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The Cistercian studium at Oxford
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At the vanguard of change: the Cistercian studium at Rewley
A Rotherham connection
In 1254 Pope Innocent IV confirmed the patronage of Rotherham church to
St Bernard’s college, Paris. This had been granted to the Order
by John of Lexington, lord of Eston.
[The Early History of St John’s College, ed. Stevenson and Salter,
p. 4.]
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In 1247 the Cistercians established a college (studium)
in Paris where members of the Order could complete a university education
in an appropriate environment; other orders followed suit. The
foundation of
this college, known as St Bernard’s, owed much to the energy and
enthusiasm of an Englishman, Stephen of Lexington, who was at this
time abbot of Clairvaux.
With the backing of Pope Innocent IV, Stephen forged ahead to convert
the Order’s house for student monks in Paris into
the first Cistercian college.(2) It was
almost forty years later that the first Cistercian studium was
established in England. This was Rewley (Regali loci), which
was founded in 1282 by Edmund, earl of Cornwall and was dependent
on Thame
Abbey. (3)
Accordingly, the founding community at Rewley - an
abbot and fourteen monks - came from Thame.
As was so often the case throughout the Middle Ages,
the Cistercians stood at the forefront of change, for their studium at
Rewley was, in fact, the first religious house founded at Oxford to function
as a
college.(4) To lead did not,
however, mean to succeed, and Rewley’s life as
a college was relatively short-lived. Rewley faced difficulties
from the outset, not least of all as it had something of a mixed
identity. On the one hand it was an abbey for the monks of Rewley,
who were
to
provide spiritual services for their founder and his family; yet,
it also functioned as a residence for Cistercian monks throughout
the country,
who wished to study at Oxford. Not all of the Rewley monks would
have been students, and the Cistercian scholars who lodged at the
college were not considered monks of Rewley; indeed their own abbots
were
responsible
for providing their living expenses. There were thus two distinct
groups residing at Rewley, who may even have occupied separate
parts of the
precinct.(5) It was initially for each abbot to decide whether
or not he wished to send any of his monks to Rewley. In England,
as elsewhere, many
were reluctant to so. This led to a ruling in 1292, which made
it obligatory for all Cistercian abbots to send one monk for every
twenty
in
the community
to the local studium and to provide each scholar with an allowance
of at least sixty shillings. Direct evidence of the rather lukewarm
attitude of the English abbots survives in a letter sent by the
abbot of
Cîteaux to
the abbots of the Southern Province (Canterbury) in 1292, which
names every community in the kingdom that had so far failed to send a
scholar
to Oxford.(6)
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