Word: cistercians
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...threaten family life. The lament on alcoholism supported a theme that the regime is also pressing, but another of the Pope's moral concerns this day, abortion, put him in direct opposition to official Polish policy. The Pope's Saturday schedule was relaxed, with a midday visit to the Cistercian shrine at Mogila, and a poignant meeting with the sick and disabled at a Cracow basilica...
That we know any of Montaillou's indiscretions is the work of a tireless Inquisitor: Jacques Fournier, bishop of Pamiers. A learned, tough-minded Cistercian monk, Bishop Fournier took charge of the local Inquisition. Montaillou's heretics -spiritual heirs of the Albigensians who had been so bloodily crushed the century before-became his target. In the process he left a thick record of testimony from the accused and witnesses...
Johnson's history is much more than a collection of vignettes. He stresses the integral role that Christianity played not merely in European society but specifically in its economy. From the 9th to the 14th centuries, it was the monks of the great monasteries, particularly the Cistercian houses, who drained the swamps of Europe and cleared its for ests, thus creating thousands of square miles of arable land - and laying the foundations of Europe's prosperity. Christianity left some less fortunate legacies too. The ferocity of the Crusades, observes Johnson, "fossilized Islam into a fanatic posture" from which...
...damp green hills of Brittany stands Abbaye de Boquen, a small 12th century monastery, where cloistered Cistercian monks have prayed and tilled the soil in silent serenity for centuries. In recent years, though, the monastery has welcomed the outside world with a sign at the gate proclaiming: "The brothers would like you to share in their search for spiritual unity and liberty." Since 1964, the abbey has been a center for audacious innovation under its prior, Dom Bernard Besret...
Last week a new prior arrived in Boquen. Dom Besret (pronounced beret) had been summoned to Rome and dismissed for threatening to destroy the monastic concept. Cistercian superiors were unmoved by his pleas to be permitted to stay on as "president" of a more open community. Explained a Vatican official privately: "If you are going to have a monastery, you must have a monastery. It can't be a country club...