Saint Robert was brought up near Gargrave in the district of Craven somewhere near the Aire Gap. This is where the River Aire, the A65, the railway and the canal all come together before going their separate ways. The geography that brought this communication network together here is also the reason for the fact that Gargrave has never been as secluded as a cursory glance at the map of North Yorkshire might suggest. Robert’s world was larger than village life. When he was old enough he went to the expanding University of Paris to study.
It is possible that he met Saint Stephen Harding there. He would certainly have known about him and his writing. Following a visit from Saint Benedict, Stephen Harding wrote the original version of the Cistercian rules of monastic life, the Carta Caritas – the Charter of Love. This was published in 1119 and was so influential that numerous Cistercian monasteries were built to house the influx of young men wanting to live a life of prayer and hard work according to Stephen’s rules. The most famous of these monasteries was built at Cîteaux, not far from the village of Nuits-Saint-Georges, now famous for its wines, in Burgundy. The wine is not an insignificant detail: vines were originally grown on land that was useless for anything else. When rich people made gifts of land to the monastery, Stephen would only accept undeveloped land. Cîteaux was not a comfortable location.
Robert was ordained and returned home to Gargrave as parish priest. He had the reputation of being a prayerful and gentle man but the education and influences of his time in Paris had given him a set of expectations and ambitions that could not be fulfilled by simple parish work. Robert became a Benedictine monk at Whitby and joined a small group of thirteen monks from St Mary’s Abbey in York. There had been a riot there in 1132 and this group wanted to set up on their own living according to strict rules.
The Archbishop of York gave them a piece of wet land in an undeveloped valley on the banks of the River Skell in Yorkshire. Robert and his companions moved there in the winter of 1132. They lived a life of extreme poverty in makeshift buildings. They had to be very tough and determined. It did not take long before they became known in the area round about for their holiness and dedication to the Benedictine way of life as practised by the monks of Cîteaux.
Their lives changed when the Dean of York gave the group his entire fortune and joined them himself. Now they were able to afford stone to build with. The land was tamed and the numerous springs controlled. It was because of these springs that the place was called Fountains Abbey. Robert felt called to start again.
In 1138 Robert and a few others set out to form a colony of Fountains Abbey near Morpeth. He became abbot of the new minster and over the next ten years he sent monks out to start new abbeys at Pipewell, Roche and Sawley. Robert became famous as an abbot for the way he was much harder on himself than on others. His biographer says that Robert was “strict with himself, kind and merciful to others, learned and yet simple.”
Robert used all his education, energy and force of character in the service of God. He changed both the physical and spiritual landscape of his own time for good.
Author: C B Whittle