"Oubliant ce qui est en arriére et me portant vers ce qui est en avant". Clairvaux et les institutions cisterciennes

This paper, in an attempt to analyze the position of Clairvaux in front of the Cistercian institutions, starts off from a passage of the letter of Paul to the Philippians (3: 12-14): ‘Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus’. These three verses, especially verse 13, are quoted in numerous texts of Bernard of Clairvaux and in some papal letters, not only for the Cistercians but also for other monastic experiences. Using this passage, a personal level, linked to the spiritual progress of the individual alternates with a more institutional level, linked to the normative and disciplinary progress of a community experience. Furthermore an eschatological perspective, intimately embedded in the Pauline passage, is replaced sometimes with a whole worldly perspective, linked to specific regular ways of life. We can find here a shift from what may be called a backward – to a forward – looking ideology of reform. The reformatory trend that Clairvaux gave to the Cistercian order tended to look less to the past and more to the future for the models it sought to impose upon the present.