The year 1198 witnessed the start of an unlikely alliance between a new pope and a long-established monastic order. It would have been considered unlikely because relationships between secular and regular branches of the church were often uneasy and sometimes even tense. 1198 was indeed a chance for a new beginning. In Rome on 8 January, the cardinals raised one of their fellows, the thirty-seven-year-old Lotario dei Conti di Segni, to the Chair of St Peter as Innocent III. In Burgundy, on 14 September, the Cistercian Order was beginning its second century of existence at Cîteaux. It was time, not only for a celebration of the hundredth anniversary but also for a radical reassessment of the motives of the foundation. Guido de Paray, presiding over the annual General Chapter by right as abbot of Cîteaux, read out to the assembled abbots a letter received from the new pope in Rome. Surely the coincidence of these two events could bring forth fruit in some form or other? For his part, Innocent, while stressing his youth and inexperience, earnestly begged the Cistercians to remember him in their prayers. By so doing he would be better enabled to fulfil the pastoral office to which he had recently been called. In a phrase that he was later to use to cities of the Patrimony, he reminded the order that, although Christ’s yoke was easy and the burden light, it was, nevertheless, of vital importance that it be taken up. Mary’s spiritual contemplation was to be just as vital as Martha’s activity! In return for their prayers, the pope made a personal threefold promise to the abbots. He stated his intention to watch carefully over their progress, to be ‘powerfully’ at hand for them in their necessities and, lastly, to provide a safeguard by his apostolic protection against the attacks of all those who were ill-intentioned. ‘These things we shall pursue the more willingly when we feel that we are supported by your prayers and merits. For it is right that the universal Church should pour forth its prayers for us and mitigate our inadequacy by its supplications’