The foundations established during Bernard of Abbeville's lifetime and shortly after did not follow a pattern of gradual expansion outwards from Tiron Abbey, unlike the early expansion pattern of Cîteaux and Clairvaux. The same famine that flooded Tiron with refugees devastated Cîteaux, until in 1113 the future Bernard of Clairvaux and thirty Burgundian noblemen revived the house. Cîteaux founded its four daughter houses of La Ferté, Pontigny, Morimond, and Clairvaux (pre-1165) within 161 kilometres of the mother house. Clairvaux, with Bernard as abbot, founded two daughter houses: Trois-Fontaines 76 kilometres to the north and Fontenay 77 kilometres to the southwest. In contrast, Tiron's expansion pattern was eccentric and atypical of most monastic reformers: some of the earliest foundations were established on the distant boundaries of the future congregation. Tironensian foundations established during the last two years of Bernard's abbacy, 1114– 1116, and shortly afterward to 1119, were in Scotland, Wales, on the Channel coast in England and Normandy, in the Chartrain, the Perche, the Dunois, the Beauce, the Blésois and Anjou in the Loire Valley, and Beaujolais near the Rhône. The pattern is attributed to a surplus of monks at Tiron Abbey and the requests of prominent donors to establish reformed Benedictine foundations of monks who were Bernard's disciples. It is unlikely that Bernard was establishing a network of daughter houses, but he was receiving properties during a wave of enormous celebrity during the last two years of his life. Consequently he needed to groom successors and recruit future leaders.

Donors gave property for spiritual reasons. Bernard was renowned for his holiness of life and the efficacy of his prayers, particularly in healing and in liberating prisoners in fetters. Both Rotrou II, count of the Perche, and the sainted crusader Adjutor of Vernon attributed their release from prison to Bernard's spiritual powers. Many donors sought prayers, confraternity, deathbed clothing, and monastic burial. The Gregorian reform encouraged laymen who owned churches to give them to the local bishop or monastery. Many of Tiron's donors gave for pious reasons, and phrases like “for the remission of sins” and “for the redemption of souls” are used in the early charters.