Founding of Rievaulx Abbey

1132

A dozen Cistercian monks from Clairvaux, led by the future Aelred's mentor, settled in a steep Yorkshire valley and began building an abbey that within fifty years would have six hundred monks and lay brothers. It was the mother house of the English Cistercians. Under Aelred's abbacy the community became famous for its warmth and intellectual life, a rare combination in an order that prized austerity above all else.