The New International Encyclopædia/Harding, Stephen

HARDING, Stephen (?-1134). The third abbot of the celebrated monastery of Cîteaux. Of his parentage and youthful history little is known beyond the fact that he was born at Sherborne, near Dorchester, England, of a respectable family, and in early life traveled first to Scotland, then to Paris, and later to Rome, On his way back he stopped at the Benedictine monastery at Molesme, near Dijon, Burgundy, and joining the Order, received the name of Stephen. He delighted in austerities, and left the monastery with some twenty companions, including the abbot and prior, in order that they might start a new monastery where the Benedictine rule should be strictly observed. Cîteaux, the ‘cisterns,’ fifteen miles south of Dijon, a barren and marshy spot, seemed attractive to the band, and there the monastery was built. In 1110 Stephen was elected its abbot. The rigor of observance which he enforced had such an effect in deterring novices from entering the new Order that at first grave fears were entertained for its stability; but Stephen persevered, and was rewarded in 1113 by the accession of Saint Bernard (q.v.) and thirty others, who gave such an impulse to the institute that in a short time the number ot claimants for admission compelled him to found several new convents, and especially that ot Clairvaux (1115), which, under the rule of Saint Bernard, attained to the very highest distinction in that age. Stephen continued till his death, at Cîteaux, March 28, 1134, to direct the fortunes of the Cistercian Order. In 1119 he drew up, in conjunction with Saint Bernard and other members of the brotherliood, the well-known constitutions of the Order, entitled the Charter of Charity, which were approved by Popes Calixtus II. and Eugenius III., and, with some modifications, have continued down to modern times as the rule of the Cistercian institute. Two of Stephen's letters are preserved among the Epistolæ Sancti Bernardi (Epp. 45 and 49). See Cistercians.