Carta Caritatis: Collège des Bernardins celebrates 900th Anniversary

Amidst persistent difficulties in identifying who precisely founded the Cistercian Order and when, historians have assigned a pivotal role to St. Stephen Harding, who is popularly considered to be the third abbot of Cîteaux and the author of the Carta Caritatis, a vastly influential piece of monastic legislation that received approbation from the Holy See exactly 900 years ago, in 1119. The Carta counts as a foundational legislative document: Scholars see in it an indispensable, often-adapted constitution and therefore the mark of the Cistercian Order’s maturity. Without it, so goes one line of logic, there could be no Cistercian Order in the fully canonical sense. Look at the conference program here.