e of St. Bernard. This aimed at reviving the Benedictine rule in all
its strictness, insisting especially on manual labour. Cistercian houses
were founded in desolate places, as far removed from populous centres as
possible. But the Order differed from the early Benedictines in
organisation. Each Cistercian house was independent and self-governing,
electing its own abbot; but all the abbots were bound to come together
at stated times for general assemblies or chapters, and these general
assemblies were the supreme governing body in the Order. Thus unity was
established; the organisation was close, but not monarchical; the Order
was a great federation. This is the highest point reached in monastic
development.

But about the time of the Crusades another ideal made itself felt.
Hitherto the religious man withdrew from the world: but, as an old
chronicler put it, "God found out the Crusades as a way to reconcile
religion and the world"--was it not possible to serve God _in_ the
world? The knight did it; he went on fighting, but he fought for the
Holy Sepulchre. The Military Orders (Templars and Hospitallers)
combined the life of a monk with the life of a soldier. The Regular or
Augustinian Canons combined the life of a monk with the life of a
parish priest. And this ideal--new to the Middle Ages--received its
highest realisation in the Dominican and Franciscan friars. The monk
left the world in order to become religious; the friar aimed at making
the world religious. The monk's main object was to save his own soul;
the friar's, to save the souls of others.

We will now turn to the monasteries in Wales. Of the older
Benedictine houses there were about fifteen, almost all in South
Wales, and all except one were not abbeys but priories, or cells,
_i.e._, they were dependent on some abbey elsewhere. A number of them
belonged to some foreign abbey, especially the earliest. This was the
case with the Priory of Monmouth, founded by the Breton Wihenoc, which
belonged to the Abbey of St. Florence of Saumur (Anjou); and this was
the case too with the priories of Abergavenny and Pembroke. These
"alien priories" were simply used by the abbeys abroad as sources of
revenue; they were foreign, unpopular, and during the French war in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries most of them were suppressed
and their revenues appropriated by the Crown. The same applies to the
three Cluniac cells established in Wales, such as St. Clears, which