Old french words

Raoul

doi:10.1093/nq/s4-iv.100.462a

Old French Words

Notes and Queries ◽

10.1093/nq/s4-iv.98.420f ◽

1869 ◽

Vol s4-IV (98) ◽

pp. 420-420

Author(s):

Hermentrude

Keyword(s):

Old French ◽

French Words

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Old french words

Notes and Queries ◽

10.1093/nq/s4-v.105.24a ◽

1870 ◽

Vol s4-V (105) ◽

pp. 24-24

Author(s):

Henry T. Riley

Keyword(s):

Old French ◽

French Words

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The Beginnings of the Cistercian Order

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society ◽

10.2307/3678231 ◽

1905 ◽

Vol 19 ◽

pp. 169-207

Author(s):

W. A. Parker Mason

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Old French ◽

Religious Orders ◽

North West ◽

The North ◽

Cistercian Order ◽

Rolling Plain ◽

French Words ◽

The Church

In the eastern part of the Duchy of Burgundy, in a region which now forms the southern portion of the Côte-d'Or Department, lies Cîteaux. The country around, after gently sloping from the hills on which Dijon stands, some four or five leagues to the north, here expands into a rolling plain formed by the basin of the Saône, and not far away southwards there is the junction of this river with its tributaries, the Doubs and the Denthe. The Côte-d'Or hills to the north-west protect it from some of the more violent storms, and under their shelter and through the congenial nature of the soil has grown up the great vine-growing industry of the district. Around Cîteaux in old days the country was wild, marshy, and a tangled mass of scrub, and even to-day the soil here is marshy, and there is an abundance of pools. The name itself shows the nature of the place: in its older form Cisteaux, or Cistercium, it seems to be derived either from Cisternæ, which Du Cange explains as ‘a marsh with stagnant pools’; or from Cistels, as the Bollandists give the form of the word; or Citeals, which is the form of the word preferred by Courtépée, with a variant Cisteauls. These last are explained as old French words meaning marsh rushes. Whichever be the correct derivation, the fact pointed to is the same; the word itself shows the swampy, unpromising nature of the country. But here was to spring up the mother-house of one of the greatest and most powerful of the religious orders of the Church, which some ot its adherents could claim to have been the mother of 10,000 dependent houses, 4,000 male, and 6,000 female, by the seventeenth century.

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