The Proto-Cistercian Office for Mary Magdalene and Its Changes in the Course of the Twelfth Century 1

The first fifty years of the existence of the Cistercian order were marked by two major liturgical reforms. Around 1110, while Stephen Harding was abbot at Cîteaux, the founders of the Abbey of Cîteaux abandoned their Benedictine liturgy in favor of one they considered to be more authentic to the traditions of Saint Ambrose ² and of Pope Gregory the Great. ³ Having originated in Milan and Metz, this first Cistercian liturgy was profoundly reorganized at the beginning of the 1140s, when Saint Bernard of Clairvaux sought to substitute for the traditional liturgy a chant that was more ordered, reasoned and based on theoretical principles. ⁴ It also gave rise to controversy within the order. Of the pre-Bernardine sources that show this liturgical flowering, two stand out: the breviary Berlin Ms 402, ⁵ a unique, intact and complete record of the texts of the early Cistercian Office (sometimes called “primitive Cistercian Office”), ⁶ and the antiphonary Westmalle Ms 12A–B, ⁷ whose contribution is that it shows the traces of the two successive Cistercian reforms.