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Ordinis splendor.

San Bernardo alle Terme

6/12/2025

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This is the facade of the once-famous San Bernardo alle Terme, seat of the influential Feuillants, a splitter group within the Cistercian movement who took their name from Feulliant Abbey, where their founder Jean de la Barrière was abbot. The movement had a French and an Italian wing, with the Italians soon dominating and having their administrative seat in San Bernardo alle Terme, located very conventiently near the Diocletian Baths in Rome and today just a jump from Termini train station. 

The interior is like the Pantheon, and behind the altar you will find the graves of two men who were exceedingly significant for Cistercian history: the most famous tombstone is that of Cardinal Giovanni Bona (†1674, himself a Feuillant, considered to be the father of modern liturgical theology and much admired by Pope Pius X). There lies also Abbot Jean de la Barrière (†1600, founder of the Feuillants), and finally Cardinal Francesco Sforza (†1624), himself not a Cistercian. 

The Feuillants flourished for about 200 years, but did not survive the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. This Roman church (they had several) became a parish church in the early 1800s and has always been run by Cistercians, currently the monks are Eritrean Cistercians arriving via Casamari. One of them is pictured below. Note his fez-like hat (it's part of their habit). 

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