Cysterski krajobraz ciszy

For ages the Cistercians demonstrated a very personalized approach to nature. No other monks have become such an inherent part of the natural environment understanding the laws of nature as the Cistercians did. No other monks used the nature powers to work for the congregation as eagerly as the Cistercians did. The Cistercian foundations are characterized by a perfect adaptation to the landscape not only in respect of functions and composition but also significance. In their charisma the Cistercians rejected superficial beauty, however they had a common belief that a beautiful landscape may “revive a dying spirit, soften a tough mind intact by piety”. The monks who voluntarily remained in seclusion and also the pilgrims visiting the monastery, the beauty of the world articulated by landscape was a testimony of the Creator’s love and was used as a stimuli encouraging spiritual reflections and even more zealous praying and working. One of the very important components of such holy spaces was a specific world of sounds. Isolated from the world by walls of an abbey, the space of claustrum was characterized by a piercing silence regularly broken by the prayers of the monks and at solemn moments by organ music and Gregorian choirs. The time of prayer was distinctly separated from the time of work when the cloister gardens and households were fulfilled with the noise of tools. One of the contemporary monks of St. Bernard of Clairvaux – the most eminent of the Cistercians, describes his native monastery in the following way: “During the day one hears the silence of the night, interrupted by hitting of an axe and singing of pious workers; the sight so touching that it is not possible to think or talk about trivial things”. An isolation from a bustling external world was extremely important for keeping the atmosphere of concentration and finding inner silence. Closing in the monastic silence was to seclude the monks from earthly matters, to make them sensitive to more spiritual perceiving of the world, opening them to the voice of God. The Benedictine ora et labora most briefly characterizes the type of sounds heard in the abbeys of white monks. A deeper entrance into the climate of such secluded places of spiritual experiencing the world can show how versatile and today much more scarce are those sounds and how important it is to protect the acoustic sphere of the sacral landscape.