Cîteaux

This 1650 engraving shows how the great abbey of Cîteaux (Côte d'Or), mother house of the Cistercian Order which had such a big influence on the development of pre-Reformation England, looked a century before the French Revolution. The pictures below show the miserable concrete box that was erected to replace the destroyed abbey church in the latter part of the 20th century. To me it is a sad illustration of the loss of confidence in the Christian aesthetic tradition that has crept in from the 1960s onwards. I tried to pray in it, but, like Hamlet, had the feeling that "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: words without thoughts never to Heaven go."




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