As every year, Cîteaux Commentarii Cistercienses coorganises several sessions at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds. This year:
1226 – Cistercian Longevity from the 12th to the 18th Century
Wednesday, 8 July 2026 – 3:15 PM – 4:45 PM GMT+2 – Newlyn Building: 1.02
1226-a – St Mary’s Abbey: Dublin and Its Irish Monastic Estate
Geraldine Stout, Independent Scholar
St Mary’s Abbey in Dublin City was founded in 1139 as a daughter house to the Benedictine Order of eavigny in France. In 1147, the Order adopted the Cistercian rule and in 1156 St Mary’s abbey was made subject to the English monastery of Buildwas in Shropshire, England. It served as an abbey for over 500 years and became the wealthiest and most powerful Cistercian foundation in Ireland with an estate that stretched from its base in Dublin City to Ulster in the north of Ireland, Cork in the south and Roscommon and Galway in the west. When it was dissolved in 1539 its value was exceeded only by the major English Cistercian foundations at Furness and Fountains. This paper will look at the abbey’s most generous patrons and the motivation behind their grants.
1226-b – Aging and Infirmitas in Cistercian Monasticism
Amelia Kennedy, Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey
This paper examines the role of the monastic infirmary in providing eldercare and long-term accommodation. To what extent did older people belong among the infirmi, and was old age itself seen as a kind of infirmitas? How did monastic elders discern whether they should relocate to the infirmary? Normative texts such as monastic rules and customaries constitute key sources, supplemented by hagiographies and exempla that mention the allocation and use of infirmary space. Finally, the paper considers alternatives to the infirmary, identifying cases of private or informal spaces tailored to the needs of the individual and the community.
Organiser and Moderator: Terryl N. Kinder, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, Pontigny
1326 – Time and Memory in the Cistercian Chronicles of Pomerania
Wednesday, 8 July 2026 – 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM GMT+2 – Newlyn Building: 1.02
Sponsor: Wydział Nauk Historycznych, Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, Toruń
The session will present selected issues related to organizing and structuring time and the functioning of memory in a Cistercian monastery. The first presentation examines the designation of days, months, and years in the chronicles of Cistercian monasteries in Pomerania. It compares the methods of dating found in these chronicles with the monasteries’ liturgical sources. The study investigates whether the liturgical order prevailing in the monasteries influenced the structure of the monastic chronicles, how frequently local and external events were used as temporal markers, and how often – and in what contexts – eschatological time was referenced. In the second paper Memoriam huius rei patres nostri hoc disticho ad nos transmiserunt (‘the memory of this matter our fathers have passed down to us in this couplet’) – with this phrase, the author of the Pelplin Cistercian chronicle introduces a rather exceptional element in the text: a singular piece of poetry, a kind of chronostichon, which combines the mention of a specific event with the date of the event written in Roman numerals. In the paper I shall examine the specimens of poetry in the Cistercian chronicle, marking an early stage in the development of poesis artificiosa, against the background of the medieval and ancient tradition of ‘artificial poetry’. The last paper examines how the chronicle of the Cistercian monastery in Pelplin depicts late medieval and early modern armed conflicts in the Pomeranian region, particularly those that directly affected the monastic community. It explores how the monks of Pelplin distinguished between periods of peace and war, and how they remembered their struggles associated with local military events. Through this analysis, the study sheds light on the monastic perspective on conflict and memory in a region shaped by recurring warfare.
1326-a – Time in the Chronicles of the Pomeranian Cistercians
Piotr Oliński, Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, Toruń
1326-b – Time and Memory: Poesis Artificiosa in the Cistercian Chronicle from Pelplin
Radosław Piętka, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza, Poznań
1326-c – A Monastery in Times of War: How the Cistercians of Pelplin Remembered Local Conflicts
Piotr Kołodziejczak, Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, Toruń
Organiser: Piotr Oliński , Wydział Nauk Historycznych, Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, Toruń
Moderator: Beata Możejko, Wydział Historyczny, Uniwersytet Gdański
Other sessions and papers related to the Cistercian order
127-a – ‘The attack of the Noonday Devil’: Bernard of Clairvaux on the Movement of Time
James Kroemer, Department of Theology, Concordia University, Wisconsin
Session: 127 – Temporalities: Godly and Human
The Christian doctrine of Christ’s return for a final judgment resulted in the Church understanding that time was moving to a definite conclusion. Numerous Christian theologians responded by dividing history into a number of definable ages in an attempt to determine the proximity of the Last Day. This paper will look at the four-age division of the history of the Church put forth by the twelfth century Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux. His fourth age culminated with the period of the Antichrist, which he labelled the ‘attack of the noonday devil,’ an age the abbot believed was not far off. The paper will argue that Bernard’s understanding of the movement of time played an important role in his mystical theology and his crusade activity.
141 – Reading the Medieval and Early Modern Codex: Scribes, Readers, and Book Producers in Action, I
Monday, 6 July 2026 – 12:15 PM – 1:45 PM GMT+2 – Maurice Keyworth Building: 1.09
Sponsor: Mainzer Buchwissenschaft, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz / Re-Mediating the Early Book: Pasts and Futures (REBPAF) / Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Bristol
For the study of the history of book production and the history of reading practices in the later Middle Ages and the sixteenth century, we must learn to read the clues that books from this period themselves can offer us. In this three-session strand, the speakers teach us how to analyse the traces left by the earliest owners and readers of books, and they explore the choices that book producers made regarding mise-en-page, illustration, and other aspects of book design. Session I examines the evidence left by the earliest readers of late medieval books; session II explores how owners of early books ‘personalised’ their books and made them expressive of their own interests and concerns; session III examines how conventions and technologies of book design and compilation changed in the new age of printing.
Presentations
141-c – The Medical Library of the Cistercian Abbey of Altzelle: Traces of Use by the Altzelle Cistercians
Felix Schulze, Universität Zürich
When the Cistercian abbey of Altzelle was dissolved around 1540, it possessed over 100 medical manuscripts and incunabula, of which 70 volumes have survived to the present day. In my paper I want to present traces of use that can be palaeographically attributed to readers from Altzelle or provide indications of medical processes within the monastery, using selected manuscripts.
230-a – Time, Reform, and Heresy in Cistercian Thought
Stamatia Noutsou
Session: 230 – A Time for Dissent, II: Diverging Timelines
323 – Sacred Partnerships: Temporalities and Gender Dynamics in the Making of Medieval Saints’ Cults, II
Monday, 6 July 2026 – 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM GMT+2 – Clarendon Building: GR 01
These two sessions examine how medieval ecclesiastical and secular leaders strategically shaped temporalities by reviving and promoting earlier saints’ cults to reinforce institutional authority. Between the 11th and 15th centuries, bishops, abbots, queens, abbesses, patrons and matrons shaped the memory of earlier saints, often female figures from Late Antiquity, to bridge chronological gaps and legitimize contemporary power structures. Our papers explore how these temporal strategies were articulated in hagiography, liturgical offices, relic traditions, music, architecture, and visual culture, and how they intersected with gender.
The second interdisciplinary session turns to Castile, Galicia, and Catalonia to examine queens, bishops, and abbesses as agents of the transformation of saints’ cults. Amaya Pérez Almenara examines how two Castilian queens, Urraca López de Haro and Violante of Aragon, drew inspiration from the cult of Saint Ursula. Through reliquaries linked to their names, they combined dynastic self-assertion with acts of devotion in monastic settings. Mariana Ramos de Lima turns to the Lugo Breviary, illustrating how Bishop Pedro López de Aguiar left his mark on the city’s liturgy by incorporating Dominican saints into its pages and reshaping the local identity in the process. Marga Mingote takes us to Vallbona, where the abbesses of the Anglesola family fostered the cult of Corpus Christi. Their support reached into every corner of convent life, from building chapels and commissioning altarpieces to providing music for the Corpus Christi procession, so that Christ’s presence was experienced through their initiative and vision. Read together, the papers reveal figures such as queens, bishops, and abbesses not as distant figures of authority, but as active voices shaping devotion, leaving behind contributions that feel at once practical, creative, and personal.
Presentations
323-a – Five Skulls, One Diptych, and Two Cistercian Houses: Promoting St Ursula in Castile
Amaya Pérez Almenara, Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Madrid
This paper examines the promotion of Saint Ursula’s cult in two Castilian Cistercian female monasteries, comparing strategies of royal patronage. At Santa María del Salvador in Cañas, five skull reliquaries of the Eleven Thousand Virgins—linked to Urraca López de Haro († c.1230), queen consort of León—remain in situ, enriched with later textiles. At Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas in Burgos, a reliquary-diptych is attributed to Violante of Aragón († 1284), queen of Castile. Juxtaposing these objects reveals how queens employed relics to assert influence in monastic settings, while their composite forms illuminate changing devotional practices across time.
323-b – Shaping the Sacred: Episcopal Agency and the Making of Devotion in Late Medieval Lugo
Mariana Ramos de Lima, Universidade Nova de Lisboa; University of Cambridge
323-c – ‘Ad processionem in die Corpus Christe’: Music, Architecture, and the Matronage of Vallbona’s Nuns, 14th-15th Centuries
Marga Mingote, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona
This paper explores the development of the Corpus Christi cult at the Cistercian royal monastery of Santa Maria de Vallbona, focusing on how female matronage intersected with a devotion centered on the male body of Christ. From the fourteenth century, abbesses of the Anglesola family and other noble nuns financed the Corpus Christi chapel, its benefice, and the celebrated altarpiece by Guillem Seguer, now in the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (Barcelona). Their matronage also extended to music: eight heraldic procession booklets survive. Through architecture, painting, and chant, Vallbona’s community articulated a sacred partnership between Christ’s presence and female agency
Organisers: Kristin Hoefener, Centro de Estudos em Música (CESEM), Universidade Nova de Lisboa & Jean-François Goudesenne, Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (IRHT), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Orléans
Moderator: Kristin Hoefener, Centro de Estudos em Música (CESEM), Universidade Nova de Lisboa
513 – The Identities of Religious Orders between the Passage of Time and the Manipulation of Memory, I
Tuesday, 7 July 2026 – 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM GMT+2 – Newlyn Building: 1.07
Sponsor: JSPS Grant in Aid for Scientific Research (B)
This session undertakes a comparative and analytical inquiry into the factors that endowed monastic orders and monastic institutions of the medieval and early modern periods with a distinctive identity. In the approximately eighty years following the foundation of a given order, the ‘communicative memory’ of its origins was constructed and transmitted by living witnesses. With the passing of these contemporaries, however, many communities entered a phase of ‘crisis’: across the ensuing rupture – the so-called ‘floating gap’ – they sought to recollect the past in ways that gave rise to a ‘cultural memory’ (Jan Assmann). By integrating into the discussion this correlation between the temporal distance from foundational events and the strategic shaping of memory, the session aims to elucidate the processes through which monastic orders forged enduring identities and sustained the vigor of their religious practice.
513-a – Librarian as Keeper of Memory: Continuities of the Armarius’ Functions beyond the 12th Century
Kenji Hayashi, Waseda University, Tokyo
513-b – The Cistercian Identity and the Rule of Saint Benedict: Reconsiderations after Bernard of Clairvaux
Toshio Ohnuki, Tokyo Metropolitan University
513-c – Writing the Past at Clairvaux: Exempla, Memory, and the Construction of History in the Late 12th Century
Yoshifumi Kitadate, Chuo University, Tokyo
Organiser: Toshio Ohnuki, Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences, Tokyo Metropolitan University
Moderator: Steven Vanderputten, Vakgroep Geschiedenis, Universiteit Gent
602-b – Iconographic Variants of the Virgin Mary with Child: Cistercian Conventual Seals in the Polish Diocese of Kraków
Marcin Szymoniak, Centrum Studiów Mediewistycznych, Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II
Michael Sadler Building: LG.16
Session: 602 – The Art of Commemoration
The cult of the Virgin Mary remains a characteristic feature of Cistercian spirituality and piety. Their churches were primarily dedicated to Mary. From 1335, their convents were also required to have seals bearing the image of Mary. From then on, various iconographic types of this theme began to appear on them. This paper concerns their occurrence on six known medieval conventual seals (used until the 16th-17th centuries) of Cistercian monasteries from one of the most important Polish diocese in the Middle Ages – Cracow’s. So far, these seals have not been studied from this perspective. In the Middle Ages, there were five male Cistercian abbeys in the Diocese of Cracow: in Jędrzejów, Wąchock, Koprzywnica, Mogiła (Cracow) and Szczyrzyc. During the presentation I will present the ideological content and symbolizm of various iconographic types of Mary, especially Madonna dell’Umiltà, Apocalyptic Madonna, hortus conclusus, Regina Caeli. I will also discuss the reasons for choosing a particular artistic approach, as well as the influence of monastic tradition and filial ties between individual abbeys on this decision.
850 – Historians among the White Monks: Cistercians and Their Records of the Past
Tuesday, 7 July 2026 – 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM GMT+2 – Parkinson Building: B.22
Sponsor: ANR Access ERC Project Sigebert of Gembloux Master of History (ANR-24-AERC-0008 – SiGMaH) / Centre Jean-Mabillon, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres / École Nationale des Chartes, Paris
Medieval Cistercians appear to have had a strong interest in history. Their libraries housed Classical and Medieval historical texts, and members of the Order authored annals and chronicles about their abbeys, universal chronicles, hagiographies of Cistercian saints, collections of Cistercian stories, and more. But what does it mean to write “Cistercian history”? What are the structural and thematic features that reveal how authors gave expression to the Order’s concerns and priorities? And are these features always present?
Our aim is to gather case studies from a variety of Cistercian contexts across Europe in order to explore the multiple strategies by which authors of historical texts reimagined the Order’s past, engaged with its historical tradition, and responded to the political, social, and religious challenges it faced – both locally and more broadly.
The session begins with an exploration of the relationship between Cistercian historiography and the natural environment, examining how natural archives influenced the order’s narratives. It then turns to the intellectual networks that shaped the chroniclers, and to the interplay between monastic thought and secular affairs. Particular attention is devoted to the place of heresy and its repression within the historiographical tradition of the order.
850-a – Cistercian Histories in Natural Archives
Piotr Guzowski, Uniwersytet w Białymstoku
850-b – The Cistercian Network of Historical Writing in 12th-Century England: The Sources of the First Part of the Chronicle of Ralph of Coggeshall
Stanislav Mereminskiy, Independent Scholar
Organisers:
Elisa Lonati, Centre Jean-Mabillon, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, École Nationale des Chartes, Paris
Antoni Grabowski, Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla, Polska Akademia Nauk, Warszawa
Moderator: Charlie Rozier, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Studies (MEMS), University of Kent
1204-b – Welsh Cistercian Houses and the Older Saintly Inheritance
Barry James Lewis, School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
Session: 1204 – Evoking Saints and Times Past in Irish and Welsh Monasteries
This session explores the role of saints in religious communities. Paper 2 takes the copying of the hagiographic-genealogical tract Bonedd y Saint as evidence for Cistercian interest in the cults of local founder saints. Comparatively little is known about the relationships of the Welsh Cistercian houses to the local saints’ cults of medieval Wales. Traditionally, these cults are seen as closely attached to the older, so-called clas churches, whereas the Cistercians emphasized devotion to the Virgin Mary and international cults.
1615 – Chroniclers and Information in 13th-Century Britain, I: Getting News
Thursday, 9 July 2026 – 12:15 PM – 1:45 PM GMT+2 – Clarendon Building: 1.06
Chroniclers across thirteenth-century Britain used news texts to compose and compile their narratives. Some are well-known, like Matthew Paris, whose proximity to London and access to the means of one of the largest abbeys in England explain his ability to collect information. For chronicles of smaller localities, or with smaller means, however, much remains unclear. The proposed sessions aim to look at the circulation of news and information in medieval Britain and the way they were received and processed by chroniclers.
The first session will look at the process of gathering news. It will explore the networks to which chroniclers had access, reflect more broadly on how news circulated in different areas of medieval Britain, and highlight the regional and social discrepancies.
1615-a – City Views on the Latest News: Chronicle Writing in a Divided City
Ian Stone, Dartmouth College
1615-b – Identifying the Sources of the 13th-Century Scribe of the Annals of Margam
Élodie Papin, Université de Lorraine
Compiled in the second quarter of the thirteenth century at the Cistercian abbey of Margam, the Annals of Margam serve as vital evidence for the history of southern Wales, particularly Glamorgan, from the end of the eleventh century to the early thirteenth century. The text of the annals can be delineated into two parts. The first section, covering the years 1066 to 1185, is influenced by older sources, notably the works of William of Malmesbury († c. 1143). Conversely, in the second section, the author appears to have had access to more immediate sources, providing detailed accounts, especially of events pertaining to Glamorgan and its environs. Although this structural division is characteristic of thirteenth-century chronicles, the precise influences on the Margam scribe remain largely unidentified. Understanding these influences is essential for situating the Annals within the broader political, social, and cultural context of thirteenth-century Wales. This constitutes a significant initial step in examining the scribe’s historiographical approach.
1615-c – The Creative Use of News in the Annals of Waverley
Jennifer Jolly, King’s College London
The annals of 1202–1266 of the Waverley Chronicle were composed contemporaneously and news formed a part of these annals. From its foundation, Waverley was part of two important networks, the Cistercian Order and the Bishopric of Winchester, and his included information taken from both of these networks. How and why news was incorporated into raises questions about the composition of the Chronicle. News is not presented consistently – it can be attributed to a named source but also as the Chronicle’s own account. These uses of news point to the creative and partial nature of the historical record kept by the Waverley Chronicle. The unpublished documents which precede the Waverley Chronicle in BL, Cotton MS Vespasian A XVI also include important newsletters which were copied and kept with the Chronicle but not incorporated into its main text. Palaeographical links suggest that the manuscript was being used as a useful repository for information not included in the Chronicle itself.
Organisers: Marie Tranchant, Department of History, King’s College London
Ian Stone, Department of History, Dartmouth College
Moderator: Helen Birkett, Department of Archaeology & History, University of Exeter