Da Chiaravalle a Cerreto e ritorno. Tempi e motivi dell'incorporazione di un'abbazia cistercense

The article makes a new hypothesis on the reform of Cerreto and its incorporation in the order. The reform of the abbey in the Lodi area does not seem to be one in the commonest meaning of the term, i.e. the exchange of a Benedictine community for a Cistercian one. For a few years, Milan’s Chiaravalle and Cerreto were probably the two poles of the same institution. The group of monks who settled in Milan in August 1135, in a political and economic context that was not yet favourable, moved to the much more solid Lodi coenobium, which was already well established, between 1136 and 1139, thanks to the initiative of the Roman Church, of which this institution was the eminent property. This passage was probably considered with favour by the Ambrosian city, which saw in this southward projection, an important bridgehead that was also political-strategic. For a certain period of time, Cerreto and Chiaravalle thus formed a single institution from the property point of view as well, linked directly to Clairvaux in Champagne. The barycentre of the pair was Cerreto, the seat that the abbot Bruno, very close to Bernard of Clairvaux, chose for some years. Bruno was therefore not at the head of two abbeys, one in Milan and the other in Lodi area, between 1139 and 1144, but probably he was only the abbot of Cerreto, of which Chiaravalle was temporarily an appendix, albeit an important one.