Cistercians

The coat of arms of the Cistercian Order

Cistercians are a Benedictine monastic family originating at Cîteaux in 1098 and marked by the Rule of Saint Benedict, liturgical prayer, simplicity, work, and communion among autonomous monasteries.

Disciplinary status: Church discipline

Overview

The Cistercians (/sɪˈstɜːrʃənz/), or the Order of Cistercians (Latin: (Sacer) Ordo Cisterciensis, abbreviated as OCist or SOCist), are a Catholic religious order of monks and nuns 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 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 Cistercians of the Strict Observance, abbreviated as OCSO. The Cistercians who remained within the Order of Cistercians are called the Cistercians of the Common Observance (OCist).

Apart from Catholicism, Cistercian spirituality is present in certain monastic houses of Evangelical Lutheranism and Anglicanism.

Cistercian observance

The founders of Cîteaux sought a focused observance of the Rule of Saint Benedict. The Charter of Charity shaped relations among monasteries through visitation and chapters without treating each abbey as a mere branch house. Cistercian monks and nuns profess monastic vows under their proper constitutions; communities include ordained and non-ordained monks, while women's monasteries have their own superiors.

Cistercian names must be used precisely. The Order of Cistercians, abbreviated O.Cist., and the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, abbreviated O.C.S.O. and commonly called Trappists, are distinct religious institutes sharing Cistercian roots.

Congregations and abbeys

O.Cist. consists of autonomous monasteries organized in congregations under the order's constitutions. Abbots and abbesses govern their houses; general chapters and the Abbot General serve unity, fidelity, and coordinated governance according to proper law.

Cistercian practices

The abbot general is the leader of the "administrative machinery" of a Cistercian order.

The burial practices for Cistercian monks involve complex rituals, and monks may be buried with or without shrouds.

Cistercian monks and nuns cultivate solitude and silence. However, contrary to some popular perceptions, Cistercians do not take a vow of silence. Silence assumes a variety of expressions in Cistercian life and practice.

Origins and early expansion

Foundation

In 1098, a Benedictine abbot, Robert of Molesme, left Molesme Abbey in Burgundy with around 20 supporters, who felt that the Cluniac communities had abandoned the rigours and simplicity of the Rule of St. Benedict. Chief among Robert's followers included Alberic, a former hermit from the nearby forest of Colan, and Stephen Harding, a young monk from England. Stephen had experienced the monastic traditions of the Camaldolese and Vallombrosians before joining Molesme Abbey.

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. 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.

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. 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.

On 26 January 1108, Alberic died and was succeeded by Stephen Harding.

Cistercian reform

Harding framed the original version of the Cistercian constitution, soon to be called the Carta Caritatis (Charter of Charity). Although it was revised on several occasions to meet contemporary needs, from the outset it emphasised a simple life of work, love, prayer and self-denial. The Cistercians soon came to distinguish themselves from Benedictines by wearing white or grey tunics instead of black; white habits are common for reform movements. Much of Cistercian reform took place against the rivalry with the famous Benedictine abbey of Cluny, where wealth and excess were said to have set in.

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. In some cases, the order accepted developed land and relocated the serfs elsewhere.

Charter of Charity

The outlines of the Cistercian reform were adumbrated by Alberic, but it received its final form in the Carta caritatis (Charter of Charity), which was the defining guide on how the reform was to be lived. This document governed 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, in which each abbey was autonomous and isolated, and the centralization of Cluny.

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. 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.

Cistercian nuns

The first community of Cistercian nuns, Tart, was founded 1125 in the Diocese of Langres. Their number rose so quickly in the course of the next century that the historian and cardinal Jacques de Vitry wrote: "Cistercian nunneries multiplied like stars in the sky." At their most populous point, there may have been over 900 women's monasteries, but not all were officially integrated into the order. One of the best-known Cistercian women's communities was the Abbey of Port-Royal, associated with the Jansenist controversy. In Spain and France, a number of Cistercian abbesses had extraordinary privileges and authority over priests.

International expansion

In the 1130s and 1140s, the Cistercians expanded into "an order of immense size" by incorporating independent religious communities.

France

In 1113, Bernard joined the Cîteaux monastery along with 35 relatives and friends. Bernard's charisma greatly expanded the size of the order. In 1115, Count Hugh of Champagne gifted the order a tract of forested land located forty miles east of Troyes. At the age of 25, Bernard founded the Abbey of Clairvaux with twelve other monks. At this time, Cîteaux had four daughter houses: Pontigny, Morimond, La Ferté and Clairvaux.

The most foundations made by any Cistercian monastery came from Clairvaux.

Austria

Rein Abbey was founded in 1129 from Ebrach Abbey in Bavaria, which had been founded from Morimond Abbey in France. In 1129 Margrave Leopold the Strong of Styria granted the Bavarian monks an area of land just north of what is today the provincial capital Graz, where they founded Rein Abbey. At the time, it was the 38th Cistercian monastery founded; as of 2024, it is the oldest surviving Cistercian house in the world. In 1133, Heiligenkreuz Abbey was founded near Vienna by Morimond monks; it is (as of 2024) the largest men's abbey in Europe.

Hungary

The Cistercian Order reached the Kingdom of Hungary exceptionally early, during the lifetime of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, as part of the initial wave of international expansion. The first Hungarian house, Cikádor Abbey (near modern-day Bátaszék), was founded in 1142 as a daughter house of Heiligenkreuz Abbey in Austria. Monastic expansion accelerated significantly during the late 12th century under the direct patronage of King Béla III (r. 1172–1196). Seeking to modernize his administration and align Hungary with Western European models, Béla III granted the Cistercians extensive judicial and fiscal privileges equivalent to those enjoyed by houses in France. He invited monks directly from the primary French mother houses—particularly Clairvaux, Acey, and Pontigny—leading to the foundation of major royal abbeys, including Zirc Abbey (1182), Pilis Abbey (1184), Pásztó Abbey (1191), and Szentgotthárd Abbey (1183). By the early 13th century, the network had grown to include between 22 and 25 monasteries across the medieval kingdom. The Cistercians played a foundational role in introducing Western European cultural and technological developments to medieval Hungary. Architecturally, their construction projects marked the arrival of early Gothic and late Romanesque styles in East-Central Europe. The stonemasonry techniques and structural plans developed at places like Pilis Abbey heavily influenced the construction of royal palaces and cathedrals, such as the royal castle complex at Esztergom. Economically, the Hungarian abbeys operated complex manorial estates. While traditional historiography emphasized their role in agricultural internal colonization, modern research by scholars such as Beatrix Romhányi indicates they primarily utilized existing regional infrastructure to establish trade and market networks, frequently positioning their monasteries along major international transport routes. They also played a central role in diplomacy and royal representation; Egres Abbey (founded in 1179 as a daughter house of Pontigny) serves as a prime example, housing a significant royal library and becoming the burial site of King Andrew II and his queen, Yolanda of Courtenay. The prosperity of the order was abruptly halted by geopolitical disruptions. Although several abbeys survived the initial Mongol invasion of 1241–1242 (such as Bélapátfalva Abbey, which completed its landmark three-naved basilica shortly after the incursion), the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century proved fatal. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the expanding Ottoman occupation zone swallowed the majority of Cistercian territories. Monasteries were systematically looted, abandoned, or repurposed as military fortifications, leading to the complete extinction of medieval Cistercian monastic life in Hungary by the late 16th century. The order was revitalized in the 18th century under Habsburg rule following the expulsion of the Ottomans. Heinrichau Abbey in Silesia acquired the rights to the ruined Zirc Abbey, sending German monks to rebuild the complex in the Baroque style. In 1814, the Hungarian Cistercian congregation was formally unified under the Abbot of Zirc and underwent a functional shift. In response to imperial decrees, the order assumed management of several elite secondary prep schools (gimnáziums) in cities such as Eger, Pécs, Székesfehérvár and Budapest, making education their primary pastoral mission. Despite total suppression and asset seizure under the communist regime in 1950, the order operated underground, survived, and was legally re-established in 1989 following the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Britain

The order entrusted the oversight of the English, Welsh and (intermittently) Irish abbeys to two or more abbots-commissary, thereby abrogating the famous Cistercian system of filiation: not the mother abbeys, but the abbots-commisary had full powers of visitation. This variation on the original vertical descent of authority produced "a system of centralized national control" much closer to that of the Premonstratensians or mendicants. The first Cistercian house to be established in Britain, a monastery at Waverley Abbey, Surrey, was founded by William Gifford, Bishop of Winchester in 1128. It was founded with 12 monks and an abbot from L'Aumône Abbey, in the South of France. By 1187 there were 70 monks and 120 lay brothers in residence.

Thirteen Cistercian monasteries, all in remote locations, were founded in Wales between 1131 and 1226. The first of these was Tintern Abbey, which was sited in a remote river valley, and depended largely on its agricultural and pastoral activities for survival. Other abbeys, such as at Neath, Strata Florida, Conwy and Valle Crucis became among the most hallowed names in the history of religion in medieval Wales. Their austere discipline seemed to echo the ideals of the Celtic saints, and the emphasis on pastoral farming fit well into the Welsh stock-rearing economy. In Bedfordshire Woburn Abbey was founded in 1145, remodeled into a Neo-Palladian villa in the 1800s.

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, 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).

Germany

A monastery of the Cistercians, Marienstatt Abbey, including a secondary school is located in the state Rhineland-Palatinate, in Streithausen near Hachenburg in the Westerwald.

Ireland

In the spring of 1140, Saint Malachy, the archbishop of Armagh, visited Clairvaux, becoming a personal friend of Abbot Bernard and an admirer of Cistercian life. He left four of his companions to be trained as Cistercians, and returned to Ireland to introduce Cistercian monasticism there. Mellifont Abbey was founded in County Louth in 1142 and from it daughter houses of Bective Abbey in County Meath (1147), Inislounaght Abbey in County Tipperary (1147–1148), Baltinglass in County Wicklow (1148), Monasteranenagh in County Limerick (1148), Kilbeggan in County Westmeath (1150) and Boyle Abbey in County Roscommon (1161).

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 Abbey, Duiske Abbey, Abington, Abbeylara and Tracton. This last abbey was founded in 1225 from Whitland Abbey in Wales, and at least in its earliest years, its monks were Welsh-speaking. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

The Iberian Peninsula

In 1153, the first King of Portugal, D. Afonso Henriques (Afonso, I), founded Alcobaça Monastery. The original church was replaced by the present construction from 1178. The abbey's church was consecrated in 1223. Two further building phases followed in order to complete the nave, leading to the final consecration of the medieval church building in 1252.

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 Pater Nosters 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 Abbey of Morimond 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 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 Chronicon Aulae Regiae. 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 Igris (Egres), and the second in 1204, the Cârța Monastery.

The Cistercians in Italy

Early foundations (1120–1135)

The expansion of the Cistercian Order in Italy began in the early decades of the 12th century. The first Cistercian abbey founded on the peninsula was Tiglieto Abbey (Santa Maria alla Croce) in the Ligurian Apennines in 1120, followed in 1124 by Lucedio Abbey in Piedmont.

These early foundations were followed by other significant monasteries in Northern Italy:

• Morimondo Abbey (1134)
• Chiaravalle Abbey (1135)
• Chiaravalle della Colomba Abbey, near Piacenza (1135)
• Staffarda Abbey, in Piedmont
• Rivalta Scrivia Abbey, near Alessandria
• Cerreto Abbey

Diffusion in the 12th and 13th centuries

In the early decades of the 13th century, the Order had approximately five hundred abbeys across Europe. By around 1250, Italy hosted about fifty, thirty of which were recent foundations. By the end of the 13th century, Italian Cistercian abbeys numbered 98, placing the peninsula second only to France, which had 244.

The foundations in Northern Italy (Lombardy, Piedmont, Liguria, Emilia) were followed in the 13th century by an important group of abbeys in Central and Southern Italy, particularly in Lazio, where the great complexes of Fossanova Abbey and Casamari Abbey were established.

The abbeys of Lazio

Fossanova Abbey, in the municipality of Priverno (province of Latina), is the oldest example of Cistercian Gothic architecture in Italy. It arose at the end of the 12th century from the transformation of a pre-existing Benedictine monastery, granted in 1134 by Pope Innocent II to Burgundian monks. The church was consecrated in 1208. Saint Thomas Aquinas died in this abbey on March 7, 1274.

Casamari Abbey, in the municipality of Veroli (province of Frosinone), was built starting in 1203 and consecrated in 1217. It represents one of the most significant examples of Cistercian Gothic architecture in Italy.

The Cistercians in Sardinia

Historical context

The Cistercian settlement in Sardinia is part of the broader phenomenon of monastic expansion on the island during the Judicate period (11th–13th centuries). The Sardinian Judges encouraged the arrival of monastic orders to promote the improvement of agricultural techniques and the reclamation of uncultivated lands.

The Grand Confirmation of 1153

In 1153, shortly before abdicating, Gonario II confirmed all previous donations made by his predecessors to the Benedictines of Montecassino, defining the boundaries of the properties belonging to the Abbey of Santa Maria di Tergu. The confirmed territory was extraordinary in size, covering approximately eight thousand hectares. Within its borders, along the western limit, stood the monasteries of San Pietro de Trecinglo (or Trighinzos) and San Pietro d'Othari, the latter located «verso su monumentu dessu gigante» (toward the monument of the giant), near the Tomba dei giganti di Oridda - Badde Nigolosu in Romangia. In 1154, Gonario II abdicated in favor of his son Barisone II and retired to Clairvaux Abbey in France, where he spent the rest of his life as a monk. He died after 1182.

The Cistercians and viticulture

The Cistercian settlement in Romangia is of particular interest to the history of viticulture. In Burgundy, Cistercian monks developed innovative viticultural techniques, creating the first recorded project of vineyard zonation in history.

By the 12th century, Romangia was already an area with a strong viticultural vocation. The Condaghe di San Pietro di Silki records the donation by Mariane de Thori of the domus of Gennor (in the modern territory of Sennori) «cum servos et ankillas, e cum terras, e cum binias» (with male and female servants, with lands, and with vineyards). According to historian Raimondo Turtas, the substantial landed property provided to the Cistercians suggests that the Sardinian Judges expected a significant contribution to agricultural improvement, likely including viticulture.

Notes

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.

Influence with popes and kings

Cistercian influence more than kept pace with the material expansion. Bernard had become mentor to popes and kings, and in 1145, King Louis VII's brother, Henry of France, entered Clairvaux. That same year, Bernard saw one of his monks elected pope as Pope Eugene III. Eugene was an Italian of humble background, who had first been drawn to monasticism at Clairvaux by the magnetism of Bernard. At the time of his election, he was Abbot of Saints Vincenzo and Anastasio outside Rome.

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.

Decline and attempted reforms

For a hundred years, until 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, as the initiative passed to the mendicant orders, in Ireland, Wales and elsewhere.

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. 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. Visitors 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".

In 1228, the General Chapter sent the Abbot of Stanley in Wiltshire, Stephen of Lexington, on a well-documented visitation to reform the Irish houses. 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. 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. 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. 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." The arrangement lasted almost half a century, and in 1274, the filiation of Mellifont was reconstituted.

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. 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.

Protestant Reformation

Evangelical Lutheranism

Germany became the scene of violence and destabilization following Martin Luther's efforts to separate from the Vatican. Though some abbeys lost monks who left religious life to marry, other Cistercian monasteries, such as Loccum Abbey and Amelungsborn Abbey, adopted the Evangelical Lutheran faith and continued religious life under solemn vows, being active in the present-day. For example, the Evangelical-Lutheran Cistercian Monastery of Amelungsborn has nine religious and a number of tertiaries.

Anglicanism

During the English Reformation, Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries saw the confiscation of every single monastery in that country, a disaster not only for the Cistercians. Some historians believe that the suppression of the English monasteries may have stamped out an industrial revolution.

A revival of religious orders took place under the Oxford Movement in the Anglican tradition. As such, there are Anglican Cistercian communities that remain active in the present day.

After the Reformation

The reformed Congregation of the Feuillants spread widely in France and Italy in the 16th century. The French congregation of Sept-Fontaines (1654) also deserves mention. In 1663 Jean de Rancé reformed La Trappe (see Trappists).

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. The Cistercians that remained within the original order thus came to be known as the "Common Observance".

Influence

Architecture

Cistercian architecture is an important medieval European architectural tradition. Cistercian foundations were primarily constructed in Romanesque and Gothic architecture during the Middle Ages; although later abbeys were also constructed in Renaissance and Baroque.

The Cistercian order had no fixed building rules but rather Cistercian prohibitions regarding building practices, including the prohibition of decoration as signs of poverty and simplicity, as seen in early Cistercian architecture. Furthermore, the order itself was receptive to the technical improvements of Gothic principles of construction and played an important role in its spread across Europe.

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. 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 transepts 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.

Engineering and construction

The building projects of the Church in the High Middle Ages showed that the era encourage colossal architecture, with vast amounts of stone being quarried; the same was true of the Cistercian projects. Foigny Abbey was 98 metres (322 ft) long, and Vaucelles Abbey was 132 metres (433 ft) long. Monastic buildings came to be constructed entirely of stone, right down to the most humble of buildings. In the 12th and 13th centuries, even Cistercian barns consisted had stone exteriors.

The Cistercians acquired a reputation as masters in administering ecclesial construction projects. 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. An illustration from the 16th century shows monks working alongside other craftsmen at Schönau Abbey.

World Heritage Sites

The Cistercian abbeys of Fontenay in France, Fountains in England, Alcobaça in Portugal, Poblet in Spain and Maulbronn in Germany are today recognised as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

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. 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.

Art

The mother house of the order, Cîteaux, had developed an advanced style of painting in illuminated manuscripts during the first decades of the 12th century. However, as Bernard of Clairvaux's influence increased, decoration gradually diminished in Cistercian manuscripts. He had a strong aversion to the extensive use of imagery. Decorations were finally banned altogether in the order. Any wall paintings that may have existed were presumably destroyed. Crucifixes were allowed, and later some painting and decoration crept back in. Bernard criticized abbey churches for their "immoderate length, their superfluous breadth, the costly polishings, the curious carvings and paintings which attract the worshipper's gaze and hinder his attention." He loathed the fantastical, often deformed beasts used in medievial church decoration. Weaker monks would be tempted "to spend the whole day in wondering at these things rather than in meditating the law of God."

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 for the Kings of Aragon. Corcomroe in Ireland contains one of only two surviving examples of Gaelic royal effigies from 13th and 14th century Ireland.

Agriculture, technology, and commerce

Successful farmers, the white monks introduced and propagated many improvements in medieval agriculture. They developed an organised system for selling produce, cattle and horses, and notably contributed to commercial progress in Western Europe. To the wool and cloth trade, which was especially fostered by the Cistercians, England was largely indebted for the beginnings of her commercial prosperity.

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." 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. 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 hydraulic engineering 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 metallurgists, and knowledge of their technological advances was transmitted by the order. 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. 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.

Theology

By far the most influential of the early Cistercians was Bernard of Clairvaux. He attracted vocations, served as a papal envoy, and attracted international attention to the movement: he was "one of the most influential churchmen of his time." Bernard was an ascetic and intellectual, which he demonstrated in his sermons on Grace, Free will and the Song of Songs. He was quick to recognise heretical ideas, and in 1141 and 1145 respectively, he accused the celebrated scholastic theologian Peter Abelard and the popular preacher Henry of Lausanne of heresy. He was also charged with the task of promulgating Pope Eugene's bull, Quantum praedecessores, and his eloquence in preaching the Second Crusade recruited many to the cause.

Although Bernard's De laude novae militiae was in favour of the Knights Templar, 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.

Cistercians today

Many Cistercian monasteries make produce goods such as cheese, bread, and craft products. In the United States, some abbeys support themselves through agriculture, forestry and real estate. European Trappist monasteries are known for their beer.

Literature

• Clarke, Howard B; Dent, Sarah; Johnson, Ruth (2002). Dublinia: The Story of Medieval Dublin. Dublin: O'Brien. ISBN 978-0-86278-785-1.
• Dodwell, C.R.; The Pictorial arts of the West, 800–1200, (1993), Yale UP, ISBN 0-300-06493-4
• Doran, Linda; Lyttleton, James, eds. (2008). Lordship in Medieval Ireland: Image and reality (Hardback, illustrated ed.). Four Courts Press. ISBN 978-1-84682-041-0.
• Dykes, D.W. (1980). Alan Sorrell: Early Wales Re-created. National Museum of Wales. ISBN 978-0-7200-0228-7.
• Gimpel, Jean, The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages New York, Penguin, (1976)
• Hollister, C. Warren (1992) [1966]. The Making of England, 55 BC to 1399. Volume I of A History of England, edited by Lacey Baldwin Smith (6th ed.). Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. ISBN 978-0-669-24457-1.
• Lekai, Louis (1977). The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality. The Kent State University Press, 1977. ISBN 978-0-873-38201-4.
• Logan, F. Donald, A History of the Church in the Middle Ages.
• Richter, Michael (2005). Medieval Ireland: the enduring tradition (Revised, illustrated ed.). Gill & Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-7171-3293-5.
• Rudolph, Conrad, "The 'Principal Founders' and the Early Artistic Legislation of Cîteaux", Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture 3, Cistercian Studies Series 89 (1987) 1–45
• Rudolph, Conrad, Violence and Daily Life: Reading, Art, and Polemics in the Cîteaux Moralia in Job (1997)
• Tobin, Stephen. The Cistercians: Monks and Monasteries in Europe. The Herbert Press, LTD (1995). ISBN 1-871569-80-X.
• Toman, Rolf, ed. (2007). The Art of Gothic: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting. photography by Achim Bednorz. Tandem Verlag GmbH. ISBN 978-3-8331-4676-3.
• Watt, John, The Church in Medieval Ireland. University College Dublin Press; 2nd Rev. ed. (1998). ISBN 978-1-900621-10-6.

See also

• List of Cistercian monasteries
• Monastic sign languages
• Cistercian numerals
• St Benedict Patron of Europe Association

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Cistercians — Religious of the Order of Cîteaux, a Benedictine reform, established at Cîteaux in 1098 by St. Robert, Abbot of Molesme in the Diocese of Langres, for the purpose of restoring as far as possible the literal observance of the Rule of St. Benedict. The history of this order may be divided into four periods:

I. The Formation (1098-1134);

II. The Golden Age (1134-1342);

III. The Decline (1342-1790);

IV. The Restoration (after 1790).

I. The Formation (1098-1134)

St. Robert, son of the noble Thierry and Ermengarde of Champagne, was Abbot of Molesme, a monastery dependent on Cluny. Appalled by the laxity into which the Order of Cluny had fallen, he endeavoured to effect reforms in the monasteries of Saint-Pierre-de-la-Celle, Saint-Michel of Tonnerre, and finally in that of Molesme. His attempts at reform in these monasteries meeting with very little success, he, with six of his religious, among whom were Alberic and Stephen, had recourse to Hugh, Legate of the Holy See, and Archbishop of Lyons. Authorized by Archbishop Hugh to institute a reform, Robert and his companions returned to Molesme and there chose from among the religious those whom they considered most fitted to participate in their undertaking. To the number of twenty-one the company retired to the solitude of Cîteaux (in the Diocese of Chalons), which Raynald, Viscount of Beaune, had ceded to them. (See Cîteaux, Abbey of.) On the feast of St. Benedict (21 March), 1098, which fell that year on Palm Sunday, they commenced to build the "New Monastery", as it is called in the "Exordium sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis". This, therefore, was the birthday of the Order of Cîteaux. By order of the Apostolic legate, Robert received the pastoral staff from the bishop of the diocese, Gauthier, and was charged with the government of his brethren, who immediately made their vow of stability. Thus was the "New Monastery" canonically erected into an abbey.

At this news, the monks who had remained at Molesme sent a deputation to Pope Urban II, asking that Robert might be sent back to his first monastery. The pope yielded to their petition, and Robert returned to Molesme, after having governed Cîteaux for one year. There the prior, Alberic, was elected to replace him, and, in his turn, sent the two monks, John and Ilbode, as delegates to Pascal II (who had just succeeded Urban II) to beg him to take the church of Cîteaux under the protection of the Apostolic See. By Apostolic Letters, dated at Troja in Campania, 18 April, 1100, Pascal II declared that he took under his immediate protection the abbey and the religious, of Cîteaux, saving their allegiance to the Church of Chalons. Dating from this day, Alberic and his religious established at Cîteaux the exact observance of the Rule of St. Benedict, substituted the white habit for the black which the Benedictines wore, and, the better to observe the rule in regard to the Divine Office day and night, associated with themselves lay brothers, to be chiefly occupied with the manual labours and material affairs of the order. These lay brothers, or conversi, though they were not monks, were to be treated during life and after death just like the monks themselves. St. Alberic died in 1109.

His successor was Stephen Harding, an Englishman by birth, well versed in sacred and profane science, who had been one of the first promoters of the project to leave Molesme. St. Robert, his two immediate successors, and their companions had but one object in view: a reaction against the laxity of Cluny and of other monasteries -- to resume manual labour, to adopt a more severe regimen, and to restore in monastic churches and church ceremonies the gravity and simplicity proper to the monastic profession. They never thought of founding a new order, and yet from Cîteaux were to go forth, in course of time, colonies of monks who should found other monasteries destined to become other Cîteaux, and thus create an order distinct from that of Cluny.

St. Bernard's entrance into the Order of Cîteaux (1112) was the signal of this extraordinary development. Thirty young noblemen of Burgundy followed him, among them four of his brothers. Others came after them, and in such numbers that in the following year (1113) Cîteaux was able to send forth its first colony and found its first filiation, La Ferté, in the Diocese of Chalons. In 1114 another colony was established at Pontigny, in the Diocese of Auxerre. In 1115 the young Bernard founded Clairvaux in the Diocese of Langres. In the same year Morimond was founded in the same Diocese of Langres. These were the first four offshoots of Cîteaux; but of these monasteries Clairvaux attained the highest development, becoming mother of sixty-eight monasteries even in the lifetime of St. Bernard. (See Clairvaux).

After this St. Stephen Harding was to complete the legislation for the new institute. Cluny had introduced into the monastic order the confederation of the members among themselves. St. Stephen added thereto the institution of general chapters and regular visits. Thus mutual supervision, rendering account of the administration, rigid examination of discipline, immediate correction of abuses, were so many sure means of maintaining the observance in all its purity. The collection of statutes which St. Stephen drafted, and in which are contained wise provisions for the government of the order, was called the Charter of Charity (La Charte de Charité). It and the "US", the book of usages and customs, together with some of the definitions of the first general chapters, received the approbation of Pope Callistus II. At the death of St. Stephen (1134), the order, after thirty-six years of existence, counted 70 monasteries, of which 55 were in France.

II. The Golden Age (1134-1342)

The diffusion of the new order was chiefly effected by means of foundations. Nevertheless several congregations and monasteries, which had existed before the Order of Cîteaux, became affiliated to it, among them the Congregations of Savigny and Obazine, which were incorporated in the order in 1147. St. Bernard and other Cistercians took a very active part, too, in the establishment of the great military orders, and supplied them with their constitutions and their laws. Among these various orders of chivalry may be mentioned the Templars, the Knights of Calatrava, of St. Lazarus, of Alcantara, of Avis, of St. Maurice, of the Wing of St. Michael, of Montessa, etc. In 1152 the Order of Cîteaux already counted 350 abbeys, not including the granges and priories dependent upon the principal abbeys. Among the causes which contributed to this prosperity of the new order, the influence of St. Bernard evidently holds the first place; in the next place comes the perfect unity which existed between the monasteries and the members of every house, a unity wonderfully maintained by the punctual assembling of general chapters, and the faithful performance of the regular visits. The general chapter was an assembly of all the abbots of the order, even those who resided farthest from Cîteaux. This assembly, during the Golden Age, took place annually, according to the prescriptions of the Charter of Charity. "This Cistercian Areopagus", says the author of the "Origines Cistercienses", "with equal severity and justice kept watch over the observance of the Rule of St. Benedict, the Charter of Charity and definitions of the preceding Chapters." The collection of statutes published by Dom Martene informs us that there was no distinction of persons made. After a fault became known, the same justice was meted out to lay brothers, monks, and abbots, and the first fathers of the order. Thus, as all were firmly persuaded that their rights would be protected with equal justice, the collection of statutes passed by the general chapter were consulted and respected in all the monasteries without exception. All the affairs of the order, such as differences between abbots, purchase and sale of property, incorporation of abbeys, questions relating to the laws, rites, feasts, tributes, erection of colleges, etc. were submitted to the general chapter in which resided the supreme authority of the order. Other orders took these general chapters as models of their own, either spontaneously, like the Premonstratensians, or by decree of the Fourth Lateran Council, that the religious orders should adopt the practice of holding general chapters and follow the form used by the Order of Cîteaux.

The general chapters were held every year up to 1411, when they became intermittent. Their decisions were codified. The first codification was that of 1133, under the title "Instituta Capituli Generalis". The second, which bears the title "Institutiones Capituli Generalis", was commenced in the year 1203 by the Abbot Arnoud I, and was promulgated in 1240. The third, "Libelli Antiquarum Definitionum Capituli Generalis Ordinis Cisterciencis", was issued in 1289 and in 1316. Finally, the general chapter of 1350 promulgated the "Novellae Definitiones" in conformity with the Constitution of Benedict XII, "Fulgens ut stella" of 12 July, 1355. The regular visits also contributed much to the maintenance of unity and fervour. Every abbey was visited once a year by the abbot of the house on which it immediately depended. Cîteaux was visited by the four first fathers, that is to say, by the Abbots of La Ferté, of Pontigny, of Clairvaux, and Morimond.

"The Visitor", say the ancient statutes, "will urge the Religious to greater respect for their Abbot, and to remain more and more united among themselves by the bonds of mutual love for Jesus Christ's sake... The Visitor ought not to be a man who will easily believe every one indiscriminately, but he should investigate with care those matters of which he has no knowledge, and, having ascertained the truth, he should correct abuses with prudence, uniting his zeal for the Order with his feelings of sincere paternal affection. On the other hand, the Superior visited ought to show himself submissive to, and full of confidence in, the Visitor, and do all in his power to reform his house, since one day he will have to render an account to the Lord... [The Abbot] will avoid both before the Visitor and after his departure everything that will have the appearance of revenge, reproach or indignation against any of them" [sc. his subjects]. If the visitor should act against prescriptions, he was to be corrected and punished according to the gravity of his fault by the abbot who was his superior, or by another abbot, or even by the general chapter. Likewise, the abbot visited should know that he would become grievously culpable before God by neglecting the regular form of visit, and that he would deserve to be called to account by his "Father Immediate" or by the general chapter.

Thus everything was foreseen and provided for the maintenance of good order and charity and for the preservation of the unity of observance and spirit. "No one then ought be astonished", says the author of "Origines Cistercienses", "to find in the Cistercian abbeys, during their Golden Age, so many sanctuaries of the most fervent prayer, of the severest discipline, as well as of untiring and constant labour. This explains also why, not only persons of humble and low extraction, but also eminent men, monks and abbots of other orders, doctors in every science and clerics honoured with the highest dignities, humbly begged the favour of being admitted into the Order of Cîteaux." Thus it was during this period that the order produced the greatest number of saints, blessed, and holy persons. Many abbeys -- such as Clairvaux, Villiers, Himmerod, Heisterbach, etc. -- were so many nurseries of saints. More than forty have been canonized by the Holy See. The Order of Cîteaux constantly enjoyed the favour of the Holy See, which in numerous Bulls bestowed upon the Cistercians the highest praise, and rewarded with great privileges their services to the Church. They enjoyed the favour of sovereigns, who, having entire confidence in them, entrusted to them, like Frederick II, important delegations; or, like Alphonsus I of Portugal, placed their persons and kingdoms under the care and protection of Our Lady of Clairvaux; or again, like Frederick II, feeling themselves near the point of death, wished to die clothed in the Cistercian habit.

The Cistercians benefited society by their agricultural labours. According to Dr. Janauscheck, "none but the ignorant or men of bad faith are capable of denying the merited praises which the sons of St. Benedict have received for their agricultural labours throughout Europe, or that this part of the world owes to them a greater debt of gratitude than to any other colony no matter how important it may be." They also conferred great benefits on society by the exercise of Christian charity. By means of their labours, their economy, their privations, and sometimes owing to generous donations which it would be ungrateful to despise, they became more or less rich in the things of this world, and expended their wealth upon the instruction of the ignorant, the promotion of letters and arts, and the relief of their country's necessities. Caesarius of Heisterbach speaks of a monastery in Westphalia where one day all the cattle were killed, the chalices and books pledged as security, in order to relieve the poor. The Cistercian abbeys had a house for the reception of the poor, and an infirmary for the sick, and in them all received a generous hospitality and remedies for the ills of soul and body.

Intellectual labour had also its place in the life of the Cistercians. Charles de Visch, in his "Bibliotheca Scriptorum Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis", published in 1649, devotes 773 historical and critical notices to authors who belonged to the Cistercian Order. Even in the very first period, St. Stephen Harding left a work on the Bible which is superior to anything of its kind produced by any contemporary monastery, not excepting Cluny. The Library of Dijon preserves the venerable manuscript of St. Stephen, which was to serve as a type for all Cistercian Bibles. The Cistercian libraries were rich in books and manuscripts. Nor did the sons of St. Bernard neglect the fine arts; they exercised their genius in building, contributed powerfully to the development and propagation of the Romanesque and the Gothic architecture throughout Europe, and cultivated the arts of painting and engraving.

III. The Decline (1342-1790)

The decadence of the order was due to several causes, the first of which was the large number of monasteries, often-times situated in the most widely distant countries, which prevented the "Fathers Immediate" from making the regular visits to all the houses of their filiations, while some of the abbots could not assist every year at the general chapter. Some were also found who, seeing themselves thus sheltered from the remonstrances and the punishments either of the general chapter or of the visitor, permitted abuses to creep into their houses. But the principal cause of the decline of the order (which is based on unity and charity) was the spirit of dissension which animated certain superiors. Some abbots, even not far from Cîteaux, explained in a particular sense, and that adapted to their own point of view, certain points of the Charter of Charity. The solicitude of the Roman pontiffs themselves who tried to reestablish harmony among the superiors, was not always successful.

And yet at that time there were found some courageous and determined monks who became reformers, and even founded new congregations which were detached from the old trunk of Cîteaux. Those congregations which then severed their union with Cîteaux, but which no longer exist at the present time, are:

• The Congregation of the Observance of St. Bernard of Spain, founded by Dom Martin de Vargas, in 1425, at Monte Sion near Toledo;

• The Congregation of St. Bernard of Tuscany and of Lombardy, approved by Alexander VI (1497);

• the Congregation of Portugal, or of Alcobaca, founded in 1507;

• the Congregation of the Feuillants, founded by John de la Barriere in 1563, which spread into France and Italy, the monasteries of Italy, however, eventually detaching themselves from those of France to form the Congregation of the Riformati di San Bernardo;

• the Congregation of Aragon, approved by a Bull of Paul V (1616);

• the Congregation of Rome, or of Central Italy, created by a Decree of Gregory XV in 1623;

• the Congregation of Calabria and Lucania, established by Urban VIII in 1633, and to which was united the old Congregation of Flore, which had for its founder Blessed Joachim surnamed "the Prophet".

Together with the congregations which separated from Cîteaux there were five or six others which, while remaining subject to the jurisdiction of the parent house, were legislated for by provincial or national chapters. Chief among these congregations were those of Northern Germany, the Strict Observance, and La Trappe. The Congregation of Northern Germany was erected in 1595 by Nicholas II (Boucherat), Abbot of Cîteaux, at the desire of Pope Clement VIII, in the monastery of Furstenfeld. It comprised four provinces ruled by the abbots, vicars of the general. It counted twenty-two abbeys, only three of which survived the revolutionary tempest, and now form part of the Common Observance of Cîteaux, as the Cistercian province of Austria-Hungary. The Congregation of Strict Observance, resulting from the efforts for reform of the Abbots of Charmoye and Châtillon, was established at Clairvaux by Denis Largentier, abbot of this monastery (1615). The Abbot of Cîteaux, Nicholas Boucherat, approved the reform and permitted it to hold special assemblies and to choose a vicar-general with four assistant generals. The general chapter of Cîteaux in 1623 praised it highly, Cardinal Richelieu became its protector, and the popes gave it encouragement. In 1663 it received an important member in the person of Abbot de Rancé, who introduced the Strict Observance into the Abbey of La Trappe in the Diocese of Seez, adding to it other very severe practices.

The abbeys which did not respond to the appeal of Martin de Vargas, of Denis Largentier, or of Abbot de Rancé, formed an observance which Pope Alexander VII, in his Bull of 19 April, 1666, named Common, to distinguish it from the Strict Observance, from which in reality it differed only in the use of meat and similar articles of food three times a week, a use certainly contrary to the rule of perpetual abstinence which obtained in the early days, but which the religious wars and other evils of the times in a measure rendered necessary. Mention should be made of two other reforms: that of Orval in Luxemburg, by Bernard de Montgaillard (1605), and that of Septfons, in the Diocese of Moulins, by Eustache de Beaufort, in 1663. The former numbered six monasteries, the latter did not extend beyond Septfons.

The Strict Observance developed rapidly. In a very short time it counted fifty-eight monasteries. At the death of Denis Largentier (1626), Etienne Maugier, who succeeded him, inspired it afresh. From that time it aimed at a certain superiority to which it believed it had some claims, and was resolved, in case of meeting with any opposition, to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the General of Cîteaux. Hence arose quarrels and litigations which lasted forty years or more. In 1632, at the request of the king (Louis XIII), Urban VIII continued the powers which Gregory XV had given ten years before to Cardinal De La Rochefoucauld for the reform of the monasteries of the kingdom. The cardinal heard only the Fathers of the Strict Observance, who persuaded him that no reform was possible without a return to the abstinence from meat. He therefore passed a sentence in 1634 which derogated in many points from the ancient constitutions and the Charter of Charity, particularly in what concerned the jurisdiction of the Abbot of Cîteaux and of the four first fathers. The College of St. Bernard at Paris passed into the hands of the Strict Observance. The Abbot of Cîteaux, Peter de Nivelle, appealed to the sovereign pontiff. The latter annulled the sentence of the cardinal in every point in which it was contrary to legitimate authority. In the meanwhile Peter de Nivelle having resigned, the non-reformed, in the hope of escaping from the authority of Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, elected Cardinal de Richelieu Abbot of Cîteaux. The cardinal applied the reform in his monastery Sustained by him, the reformed took possession of Cîteaux after having dispersed into other monasteries the professed religious of this monastery. At the death of Richelieu the expelled monks assembled at Dijon, 2 January, 1643, and elected to his place Dom Claude Vaussin, but the king vetoed the election; they voted again, 10 May, 1645, and gave all their voted to Claude Vaussin, while the reformed, to the number of only fifteen, voted for Dom Jean Jouaud, Abbot of Prieres in Britanny. On the 27th of November following, Innocent X sent his Bulls to Dom Claude Vaussin, and imposed silence on the reformed. February 1st, 1647, a Brief of the same pope re-established all matters in the condition in which they had been before the sentence of Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld.

The Strict Observance then tried to form an independent order under the authority of the Abbot of Prieres, and with this object in view raised new difficulties in relation to the question of abstinence. A Brief of Alexander VII, dated November, 1657, confirming the decision of Sixtus IV, in 1475, that abstinence from flesh meat was not essential to the rule, did not quiet their scruples. Finally, 26 January, 1662, the same pope interfered in a decisive manner by inviting the two parties to appear at the Court of Rome. The Common Observance sent Claude Vaussin; the Strict Observance, Dom George, Abbot of Val-Richer; La Trappe, Abbot de Rancé. On the 19th of April, 1666, appeared the Bull "In Suprema", which put an end to the divisions. It recommended that the visits be regularly and strictly made, that monks should live in the monasteries, and that the general chapters should be held every three years. It restored the night silence, poverty in apparel, and monastic tonsure. It maintained the use of meat where that already obtained, and recommended the religious who had made the vow of abstinence to be faithful to it. The Strict Observance remained under the jurisdiction of the Abbot of Cîteaux. This constitution was accepted by the general chapter of 1667, which was held at Cîteaux, in spite of protests from the opponents, and in particular of Abbot de Rance, and the new reform was put into force in all the monasteries of France, where the number of monks was sufficient.

During the eighteenth century, however, there was introduced into the Order of Cîteaux, as into almost all the great religious families, a pernicious licence of thought and morality. New conflicts between the Abbot of Cîteaux and the abbots of the four first houses of filiation arose concerning the government of the order and their own jurisdiction. In virtue of the liberties of the Gallican Church, the king and his council appointed a commission to restore order. A new collection of statutes was drawn up, but these were not definitively adopted until 1786. The general chapter of that year finally agreed among themselves and adopted the new statutes on the eve of the French Revolution. The political and religious disturbances which then and at the commencement of the nineteenth century troubled France and Europe almost ruined this venerable order. When the National Convention, by the decree of 13 February, 1790, secularized all the religious houses of France, the Order of Cîteaux had in France 228 monasteries, with 1875 religious; 61 of these houses, with 532 religious, were in the filiation of Cîteaux; 3, with 33 religious, in that of La Ferté; 33, with 171 religious, in that of Pontigny; 92, with 864 religious, in that of Clairvaux; and 37, with 251 religious, in that of Morimond. The sixty-second and last Abbot of Cîteaux, Dom François Trouvé, having lost all hope of saving his monastery, begged Pius VI to transfer all his powers to Robert Schlecht, Abbot of Salsmansweiler, of the Congregation of Northern Germany, so that the remnants of the ancient corporation of Cîteaux might still have a ruler.

From France the hatred of religion passed with the arms of the usurpers into Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and other countries, and there continued the work of destruction. By an imperial veto of the 25th of February, 1803, and a decree of the Prussian Government of the 28th of April, 1810, all the monasteries of Germany were ruined. The abbeys of Portugal were abolished by a law of the 26th of May, 1834, those of Spain by the laws of the 25th of July and 11th of October, 1835, those of Poland disappeared before the decrees of the Russian and Prussian rulers.

IV. The Restoration (After 1790)

The reform inaugurated at La Trappe by Abbot de Rance, reviving the austerity and fervour of primitive Cîteaux, was maintained, almost intact, against difficulties of every kind, until the French Revolution. There were then at La Trappe seventy religious and a numerous and fervent novitiate. When, on the 4th of December, a decree of the National Assembly suppressed the Trappists in France, Dom Augustin de Lestrange, then master of novices at La Trappe, authorized by his local superior and the Abbot of Clairvaux, set out with twenty-four of his brethren for Switzerland. The Senate of Fribourg permitted them to settle in Val-Sainte, 1 June, 1791. Pope Pius VI, by a Brief of 31 July, 1794, authorized the erection of Val-Sainte into an abbey. Dom Augustin was elected abbot on the 27th of the following November, and on the 8th of December of the same year, a solemn decree of the nuncio of the Holy See at Lucerne, executing the Brief of Pius VI, constituted Val-Sainte an abbey and the mother-house of the whole Congregation of Trappists. There the Rule of St. Benedict was observed in all its rigour, and at times its severity was even surpassed. Novices flocked thither. From Val-Sainte Dom Augustin sent colonies into Spain, Belgium, and Piedmont.

But the French troops invaded Switzerland in 1796. Obliged to leave Val-Sainte, Dom Augustin, with his religious of both sexes, commenced two years of wanderings through Europe, during which period they gave to the world the spectacle of the most heroic virtues. In 1800 Dom Augustin returned to France, and two years later resumed possession of Val-Sainte. In 1803 he sent a colony of his religious to America under the direction of Dom Urbain Guillet. In 1811, fleeing from the anger of Napoleon, who first favoured the Trappists and then suppressed all their monasteries in France and the whole empire, Dom Augustin himself left for America. In 1815, on the downfall of Napoleon, he returned immediately to La Trappe, while Dom Urbain Guillet established himself at Bellefontaine in the Diocese of Angers.

During this imperial persecution, a schism took place in the Congregation of La Trappe. The colony which Dom Augustin had sent from Val-Sainte into Belgium under the direction of Dom Eugene de Laprade, and which had settled first at Westmalle, and then at Darpheld in Westphalia, had abandoned the Rules of Val-Sainte to embrace those of de Rance. It returned to France and occupied Port-du-Salut in the Diocese of Laval; Westmalle, restored in 1821, withdrew from the jurisdiction of Dom Augustin to form, five years later, the Congregation of Belgium.

Dom Augustin died 16 July, 1827, at Lyons. A Decree dated 1 October, 1834, confirmed two days later by Gregory XVI, united the different houses of Trappists in France in one congregation known as the Congregation of Cistercian Monks of Our Lady of La Trappe. The General President of the Order of Cîteaux is its head and confirms its abbots. The four first fathers are the Abbots of Melleray, Port-du-Salut, Bellefontaine, and Gard. The Rule of St. Benedict and the Constitutions of Cîteaux or those of de Rancé, according to the custom of each monastery, are observed. But with this diversity of observance, the union did not last long. A pontifical Decree dated the 25 February, 1847, and granted at the request of the religious of each observance, divides the Trappist monasteries of France into two congregations: the Ancient Reform of Our Lady of La Trappe, which follows the Rules of de Rance, and the New Reform, which follows the Primitive Observance and is governed by the Charter of Charity. Already Westmalle in 1836 formed a distinct congregation known as the Congregation of Belgium. There were then three distinct congregations of the Trappists.

It was reserved for a later generation to see the most complete reform effected by the fusion of all the congregations into one order in unity of government and observance. On the first of October, 1892, at the desire of Leo XIII, a plenary general chapter was held in Rome, under the presidency of Cardinal Mazzella, delegated by the Cardinal Protector Monaco della Valetta. The assembly lasted twelve days; the fusion was adopted; Dom Sebastian Wyart, Abbot of Septfons, who had taken the most active part in all the negotiations to effect this union, was chosen "General of the Order of the Reformed Cistercians of Our Lady of La Trappe". Such was the name given to the order. A decree of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars of 8 December, 1892, then a pontifical Brief of 23 March, 1893, confirmed and ratified the Acts of the chapter. On the 13th of August, 1894, the sovereign pontiff approved the new constitutions and the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars promulgated them on the 25th of the same month. In 1898, the 800th anniversary of the foundation of the order, the sons of St. Bernard again took possession of the ancient Abbey of Cîteaux. Dom Sebastian Wyart was elected abbot, and thus was restored the chain of abbots of Cîteaux which had been broken for 107 years. It was then decided to suppress in the title of the order the words "Our Lady of La Trappe", the Abbey of La Trappe yielding the first rank to Cîteaux. Finally, on the 30th of July, 1902, an Apostolic Constitution of Leo XIII solemnly confirmed the restoration of the order and gave to it the definite name of "Order of Reformed Cistercians, or the Strict Observance". Dom Sebastian Wyart died 18 August, 1904. The general chapter, postponed that year until October, chose for his successor the Most Rev. Dom Augustin Marre, Abbot of Igny, and titular Bishop of Constance.

Condition of the Order in 1908

Several modern congregations must be mentioned which have been grafted on the old trunk of Cîteaux, and which, with some ancient monasteries that escaped the persecution of the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, form the Common Observance. Their mode of life corresponds to that of the Cistercians of the seventeenth century, whose mitigation was approved by Alexander VII in 1666. They are the Congregations of Italy, Belgium, Austria, and Switzerland, and the Congregation of Senanque.

1. The Congregation of St. Bernard of Italy was formed in 1820 with the monasteries which remained of the Congregations of the Roman Province and of Lombardy, after Pius VII had been deprived of his States. The congregation adopted the constitutions of the ancient Congregation of Tuscany and Lombardy.
2. The Congregation of Belgium, formed in 1836, at Bornheim in the Diocese of Mechlin, by the religious who were expelled in 1797 from Lieu-Saint-Bernard-sur-l'Escaut, observe constitutions based upon the Brief of Alexander VII and the Cistercian Ritual. They were approved by the Holy See in 1846
3. The Cistercian Congregation of Austria and Hungary was formed in 1859 by the monasteries of Austria which had escaped from the Revolution and submitted to the President General of the Order of Cîteaux.
4. The Congregation of Switzerland was formed in 1806 by the three monasteries of Hauterive, Saint-Urbain, and Wettingen, remnants of the Congregation of North Germany. These monasteries having succumbed in 1841 and 1846, the Abbot of Wettingen, an exile in Switzerland, purchased, in 1854, the Benedictine monastery of Mehrerau on the Lake of Bregenz, to which the Holy See transferred all the privileges of Wettingen. To this monastery was joined that of Marienstatt in the Diocese of Cologne in Nassau.
5. The Congregation of Senanque, or the Mean Observance, owes its origin to the parish priest, Luke Barnouin, who, with some associates, in 1849, attempted the religious life in the solitude of Our Lady of Calvary in the Diocese of Avignon, leaving that retreat in 1854, to take up his abode in the monastery of Senanque, which he had purchased. The new congregation, which, without returning to the primitive constitutions, did not adopt all the mitigations of later centuries, received the name of "Congregation of Cistercians of the Immaculate Conception". It was incorporated in the Order of Cîteaux in 1857, and in 1872 transferred its seat to the ancient monastery of Lérins. The constitutions of this congregation were approved by Leo XIII, 12 March, 1892.

When the pope, in 1892, undertook to unite in one order the three Congregations of La Trappe, His Holiness caused the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars to address a letter to the Cistercians of the Common Observance inviting them to join their brethren of the Reformed Observance of La Trappe. But as the pope left them free, they preferred to retain their respective autonomies. Since that time the Order of Cîteaux is divided into two branches absolutely distinct; the Strict and the Common Observances. To these may be added the small Congregation of Trappists of Casamari in Italy, which has only three monasteries with about 45 members.

The Order of Reformed Cistercians has (1908) 71 monasteries of men with more than 4000 subjects. In this number of houses are included the annexes which were founded in certain places to serve as refuges for the communities which had been expelled from France. These monasteries are distributed as follows: in France, 20; in Belgium, 9; in Italy, 5; in Holland, 5; in Germany, 3; in England, 3; in Ireland, 2; in Asia, 4; in Africa, 2; in America, 10; (4 in United States, 5 in Canada, and 1 in Brazil). The Reformed Cistercians make profession of the Primitive Observance of Cîteaux, with the exception of a few modifications imposed by the Holy See at the time of the fusion. Their life is strictly cenobitical, that is to say, life in common in its most absolute form. They observe perpetual silence, except in cases of necessity provided for by the rule, or when express permission is granted by the superior. Their day is divided between the Divine Office, agricultural and kindred labours, and free intervals for reading and study. The supreme authority of the order resides in the general chapter, which assembles every year at Cîteaux, from the 12th to the 17th of September, and is presided over by the abbot general. When the general chapter is not in session, current and urgent matters are regulated by the abbot general aided by his "Council of Definitors".

The abbot general, who is by right Abbot Cîteaux, resides in Rome (Via San Giovanni in Laterano, 95), with the procurator general and the five definitors of the order, of whom there are two for French-speaking countries, one for English-speaking, one for German, and one for Flemish. At the house of the abbot general are also the students whom the different houses of the order send to Rome to follow the course of studies at the Gregorian University. The Order of Reformed Cistercians has for its protector at Rome Cardinal Rampolla Del Tindaro.

The four first houses, which replace the ancient Abbeys of La Ferté, Pontigny, Clairvaux, and Morimond, are La Grande Trappe in the Diocese of Séez, Melleray in the Diocese of Nantes, Westmalle in the Diocese of Mechlin, and Port-du-Salut in the Diocese of Laval. The abbots of these four houses every year visit the mother-house at Cîteaux. The other houses are visited regularly every year by the abbots of the houses on which they immediately depend.

The actual condition of the Common Observance is as follows: The Congregation of Italy has five monasteries (two of them in Rome, at Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, and at San Bernardo alle Terme) and about 60 members. The Congregation of Belgium has two monasteries (Bornheim and Val-Dieu), with 63 members. The Congregation of Austria, the most powerful, has 12 monasteries, with 599 religious. The Congregation of Switzerland has three monasteries, with 171 members. Lastly, the Congregation of Mean Observance of Senanque, which, since the Waldeck-Rousseau Laws of 1901, has lost Senanque, Fontfroide, and Pont-Colbert, now has but two houses, with about 102 members. The Cistercians of the Common Observance in 1900 elected as their general Dom Amedeus de Bie, of the Congregation of Belgium. He has for assistants the vicars-general of the five congregations.

The Order of Cîteaux has produced a great number of saints and has given two popes to the Church, Eugene III, a disciple of St. Bernard, and Benedict XII. It has also given the Church forty cardinals, five of whom were taken from Cîteaux, and a considerable number of archbishops and bishops. The Cistercians of all observances have no less enlightened the Church by their teachings and writings, than edified it by the sanctity of their lives. Among great teachers may be cited St. Bernard, the Mellifluous Doctor and the last of the Fathers of the Church, St. Stephen Harding, author of the "Exordium Cisterciensis Coenobii", of the "Charter of Charity", etc. Then follow Conrad of Eberbach (Exordium Magnum Ordinis Cisterciensis); Aelred, Abbot of Rieval (Sermons); Serlon, Abbot of Savigny (Sermons); Thomas of Cîteaux (Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles); Caramuel, the Universal Doctor, author of a Moral Theology very much esteemed, whom St. Alphonsus Liguori calls "the prince of Laxists"; Caesarius of Heisterbach (Homilies, "Dialogus Miraculorum", etc.); Manrique (Cistercian Annals in vols. folio); Henriques (Menologium Cisterciense); Charles de Visch (Bibliotheca Scriptorum Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis); the Abbot de Rance ("De la sainteté et des devoirs de la vie monastique", "Eclaircissements sur le même traité", "Méditations sur la règle de Saint-Benoît", etc.); Dom Julien Paris ("Nomasticon Cisterciense" in fol., Paris, 1664), Dom Pierre le Nain, sub-prior of La Trappe ("Vie de l'Abbé de La Trappe", "Essai de l'histoire de Cîteaux", 9 vols., Paris, 1690-97); Sartorius ("Cistercium bis-tertium", Prague, 1700, and others. In the nineteenth century it suffices to mention among a great many writers belonging to both Observances Dr. Leopold Janauscheck (Originum Cisterciensium tom. I, Vienna, 1877 -- the author died before he was able to commence the second volume), Dom Hugues Séjalon, monk of Aiguebelle (Annales d'Aiguebelle, 2 vols. and a new edition of the "Nomasticon Cisterciense" of Dom Paris, Solesmes, 1892).

Cistercians in America

The establishment of the Cistercians in America is due to the initiative of Dom Augustin de Lestrange. He was born in 1754, in the castle of Colombier-le-Vieux, Ardèche, France, the son of Louis-César de Lestrange, an officer of the household of Louis XV, and of Jeanne-Pierrette de Lalor, daughter of an Irish gentleman who had followed in 1688 James II in his exile. Dom Augustin was master of novices at La Trappe when the Revolution burst forth, and upon the suppression of the religious orders he sought refuge at Val-Sainte in Switzerland, with twenty-four of his brethren. Driven from Val-Sainte by the French troops, these religious wandered over the whole of Europe, going even into Russia. (See above under III. The Decline.)

Dom Augustin at length resolved to send a colony of Cistercian Trappists to America, where he saw much good to be done. Already in 1793, seeing novices flocking to Val-Sainte, he had directed to Canada a part of his religious under the guidance of Father John Baptist. But at Amsterdam this colony found itself prevented by political troubles from departing, and divided into two bands, one of which settled at Westmalle in Belgium, while the other went to England and established itself at Lulworth in Dorsetshire, in the very place where formerly there had existed a Cistercian abbey which was destroyed by Henry VIII. Dom Augustin, however, had not given up the idea of an American foundation. In 1802 he charged Dom Urbain Guillet to carry out his intentions in this regard. Dom Urbain, born at Nantes, in 1766, the son of Ambroise Augustin Guillet, Knight of Malta, and of Marie-Anne Le Quellec, entered La Trappe in 1785, and was the last to pronounce his vows in that monastery when the Revolution burst forth. He assembled 24 religious, lay brothers, and members of the third order (an institution of Dom Augustin de Lestrange), and sailed from Amsterdam, 24 May, 1802, on board of the Sally, a Dutch vessel flying the American flag to avoid the risks of war -- for Holland was at the time an ally of France, and a conflict was imminent between that country and England.

The Sally entered the port of Baltimore, on the 25th of September, after a voyage of four months, having been hindered by contrary winds, and having gone out of her course to avoid English cruisers. Dom Urbain and his companions were received at St. Mary's Seminary, which was under the direction of the Sulpicians, to whose superior, the venerable M. Nagot, then eighty-five years of age, the Cistercian immigrants had letters. At that time St. Mary's College possessed several eminent professors, and among these was M. Flaget, who later became Bishop of Bardstown, and then of Louisville, and who, in 1848, was to receive in Kentucky the religious who left Melleray to found Gethsemane.

About fifty miles from Baltimore, between the little towns of Hanover and Heberston was a plantation known as Pigeon Hill, which belonged to a friend of the Sulpicians. Being absent for some years, he left them the power of disposing of it as they should deem proper. This large and beautiful residence was well provided with provisions by the goodness of the Sulpicians. In the woods near by were found all kinds of wild fruits. The Trappists installed themselves at Pigeon Hill. M. de Morainvilliers, a French emigrant, a native of Amiens and pastor of St. Patrick's church, Baltimore, used his influence with his parishioners to procure for the newly-arrived community the aid necessary for their establishment. But everything was dear in the country, and the money which Father Urbain had destined for the purchase of land did not even suffice for the support of his community. Eighteen months had already passed since the arrival of the colony at Pigeon Hill, and the true foundation had not yet been begun. Dom Urbain had not accepted any of the land which had been offered to him. Moreover, the proximity of Baltimore was a frequent source of desertions among the young people of the third order.

About the beginning of 1805 Dom Urbain heard Kentucky spoken of. Its climate was represented to him as more temperate, and its soil more fertile. He left immediately to visit that country, and found there a devoted friend in the only Catholic priest then resident, Father Stephen Badin (q.v.). Father Badin took upon himself the obligation of finding for the Trappists a suitable establishment. Having left Pigeon Hill in July, 1805, Father Urbain and his companions arrived at Louisville in the beginning of September. The inhabitants received them with great kindness and provided for their first wants. They occupied for the time being a plantation which a pious woman offered them, at some distance from Louisville, and this gave them time to acquire, about sixty miles south of Louisville, in the neighbourhood of Rohan's Knob, a property called Casey Creek, or Potinger's Creek.

In the meantime a new band had been sent out by Dom Augustin Lestrange, under the conduct of Father Mary Joseph, a native of Chapell-les-Rennes, in Jura (b. 22 April, 1774), who had been a grenadier in the French army. One day he had been ordered to shoot a priest, but had refused to obey; he left the army and became a religious at Val-Sainte. His community was at that time composed of seven priests, seventeen lay brothers, and twenty-one young people of the third order.

In the beginning of 1809 sixty acres of land had already been cleared at Casey Creek, a quantity of grain sowed, and a great number of trees planted. Permanent settlement was about to be made here when a fire destroyed in a few hours all the buildings of the new monastery. Dom Urbain was deeply affected by the misfortune, and thought only of going elsewhere. An Irish gentleman by the name of Mulamphy whom he had met in Baltimore, offered him the ownership of a habitation in Louisiana. Dom Urbain and Father Mary Joseph left together to visit this property. It pleased them, and they decided to leave Kentucky and Casey Creek.

In the "Sketches of the Early Catholic Missions of Kentucky, 1787-1826" can be read the unexceptionable testimony which Bishop Spalding renders of the fervour of the religious during the whole time they spent in Kentucky. Faithful to the rule of penance, they retrenched nothing from the austere practices of their holy state. The Rev. Father Charles Nerinckx, in a letter to Bishop Carroll, is not sparing in his praises of the Trappists, though he blames certain details of administration which were the cause of their failure at Casey Creek. In the spring of 1809 the community left for Louisiana and took up their abode at Florissant, the property of Mr. Mulamphy, some thirty miles west of St. Louis, on a hill which slopes towards the Missouri. But Father Urbain contemplated the purchase of another property on the other side of the Mississippi, which was offered to him by M. Jarrot, former procurator of the seminary of St. Sulpice at Baltimore, who had established himself at Cahokia, six miles from St. Louis. In the first month of 1810 Dom Urbain bought on the prairie of "Looking Glass" the two highest of the forty mounds which formed the burial-ground of the Indians in the vicinity of Cahokia, known by the name of Indiana Mound.

"Looking Glass" was an immense tract of land in St. Clair County, Illinois, which, it is said, had served the savages for many generations as a burial-place for their dead. These people had built there gigantic monuments which rose up from a base of 160 feet in circumference to a height of more than 100 feet. The Trappists constructed several cabins on the smaller of the two mounds purchased by Dom Urbain, reserving the higher mound for the abbey which they intended to build later. But the new settlers soon felt the influence of the unhealthy climate. Several savage tribes who had attempted in the past to take up their abode there had been obliged to abandon the undertaking. One of the religious escaped the fever, but only one of them died. However, Monks' Mound, as it was afterwards named, presented great advantages. The city of St. Louis was only six or seven miles distant, all around were vast prairies or abundance of wood, and the waters of the Mississippi were so full of fish that, to use the expression of Father Urbain, "a blind man could not help but spear a big fish, if he tried". The lands were easy to cultivate and very fertile. The savages who made frequent incursions into the neighbourhood never molested the monks. Dom Urbain had his rights of property confirmed by Congress at Washington in March, 1810. He wished also to acquire 4000 acres of land in the neighbourhood of Monks' Mound. The president and a certain number of members of Congress were favourable to him, but the hostility of several influential members, who feared to see this country peopled under the influence and direction of religious and Catholic priests, caused his petition to go over to the next session. While waiting, Dom Urbain, struck by the sad condition of religion in the vicinity of St. Louis and in Illinois sent two of his religious to preach the Gospel there -- Father Mary Joseph and Father Bernard, the latter a Canadian priest who he had brought with him from New York to Casey Creek. These settled in a parish which was the most renowned for its scandals. "There", says Gaillardin ("Histoire de la Trappe", II. 285), "a husband had just sold his wife for a bottle of whisky; the purchaser in his turn sold her for a horse; and finally she was sold a third time for a yoke of oxen." But so zealously did these missionaries labour there by word and example that in a short time religion flourished. Father Bernard, already advanced in age, after some time succumbed to fatigue. To aid Father Mary Joseph, Dom Urbain took upon himself the care of the Christian people who were nearest to the monastery.

In 1812 a terrible plague visited the colony of the Monks' Mound. This fever, which desolated the country for two years, attacked the community and rendered it impossible for them to do any work. At the same time all necessaries were dear, and there was no money. Dom Urbain resolved to leave Monk's Mound. He sold all he possessed and transferred his community to Maryland. There he found on his arrival six other religious under the direction of Father Vincent de Paul, who had been sent from Bordeaux to America by Dom Augustin de Lestrange, and, having landed in Boston the 6 August, 1811, with two religious, had been joined in the following year by three lay brothers. (Father Vincent de Paul was a native of Lyons, born in 1769.) Dom Urbain found the little band in the greatest misery. While waiting for better conditions, he settled them upon a little farm between Baltimore and Philadelphia, and conducted his own subjects to an island near Pittsburgh.

In the meanwhile Dom Augustin de Lestrange, pursued by the anger of Napoleon, who had even set a price upon his head, arrived in New York in December, 1813. The Jesuits had just given up their foundation in that city, and Dom Augustin took over the building they had used as a classical school and which was located where St. Patrick's Cathedral now stands in Fifth Avenue. Here, with Fathers Urbain and Vincent de Paul, he began a little community which resumed the regular life and exerted on outsiders a salutary influence. They cared for a number of children, most of them orphans; Protestants were edified, and some conversions were made among them. The effort to establish a community was abandoned, however, after two years' experience. Father Urbain made another attempt to found a colony upon a farm which was offered to him by M. Quesnet, Vicar-General of Philadelphia.

Monastery of Petit-Clairvaux

In 1814 Dom Augustin, after the abdication of Napoleon, resolved to return to France to re-establish there the Order of Cîteaux. He authorized Father Mary Joseph to remain in America, to continue the evangelization of the savages. Two groups left in October, the one under the conduct of Dom Augustin, the other under that of Father Urbain. A third group set sail later from New York for Halifax, under the guidance of Father Vincent de Paul (May, 1815). Here he was obliged to wait fifteen days for the vessel which was to take him back to his native land, but the vessel sailed while Father Vincent de Paul was engaged upon some business in town. He found himself without friends, without money, and in a country of which he knew nothing. But Father Vincent de Paul found there a vast field for the exercise of his zeal. He undertook to preach to the savages and, at the request of Monseigneur Lartigue, Bishop of Montreal, to found a monastery in Nova Scotia. He laboured eight years for the conversion of the infidels, and then, to carry out the latter project, he left for Bellefontaine in France (1823) and, the same year, returned to America, bringing with him four religious, with whom he founded, in 1825, the monastery of Petit Clairvaux, in Big Tracadie, Nova Scotia. Father Vincent de Paul lived twenty-eight years longer, spreading the blessings of the Gospel in that country. He died 1 January, 1853, in the odour of sanctity, and there is a question of introducing his cause at Rome.

For many years this foundation struggled for existence. Two fires in succession destroyed all. Discouraged thereby, the little community, in 1900, left that country and settled near Lonsdale, Rhode Island, where it founded the monastery of Our Lady of the Valley. Since 1903 the Nova Scotian solitude of Petit Clairvaux has been repeopled. Thirty religious from the Abbey of Thymadeuc (France), under the direction of Dom Eugene Villeneuve, continued the interrupted work, clearing 1000 acres of land, two-thirds of which are forest-lands, two thirds of the remainder either pasture or meadow-lands; only about 15 acres are capable of being worked. The monastery is situated one mile from the Intercolonial Railway. Although the Cistercian Rule was in vigour there it was only incorporated in the Order of Reformed Cistercians in 1869.

Gethsemane and New Melleray

The year 1848 saw the erection of two other monasteries in the New World, one in Nelson County in the Diocese of Louisville, Kentucky, not far from the scene of the labours and hardships of Fathers Urbain and Mary Joseph and their companions, the other in the Diocese of Dubuque, Iowa, twelve miles west of the Mississippi River. The monasteries are the present Abbeys of Our Lady of Gethsemane and Our Lady of New Melleray.

The Abbey of Gethsemane, in the Diocese of Louisville, was founded by the Abbey of Melleray in France. In 1848 Dom Maxime, abbot of that monastery, sent two of his religious to the United States to find a suitable location for a foundation. Bishop Flaget of Louisville -- the saint of Kentucky, as he was called -- indicated to them an establishment called Gethsemane, belonging to the Sisters of Loretto who were directing an orphanage. The property, consisting of about 1400 acres of good land, was purchased, and on the 20th of December, 1848, forty religious from Melleray took possession of it. On the 21st of July, 1850, Pius IX erected Gethsemane into an abbey. Dom Eutropius was chosen abbot in March, 1851, and on the 26th of the following October he received abbatial blessing from the hands of Mgr. Spalding, successor of Mgr. Flaget in the Diocese of Louisville. The ten or twelve log houses which had served as dwellings for the Sisters of Loretto and their orphans had become entirely inadequate for the needs of the Fathers, and Dom Eutropius decided to build a monastery. After eleven years of hard and incessant labour, which had considerably impaired his health, the zealous superior resigned his charge and returned to Melleray. From this place of retirement he was called to become the first superior of Tre Fontane near Rome.

His successor at Gethsemane was Dom Benedict Berger, under whose rule the beautiful abbatial church of Gethsemane was solemnly consecrated by Archbishop Purcell, of Cincinnati, assisted by the Bishop of Louisville and Buffalo, 15 November 1866. Mgr. Spalding, who had become Archbishop of Baltimore, was present on the occasion, and preached the sermon, a masterpiece of sacred eloquence. Dom Benedict died 13 August, 1890, and was succeeded by Dom Edward Bourban, who transformed into a college the little school which the Sisters of Loretto had left in charge of the new community. This college is situated about a quarter of a mile from the abbey in a picturesque location, and has since been incorporated by the legislature of Kentucky. In 1895 Dom Edward, while on a visit to France, resigned his charge on account of the poor state of his health, and was appointed chaplain of the Trappistines of Our Lady of Les Gardes, in the Diocese of Angers, France. On the 11th of October, 1898, Dom Edmond Obrecht, cellarer of the Abbey of Tre Fontane near Rome, was elected Abbot of Gethsemane, and was blessed by Bishop McCloskey of Louisville on the 28th of the same month. This community numbers 75 members.

The Abbey of New Melleray, in the Diocese of Dubuque, Iowa, about twelve miles west of the Mississippi, is so called because its mother-house is the Abbey of Mount Melleray in Ireland, which was founded by the Melleray Abbey of France. In 1848 Dom Bruno Fitzpatrick, Abbot of Mount Melleray, sent some of his religious to the State of Iowa. Mgr. Lorans, Bishop of Dubuque, offered them 80 acres of land in the vicinity of his episcopal city. The cornerstone of the monastery was laid 16 July, 1849. Raised to the dignity of an abbey in 1862, it had for first abbot, Dom Ephrem McDonald. After twenty years he resigned and returned to Mount Melleray. The Rev. Alberic Dunlea, who arrived in September, 1885, with an important colony from Mount Melleray, succeeded him as superior. He relieved the financial condition of the abbey, and ended the difficulties which had nearly ruined it under the preceding administration. In 1889 a new superior was elected in the person of Father Louis Carew. Later he became definitor of the order for the English-speaking countries, and was succeeded by Father Alberic who became titular prior. In 1897 the monastery was restored to its dignity of abbey, and Dom Alberic Dunlea was elected abbot. The property comprises some 3000 acres of land, with an abundance of excellent water. The abbey has been rebuilt, but in 1908 it was not yet completed.

Abbey of La Trappe, Canada

The Abbey of Our Lady of the Lake of Two Mountains (better known by the name of La Trappe, the official name given to the post-office established there) is situated in the territory of Oka, in the Diocese of Montreal, about thirty miles from that city and upon the shores of the Lake of the Two Mountains, whence it derives its name. The first thought of founding this monastery was due to the venerable M. Rousselot, priest of St. Sulpice, and pastor of Notre-Dame of Montreal. Born at Cholet (Maine et Loire, France), a few leagues distant from the Abbey of Bellefontaine, M. Rousselot had often, in his youth, visited this monastery. Several times during his visits to France he had communicated his projects to the Abbot of Bellefontaine, Dom Jean-Marie Chouteau. The expulsion of the religious decreed by the French Government, and put into execution at Bellefontaine, 6 November, 1880, decided the Rev. Father Jean-Marie to accept the proposition of M. Rousselot. On the 8th of April, 1881, the Rev. Father Abbot, accompanied by one of his religious, arrived in Montreal, where he was most kindly received by Bishop Fabre. After some weeks of negotiation, the Seminary of St. Sulpice ceded to the Trappists 1000 acres of land in the seigniory of the Lake of the Two Mountains. At the same time the provincial Government of Quebec promised to encourage the foundation and to come to its aid. On his return to France the Rev. Father Abbot sent to Canada four of his religious, so that the infant colony comprised five members, including his companion who remained. Father William was the superior. They installed themselves for the time being as well as they could in a little wooden house that belonged to the Mill of the Bay, as it was called, in the territory of Oka. This temporary installation lasted until the month of September. The religious then took possession of a monastery which, without being a permanent abode, gave them room enough for faithfully carrying out the Cistercian observances and receiving new recruits. This first monastery was blessed, 8 September, 1881. It has since been transformed into an agricultural school.

The grain of mustard seed promised to become a great tree. Novices presented themselves, and at the same time the grounds, until then uncultivated, covered with brush and forests and filled with rocks, were cleared and tilled. After this a permanent monastery was planned. In the autumn of 1889, thanks to a generous benefactor, M. Devine, work was commenced upon it. In the month of May, 1890, the corner-stone was laid, and on the 28th of August, 1891, Mgr. Fabre solemnly blessed the first two wings which had been completed. This same day, by a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, the priory of Our Lady of the Lake was erected into an abbey. On the 26th of March the community chose as abbot the Very Rev. Father Anthony Oger, who, on the 29th of the following June, received the abbatial blessing from the hands of Mgr. Fabre in the cathedral of Montreal. Finally, in 1897, by the aid of a benefactor as modest as he was generous, M. Rousseau, priest of St. Sulpice, the monastery and the abbatial church were entirely completed, and on the 7th of November Archbishop Bruchesi solemnly consecrated the church. Thence-forth the monks could give themselves fully to their lives of labour and prayer, without fearing any inconvenience in the fulfilment of their regular exercises. But on the 23rd of July, 1902, a fire destroyed the monastery, and the community was obliged to take shelter in the agricultural school. While waiting for sufficient means to rebuild their monastery, the monks constructed a temporary wooden shelter, and on Holy Thursday, 1903, were able to leave the school. The aid rendered by the different houses of the order and the traditional generosity of the Canadian people and the people of the United States, without distinction of creed, soon enabled them to commence the building of a new monastery upon the site of the former, and on the 21st of August, 1906, Mgr. Bruchesi, Archbishop of Montreal, surrounded by several archbishops and bishops, consecrated the abbatial church.

The Abbey of Our Lady of the Lake had in 1908, according to statistics, 120 inmates, including the oblates. This name is given to boys of eleven to fifteen years who are entrusted to the monks by their parents to be brought up according to the Rule of St. Benedict, so that later, if the superiors judge them to be called to the religious life, they may become monks. The rule is mitigated for them in consideration of their tender age. This is a revival of the monastic school of the Middle Ages and of the first centuries of religious life. The principal industries of Our Lady of the Lake are the manufacture of cheese and of a medicinal wine. The monastery possesses also an important creamery for the manufacture of butter. But that which contributes most of all to the renown of La Trappe of Oka is its agricultural school. In this matter the Reformed Cistercians (Trappists) of Our Lady of the Lake follow the glorious traditions of their ancestors. From their very installation in the country, their skill in deriving profit from lands previously sterile was noticed by the farmers of the neighbourhood. Persons of every age and condition asked to be permitted to work with them, so as to learn their methods. This was the beginning of the agricultural school which the Government was in a short time to recognize officially, and which, reorganized since the burning of the former monastery, gives instruction in agricultural science every year to 80 or 100 students. To-day the building devoted to this school is a large modern construction delightfully situated in a picturesque location, and commands a beautiful view of the Lake of the Two Mountains. This agricultural school has been affiliated with the University of Laval.

Monastery of Lake St. John

For a long time the Honourable Honore Mercier, Prime Minister of the Province of Quebec, had at the request of the colonization agent of the province, been earnestly entreating the Abbot of Bellefontaine and Dom Anthony of Our Lady of the Lake to send some religious into the country of Lake St. John, recently opened to colonization. He had offered to the Trappist Fathers 6000 acres of land and a considerable sum of money. In the year 1891 he charged the Rev. Th. Greg. Rouleau, principal of the Laval Normal School, who accompanied Mgr. Begin on his visit ad limina, to urge this request of the Government upon the Abbot of Bellefontaine. When the abbot, with the necessary authorization from his order, arrived in Quebec to settle the matter, M. de Boucherville had succeeded M. Mercier as prime minister. M. Pelletier, Secretary of the Province, and the Honourable Louis Beaubien, Minister of Agriculture, were exceedingly happy to continue the work of the preceding ministry. They favoured with all their power the establishment of the Trappists at Lake St. John. Mgr. Labrecque, who had succeeded Mgr. Begin in the See of Chicoutimi, made the foundation the particular object of his personal care and attention. In 1892 Dom Anthony sent a little colony to Lake St. John. Thus was founded the prosperous and beneficent monastery of Our Lady of Mistassini at Lake of St. John in the Diocese of Chicoutimi. In January, 1906, it was erected into a priory, and the Rev. Dom Pacomius Gaboury was elected prior. The monastery in 1907 had twenty inmates.

Monastery of Our Lady of the Prairies, Manitoba

Archbishop Taché of St. Boniface had long desired to enrich his diocese with an institution of this kind. He wrote about it several times to the Abbot of Bellefontaine, and in the spring of 1892 the latter came to an understanding with the archbishop, and his colabourer, M. Ritchot, pastor of St. Norbert. The prelates gave the Rev. Father Abbot 1500 acres of good land in the parish of St. Norbert, and immediately sent thither a little colony under the direction of Father Louis de Bourmont. The work of construction was carried on with vigour and rapidity, and on the 18th of October in the same year, Archbishop Tache blessed the monastery and named it Our Lady of the Prairies. St. Norbert is situated on the west bank of the Red River, about nine miles south of Winnipeg, the great metropolis of Western Canada. It is exclusively an agricultural colony, and farming is carried on there on an extensive scale by means of the latest improved machinery. In 1893 the harvest was remunerative. In 1897 there were more than five hundred acres of first-class land under cultivation. The monastery of Our Lady of the Prairies had forty inmates in the year 1908. By this date a new building had been erected.

Monastery of Our Lady of the Valley, Lonsdale, Rhode Island, U.S

This monastery is no other than the former Little Clairvaux transferred. After the disastrous events which made it impossible for the community of Little Clairvaux to continue its work at Big Tracadie, Dom John Mary Murphy, yielding to the desire of Bishop Harkins of Providence to have some contemplative religious in his diocese, transferred it to Lonsdale, Rhode Island, in March, 1900, leaving to other religious who came from France his monastery of Little Clairvaux. He commenced without delay to build a wooden structure which would serve for a temporary shelter for the religious. At the same time he was constructing the buildings indispensable for farming. These preparations were pushed forward with such energy that by the month of July the community were able to commence the clearing and cultivation of the lands. It was an arduous and ungrateful task; no single-handed farmer would have undertaken it. But what was impossible to individual effort was soon effected by united labour, and the ungrateful soil became productive. The new monastery, begun in April, 1902, was finished in December of the same year, and in the month of January, 1903, the religious had the consolation of being installed in a building appropriate to their kind of life. For a farm the water supply is of prime importance. The religious of Our Lady of the Valley have discovered a spring which supplies water abundantly for all purposes. Moreover, this water, on account of its mineral properties, has a considerable commercial value. The total area of the property is 450 acres. The success which has thus far attended the efforts of the monks at Lonsdale is a precious encouragement for all those who are engaged in farming pursuits in that rocky part of Rhode Island.

The monastery was erected into a priory in 1907, and the religious elected the Rev. Dom John Mary Murphy prior. It retains in the order the rank of seniority corresponding to the date of incorporation of Little Clairvaux in the Order of Cîteaux. in 1869.

Monastery of Our Lady of Calvary, Rogersville, N.B

Foreseeing the evils with which their communities were threatened by the law of 1901 (Waldeck-Rousseau), several abbots of the Order of Cîteaux in France looked to find a refuge in case of expulsion. Dom Anthony Oger, Abbot of Our Lady of the Lake, wrote to Mgr. Richard, pastor of Rogersville, N.B., who answered promptly, placing at his disposal certain mills and 1000 acres of land already partly cultivated. In August, 1902, the prior of Bonnecombe, France, the Rev. Father Anthony Piana and the Rev. Mother Lutgarde, prioress, with another sister, arrived in Montreal and afterwards at Our Lady of the Lake by way of Montreal. Dom Anthony Oger devoted his whole paternal solicitude to aiding his visitors in finding a place suitable for a foundation. The abbot communicated Mgr. Richard's proposal to the prior of Bonnecombe, who, after two visits to Rogersville decided to accept it, and the project was submitted to the approbation of the general chapter. The abbot general, Dom Sebastian Wyart, urged Dom Emile, Abbot of Bonnecombe for Canada under the direction of Dom Anthony Piana. On the 5th of the following November the little colony was solemnly received at Rogersville by the pastor and his parishioners, and took possession of the monastery, to which was given the name of Our Lady of Calvary, which was canonically erected into a priory 12 July, 1904.

Monastery of Our Lady of Jordan, Oregon

In 1904 the Cistercian monks of Fontgombault (Indreet-Loire, France), were forced to abandon their monastery. They, too, looked for a refuge in America. Under the direction of their abbot, Dom Fortunato Marchand, they went to Oregon to ask for a place of retreat where they would be able to serve Almighty God, and observe their rule. The new foundation of Our Lady of Jordan is situated in the township of Jordan, Linn County, about 90 miles from the Pacific Coast, upon a plateau a mile and a half in area. The property consists of about 400 acres of land, almost 200 of which are actually under cultivation or in meadow-lands, 100 in wood land, and the remainder covered with brush. A torrent, tributary of the Santiam River, bounds it on the south. Upon this torrent has been built a steam saw-mill in connection with the monastery. Here the Oregon fir-trees, which attain immense heights, are converted into lumber for the needs of the community and for commerce. The future of this Cistercian community to a great extent rests upon this industry. The land is ordinarily fertile and produces cereals, vegetables, pears, plums, apples, etc. The monastery of Our Lady of Jordan was solemnly dedicated in 1907, the Archbishop of Oregon City Officiating, in the presence of a large assembly of the laity, among whom were many non-Catholics. On the same occasion the Sacrament of Confirmation was administered by the archbishop. The Right Rev. Father Thomas, Abbot of the Benedictine Abbey of Mount Angel, preached the dedicatory sermon, in which he explained the nature and the object of the life of the Cistercians, or Trappists.

The Monastery of Our Lady of Maristella This monastery, at Taubaté in the Archdiocese of São Paulo do Brazil, is the first, and up to now the only monastery of the Cistercian Order in South America. It was founded in 1904 by the Abbey of Septfons in France, on a farm, or fazenda, at the foot of the Serra Mantiqueira, not far from the railroad between Rio and São Paulo, about twelve miles from Taubaté and six from Trememblé, a small place connected with Taubaté by a tramway. The property consisting of 4000 or 5000 acres, had remained untilled since the abolition of slavery in 1888, and the buildings were falling into ruins. One half of the land lies along the River Parahyba, and the other, consisting of hills and valleys, forms the base of the chain of mountains of Mantiqueira. Rice, coffee, sugar-cane, Indian corn, etc., are cultivated, and cattle are raised. The climate is temperate, although it is within the tropics. The community, forty in number, has established a school for the children of the vicinity.

Exordes de Cîteaux (Grande Trappe, 1884); D'Arbois De Jubainville, Interieur des abbayes cisterciennes au XII et au Les annales d' Aiguebelle (Valence, 1863); Janauscheck, Originum Cisterciensium etc. (Vienna, 1877), I; Gallia Christiana, IV; Hélyot, Dictionnaire des ordres religieux; Ordinis Cisterciensis Jurium etc. (Rome, 1902); Abrege de l'histoire de l'ordre de Cîteaux par un moine de Thymadeuc (St. Brieuc, 1897). Gaillardin, Histoire de La Trappe; Dom Augustin de Lestrange et les trappists pendant la Revolution (Grande Trappe, 1898); Vie du R. P. Urbain Guillet (Montligeon, 1899); Vérite, Cîteaux, La Trappe et Bellefontaine (Paris, 1885); Spalding, Sketches of the Early Missions of Kentucky, 1781-1826; Maes, The life of Rev. Charles Nerinckx (Cincinnati, 1880); L'abbaye de Notre-Dame du Lac et l'ordre de Cîteaux au Canada et dans les Etats-Unis (Montreal, 1907); Tessier, Bibliotheca Patrum Cisterciensium (4 vol. 4x, 1660); Alanus De Insulis, Opera Mosalia (4x, 1654); Bona, Opera Omnia (4x 1677): Caretto, Santosale del S. Ordine Cisterciense (4 vol. 4x, 1705); Debreyne, many volumes on theology an medicine; Ughelli, Italia Sacra (10 vol. folio, 1717); Henriquez should be quoted for having not only the menologium but also the Phoenix reviviscens (4x, 1626); Regula Constit. et Privilegia Ord. Cist. (folio, 1630); Janauscheck, Bibliographia Bernardina.

External links

• Official website
• Website on Cistercian Order, Architecture and History (Italian)
• Newadvent.org, Catholic Encyclopedia
• EUCist News, a blog about current Cistercian research in English and German
• Carta Caritatis Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine (Latin)
• Center for Cistercian and Monastic Studies
• European route of Cistercian abbeys