Abbot Stephen

In Latin Christian hagiography the title Abbot Stephen most often designates Saint Stephen Harding (Étienne Harding), the English monk who became third abbot of Cîteaux and the principal organizer of the early Cistercian Order. Other holy superiors of the same name exist, notably Saint Stephen of Obazine in the Limousin, but Harding’s role in giving a pan-European order its constitution has made him the figure usually intended. He was born in England in the mid-eleventh century; a precise year of birth is not preserved. Long-standing tradition, followed by standard reference works, places that birth at Sherborne in Dorset and his first education in the Benedictine abbey there. After leaving Sherborne he spent time in Scotland, studied in France, and visited Rome before entering the Burgundian monastery of Molesme under Robert of Molesme. In 1098 Robert, Alberic, Stephen, and a small group of monks withdrew from Molesme in search of a poorer and more exact observance of the Rule of Saint Benedict and settled in the wooded solitude of Cîteaux, in the diocese of Chalon, south of Dijon.

Robert was soon required to return to Molesme. Alberic governed the New Monastery until his death, after which Stephen was chosen abbot in 1109. The house remained fragile until Bernard of Fontaines and a large company of companions entered, traditionally in 1112 or 1113. Colonies then went out to La Ferté in 1113, Pontigny in 1114, and Clairvaux and Morimond in 1115. Those four abbeys became the principal filiations through which Cistercian expansion spread across Latin Christendom in the twelfth century. To hold so many houses in one observance without subjecting them to a single abbot’s personal rule, Stephen promoted the Carta Caritatis (Charter of Charity), a compact of mutual visitation, an annual general chapter at Cîteaux, and common customs. A version of this constitution received papal confirmation under Callixtus II in the period around 1119. The same concern for uniformity appears in the Cistercian liturgical books and in the multi-volume Bible produced at Cîteaux under his authority, often called the Bible of Stephen Harding, which sought a reliable Latin text and is a landmark of early Cistercian illumination.

Medieval witnesses portray him as learned, severe in personal poverty, and unusually able as an organizer. He insisted on manual labor, simplicity of architecture and vesture, and fidelity to the Rule as the Cistercians understood it. He died at Cîteaux on 28 March 1134 and was buried at the abbey. He lived and died as a professed monk and is not recorded to have had a spouse or children. He was neither pope nor patriarch.

Cistercian calendars and, later, the wider Catholic Church have kept his feast on 17 April; the order has also commemorated him with Robert and Alberic among the founders of Cîteaux. Formal details of canonization are poorly documented: he is venerated as a saint, but a specific papal act of canonization is not securely cited in the standard historical literature, and no well-attested list of later patronages of towns, trades, or illnesses is attached to his name. Cîteaux Abbey was wrecked during the French Revolution, and the subsequent fate of his relics is uncertain. Stephen of Obazine and other abbots named Stephen should not be conflated with the abbot of Cîteaux. For Stephen Harding himself, the English origin, the abbacy from 1109, the Carta Caritatis, the early daughter houses, and the death at Cîteaux in 1134 are the points on which the narrative sources and later scholarship agree.