordance with the Rule of St Benedict the Cistercians served two cooked vegetable dishes and a generous portion of bread at dinner; fruits in season were served as a third dish. Each monk received a daily portion of ale or wine which was set before him in an earthen pitcher and was to last him for dinner or dinner and supper when both were taken.
Supper (cena)
In summer when the monks dined for a second time they were generally served green vegetables and fruits which they ate with the remainder of their bread from dinner.
Whilst the monks often received extra dishes (pittances) on special occasions, at certain times of the year they followed a more restrictive diet. Throughout Advent and Lent the use of animal fat, eggs, milk and milk products was strictly prohibited except on the first Sunday of Lent, the Monday and Thursday before Ash Wednesday, the vigil of Pentecost, the Ember days in September, the vigil of the Assumption of Mary, and the vigils of St John the Baptist, St Peter, St Paul, St Lawrence, the Apostle Matthew, Simon and Jude, All Saints, the Apostle Andrew.(5) On Fridays during Lent the monks fasted on bread and water. From the late twelfth century it was ruled that neither cheese nor eggs should be served to guests during Lent, except on the days when such foods were permitted to the brethren.(6)
Think of how many people worked to prepare you food, and especially how diligently the Lord supplies you with spiritual delights in the way of learned teachers. Think of the countless dangers endured by seamen in order to provide fish to satisfy the wants of your flesh and thank God for each bite.
[Stephen of Sawley, ‘Mirror for Novices‘, ch. 12, ‘Meals’ pp. 103-4, at p. 104)
The prohibition of meat
The Cistercians were adamant that neither meat nor lard should be eaten within the monastery, although an allowance was made for the seriously ill and hired craftsmen.(7) This ruling also applied to the granges.(8) The prohibition of meat was essentially in adherence to chapter 59 of the Rule of St Benedict, (9) but it was also believed that this would quench the monks’ carnal desires and sharpen their spiritual alertness. Thus, Bernard of Clairvaux wrote in a sermon on the Song of Songs:
I abstain from meat because by over-feeding the body I also feed carnal desires; I strive to take even bread with moderation, lest my heavy stomach hinder me in standing up for prayer.(10)
Inevitably, ideals were not always observed and there were those who disregarded these rules. Transgressors were reprimanded by the General Chapter took measures against transgressors, but by the fourteenth century relaxed its stance: in 1335 it was officially sanctioned that meat could be served at the abbot’s table and also in the infirmary; in 1439 the General Chapter conceded that once or twice a week each monk might dine outside the refectory to eat meat but underlined that there should always be 2/3 of the community eating a regular diet in the refectory and that nobody should eat meat more than twice a week.(11)By the end of the fifteenth century it was commonplace for the monks to eat meat two or three times a week in a separate room, the misericord; the meat served here was prepared in a special kitchen.
Gerald of Wales’ comment on the Cistercians’ dietary habits
The satirist, Gerald of Wales, who was writing in the late twelfth / early thirteenth century, complained that the Cistercians were hypocritics who openly observed a strict diet, but in private places deputed to gluttony indulged in meats and fine foods.
Gerald’s stories must not be taken too seriously – he was a critic of the Cistercians in his later years and was also fond of a colourful tale. Nevertheless, other contemporary sources including statutes issued by the General Chapter and accounts, such as Abbot Gervase of Louth Park’s last testament, suggest that his claims were not wholly unfounded; whilst Gerald may have embroidered the facts his stories were not utter inventions.
Gerald recounts one occasion when Abbot John of Battle visited a Cistercian abbey in Sussex; this presumably was Robertsbridge, founded in 1176, which was the only Cistercian abbey in the county. Gerald vividly describes how the abbot of the house led Abbot John through the cloister, but forcibly prevented him from entering the refectory, as the servers were dining. Human nature as it is, the more Abbot John was prevented from entering the refectory, the more determined he was to see what was going on inside. Eventually John managed to open the door and realised why the abbot of the house had been so eager to keep him out, for there he saw the servers enjoying a fine feast of meats and spiced drinks. John teasingly asked the Cistercian abbot to which saint these ‘relics’ ( i.e. the meat bones) belonged, and returned to his house flabbergasted by what he had seen.
[Gerald of Wales, Giraldi Cambrensis Opera IV: Speculum Ecclesiae (London, 1873), pp. 215-6.]
Gerald also tells of a parish priest from Hereford who frequently visited a Cistercian house where he conferred goods and benefits. On one occasion the priest was poorly received by the community. Dinner was a cheerless and meagre affair since, like the other guests, he was forced to observe the Cistercians’ abstemious diet. After eating he rose from the table and walked through the court, looking at the various lodgings and offices when, on reaching the innermost chamber, he noticed that the door was open, ventured a peep inside and, to his horror, saw the abbot with eight or ten of the thirteen brethren gorging themselves in splendour on meat, capons, geese, wine, good beer and mead served in silver jugs adorned with gold and silver. The abbot’s table, in fact, heaved with fine foods. Unfortunately the text breaks off at this point, the result of fire damage, but it would seem that the priest cursed the community, leapt on his horse and departed, never again to darken their doors or bestow his largesse.
[Gerald of Wales, Speculum Ecclesiae, pp. 210-11.]
Relaxation of the rules
In the twelfth century the abstemious ways of the White Monks were noted and commented upon by their contemporaries, and their austere diet deterred some from taking the Cistercian habit. By the end of the twelfth century, however, there were signs of laxity, although those who broke the rules were punished, i.e. the Cistercians’ ideals remained high even if these were not always practiced everywhere. Change was afoot. In the fourteenth century difficulties in obtaining vegetables and obligations to guests were cited as excuses to deviate from the Order’s restrictive diet and papal dispensations were granted to a number of houses. The General Chapter was forced to reconsider its stance and make concessions. Meat-eating, which had been prohibited to all but the sick, was condoned but controlled in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. By the late fifteenth century there was such a diversity of local customs that the General Chapter approached the papacy in 1473 for new regulations to clarify rules of abstinence. Sixtus IV’s bull on 13 December 1475 granted the abbot of Cîteaux and the General Chapter the right to adapt their regulations to accord with the times. By the end of the fifteenth century abstinence was a thing of the past.(12) Indeed, during the abbacy of John Paslew (1507-37), the last abbot of Whalley, Lancashire, there was clearly no shortage of fine foodstuffs; in 1520 the community spent c 2/3 of their annual expenditure on food and drink and feasted on delicacies such as figs, dates, sugar and cakes.
References
(1) This is taken from Bernard of Clairvaux’s rather exasperated letter to his nephew, Robert, who had left the rigorous Cistercian life to join the Black monks of Cluny, The Letters of Bernard of Clairvaux, ed. and tr. B. S. James, rev. edn., B. M. Kienzle (Stroud, 1998), ep. 1 (pp. 1-10, at p. 8).
(2) Les Ecclesiastica Officia Cisterciens du xii siecle, ed. D. Choisselet and P. Vernet (Reinigue, 1989), 73:9 (p. 216).
(3) Institutes, clause LII, in Narrative and Legislative Texts from Early Citeaux, ed. C. Waddell (Citeaux, 1999), p. 478.
(4) The twelfth-century customary, the Ecclesiastica Officia, mentions the distribution of 1 1/2 lbs of bread and a mixture of honey and milk for drink, see Lekai, Cistercians, p. 367.
(5) Institutes, clause XXV in Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, p. 466; also see Ecclesiastica Officia 88:18 (p. 250).
(6) Institutes, clause XXV, in Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, p. 466.
(7) Institutes, clause XXIV, in Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, p. 466.
(8) Nobody was permitted to eat meat or lard within the enclosures of the granges except those who were gravely ill and hired workers, Institutes, clause XXIV in Waddell, Narrative and Legislative Texts, p. 466.
(9) ‘Let everyone abstain altogether from the flesh of four-footed animals, except the very weak and the sick.’
(10) Sermon 66, cited in L. Lekai, The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality (Ohio, 1977), p. 368.
(11) Lekai, Cistercians, p. 370.
(12) Lekai, Cistercians, pp. 370-1.