069: Medieval Heritage in the Heart of California | Abbot Paul Mark Schwan (Part 1)

Part 1 of this interview explores the rich history of the Abbey of New Clairvaux, a Roman Catholic monastery in Vina, California. The abbey is rooted in the Benedictine tradition, a monastic lifestyle that began over 1,500 years ago. Abbot Fr. Paul Mark Schwan shares how through the monastery, medieval European monasticism intersected with U.S. westward expansion, touching upon historical figures like William Randolph Hearst and Leland Stanford, and the early years of the California wine industry. We learn about the abbey's foundation in 1955 by monks from Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky, as well as the extensive history of the Vina location itself, which was once home to Native American tribes and later became an important site for prominent historical figures in California. The discussion also delves into the medieval stone church purchased by William Randolph Hearst, and its journey to California from Spain. Tune in to discover how these stones connect with present-day Golden Gate Park and their ultimate fate.

00:00 Introduction to the Abbey of New Clairvaux
00:31 Meeting the Monks and Learning the History
01:23 The Monastic Life and Its Origins
06:25 Founding of New Clairvaux
08:12 The Location and Its Historical Significance
10:18 The Property's Previous Owners
16:16 Leland Stanford's Vision and Challenges
26:20 William Randolph Hearst and the Ovila Monastery
33:31 Conclusion and Segue to Part 2

The Abbey of New Clairvaux's Website

Transcript

Damian Bacich 0:00

Welcome to season four of the California Frontier podcast. I'm your host, Damian Basich, and I'm excited to bring you a new season of stories, of interviews, all about and from the history of this fascinating place, which is California. So stay tuned for the first episode of this new season. The Abbey of New Clairvaux is a Roman Catholic monastery in Vina, California, located at the north end of the Great Central Valley. The monks who live there dedicate themselves to a strict regime of manual labor, prayer, and welcoming of visitors and pilgrims. that has its origin over 1, 500 years ago when Saint Benedict of Norcia wrote down a rule for monks in Western Europe to live by. So a few months ago, I had a chance to visit New Clairvaux for the first time. I got to meet some of the monks and learn about its history. There I found out about a series of people and events in which medieval European monasticism intersected with U. S. westward expansion, the California wine industry, and titanic figures such as William Randolph Hearst and Leland Stanford. Fr. Paul Mark Swan is the abbot or leader of the Monastery of New Clairvaux. I asked him to walk us through the fascinating story of the Monastery, its origins, and its place in the history of California.

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 1:48

I'm a native of North Dakota and, uh, I was in seminary there, um, studying for the diocesan priesthood when I, um, I came across a book by Thomas Merton, a celebrated American monk of the Trappist Cistercian Order in Kentucky, and you might say I was smitten. I fell in love at that moment. And, uh, so, um, kind of a long story short, after I did finish, um, my college degree at the seminary, and I spent two years, um, living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, working for a city newspaper there. And I was in discernment, and with this monastery, with several other monasteries, of our order. Our order itself goes back as a reform of the Benedictine tradition in the year 1098, in a place very close to Dijon, France. It's still there today, called, um, Citeaux. Or Cistercium in Latin. At any rate, uh, it was a reform of the Benedictines, um, and we eventually got to be labeled Trappist, um, because of another reform hundreds of years later at a monastery of the same order, the Cistercians, um, in a place called La Troppe in, in northern France, in Normandy. And then those Cistercian monks that followed that reform, and this is, in one sense it goes back about 400 years ago, in another sense the nickname Trappist began to be used about 200 years ago for that group that continued to follow these reformed principles. From Latrop. But at any rate, I did my discernment and I came here in 1980. I, well, I entered the monastery. And so I've been here ever since. Held a lot of, um, different, um, positions, responsibilities in the monastery. And 16 years ago I was elected the leader. We call the abbot, kind of a pastor, is probably the best term in church vocabulary. And in the civil world, I would be called the CEO, the president of the corporation. So, but just a nutshell of who we are. We are monks. Monks in the Christian world have been around for, you know, some 1700 years. Again, as a way of. radically living the gospel, going out to wilderness areas or desert areas where few people lived, to enter into a communion with God, without as many distractions as it were that That would have been, you know, had, I guess the monks had stayed in regular society, etc. So it's always had a radical element. It's in that sense of following the gospel in a particular form, leaving a lot of You know, things behind careers, um, family, um, you know, all those things that, um, other people are not necessarily called to leave behind, like yourself. You're a university professor, and that's what you're supposed to be doing. So, um, but monks, you know, again, um, throughout the, the Middle Ages, um, And its monks were both in the Christian East and the Christian West, so it's a kind of a universal vocation and call. But in the West, it came to be associated with the rule of Saint Benedict, and this is a rule for monks that was written in the, I suppose, really the very early 6th century, but based on older monastic tradition. At about the year 800, under an emperor called the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, uh, he decided that all monks were going to follow the rule of Saint Benedict, and um, you know. So ever since that time, uh, the Benedictine life, as it were, has been very, very crucial in European civilization and education, but um, just in development of the whole um, Christian Um, and that's what we are part of, even though we are a reform with a different name, as it were, but we are Benedictines. Um, but in the Benedictine tradition, uh, when a monastery reaches a certain number of monks, um, they discern if they should make a new foundation, send monks out to a new place and begin a new church, as it were, a monastic church. And so, it was in 1955 that this abbey in Gethsemane, or Gethsemane Abbey in Trappist, Kentucky, about an hour south of Louisville, they had so many vocations that, um, they sent out, um, twenty, twenty six, actually I think it was twenty eight monks, uh, to found this monastery here in Vaina, California. Uh, yes.

Damian Bacich 7:43

So, Vaina, well, first of all, 28 monks. How many monks were at the Abbey of Gethsemane at the time?

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 7:51

Uh, yes.

Damian Bacich 7:52

said they had so

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 7:53

You're right. Well, there were, you know, close to 300 monks,

Damian Bacich 7:57

Wow.

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 7:58

some 270, 280 monks. Yeah, it was a little, probably a little bit too big. I should say this same monastery of Gethsemane had founded four other monasteries prior to us in the 11 years from 1944 to 1951. And then, um, we were founded in 1955. So it was a time of great growth, uh, for that particular house. And it's still there. It was founded in 1848 from France, you know? Um, so go ahead.

Damian Bacich 8:37

So, so Vaina is, can you tell us a little bit about where it is? Maybe a lot of people don't know where Vaina is.

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 8:47

most people have never heard of Vaina. Vaina is located about 20 minutes north of the city of Chico, so that makes us about two hours north of the state capital, Sacramento. And we sit right, very close to the river, so we're right kind of in the heart of the Sacramento Valley. Um, and three hours north of us is the Oregon border, you know. Um, so that's where Vina is. Um, it

Damian Bacich 9:16

And why was that place chosen?

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 9:18

well, uh, we were able to find some very good farmland. Which today we realize is probably some of the best in the world that we sit on. There was, uh, an active ranch farming operation of orchards, uh, dairy cows, um, that was already in place. A lot of buildings were already in existence of very old buildings, historical buildings. Um, and so the, the family that owned, uh, the property, uh, they had other property as well, further just North of us. But they were willing to, to sell this working ranch and farm to the monks of Gethsemane. And it suited our needs and our particular approach to living monastic life, with a strong emphasis on manual labor and self support, and which usually means, or did mean, agricultural and animal husbandry kinds of industries. You know, so,

Damian Bacich 10:27

So I know that this, uh, that your location has a, has a big connection to California history. And could you talk to us about who the previous owners were and a little bit about the background of that, uh, of that property?

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 10:44

uh, yes, um, of course, you know, going way, way back, thousands of years, you know, the Native Americans and there were several tribes that, you know, had, well, kind of claimed this as part of their territory and some of them was the Nolaki, um, and they're still in the area, the Yanayahi, you know. which I, unfortunately, that tribe was totally decimated. Um, and it's one of its last members, or its last member, was a man named Ishi. And he's somewhat celebrated as the last, Wild Indian, I forgot how the title goes, but, um, so his people would have lived here along Deer Creek, and we find lots of Indian artifacts along the creek, and, you know, the indicated villages, and this goes back maybe four or five thousand years, you know. But as far as Spanish and European American settlement, Uh, a Danish, uh, immigrant who was working for John Sutter in what was called New Helvetia, the city of Sacramento today. Um, Peter Lassen was his, his name. He was working, uh, for John Sutter. And he and another significant member of the history of California, John Bidwell, um, were sent up, uh, to chase, um, cattle rustlers, or they had stolen horses, something like that from Sutter's farm. Fort. So at any rate, they came up to this area, fell in love with the area, and immediately on their return, filed a Mexican land grant from the Mexican government. This is 1843, and both of them received very large tracts of land. I mean like in the, you know, thousands of acres. And so Peter his land grant was called the Rancho Bosque. Which means the ranch of the trees. Eventually it got misspelled as Bosquejo, but it's actually that's, that's, uh, that's a misspelling. It's Bosque. So, so the ranch of the woods, making reference to a lot of the timber, a lot of oak trees, that kind of thing, black oak, growing in, in the area at the time. Well, I mean, they're, they still grow in the area right now, but, uh, not quite like they were, um, back in 1843. So he got this property and had developed a city, Benton City. I believe it was named after either his father in law or anyway, Senator Benton of Missouri. And things were going well and then of course in eight, well really December of 1848, I think you know, gold was discovered there on the American River. Up by Placerville, in Grass Valley area, and that kind of was the demise of Peter Lassen's property here, in the sense that he had another partner from San Francisco, another European immigrant from the Rhineland, Henry Gherke, and eventually Henry Gherke came in 1852 to possess the property. And Peter Lassen went up to the mountains near Susanville, um, and he died, kind of a mysterious death. No one's too sure if he was killed or murdered, you know, but at any rate, um, the state decided to name a mountain after him, so we have Mount Lassen. Or really, Lassen Peak, but Anyway, most everyone calls it Mount Lassen, which we can see from the property. And then Henry Gherke, well, I should back up here, Peter Lassen had a very successful, well, he planted vines, grape vines. Uh, the story is that he got them from the San Gabriel Mission, um, and they were the Mission Variety. Um, you know, so,

Damian Bacich 15:15

That would make

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 15:16

Yeah, um, so he, he planted these vines, but of course basically lost the property, uh, to, um, Henry Gerke, um, in 1852. Well, Henry Gerke was a vintner himself. from the Rhineland. So he worked on improving the varietals, primarily whites. And so he had a very successful wine business, winning actually international accolades in the 1860s, the 1870s. So, and he's the one who gave the name Vaina, really it should be, it's Spanish, but it should be pronounced Viña, meaning the place of the vineyards. But at any rate, he gave the name to the settlement. I don't think it was really purposely founded as a town, it's just that workers and other people ended up building homes, um, along, near the ranch. But at any rate, he had a very successful winery, and generally of white wines. And some of those white varietals actually we grow today here at the monastery in our, um, our winery business in, in, in vineyard. But at any rate, uh, as you know, Leland Stanford, one of the big four, and primarily because of their railroad interests and owning the, um, you know, what at least it initially was called the Central Pacific. Um, uh, they were putting a railroad line up through this area. Shows that he could have better access to the, uh, gold fields and silver mines of the Redding and West of Redding. And Leland Stanford decided he, he wanted the property. And so in 1881, uh, he acquires the property from, um, Henry Gerke. And it was his, he was, you know. He had a lot of vision, and he was many ways ahead, well he was ahead of his time. You know, he had gone to Europe, he saw Europeans drinking wine, and it seemed like a healthy thing and he didn't, he claimed he never saw any. And he drunks, as it were, on the streets in Europe. But, um, so he thought, you know, maybe we'd get Americans to drink wine. You know, in a social way, and just with meals, and it won't become such a big thing. You know, alcohol and alcoholic, or alcohol abuse. So he wanted to, so he proceeded to plant, uh, out of his, eventually, some 60, 000, um, or more acres that he owned here, uh, he proceeded to plant like around 3, 800 acres in vines.

Damian Bacich 18:26

Now, where did he get those, um, vines?

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 18:29

Yeah, that, um, well a lot of them were right from, you know, here in the state of California. Uh, a lot of them were all the Mission varietals. Um, and again, I, I don't have enough details, but I do know some of the, again, some of the wines that we're growing today were actually raised, uh, or grown here by Leland Stanford. One was Trebbiano, which is a white wine from, originally from, well, it still is in Italy. It's an Italian wine. And, um, I know there's a red, um, and I think it might be The Tempranillo, which is a relatively new wine, red wine, again to the California wine scene, but he had that, and I believe he was growing that here. But the problem with Leland Stanford, when you have 3, 800 acres of grape vines, Uh, you have no machinery like they have today for these really big plantings that you see here and there. Um, uh, he never was very successful, not because he didn't have the good grape varietals, and that he didn't have the professional people. He did. He brought a lot of French vintners in from France, from Bordeaux. And some of those family members are still in the Chico area, the local area, um, of those, those, those French vintners, their, their, their, descendants, you know, every once in a while someone shows up and says, my great grandfather worked here. He was one of the French vintners, you know, kind of thing. At any rate, it was just so big. Plus, you know, we didn't have refrigeration in the sense that we have today, and tanks where you can, you can keep your, your wine, your grape juice at a certain temperature, and fermenting, you know. We have this huge, nearly two acre red brick building that went up in 1885. that was the wine cellar, double walled, um, a magnificent building. Uh,

Damian Bacich 20:49

It's very impressive.

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 20:50

uh, yes, it is, but again, no matter what he did, you, you, it wasn't cool enough with the hot summers we have. No, I mean, it is cooler in there, but it's nothing like a cave. That, you know, that would have, um, you know, temperature control, as it were, you know, even humidity control. So, um, so unfortunately, um, he did not succeed in really producing the kinds of, um, table wines that he had wanted. Um, you know, well, the unfortunate thing is that in his case, The whole California wine industry was, Vina left a bad name on the California wine industry, and the idea was you cannot grow or produce good wines at Vina.

Damian Bacich 21:48

Oh, wow.

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 21:50

So we kind of have this cloud over us, you know, but now I'm getting a little ahead of myself with our winery operation that we have now, which has proven that all wrong, but um, meanwhile, um, So Leland Stanford, he has all kinds of things going on here. He has a world prize Holstein dairy herd. Holsteins were relatively new to the dairy industry in the United States. Um, and he brought Holstein cows from Denmark or Northern Germany. Um, he also had a very successful breeding, horse breeding, thoroughbred. operation here, uh, which he also had in Palo Alto. Okay, um, and at one point, uh, around 1891, the Tsar of Russia bought twelve of Leland Stanford's thoroughbreds, and six of them were from this property. And that's all recorded, you know, you can find that in archives at Stanford University. But you might ask, well, why, why Stanford University? Um, the idea was their young son, this was Leland and Jane Lathrop, This was going to be young Leland Stanford Jr.'s playground. Unfortunately, he was in Europe at the tender age of 15 and he, he, um, picks up typhus. And in those days, I mean, it's still a serious illness, but anyway, he died from typhus. And unfortunately, he was an only child, let alone an only son. So the Stanfords were heartbroken, as you can imagine. And you know, the famous story, um, Leland Stan, or turns to Jane at the, after the funeral, or during the funeral, and says, okay, Um, let's build and found a university and name it after our son and the children of California will be our children. And you know, in those early days, um, believe it or not, there was a free tuition at Stanford.

Damian Bacich 24:20

Those were the days.

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 24:24

but it almost, uh, went under too financially, you know? And then actually what saved, uh, the university in many ways was the selling, selling of this property. And the very last, um, parcel, which we sit on the headquarters property, about six, uh, 600 acres, a little 596 acres, I think. Um, that was the last property to be sold by the university, because after Leland Stanford died, um, of course, Jane took over the, all the enterprises, and then she died in, um, I think in 1916. And, um, at any rate, um, so the university had all this property and, and just sold all the, um, All the property, not just this Vina property, but other properties other than the Palo Alto property where the university sits today.

Damian Bacich 25:22

Okay. Very

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 25:23

we kind of kept the university going in its, um, uh, difficult early days. Um, you know, so, um, at any rate, so, uh, it's sold to the Shadduck family. Um, that's well known. And if you ever go to Berkeley.

Damian Bacich 25:45

Right. Shattuck

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 25:46

The university there, um, and their, their son in law, uh, Colonel Robeson, uh, managed the property. And meanwhile, another important figure in California's history, uh, uh, actually a, a native of California from San Francisco, William Randolph Hearst, is building a newspaper empire. in, um, in the United States. It's, it's not unlike probably, you know, Mark Zuckerberg or, um, today in the media, you know, he knew how to, uh, operate in the media. Anyway. I became very, very wealthy, and he had lots of properties, and he was buying lots of, um, properties from Europe. Uh, well, uh, not so much properties, but buildings, artifacts, and he bought, um, parts of seven, seven different, non existing monasteries, but their ruins were there, okay, um, from Spain, from France primarily, and he brought some of this over to the United States. Well, he bought in 1931, he bought an entire monastery called Ovila, um, about an hour outside of Madrid, Spain. And Ovila is a monastery of our order, founded in 1175.

Damian Bacich 27:29

Wow.

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 27:30

Yeah. And, and it existed until 1835, when the Spanish crown, uh, closed a lot of religious houses. At that time, church and state were united in Spain. And, um, So, this monastery, which had less than 15 monks, uh, was closed by decree of the Queen of Spain, Maria Cristina was her name. And so, uh, it passed into private hands where it was a functioning farm and ranch, um, from the 1830s, um, until, for about a hundred years.

Damian Bacich 28:15

So the entire monastery

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 28:17

entire monastery was, was, was destroyed.

Damian Bacich 28:19

was now a farm. Wow.

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 28:23

were used for, um, animals, you know, um, like barns, you know, or storage. Um, and there's, there's parts of a monastery. Okay, so Leland, or William Randolph Hearst buys the whole monastery with the plan. He's going to dismantle every stone of the whole monastery, ship it to California, rebuild the whole thing.

Damian Bacich 28:48

Now, was, was he going to do that? At San Simeon? Because I've visited San Simeon and it's a huge hodgepodge of all different styles and architectural monuments, etc. Is that where he planned to rebuild the monastery?

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 29:03

Uh, no, although it was one, another one of his projects and he has a lot of monastic artifacts at St. Simeon there, but,

Damian Bacich 29:13

Right.

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 29:14

uh, Hurst had a, a big property today, at least it's 10, 000 acres. Maybe it was larger a hundred some years ago, uh, north of Reading, uh, at Wintum, uh, along the McLeod branch today of Lake Shasta. The family still has that huge compound, um, and they still use it, the Hearst, the descendants, you know, of, um, Hearst. Um, so this is what that monastery where it was originally designated for. Well, he got, okay, so in a monastery, there, there's a church, and then there's a chapter house, there's a refectory, And then the dormitories. Those are the three or four major common spaces, as it were, in a monastery. And, uh, the chapter house is, is related to the church. It's where the monks gather every day. A chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict, which I told, explained earlier about, is read and commented on. And then, um, all important decisions are made in the chapter house. Any votes that were, would be taken are taken there, etc. So it's a very important, um, space. As far as a religious use of listening, you know, to the Word of God, or listening to the Holy Spirit, as we call it, um, and discerning, um, a community's needs in future and its path forward. At any rate, uh, Hearst. is successful in dismantling the chapter house, first of all, and is successful in getting it on ships and shipping it to, um, over here to the west coast. Um, it arrived in San Francisco, of course, and so they had all these stones, so they didn't have time to, you know, move them further, so they store them in warehouses. Meanwhile, you know, we're in the depths of the Great Depression, and even William Randolph Hearst, who was even then a multi millionaire, which, you know, is unfathomable today. I mean, he would be billionaires. He's a multi billionaire today with inflation and the price of the dollar is worth today. But, um, so he got in financial troubles and the federal government had to step in because he was so significant to the U. S. economy and industry, especially in newspapers, that if he went under, it was just going to be bad news for everyone.

Damian Bacich 32:15

Oh.

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 32:16

federal government, um, intervened to help him out and they appointed, I forget what his official title was, but his name was Joseph P. Kennedy, whose son eventually became President of the United States.

Damian Bacich 32:32

So THE Joseph P.

Fr. Paul Mark Schwan 32:33

Yeah, you know, and so he had to step in and was given authority and to rectify the financial situation of the Hearst Empire. So it was apparent that this project to move this monastery from Spain went out the window. And then they had all these stones in San Francisco, and they said, you're just going to forget this project. So, um, there was a deal made that, um, Hearst, uh, or the city of San Francisco, who owned the warehouses, okay, um, would, um, oh, what's the word I want? Um, Hearst had rent, had to pay rent on the warehouses. And, um, anyway, um, the, the city canceled the, the, the rent or the debt, actually the debt, in, in lieu of, um, receiving the stones. So now suddenly the city of San Francisco owns, um, medieval stones from a Cistercian monastery in Spain. Um, and they're hoping that they can rebuild. this building in Golden Gate Park.

Damian Bacich 33:56

Hope you enjoyed the first half of my interview with Abbot Paul Mark Swan. of the Abbey of New Clairvaux in Vina, California. I'm sure you'd like to know what became of those stones in Golden Gate Park. And in part two, we're going to find out where they wound up and how you can visit them today.

34:28

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