Narratives of a New Order

The origins of the Cistercian monastic order are currently under intense scrutiny and revision, as scholars identify how the written word was used to ‘invent’ a unified corporate identity. Here Elizabeth Freeman examines the classic genre for inventing a past – the history, chronicle, and annal – and argues that historical narratives of the English Cistercians helped define the characteristics of both the new Cistercian monastic order and also the new orders of twelfth- and thirteenth-century En