The beginning of Ethiopian Cistercian Monks

The beginning of Ethiopian Cistercian Monks

Abba Fisseha Gebreamlak (Fr. Felix Idris) was born on June 1887 in Juffa, Eritrea. He entered the diocesan seminary at Keren, 91 kms north of Asmara. He joined the seminary at the age of 12. Right from his childhood, he was very spiritual and hardworking man. His parents were from the Orthodox Church.

Frequenting and completing his study of philosophy and theology very devoutly and was ordained as a priest on September 22, 1918, at Keren in St. Michael’s church. After seven years of priestly ministries in Ethiopia of that time, he was sent to Rome to be the spiritual director of the Ethiopian scolasticates in the Ethiopian college of St. Stephen in the Vatican City in1925.

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CONDITION OF THE ORDER IN 1908

CONDITION OF THE ORDER IN 1908

Several modern congregations must be mentioned which have been grafted on the old trunk of Cîteaux, and which, with some ancient monasteries that escaped the persecution of the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, form the Common Observance. Their mode of life corresponds to that of the Cistercians of the seventeenth century, whose mitigation was approved by Alexander VII in 1666. They are the Congregations of Italy, Belgium, Austria, and Switzerland, and the Congregation of Sénanque.

IV. THE RESTORATION (AFTER 1790)

IV. THE RESTORATION (AFTER 1790)

The reform inaugurated at La Trappe by Abbot de Rance, reviving the austerity and fervour of primitive Cîteaux, was maintained, almost intact, against difficulties of every kind, until the French Revolution. There were then at La Trappe seventy religious and a numerous and fervent novitiate. When, on the 4th of December, a decree of the National Assembly suppressed the Trappists in France, Dom Augustin de Lestrange, then master of novices at La Trappe, authorized by his local superior and the Abbot of Clairvaux, set out with twenty-four of his brethren for Switzerland. The Senate of Fribourg permitted them to settle in Val-Sainte, 1 June, 1791. Pope Pius VI, by a Brief of 31 July, 1794, authorized the erection of Val-Sainte into an abbey. Dom Augustin was elected abbot on the 27th of the following November, and on the 8th of December of the same year, a solemn decree of the nuncio of the Holy See at Lucerne, executing the Brief of Pius VI, constituted Val-Sainte an abbey and the mother-house of the whole Congregation of Trappists. There the Rule of St. Benedict was observed in all its rigour, and at times its severity was even surpassed. Novices flocked thither. From Val-Sainte Dom Augustin sent colonies into Spain, Belgium, and Piedmont.

III. THE DECLINE (1342-1790)

III. THE DECLINE (1342-1790)

The decadence of the order was due to several causes, the first of which was the large number of monasteries, often-times situated in the most widely distant countries, which prevented the "Fathers Immediate" from making the regular visits to all the houses of their filiations, while some of the abbots could not assist every year at the general chapter. Some were also found who, seeing themselves thus sheltered from the remonstrances and the punishments either of the general chapter or of the visitor, permitted abuses to creep into their houses. But the principal cause of the decline of the order (which is based on unity and charity) was the spirit of dissension which animated certain superiors. Some abbots, even not far from Cîteaux, explained in a particular sense, and that adapted to their own point of view, certain points of the Charter of Charity. The solicitude of the Roman pontiffs themselves who tried to reestablish harmony among the superiors, was not always successful. And yet at that time there were found some courageous and determined monks who became reformers, and even founded new congregations which were detached from the old trunk of Cîteaux. Those congregations which then severed their union with Cîteaux, but which no longer exist at the present time, are:

II. THE GOLDEN AGE (1134-1342)

II. THE GOLDEN AGE (1134-1342)

The diffusion of the new order was chiefly effected by means of foundations. Nevertheless several congregations and monasteries, which had existed before the Order of Cîteaux, became affiliated to it, among them the Congregations of Savigny and Obazine, which were incorporated in the order in 1147.

I. The Formation (1098-1134)

I. THE FORMATION (1098-1134)

St. Robert, son of the noble Thierry and Ermengarde of Champagne, was Abbot of Molesme, a monastery dependent on Cluny. Appalled by the laxity into which the Order of Cluny had fallen, he endeavoured to effect reforms in the monasteries of Saint-Pierre-de-la-Celle, Saint-Michel of Tonnerre, and finally in that of Molesme. His attempts at reform in these monasteries meeting with very little success, he, with six of his religious, among whom were Alberic and Stephen, had recourse to Hugh, Legate of the Holy See, and Archbishop of Lyons.

An Introductory History

Beginnings

On 21 March 1098, the saintly abbot of the thriving Benedictine Abbey of Molesme, Robert, led twenty-one of his monks into the inhospitable thickets of Citeaux to establish a new monastery where they hoped to follow Benedict of Nursia'sRule for Monasteries in all its fullness. The unhappy monks of Molesme, grieved at the loss of their holy leader, soon obtained a papal command for his return. The new struggling community continued until 1109 under the leadership of Alberic, who introduced the idea of lay brothers being accepted as full members of the monastic family, making it possible for the monks to be free to follow all the demands of the Benedictine Rule. Stephen Harding, who succeeded Alberic at the helm of the community, welcomed the dynamic Bernard of Fontaines, who came in 1112 with thirty relatives in tow. Thus began the saga of Citeaux.