This [Newminster] was the first seed our vine
put forth;
this was the first swarm which went from our hive. The
holy seed sprouted in the soil and, being cast as it were
in the lap of fertile earth, grew to a great plant, and from
a few grains there sprang a plentiful harvest.(39)
[‘Foundation history of Fountains’ (Narratio)]
Robert of Newminster He was modest in demeanour, gentle in company, merciful in judgement
and notable for his holy life. [‘Foundation history of Fountains’ (Narratio),
p. 187.]
Robert had been a Benedictine monk of Whitby, but joined the Fountains
community soon after its arrival at Skelldale. Read
more about Robert
The Fountains
community had stood firm in the face of adversity and weathered
the storm to establish deep and enduring roots. Now,
some five years after the reformers had fled from St Mary’s,
Fountains’ future was secure. The community’s reputation
spread, attracting recruits and benefactors who wished to be in
some way affiliated to such a praiseworthy abbey. Ralph de Merley,
lord of Morpeth, was so impressed that he granted Fountains land
on his estate in Northumberland to found another monastery, Newminster [Novum
Monasterium]. In the January of 1139, when the necessary
buildings had been erected, Fountains sent a colony of its monks
under the leadership of Robert, to start a new community at Newminster.
The fact that Fountains had the numbers and resources to found
Newminster – and the other daughter-houses that soon followed
- was testimony to the abbey’s success and commitment to
the Cistercian policy of expansion, a tradition strongly upheld
by Fountains’ mother-house, Clairvaux,
which had fostered a large and wide-spread family. Fountains soon
expanded into Lincolnshire,
founding daughter-houses at Kirkstead and Louth
Park. The two monks
of Fountains sent to lead these new communities, Robert of Sewell
and Gervase, had been members of the founding community that had
fled from St Mary’s in the tumult of 1132.
The first book
of the foundation history ends with the death of Abbot Richard,
described as his ‘falling asleep’. Abbot
Richard had seen the Fountains community through difficult times
and led them to stability, security and success. He had established
the abbey’s renown and was himself highly reputed. Indeed,
he greatly impressed Bishop Alberic of Ostia, the papal legate
whom he guided around the North of England and Scotland in 1138,
and accompanied to Rome. This, however, was to be Richard’s
final journey, for he contracted a fever en route and died at Rome,
where he was buried in 1139:
[the Lord] took him from his pilgrimage
to his home, from
toil to the longed-for rest of God. (40)