RELIGIONS AND FIGURATVE REPRESENTATION

These Cistercian specificities came to the notice of mid-20th century art historians. Marcel Aubert and Aliette, Marchioness of Maillé were first to define, in 1943, a “Cistercian architecture” characterised by an austerity manifest notably in the absence of figurative sculptures, in contrast with the Romanesque buildings of the same period. In the synthesis they published in 1962, Dom Angelico Surchamp and Father Anselme Didier extended this reflexion to other types of production and defined a “Cistercian art” that, what with its “deliberate plainness”, amounted to the 12th century's missing link between a “Romanesque art”, profuse with figurative imagery and a “gothic art”, much more reticent in its decor. They propose a parallel with an “Almohad art” emerging in the Western Muslim world at the same time spurred on by the “austere asceticism of that Berber dynasty. The notion of “Cistercian art” got its consecration in 1976 when Georges Duby, a major figure of French historiography in the Annales tradition, made the connection between these artistic manifestations and a particular substructure, a Cistercian economy^[1], defined by its respect of equally rigorous norms. In his view, Bernardine thought as framed in the Apology exhibits, from the outset, the connexion between economic norms and the relation to representation in the Cistercian order. Thereafter, historians would keep associating “Cistercian art” with this distinctive “simplicity”. Against this positive connotation, terms such as “iconoclasm” or “aniconism” are more rarely found, with a few rare exceptions such as Yolanda Załuska's 1989 thesis on Cistercian illumination. They are no less implicit in all definitions of “Cistercian art” and regularly resurface in research papers.

And yet Bernard's position towards figuration in the Apology is more nuanced than has often been asserted. The abbot of Clairvaux condemns figurative art only in the monastic context, lest the monks' attention be diverted. He also objects, for moral reasons, to the fact that artifacts may be used by certain religious communities as curiosities intended to increase pilgrim flows and, thereby, their income. But he tacitly accepts the presence of works of art, whether figurative or otherwise, in places of worship intended for the laity^[2]. Besides, the Apology is a polemical treatise against traditional monasticism in which Bernard of Clairvaux caricatures the practices he castigate in his opponents, it is therefore risky to infer an artistic ideal from its negatives. He never shied from the use of images in his writing and some passages of his famed commentary of the Song of Songs are directly inspired by figurative illuminations. To his mind, the principle of plainness in the abbey church and the cloister was meant essentially to convey to society at large the exemplarity of his order via external signs of poverty, what he called “conspicuous poverty”. Neither was the other above-mentioned Cistercian writers' positions any more rigid. In his Formation of Anchoresses, Aelred of Rievaulx chastises the uncalled for presence of art works in anchoresses' cells and advocates self-denial to a significant but relative extent, allowing, notably, representations of Christ or of the Virgin with Saint John the Apostle. As they did not advocate a strict aniconism, they can hardly rate as iconoclasts. Meanwhile, even when they rejected figurative representation, Cistercian rules and practices did not repudiate figuration as understood in the Middle Ages. Some geometrical figures may offer a meaning and thus rate as imagery: this would apply to the apses' treble windows, as well as the motives in the grisaille windows or pavement tiles for instance.

In any event, Bernard of Clairvaux did not express the unanimous view of his order. Before he became the spearhead of his order at the end of the years 1120, Cistercian artistic practice followed different principles. In that earlier decade, while the architecture was not yet monumentalized, in the scriptorium at Cîteaux, miniaturists developed what specialists refer to as its “first style” under Abbot Stephen Harding^[3]. Much in the tradition of Romanesque miniature, it gives pride of place to figurative representation; indeed it stands out for its extraordinary iconographic register and its manifold expressiveness – humorous or fabulous, droll or mundane. The “second style”, flourishing in the 1120-1140s, while undoubtedly more sober, remains no less attached to polychromy and to figurative representation. To the point that historian Conrad Rudolph feels bound to wonder to which extend the Apology to William of Saint-Thierry was not targeted first and foremost at Bernard's opponents within his order, notably Stephen Harding, abbot of Cîteaux. Indications of this ideological debate between Cistercians transpire in the Libellus proverbiorum (Little Book of Proverbs) written by one of them Galand de Reigny^[4], in 1146-47. The author unreservedly vaunts the educational value of church paintings and statues. At the beginning of the 13th century another Cistercian monk, Hélinand of Froidmont^[5], though a proponent of the return to an architectural simplicity he feared lost, gives vent to his skepticism when it comes to renouncing all figurative representation in the cloisters.

In fact, echoing this internal debate, Cistercian abbeys are rife with instances of transgression of the Order's norms concerning art works. Figurative sculptures thus show up in the most sober cloisters such as Sénanque. Human representations take the shape of gisants, notably of patrons who had themselves buried within the monastic walls.

The use of grisaille panels for the glazing does not appear to have been an infrangible rule as colours could be used to illustrate biblical scenes among others. In the field of miniature, the “monochrome style” disappeared as early as the years 1180-1190 after culminating in the 1160-1180s. Noted by 20th century “Cistercian art” historians, these breaches of the rule, which went multiplying throughout the 13th century, were first explained by a moral crisis within the Order, supposedly victim of its success as from the end of the 12th century. The numerous reiterations of the original prohibitions during the 13th century were understood as evidence of ever broadening transgressions.

However, recent studies call into question the chronological model of a rigorous aniconism in the 12th century followed by a long period of decadence. Indeed some instances, notably that of Aragon in the 14th century show that the Cistercians could observe the principles of deliberate plainness in architecture in latter times. These recent approaches warn against the idea of a moral decline and set forth a more balanced perception of the sought equilibrium between centripetal and centrifugal tendencies within the Order starting in the 12th century. They thus refute the idea of a “Cistercian art” supposing total uniformity in the Order's abbeys as dictated by Bernard de Clairvaux' thought and the prohibitions issued by the General Chapter. Specialists prefer to refer henceforward to the “Cistercians' art” which does not rely on specific innovations but on a fair range of choices arrived at by weighing up the locally available solutions against the prescriptions of the General Chapter.

As it happens, this debate was not restricted to the Cistercian realm: it is equally alive in other 12th century intellectual and religious circles. For instance, in the 1130s, the Scholastic philosopher Abelard^[11], sided with Bernard de Clairvaux – his sworn opponent though he was – on the banning of paintings and sculptures in a monastic context when it came to the Rule he sets before his erstwhile lover Héloïse^[12] for her community of nuns at the Paraclete. The addressee of the Apology, Bishop William of Saint-Thierry^[13], a former Benedictine monk favouring monastic reform engaged in turn the Carthusians to exclude works of art from their monasteries, and, in his letter to the brothers of Mont-Dieu shortly after 1144, beauty itself. Canon Hugh of Fouilloy^[14] wrote in similar terms circa 1153, in his allegorical treatise The Cloister of the Soul, one of the books most read by medieval monks, which establishes a relationship between monastic architecture and spirituality. He too called for the rejection of images, meaning mostly sculptures on the buildings as a way for religious communities to forego all luxuries; but he was happy to tolerate them for the purpose of educating ordinary folks. In every case, this is not a case of dogmatic rejection of images in religious practice but rather considerations about the possible contradiction between the lavishness of religious buildings and the ascetic aspirations of monasticism. In no way can the authors most critical of the use of images be suspected of iconoclasm.

The idea of Cistercian iconoclasm, indeed of a strictly aniconic tradition in the Order, must accordingly be laid to rest. The ideal of voluntary plainness patent in their 12th century theoretical and normative writings nevertheless had a lasting effect on their artistic praxis. The Order's output often displays an aniconist bent sensible in the reluctance towards figurative representations particularly within cloisters and abbey churches. They bear out a will to project exemplary poverty in a context of monastic polemic wherein the Cistercians intend to assert themselves as the champions of asceticism. However these orientations never prevailed absolutely and unanimously throughout the order in the 12th century and would carry less and less weight in the late Middle Ages when the debate between former and latter monasticism was superseded upon the advent of the Mendicant orders^[15].