SOURCE: Pranger, M. B. Introduction to Bernard of Clairvaux and the Shape of the Monastic Thought: Broken Dreams, pp. 3-18. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1994.

In the following excerpt, Pranger speculates about the effect that the physical environment of the Cistercian monastery may have exerted on Bernard and his writings.

Entering the site of the twelfth-century Cistercian monasteries at Fontenay in Burgundy or Le Thoronet in Provence, the visitor takes in two seemingly different sets of images. On the one hand, there is the austere but massive architectural form of the buildings making up the monastic complex, with their simple geometrical proportions. On the other hand, there is the extreme, untamed wildness of the surrounding landscape. Yet it is one single image which is conveyed to the eye of the beholder. What, then, does he really see? Form or chaos, light or darkness, exuberant vegetation or ascetic...