Stacey Graham

REVIEWS Constance Hoffman Berman, The Cistercian Evolution: The Inven- tion of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania 2000) xxiv + 382 pp.; 49 b/w illustra- tions; 5 appendices. The Cistercian Order represents the most amazing success story of twelfth-century Europe, and perhaps of the entire history of monasti- cism. As such, it has attracted the scholarly attention of generations of academics, who interpret the early history of the Order generally as follows. Fostered by the general milieu of religious reform and by the charismatic writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, the Order grew from humble beginnings at Citeaux into a network of abbeys radiating out- ward from Burgundy with astonishing speed. New monasteries were founded by a process called “apostolic gestation,” whereby a small group of monks leave the mother house to found the daughter house, and were characteristically located in remote places, according to the ideal of the “dese...

The concept of preserving buildings and landscapes is not an invention of the post-industrial age.  In the Middle Ages, people and institutions reused buildings and spaces that were significant for their association with a classical or palaeochristian past.  At the same time, attitudes towards historic structures allowed for the repurposing of building materials on both small and large scales.  In some respects a far cry from what we would call historic preservation today, I describe what passed for preservation in the Middle Ages as "preservation through use."  It was not a concerted administrative or ecclesiastical policy, though it was aided through repeated legislation on the part of emperors, popes, and civic bodies.  When neighborhoods were continuously occupied, infrastructure utilized, and buildings adapted to new functions, those parts of the built environment generally endured.  Because these structures were used in a practical sense, they were included in, rather than isolated from, the cultural landscapes of their (mostly) urban environments.  They did not merely survive, but were preserved because they served a function, though not necessarily because they were witnesses to the past.