The Abbey of Neuzelle began in 1268, when Margrave Henry the Illustrious (Henry III of Meissen; Henry IV of Lusatia) donated lands in Lower Lusatia to monks from a Cistercian Abbey in Bohemia. At the time, the Cistercians had been a dynamic project of “commoning” for more than a century. At the center of the life was the spiritual good: God, who was for them the ultimate “common good” the common end of their lives, in which all shared without diminishment or division. He was what scholastic theologians at the time had begun calling the “extrinsic common good”. Around that central common good the Cistercians built a life of prayer, study, work, eating, and sleeping, ordered according to the Rule of St Benedict. That order of life was the “intrinsic common good” that defined their community. Again, a good that was not divided or diminished by being shared. This order included some elements that would appear egalitarian to us—included holding all possessions in common. St Benedict is very vehement in his condemnation of private property:

Very specially is this vice of private ownership to be cut off from the monastery by the roots; and let not anyone presume to give or accept anything without the abbot’s orders, nor to have anything as his own, not anything whatsoever, neither book, nor writing-tablet, nor pen; no, nothing at all, since indeed it is not allowed them to keep either body or will in their own power, but to look to receive everything necessary from their monastic father; and let not any be allowed to have what the abbot has not either given or permitted. And let all things be common to all, as it is written: “Neither did any one of them say or presume that anything was his own.” (Regula Benedicti, c. 33)

But the Rule also contains elements that we would think of as more hierarchical. St Benedict presupposes that the true good of human beings cannot be attained without discipline, without rules and authorities which help the monks overcome bad habits and disordered desires, and be liberated through true virtue.

The community was what the scholastics called a “prudential society,” ordered to human flourishing as such, rather than an “artistic society,” which would be ordered to a particular product of human technology. Nevertheless, as part of the order of their life they also produced goods. They cleared forests, drained marshes, worked and developed the land, and founded villages in which laypeople could live and work.

What was Henry the Illustrious’s intention in donating land to the Cistercians? Certainly, he wanted to develop Christianity in his Margravate. He was concerned for the spiritual good of his subjects. But he was also interested in the cultural, agricultural, and economic development of the region. The new agricultural methods and technologies (including innovations in the use of waterwheels) for which the Cistercians were famed, could play an important role in the development of lands which at the time were little better than wilderness. In other words, he hoped it would contribute to the flourishing of the lands under his rule on various levels. And he was not disappointed. The area was developed, and a feudal domain with more than 30 villages was established, with flourishing agriculture and crafts.

Could we see a Cistercian Abbey as a “parallel polis” in Bollier’s sense? We can see that the Cistercian order, and other orders influenced by them, such as the Nobertines and the Dominicans, related to the wider society in various ways. We have seen some of them already. But we also see more properly political convergences. On the one hand the close-knit character of the monastic community, with common property etc., could not be copied 1-1 in the wider society. On the other hand, the organizational structure of the religious orders (such as the Charter of Charity of the Cistercian St Stephan Harding, which regulated relations between monasteries, or the constitutions of the Norbertines and the Dominicans) was even influential on the constitutional development of European states. Archbishop Stephen Langton stayed at the Cistercian Abbey of Pontigny for several years while in exile from England, and the Charter of Charity may have been an influence on the Magna Carta, of which he became one of the main drafters. Later, the Dominican Constitutions were an influence on the development of the English Parliament.

The cooperation between Henry the Illustrious and the Cistercians was clearly based on a shared vision of human flourishing and spiritual life, which lay behind their vision of the common good.

But in subsequent centuries the monks of Neuzelle could not always rely on a shared vision with temporal rulers. In the Hussite wars, 12 monks were killed by the Hussites, who did not share their vision of spiritual life. After the Reformation, the population around Neuzelle converted to Protestantism, the monastery itself remained Catholic, and was secured even after the Thirty Years War by treaty, but it now had to recruit its monks from further afield (mostly from Bohemia). It was during this period that the map on our poster and flyer was made. It shows the impressive Baroque remodeling of the Abbey’s grounds, which were meant as a sign of contradiction in a hostile environment.

After the Napoleonic Wars, Neuzelle came under Prussian dominion, and in 1817 the abbey was dissolved by King Frederick William III of Prussia, it’s lands being confiscated by the Prussian State. The buildings and some of its lands are now administered by a state foundation. For King Frederick William, the Cistercian Abbey was a remnant of a backward and superstitious past that had no place in a progressive future.

In 2018, however, six monks from my own Cistercian Abbey of Stift Heiligenkreuz in Austria revived the Cistercian life in Neuzelle, with the foundation of a new monastery there. This new foundation would not have been possible without the cooperation of the government of the Land of Brandenburg. At the time under a “red-red” coalition of the Social Democrats and the Left. It was in particular the social democrat culture minister who supported the project against the objections of some within the state-run foundation Neuzelle. Why did she support the project? Probably not because she expected us to again found thirty villages. But it seems, that she saw some cultural and (even) spiritual value in some part of the monastery being used for its original purpose.

Clearly, the German Social Democratic Party does not in every respect share the vision of human flourishing that we Cistercians, as Catholic monks, uphold. (The SPD is clearly committed in many ways to the liberal state/market complex, and the prioritization of autonomy over community, eg. assisted suicide). Nevertheless, a certain amount of cooperation is possible. Who knows what the future will hold?

At any rate, we see that efforts for the common good require movement in two directions. First, we need spontaneous movements of commoning from below, such as those described by David Bollier. But, second, we also need political action from above, directed not primarily to the promotion of capitalist profit-making, but toward the fostering of true common goods. The more a true understanding of human flourishing can be promoted at both levels, the more cooperation will be possible.