Welsh Journals

is brought out in the universal dedication of their churches to St. Mary, and in the distinctive dress which caused them to be popularly known as White Monks in contrast to the Black Monks of the older orders. Apart from revolutionising the religious outlook of the age, the Cistercian revival was accompanied by important repercussions on the economic and social usages of the lands in which their settlements are found. Unlike their predecessors, Cistercian houses were forbidden to accept endowments in the form of fully developed estates or the gift of churches and tithes. This meant that the new abbeys were usually built in remote districts, in deserted valleys or on the fringes of lonely moorlands "far removed from the concourse of men" and their endowments consisted as a rule of vast tracts of virgin waste, making it necessary for the monks to face up to the immense task of developing those territories. This great undertaking was facilitated by the creation of a class of lay brethren who were subject to normal monastic discipline, although they devoted most of their time to manual labour on the scattered granges which characterised the fully developed Cistercian establishment. There need only be instanced the pioneer work of the Cistercians as sheep farmers and wool merchants in Eng- land, and in Wales, to realise how the exploitation of large areas of waste land was an immense contribution to economic progress during the central period of the middle ages. Within fifty years of the foundation of Citeaux there were not far short of three hundred and fifty Cistercian monasteries in Europe. Though Cistercian influence had reached the Welsh border by 1130, another decade was to pass before the Order secured its first real foot-hold in Wales. It is true that Neath and Basingwerk, both Savignac houses belonging to an order which had sprung up under the same impetus as Citeaux, were founded as early as 1130 and 1131, and became Cistercian in I 147 when Savigny merged with Citeaux, but the first purely Cistercian house was Whitland, founded at Little Trefgarn sometime between 1140 and 1144, and then moved to Whitland in 1151. Margam followed in 1 1 47, the year in which Neath and Basingwerk became Cistercian. All four foundations, though at first by no means without attraction for native elements in the pop- ulation, appeared in Norman territory, and having been originally endowed by powerful Norman benefactors, became in time, with the notable exception of Whitland, thoroughly Norman in sympathy and outlook. Whitland, on the other hand, passed in 1165 under the protection pf a native dynasty, and as the mother house of an entirely Welsh group of Cistercian monasteries, continued to enjoy the patron- age of Welsh lords until the final collapse of political independence.