CISTERCIAN ORDER, The order of White Monks, so called from the mother house at Cîteaux, which was founded in 1098 by St Robert of Molesme and several other brethren, incl. St Stephen Harding, who sought to establish a form of Benedictinism stricter and more primitive than any then existing. After some precarious years Cîteaux rose rapidly to celebrity through its connection with its most famous son, St Bernard, who became a novice there in 1112. Its four eldest ‘daughters’ were founded in quick succession: la Ferté (1113), Pontigny (1114), Clairvaux, and Morimond (1115). In the following decades the order spread very rapidly to almost every part of Europe and the Latin East. By the death of St Bernard (1153) there were 345 houses; by the end of the 13th cent. the order reached its maximum of 740; and there were still some 700 on the eve of the Reformation. There were also many houses of Cistercian nuns. The first foundation in England was at Waverley, Surrey (1128–9), soon followed by Rievaulx (1131/2) and Fountains (1132).

The Cistercians thus became important agricultural pioneers, playing a notable part in English sheep farming, the care of their estates being for long undertaken by lay brothers who lived under somewhat less severe rules.

According to recent scholarship, the constitution of the Cistercian order developed gradually during the 12th cent., and its basic documents—the Carta caritatis, the Exordium parvum, and the Exordium Cistercii—also took shape gradually during this process.

The detailed course of events remains a matter of controversy, but the order developed a constitution under which

a founding abbey had permanent oversight of abbeys that it founded;

this was achieved through visitation by the abbot, in principle annually but perhaps more often, to ensure observance and discipline.

Daughter-abbeys could make foundations of their own; thus, lines of filiation quickly developed, often to four generations and more. Cîteaux itself was visited by the abbots of its eldest daughters (the ‘proto-abbots’).

All Cistercian abbots were obliged to attend an annual General Chapter at Cîteaux; if inevitably hindered they had to send a deputy. In the General Chapter was vested legislative, executive, and judicial authority over the whole order.

There was no scope for the abbot of Cîteaux to develop monarchical authority,

and a body of Statutes of the General Chapters was built up. No other chapters of abbots were allowed to assemble.

Cistercian observances powerfully influenced those of other medieval orders, notably certain congregations of regular canons, and after 1215 their scheme of periodic general chapters and visitations was made obligatory for other monastic orders.

From the 13th cent., however, the fame of the order waned.

Starting with Castile in the 15th cent., more and more foreign houses formed national congregations, which developed outside the control of Cîteaux and the four proto-abbeys, while still remaining juridically part of the order. In France a particularly radical reform in the late 16th cent. gave rise first to a congregation and then an independent order of Feuillants. In the 17th cent. Cistercians, like most orders, were divided between reformers (the Strict Observance), trying to return to the spirit and practice of the founding fathers by rejecting all later mitigations of the Rule, and those, led by Cîteaux, who wanted a minimum of change (the Common Observance). The Strict Observance eventually controlled about a third of the French houses, but failed either to impose their reform on the whole order or to achieve the autonomy they sought. Those houses flourished most where austerity, as at la Trappe, went consistently beyond the average.

In the 18th cent. Cistercians in the Austro-Hungarian Empire survived the Josephine edicts only by undertaking major educational and pastoral responsibilities. Shortly afterwards the French Revolution destroyed not only all houses in France and neighbouring lands, but the very structure of central authority. Throughout the 19th cent. government hostility to monastic life led to massive closures and expulsions in Spain, Italy, Germany, and even Switzerland, and in the 20th cent. wars in Europe and Asia, totalitarian regimes and post-colonial turbulence have all violently, and often unpredictably, affected organisation and survival.

It has been reaction to external events that has given the present Common Observance (properly the Sacred Order of Cîteaux, S. O. Cist.) its present shape, with an Abbot General and staff (finally established at Rome only in 1927), presiding over a union of about a dozen congregations, formed mainly on a national or linguistic basis. These differ widely in their pattern of life, some being responsible for high schools and universities, some in the mission field, often with parishes, and some (notably Lérins) primarily contemplative. The largest congregations are those in Austria, Italy, and the United States of America. The order has almost as many nuns as monks, organized in similar congregations.

The extinction of Cîteaux and the proto-abbeys in 1790/1 left la Trappe as the only French community of any male order to survive. Under the leadership of Augustin de Lestrange (elected Abbot in 1794), 24 volunteers fled to Switzerland; they soon attracted hundreds of recruits (many from other orders) and founded communities in various countries. Wartime conditions obliged Lestrange to draft regulations of excessive rigour which were only partly relaxed when peace permitted Trappists to re-establish monastic life in France; other houses, and their daughter foundations, preferred to follow A.-J. le B. de Rancé’s original reform. A fundamentally penitential view of monastic life, expressed in a uniformly strict observance, was the common aim of all the Trappist houses. It was not, however, until 1892 that the three Trappist congregations achieved union and were recognized in 1893 as a new independent order; in 1902, after the recovery of Cîteaux, which became the mother house, it was designated as the Cistercians of the Strict Observance (OCSO) or Reformed Cistercians (OCR). This order is not the continuation of the Strict Observance destroyed in 1791, but the lineal descendant of Rancé’s reform of 1664 at la Trappe.

Vast expansion worldwide has strained the practice of uniformity, and, with the abolition of the category of lay brothers (and sisters) after the Second Vatican Council, major changes were initiated, culminating in new Constitutions which were finally approved in 1990. The explicit aim is now unity, not uniformity, expressed through a pluralism which recognises cultural and regional differences. Abbots (including the Abbot General) are no longer automatically elected for life; regional conferences have much wider powers (though the General Chapter remains supreme); the Divine Office has been simplified (but Vigils, the Night Office, is retained); abstention from meat is normally recommended, but detailed dietary prescriptions have been omitted; silence is normally absolute only in prescribed places and at night; contacts with family, and the outside world, are easier; and study is actively encouraged. A major change has been a much greater degree of self-government for the nuns, whose General Chapter was for the first time in 1990 given equality with that of the monks in electing the new Abbot General. There are about 80 houses of men and rather fewer of women.

Though there are now two quite separate Cistercian Orders, close and fraternal co-operation between them, at a local and also wider level, is constant.

J.-M. Canivez, OCR (ed.), Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis (8 vols., Bibliothèque de la Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, fascs. 9–14 B; 1933–41). C. Waddell, OCSO (ed.), Narrative and Legislative Texts from Early Cîteaux (Cîteaux, Commentarii Cisterciences, Studia et Documenta, 9; 1999), incl. Eng. tr., and introd. A. Manrique, O. Cist., Annales Cistercienses (4 vols., Lyons, 1642–59; repr., Farnborough, 1970). B. Tissier, O. Cist. (ed.), Bibliotheca Patrum Cisterciensium, id est Operum Abbatum et Monachorum Ordinis Cisterciensis qui saeculo S. Bernardi aut paulo post eius obitum floruerunt (8 vols., bound in 3, Bonnefontaine and Paris, 1660–9). On the problems presented by the early Cistercian docs. see [M.] D. Knowles, Great Historical Enterprises: Problems in Monastic History (1963), pp. 198–222; K. Hallinger, ‘Die Anfänge von Cîteaux’, in Aus Kirche und Reich. …: Festschrift für Friedrich Kempf zu seinem 75. Geburtstag und 50. Doktorjubiläum, ed. H. Mordek (1983), pp. 225–235. J.-B. Auberger, OFM, L’Unanimité cistercienne primitive: mythe ou réalité? (Cîteaux, Studia et Documenta, 3; Achel, 1986). P. Le Nain, O. Cist., Essai de l’histoire de l’ordre de Citeaux (9 vols., 1695–7). L. J. Lekai, O. Cist., The White Monks: A History of the Cistercian Order (Okauchee, Wis., 1953); id., The Rise of the Cistercian Strict Observance in Seventeenth Century France (Washington, DC, 1968). A Schneider, O. Cist., and others (eds.), Die Cisterciense Geschichte, Geist, Kunst (Cologne, 1974). M. Pacaut, Les moines blancs: Histoire de l’ordre de Cîteaux [1993]. C. H. Berman, The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia, Pa. [2000]). I. Eberl, Die Zisterzienser; Geschichte eines europäischen Ordens (Stuttgart [2002]).

L. Pressouyre and T. N. Kinder (eds.), Saint Bernard et le monde cistercien: Exposition presentée par la Caisse nationale des monuments historiques et des sites à la Conciergerie de Paris du 18 décembre 1990 au 28 février 1991 (1990). L. Bouyer, Cong. Orat., La Spiritualité de Cîteaux (1955; Eng. tr., 1958). J. B. Mahn, L’Ordre cistercien et son gouvernement, des origines au milieu du XIII^e siècle, 1098–1265 (Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 116; 1945). A. A. King, Cîteaux and her Elder Daughters (1954), pp. 1–105. [M.] D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England (Cambridge, 1940; 2nd edn., 1967), pp. 208–66, 346–62, and 632–48. J. F. O’Sullivan, Cistercian Settlements in Wales and Monmouthshire, 1140–1540 (Fordham University Studies, History Series, 2; New York, 1947). B. D. Hill, English Cistercian Monasteries and their Patrons in the Twelfth Century (1968). Y. Zaluska, L’Enluminure et le Scriptorium de Cîteaux au XII^e siècle (Cîteaux, Commentarii Cistercienses, Studia et documenta, 4; Cîteaux, 1989). J.-B. Lefèvre and J.-J. Bolly, ‘Monastères Bénédictins et Cisterciens dans les Albums de Croÿ (1596–1611). Histoire et Institutions des Abbayes Cisterciennes (XII^e–XVII^e siècles)’, R. Bén. 100 (1990), pp. 109–238.

A. Le Bail, OSB, L’Ordre de Cîteaux: ‘La Trappe’ (Les Ordres religieux, 1924); C. Grolleau–G. Chastel, L’Ordre de Cîteaux: La Trappe (Les Grands Ordres monastiques et instituts religieux, 1932). Y. Estienne, Les Trappistines: Cisterciennes de la stricte observance (1937). M. T. Kervingant, OCSO, Des moniales face à la Révolution française: Aux origines des Cisterciennes-Trappistines (1989). Life in a Trappist monastery in the USA before the Second Vatican Council is depicted in the autobiography of T. Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (New York [1948]), pub. in England as Elected Silence (London, 1949), and other works of this author.

The Cistercienser-Chronik ed. by the Cistercians of Mehrerau (1889 ff.); Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis (Rome, 1945–64; called Analecta Cisterciensia, 1965 ff.); Collectanea Ordinis Cisterciensium Reformatorum (Rome and Westmalle, 1934–64; called Collectanea Cisterciensia, 1965 ff.). L. J. Lekai, O. Cist., in DIP 2 (1975), cols. 1058–98, s.v. ‘Cistercensi’; É. Mikkers, OCR, in Dict. Sp. 13 (1988), cols. 738–814, s.v. ‘Robert (12) de Molesmes’, 2: ‘La Spiritualité Cistercienne’. L. J. Lekai, O. Cist., and others in NCE (2nd edn.), 3 (2003), pp. 746–9, s.v.; M. R. Flanagan, OCSO, and M. B. Pennington, OCSO, ibid. 14 (2003), pp. 160–62, s.v. ‘Trappists’.

R. de Vaux, OP, Les Institutions de l’Ancien Testament, 1 (1958; 4th edn., 1982), pp. 247–50; Eng. tr., Ancient Israel (2nd edn., 1965), pp. 160–3.

Butler Article in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

CISTERCIANS, otherwise Grey or White Monks (from the colour of the habit, over which is worn a black scapular or apron). In 1098 St Robert, born of a noble family in Champagne, at first a Benedictine monk, and then abbot of certain hermits settled at Molesme near Châtillon, being dissatisfied with the manner of life and observance there, migrated with twenty of the monks to a swampy place called Cîteaux in the diocese of Châlons, not far from Dijon. Count Odo of Burgundy here built them a monastery, and they began to live a life of strict observance according to the letter of St Benedict’s rule. In the following year Robert was compelled by papal authority to return to Molesme, and Alberic succeeded him as abbot of Cîteaux and held the office till his death in 1109, when the Englishman St Stephen Harding became abbot, until 1134. For some years the new institute seemed little likely to prosper; few novices came, and in the first years of Stephen’s abbacy it seemed doomed to failure. In 1112, however, St Bernard and thirty others offered themselves to the monastery, and a rapid and wonderful development at once set in. The next three years witnessed the foundation of the four great “daughter-houses of Cîteaux”—La Ferté, Pontigny, Clairvaux and Morimond. At Stephen’s death there were over 30 Cistercian houses; at Bernard’s (1154) over 280; and by the end of the century over 500; and the Cistercian influence in the Church more than kept pace with this material expansion, so that St Bernard saw one of his monks ascend the papal chair as Eugenius III.

The keynote of Cistercian life was a return to a literal observance of St Benedict’s rule—how literal may be seen from the controversy between St Bernard and Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny (see Maitland, Dark Ages, § xxii.). The Cistercians rejected alike all mitigations and all developments, and tried to reproduce the life exactly as it had been in St Benedict’s time, indeed in various points they went beyond it in austerity. The most striking feature in the reform was the return to manual labour, and especially to field-work, which became a special characteristic of Cistercian life. In order to make time for this work they cut away the accretions to the divine office which had been steadily growing during three centuries, and in Cluny and the other Black Monk monasteries had come to exceed greatly in length the regular canonical office: one only of these accretions did they retain, the daily recitation of the Office of the Dead (Edm. Bishop, Origin of the Primer, Early English Text Society, original series, 109, p. xxx.).

It was as agriculturists and horse and cattle breeders that, after the first blush of their success and before a century had passed, the Cistercians exercised their chief influence on the progress of civilization in the later middle ages: they were the great farmers of those days, and many of the improvements in the various farming operations were introduced and propagated by them; it is from this point of view that the importance of their extension in northern Europe is to be estimated. The Cistercians at the beginning renounced all sources of income arising from benefices, tithes, tolls and rents, and depended for their income wholly on the land. This developed an organized system for selling their farm produce, cattle and horses, and notably contributed to the commercial progress of the countries of western Europe. Thus by the middle of the 13th century the export of wool by the English Cistercians had become a feature in the commerce of the country. Farming operations on so extensive a scale could not be carried out by the monks alone, whose choir and religious duties took up a considerable portion of their time; and so from the beginning the system of lay brothers was introduced on a large scale. The lay brothers were recruited from the peasantry and were simple uneducated men, whose function consisted in carrying out the various field-works and plying all sorts of useful trades; they 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. A lay brother was never ordained, and never held any office of superiority. It was by this system of lay brothers that the Cistercians were able to play their distinctive part in the progress of European civilization. But 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, at any rate 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 régime of the English Cistercian houses tended to approximate more and more to that of the Black Monks.

The Cistercian polity calls for special mention. Its lines were adumbrated by Alberic, but it received its final form at a meeting of the abbots in the time of Stephen Harding, when was drawn up the Carta Caritatis (Migne, Patrol. Lat. clxvi. 1377), a document which arranged the relations between the various houses of the Cistercian order, and exercised a great influence also upon the future course of western monachism. From one point of view, it may be regarded as a compromise between the primitive Benedictine system, whereby each abbey was autonomous and isolated, and the complete centralization of Cluny, whereby the abbot of Cluny was the only true superior in the body. Cîteaux, on the one hand, maintained the independent organic life of the houses—each abbey had its own abbot, elected by its own monks; its own community, belonging to itself and not to the order in general; its own property and finances administered by itself, without interference from outside. On the other hand, all the abbeys were subjected to the general chapter, which met yearly at Cîteaux, and consisted of the abbots only; the abbot of Cîteaux was the president of the chapter and of the order, and the visitor of each and every house, with a predominant influence and the power of enforcing everywhere exact conformity to Cîteaux in all details of the exterior life—observance, chant, customs. The principle was that Cîteaux should always be the model to which all the other houses had to conform. In case of any divergence of view at the chapter, the side taken by the abbot of Cîteaux was always to prevail (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).

By the end of the 12th century the Cistercian houses numbered 500; in the 13th a hundred more were added; and in the 15th, when the order attained its greatest extension, there were close on 750 houses: the larger figures sometimes given are now recognized as apocryphal. Nearly half of the houses had been founded, directly or indirectly, from Clairvaux, so great was St Bernard’s influence and prestige: indeed he has come almost to be regarded as the founder of the Cistercians, who have often been called Bernardines. The order was spread all over western Europe,—chiefly in France, but also in Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Italy and Sicily, Spain and Portugal,—where some of the houses, as Alcobaça, were of almost incredible magnificence. In England the first foundation was Furness (1127), and many of the most beautiful monastic buildings of the country, beautiful in themselves and beautiful in their sites, were Cistercian,—as Tintern, Rievaulx, Byland, Fountains. A hundred were established in England in the next hundred years, and then only one more up to the Dissolution (for list, see table and map in F. A. Gasquet’s English Monastic Life, or Catholic Dictionary, art. “Cistercians”).

For a hundred years, till the first quarter of the 13th century, the Cistercians supplanted Cluny as the most powerful order and the chief religious influence in western Europe. But then in turn their influence began to wane, chiefly, no doubt, because of the rise of the mendicant orders, who ministered more directly to the needs and ideas of the new age. But some of the reasons of Cistercian decline were internal. In the first place, there was the permanent difficulty of maintaining in its first fervour a body embracing hundreds of monasteries and thousands of monks, spread all over Europe; and as the Cistercian very raison d’être consisted in its being a “reform,” a return to primitive monachism, with its field-work and severe simplicity, any failures to live up to the ideal proposed worked more disastrously among Cistercians than among mere Benedictines, who were intended to live a life of self-denial, but not of great austerity. Relaxations were gradually introduced in regard to diet and to simplicity of life, and also in regard to the sources of income, rents and tolls being admitted and benefices incorporated, as was done among the Benedictines; the farming operations tended to produce a commercial spirit; wealth and splendour invaded many of the monasteries, and the choir monks abandoned field-work.

The later history of the Cistercians is largely one of attempted revivals and reforms. The general chapter for long battled bravely against the invasion of relaxations and abuses. In 1335 Benedict XII., himself a Cistercian, promulgated a series of regulations to restore the primitive spirit of the order, and in the 15th century various popes endeavoured to promote reforms. All these efforts at a reform of the great body of the order proved unavailing; but local reforms, producing various semi-independent offshoots and congregations, were successfully carried out in many parts in the course of the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 17th another great effort at a general reform was made, promoted by the pope and the king of France; the general chapter elected Richelieu (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. So great, however, was the resistance, and so serious the disturbances that ensued, that the attempt to reform Cîteaux itself and the general body of the houses had again to be abandoned, and only local projects of reform could be carried out. In 1598 had arisen the reformed congregation of the Feuillants, which spread widely in France and Italy, in the latter country under the name of “Improved Bernardines.” The French congregation of Sept-Fontaines (1654) also deserves mention. In 1663 de Rancé reformed La Trappe (see Trappists).

The Reformation, the ecclesiastical policy of Joseph II., the French Revolution, and the revolutions of the 19th century, almost wholly destroyed the Cistercians; but some survived, and since the beginning of the last half of the 19th century there has been a considerable recovery. They are at present divided into three bodies: (1) the Common Observance, with about 30 monasteries and 800 choir monks, the large majority being in Austria-Hungary; they represent the main body of the order and follow a mitigated rule of life; they do not carry on field-work, but have large secondary schools, and are in manner of life little different from fairly observant Benedictine Black monks; of late years, however, signs are not wanting of a tendency towards a return to older ideas; (2) the Middle Observance, embracing some dozen monasteries and about 150 choir monks; (3) the Strict Observance, or Trappists (q.v.), with nearly 60 monasteries, about 1600 choir monks and 2000 lay brothers.

In all there are about 100 Cistercian monasteries and about 4700 monks, including lay brothers. There have always been a large number of Cistercian nuns; the first nunnery was founded at Tart in the diocese of Langres, 1125; at the period of their widest extension there are said to have been 900 nunneries, and the communities were very large. The nuns were devoted to contemplation and also did field-work. In Spain and France certain Cistercian abbesses had extraordinary privileges. Numerous reforms took place among the nuns. The best known of all Cistercian convents was probably Port-Royal (q.v.), reformed by Angélique Arnaud, and associated with the story of the Jansenist controversy. After all the troubles of the 19th century there still exist 100 Cistercian nunneries with 3000 nuns, choir and lay; of these, 15 nunneries with 900 nuns are Trappist.

Accounts of the beginnings of the Cistercians and of the primitive life and spirit will be found in the lives of St Bernard, the best whereof is that of Abbé E. Vacandard (1895); also in the Life of St Stephen Harding, in the English Saints. See also Henry Collins (one of the Oxford Movement, who became a Cistercian), Spirit and Mission of the Cistercian Order (1866). The facts are related in Helyot, Hist. des ordres religieux (1792), v. cc. 33-46, vi cc. 1, 2. Useful sketches, with references to the literature, are supplied in Herzog, Realencyklopädie (ed. 3), art. “Cistercienser”; Wetzer und Welte, Kirchenlexikon (ed. 2), art. “Cistercienserorden”; Max Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen (1896), i. §§ 33, 34. Prof. Brewer’s discriminating, yet on the whole sympathetic, Preface to vol. iv. of the Works of Giraldus Cambrensis (Rolls Series of Chronicles and Memorials) is very instructive. Denis Murphy’s Triumphalia Monasterii S. Crucis (1891) contains a general sketch, with a particular account of the Irish Cistercians. (E. C. B.) 

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