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The Cistercians (), officially the Order of Cistercians (, abbreviated as OCist or SOCist), are a Catholic religious order of and that branched off from the Benedictines and follow the Rule of Saint Benedict, as well as the contributions of the highly influential Bernard of Clairvaux, known as the Latin Rule. They are also known as Bernardines, after Saint Bernard, or as White Monks, in reference to the colour of their cowl, as opposed to the black cowl worn by Benedictines.
The term Cistercian derives from Cistercium, the Latin name for the locale of Cîteaux, near Dijon in eastern France. It was here that a group of Benedictine monks from the monastery of Molesme Abbey founded Cîteaux Abbey in 1098. The first three abbots were Robert of Molesme, Alberic of Cîteaux and Stephen Harding. Bernard helped launch a new era when he entered the monastery in the early 1110s with 30 companions. By the end of the 12th century, the order had spread throughout most of Europe.
The keynote of Cistercian life was a return to literal observance of the Benedictine Rule. The reform-minded monks tried to live monastic life as they thought it had been in Benedict's time; at various points they went beyond it in austerity. They returned to manual labour, especially agricultural work in the fields. The Cistercians made major contributions to culture and technology: Cistercian architecture has been recognized as a notable form of medieval architecture, and the Cistercians were the main force of technological diffusion in fields such as agriculture and hydraulic engineering.
Over the centuries, education and scholarship came to dominate the life of many monasteries. A reform movement seeking a simpler lifestyle began in 17th-century France at La Trappe Abbey, and became known as the Trappists. They were eventually consolidated in 1892 into a new order called the Order of OCSO, abbreviated as OCSO. The Cistercians who remained within the Order of Cistercians are called the Cistercians of the Common Observance (OCist).
The burial practices for Cistercian monks involve complex rituals, and monks may be buried with or without shrouds. (1997). 9780691026732, Princeton Univ. Press. ISBN 9780691026732
On 21 March 1098, Robert's small group acquired a plot of marshland just south of Dijon called Cîteaux ( Latin: "Cistercium". Cisteaux means reeds in Old French), given to them expressly for the purpose of founding their Novum Monasterium.Tobin, pp 29, 33, 36. During the first year, the monks set about constructing lodging areas and farming the lands of Cîteaux, making use of a nearby chapel for Mass. In Robert's absence from Molesme, however, the abbey had gone into decline, and Pope Urban II, a former Cluniac monk, ordered him to return.Read, pp 94–95
The remaining monks of Cîteaux elected Alberic as their abbot, under whose leadership the abbey would find its grounding. Robert had been the idealist of the order, and Alberic was their builder. Upon assuming the role of abbot, Alberic moved the site of the fledgling community near a brook a short distance away from the original site. Alberic discontinued the use of Benedictine black garments in the abbey and clothed the monks in white habits of undyed wool. Gildas, Marie. "Cistercians." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. 21 January 2020 Alberic forged an alliance with the Dukes of Burgundy, working out a deal with Duke Odo I of Burgundy concerning the donation of a vineyard (Meursault) as well as materials for building the abbey church, which was consecrated on 16 November 1106 by the Bishop of Chalon sur Saône.Tobin, pp 37–38.
On 26 January 1108, Alberic died and was succeeded by Stephen Harding, the man responsible for carrying the order into its crucial phase.
Harding acquired land for the abbey to develop to ensure its survival and ethic. As to grants of land, the order would normally accept only undeveloped land, which the monks then developed by their own labour. For this they developed over time a very large component of uneducated lay brothers known as conversi.Hollister, p 209–10 In some cases, the order accepted developed land and relocated the elsewhere.
The Cistercians maintained the independence of individual houses: each abbey had its own abbot, elected by its own monks, and its own property and finances administered without outside interference. On the other hand, all the abbeys were subjected to the General Chapter, the constitutional body which exercised vigilance over the order. Made up of all the abbots, the General Chapter met annually in mid-September at Cîteaux. Attendance was compulsory, with the abbot of Cîteaux presiding.Watt, p 52 He was to enforce conformity to Cîteaux in all details of monastic observance, liturgy, and customs. Cîteaux was always to be the model to which all the other houses had to conform.See F. A. Gasquet, Sketch of Monastic Constitutional History, pp. xxxv–xxxviii, prefixed to English trans. Of Montalembert's Monks of the West, ed. 1895
The most foundations made by any Cistercian monastery came from Clairvaux.
In Yorkshire, Rievaulx Abbey was founded from Clairvaux in 1131, on a small, isolated property donated by Walter Espec, with the support of Thurstan, Archbishop of York. By 1143, three hundred monks had entered Rievaulx, including the famous St Ælred. It was from Rievaulx that a foundation was made at Melrose Abbey, which became the earliest Cistercian monastery in Scotland. Located in Roxburghshire, it was built in 1136 by King David I of Scotland, and completed in less than ten years. Another important offshoot of Rievaulx was Revesby Abbey in Lincolnshire.
Fountains Abbey was founded in 1132 by discontented Benedictine monks from St. Mary's Abbey, York, who desired a return to the austere Rule of St Benedict. After many struggles and great hardships, St Bernard agreed to send a monk from Clairvaux to instruct them, and in the end they prospered. Already by 1152, Fountains had many offshoots, including Newminster Abbey (1137) and Meaux Abbey (1151).
Following the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in the 1170s, the English improved the standing of the Cistercian Order in Ireland with nine foundations: Dunbrody Abbey, Inch Abbey, Grey Abbey, Comber, Duiske Abbey, Abington, Abbeylara and Tracton.Watt, pp 49–50 This last abbey was founded in 1225 from Whitland Abbey in Wales, and at least in its earliest years, its monks were Welsh language. By this time, another ten abbeys had been founded by Irishmen since the invasion, bringing the total number of Cistercian houses in Ireland to 31. This was almost half the number of those in England, but it was about thrice the number in each of Scotland and Wales.Watt, p 50 Most of these monasteries enjoyed either noble, episcopal or royal patronage. In 1269, the Archbishop of Cashel joined the order and established a Cistercian house at the foot of the Rock of Cashel in 1272.Watt, p 115 Similarly, the Irish-establishment of Abbeyknockmoy in County Galway was founded by King of Connacht, Cathal Crobhdearg Ua Conchobair, who died a Cistercian monk and was buried there in 1224.Doran, p 53
By 1152, there were 54 Cistercian monasteries in England, few of which had been founded directly from the Continent. Overall, there were 333 Cistercian abbeys in Europe, so many that a halt was put to this expansion.Logan, p 139 Nearly half of these houses had been founded, directly or indirectly, from Clairvaux, so great was St Bernard's influence and prestige. He later came popularly to be regarded as the founder of the Cistercians, who have often been called Bernardines. Bernard died in 1153, one month after his pupil Eugene III.Read, p 126
As a consequence of the wars between the Christians and Moors on the Iberian Peninsula, the Cistercians established a military branch of the order in Castile in 1157: the Order of Calatrava. Membership of the Cistercian Order had included a large number of men from knightly families, and when King Alfonso VII began looking for a military order to defend the Calatrava, which had been recovered from the Moors a decade before, the Cistercian Abbot Raymond of Fitero offered his help. Lay brothers were to be employed as "soldiers of the Cross" to defend Calatrava. The initial successes of the new order in the Spanish Reconquista were convincing, and the arrangement was approved by the General Chapter at Cîteaux and successive popes; the Knights of Calatrava were given a definitive rule in 1187, modeled upon the Cistercian rule for lay brothers, which included the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience; specific rules of silence; abstinence on four days a week; the recitation of a fixed number of daily; to sleep in their armour; and to wear, as their full dress, the Cistercian white mantle with the scarlet cross fleurdelisée.
Calatrava was not subject to Cîteaux, but to Fitero's mother-house, the Morimond Abbey in Burgundy. By the end of the 13th century, the knights had become a major autonomous power within the Castilian state, subject only to Morimond and the pope. They had abundant resources of men and wealth, lands and castles scattered along the borders of Castile, and feudal lordship over thousands of peasants and vassals. On more than one occasion, the Order of Calatrava brought to the field a force of 1200 to 2000 knights – considerable in medieval terms. Over time, as the Reconquista neared completion, the canonical bond between Calatrava and Morimond relaxed more and more, and the knights of the order became virtually secularized, finally undergoing dissolution in the 18th–19th centuries.
The first Cistercian abbey in Bohemia was founded in Sedlec Abbey near Kutná Hora in 1142. In the late 13th century and early 14th century, the Cistercian order played an essential role in the politics and diplomacy of the late Přemyslid and early Luxembourg state, as reflected in the Czech literature. This chronicle was written by Otto and Peter of Zittau, abbots of the Zbraslav abbey (Latin: Aula Regia, "Royal Hall"), founded in 1292 by the King of Bohemia and Poland, Wenceslas II. The order also played the main role in the early Gothic art of Bohemia; one of the outstanding pieces of Cistercian architecture is the Alt-neu Shul, Prague. The first abbey in the present day Romania was founded in 1179, at Egres Abbey, and the second in 1204, the Cârța Monastery.
By the end of the 13th century, the Cistercian houses numbered 500. In this period, the monks performed pastoral tasks in and outside of the monastery and began preaching and teaching, even though their movement originally forbade schools and parishes. At the order's height in the 15th century, it would have nearly 750 houses.
It often happened that the number of lay brothers became excessive and out of proportion to the resources of the monasteries, there being sometimes as many as 200, or even 300, in a single abbey. On the other hand, in some countries, the system of lay brothers in course of time worked itself out; thus in England by the close of the 14th century it had shrunk to relatively small proportions, and in the 15th century the regimen of the English Cistercian houses tended to approximate more and more to that of the Black Monks.
A considerable reinforcement to the Order was the merger of the Savigniac houses with the Cistercians, at the insistence of Eugene III. Thirteen English abbeys, of which the most famous were Furness Abbey and Jervaulx Abbey, thus adopted the Cistercian formula. In Dublin, the two Savigniac houses of Erenagh and St Mary's became Cistercian. It was in the latter case that medieval Dublin acquired a Cistercian monastery in the very unusual suburban location of Oxmantown, with its own private harbour called The Pill.Clarke, pp 42–43
Relaxations were gradually introduced into Cistercian life with regard to diet and simplicity of life. Also, they began accepting the traditional sources of income that monks in comparable orders used: like rents, tolls, and benefices. The agricultural operations were blessed by success. Wealth and splendour characterized the monasteries, so that by 1300, the standard of living in most abbeys was comparable, if not higher, than the standards middling nobles enjoyed. Two important papal bulls tried to introduce reforms: Clement IV's Parvus fons and Benedict XII's Fulgens sicut stella matutina. The General Chapter continued to battle against abuses.
In Ireland, the information on the Cistercian Order after the Anglo-Norman invasion gives a rather gloomy impression.Richter, p 154 Absenteeism among Irish abbots at the General Chapter became a persistent and much criticised problem in the 13th century, and escalated into the conspiratio Mellifontis, a "rebellion" by the abbeys of the Mellifont filiation. were appointed to reform Mellifont on account of the multa enormia that had arisen there, but in 1217 the abbot refused their admission and had lay brothers bar the abbey gates. There was also trouble at Jerpoint, and alarmingly, the abbots of Baltinglass, Killenny, Kilbeggan and Bective supported the actions of the "revolt".Watt, p. 53
In 1228, the General Chapter sent the Stanley Abbey in Wiltshire, Stephen of Lexington, on a well-documented visitation to reform the Irish houses.Watt, p. 55 A graduate of both Oxford and Paris, and a future Abbot of Clairvaux (to be appointed in 1243), Stephen was one of the outstanding figures in 13th-century Cistercian history, having founded the College of St. Bernard in Paris in 1244. (2025). 9780879070434, Liturgical Press. ISBN 9780879070434 He found his life threatened as a result of the Irish visitations: his representatives were attacked and his party harassed, while the three key houses of Mellifont, Suir and Maigue had been fortified by monks to hold out against him.Watt, p. 56 However, with the help of his assistants, the core of obedient Irish monks and the aid of both English and Irish secular powers, he was able to envisage the reconstruction of the Cistercian province in Ireland.Watt, pp. 56–57 Stephen dissolved the Mellifont filiation altogether, and subjected 15 monasteries to houses outside Ireland. In breadth and depth, his instructions constituted a radical reform programme: "They were intended to put an end to abuses, restore the full observance of the Cistercian way of life, safeguard monastic properties, initiate a regime of benign paternalism to train a new generation of religious, isolate trouble-makers and institute an effective visitation system."Watt, p. 59 The arrangement lasted almost half a century, and in 1274, the filiation of Mellifont was reconstituted.Richter, p. 155
In Germany the Cistercians were instrumental in the spread of Christianity east of the Elbe. They developed grants of territories of 180,000 acres where they would drain land, build monasteries and plan villages. Many towns near Berlin owe their origins to this order, including Heiligengrabe and Chorin; its Chorin Abbey was the first brick-built monastery in the area.Richie, p. 21 By this time, however, "the Cistercian order as a whole had experienced a gradual decline and its central organisation was noticeably weakened."
In 1335, the French cardinal Jacques Fournier, a Cistercian monk, was elected and consecrated Pope Benedict XII. He was devoted to reducing the culture of nepotism at the Vatican. He promulgated a series of regulations to restore the spirit of reform in the Cistercian Order.
By the 15th century, however, the Cistercians had fallen on dark days. The General Chapter lost virtually all its power to enforce its decrees, and the strength of the order which derived from this uniformity declined. Wars, among them the Hundred Years' War, and a lack of leadership did damage. Many of the monasteries were controlled by dynasties who appointed their relatives to leadership positions, and pocketed the abbeys' profits. The system of placing abbeys in commendam was widespread and led to the spiritual and material decline of many abbeys.Lekai, Ideals and Reality, pp. 91-108.
In the 17th century another great effort at a general reform was made, promoted by the pope and the king of France; the general chapter elected Richelieu to be (commendatory) abbot of Cîteaux, thinking he would protect them from the threatened reform. In this they were disappointed, for he threw himself wholly on the side of reform. A formidable battle ensued, making it clear that Italian and Central European abbeys did not want to go the way of the Trappists. Civic politics also played a role in the conflict.
The Protestant Reformation, the ecclesiastical policy of Emperor Joseph II, the French Revolution, and the revolutions of the 18th century almost wholly destroyed the Cistercians. But some survived, and from the beginning of the last half of the 19th century there was a considerable recovery.
In 1892, the Trappists left the Cistercians and founded a new order, named the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance.Alcuin Schachenmayr and Polycarp Zakar: Union And Division: The Proceedings of the Three Trappist Congregations at their General Chapter in 1892. In: Analecta Cisterciensia 56 (2006) 334–384. The Cistercians that remained within the original order thus came to be known as the "Common Observance".
Bernard condemned excessive decoration of monastic buildings as a distraction for monks.
Cistercian architecture embodied the ideals of the order, and was in theory at least utilitarian and without ornamentation.Lalor, p 1 The same "rational, integrated scheme" was used across Europe to meet the largely homogeneous needs of the order. Various buildings, including the chapter-house to the east and the dormitories above, were grouped around a cloister, and were sometimes linked to the transept of the church itself by a night stair. Usually Cistercian churches are cruciform, with a short presbytery to meet the liturgical needs of the brethren, small chapels in the for private prayer, and an aisled nave that was divided roughly in the middle by a screen to separate the monks from the lay brothers.Lalor, p 1, 38
The Cistercians acquired a reputation as masters in administering ecclesial construction projects.Erlande-Brandenburg, p 50 Bernard's own brother, Achard, is known to have supervised the construction of many abbeys, such as Himmerod Abbey in the Rhineland. On one occasion the abbot of La Trinité at Vendôme loaned a monk named John to the Bishop of Le Mans, Hildebert de Lavardin, for the building of a cathedral; after the project was completed, John refused to return to his monastery. However, the monks did not construct their edifices alone. As early as 1133, Bernard was hiring workers to help the monks erect new buildings at Clairvaux.Erlande-Brandenburg, p 101 An illustration from the 16th century shows monks working alongside other craftsmen at Schönau Abbey.
In the purity of architectural style, the beauty of materials and the care with which the Alcobaça Monastery was built, Portugal possesses one of the most outstanding and best preserved examples of Early Gothic.Toman, p 289 Poblet Monastery, one of the largest in Spain, is considered similarly impressive for its austerity, majesty, and the fortified royal residence within. The fortified Maulbronn Abbey in Germany is considered "the most complete and best-preserved medieval monastic complex north of the Alps". The Transitional Gothic style of its church had a major influence in the spread of Gothic architecture over much of northern and central Europe, and the abbey's elaborate network of drains, irrigation canals and reservoirs has since been recognised as having "exceptional" cultural interest.
Nonetheless, many Cistercian abbey churches housed the tombs of royal or noble patrons, and these were often elaborately carved and painted. Notable dynastic burial places were Alcobaça for the Kings of Portugal, Cîteaux for the Dukes of Burgundy, and Poblet Monastery for the Kings of Aragon. Corcomroe in Ireland contains one of only two surviving examples of Gaelic royal effigy from 13th and 14th century Ireland.Doran, p 48
From the beginning, the monks used a system of lay brothers and employees to operate their farms; monks and priests were busy with their liturgical and sacramental duties. The lay brothers formed a body of men who lived alongside of the choir monks, but separate from them, not taking part in the canonical office, but having their own fixed round of prayer and religious exercises. They were not ordained, nor did they have a voice in the monks' chapter. One Cistercian monk claims that, until the Industrial Revolution, most of the technological advances in Europe were made in the monasteries. According to the medievalist Jean Gimpel, their high level of industrial technology facilitated the diffusion of new techniques: "Every monastery had a model factory, often as large as the church and only several feet away, and waterpower drove the machinery of the various industries located on its floor."Gimpel, p 67. Cited by Woods. Waterpower was used for crushing wheat, sieving flour, fulling cloth and tanning – a technological achievement in use in practically all of the order's monasteries.Woods, p 33 The monks used their own numbering system, which could express all the numbers from 0 to 9999 in a single sign.
The Cistercian order was innovative in developing techniques of hydrology for monasteries established in remote valleys. In Spain, one of the earliest surviving Cistercian houses, the Real Monasterio de Nuestra Senora de Rueda in Aragon, is a good example of such early hydraulic engineering, using a large waterwheel for power and an elaborate water circulation system for central heating.
The Cistercians are known to have been skilled metallurgy, and knowledge of their technological advances was transmitted by the order.Woods, pp 34–35 Iron ore deposits were often donated to the monks along with forges to extract the iron, and within time surpluses were being offered for sale. The Cistercians became the leading iron producers in Champagne, from the mid-13th century to the 17th century, also using the phosphate-rich slag from their furnaces as an agricultural fertiliser.Gimpel, p 68; cited by Woods, p 35 The forge at Fontenay abbey, for instance, is not on the margins of the abbey grounds, but within the monastic enclosure itself. Cistercian innovations may have shaped the very course of Gothic architecture.Erlande-Brandenburg, pp 116–117
Although Bernard's De laude novae militiae was in favour of the Knights Templar,Read, p. 180 the English Cistercian Abbot Isaac of Stella, near Poitiers, preached against the very same group as a "new monstrosity." In the course of the 12th and 13th centuries, many Cistercian authors wrote on spiritual topics. The "four evangelists" of the movement are: Bernard, William of Saint Thierry, Aelred of Rievaulx, and Guerric of Igny. During the Middle Ages, they were often read by monks from other orders, for example the Carthusians. Besides Bernard, the others were only re-discovered in the 20th century.
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