Introduction
The reform of the secular clergy that culminated in a confrontation between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire over the investiture of bishops so dominated the history of the Latin world during the second half of the 11th century that it often overshadows the significant regeneration which was taking place at the same time within the regular clergy. Indeed a good many reformers were busy at the time questioning current practices, advocating a new, stricter monasticism that would privilege hermitism along with asceticism in the monks' daily practice. Their initiatives led to the advent of a range of new institutions many of which propagated and set up congregations of varying importance generally known to historians as the “new orders”. A small number is remembered to this day, which achieved a lasting success: the Carthusians at Grandmont, Fontevraud or Tiron, and, even more so, the Cistercians.
Informations[1]Founded in 1098, the “new monastery” of Cîteaux propagated from the 1110s onwards and numbered up to 740 male houses and probably as many female ones throughout Europe and beyond: by 1157, the monastery of Belmont had been founded in the Crusader States, in the County of Tripoli, today's North Lebanon, where, as Our Lady of Balamand it is an Orthodox religious house. The founders expounded a militant program in order to bring ancient monastic traditions into their slipstream and they signalled their breach with the past with highly visible symbols such as the choice of a different colour for their habit: gone was the traditional monastic black in favour of the white of purity and poverty.
In this context the Cistercians developed a specific discourse on the place of art works in the monastic environment. Their attitude to figurative art stands out to the point that some specialists have sometimes alluded to a late resurgence of iconoclasm in the mediaeval Latin world. The pertinence of this analysis needs closer scrutiny as do the terminology o that end.
