A religious order formed by Benedictine monks by St Robert of Molesme in Citeaux, France, in 1098, under a strict rule, with an emphasis on solitude, poverty, and simplicity. The order was prominent in the Middle Ages, with leaders including Bernard of Clairvaux. By the 13th-c it had over 500 houses in Europe, but thereafter declined. In the 17th-c it was divided into communities of Common Observance (now abbreviated SOCist) and of Strict Observance (in full, the Order of the Reformed Cistercians of the Strict Observance, abbreviated OCSO). The latter were revived in France after the Revolution by Trappists (former members of the monastery of La Trappe). Common Observance is now prominent in the USA and parts of W Europe, with an abbot-general in Rome; Strict Observance, with a mother-house in Citeaux and an abbot in Rome, is active in France, Switzerland, England, and Poland.
The Order of Cistercians (OCist) (Latin Cistercenses), otherwise White Monks (from the colour of the habit, over which is worn a black scapular or apron) is a Roman Catholic order of enclosed monks.
Formation
In 1098 a band of 21 Cluniac monks left their abbey of Molesme in Burgundy and followed their Abbot, Robert of Molesme (1027-1111), to establish a new monastery.
During the first year the monks set about constructing lodging areas and farmed the lands. Soon the monks in Molesme began petitioning Pope Urban II to return their Abbot to them. A good number of the monks who helped found Cîteaux returned with him to Molesme, leaving just a few in their stead. The remaining monks elected Prior Alberic as their Abbot, under whose leadership the abbey would find its grounding.
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 cowls (dyed wool).
On January 26, 1108 Alberic died and was soon succeeded by Stephen Harding, the man responsible for carrying the order into its crucial phase. Stephen also acquired farms for the abbey in order to ensure its survival and ethic, the first of which was Clos Vougeot.
By 1111 the ranks had grown sufficiently at Cîteaux and Stephen sent a group of 12 monks to start a "daughter house", basically a sister temple dedicated to the strict observance of Saint Benedict. Meanwhile, the Cistercian influence in the Catholic Church more than kept pace with this material expansion, so that St Bernard saw one of his monks ascend the papal chair as Pope Eugene III.
Cistercian Life
The keynote of Cistercian life was a return to a literal observance of St Benedict's rule: how literal may be seen from the controversy between St. Bernard and Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny (see Maitland, Dark Ages, § xxii.).
In order to make time for this work they cut away the accretions to the divine office which had been steadily growing during three centuries, and in Cluny and the other Black Monk monasteries had come to exceed greatly in length the regular canonical office: one only of these accretions did they retain, the daily recitation of the Office of the Dead (Edm.
It was as agriculturists and horse and cattle breeders that, after the first blush of their success and before a century had passed, the Cistercians exercised their chief influence on the progress of civilization in the later Middle Ages: they were the great farmers of those days, and many of the improvements in the various farming operations were introduced and propagated by them, and it is from this point of view that the importance of their extension in northern Europe is to be estimated.
The Cistercians at the beginning renounced all sources of income arising from benefices, tithes, tolls and rents, and depended for their income wholly on the land. Farming operations on so extensive a scale could not be carried out by the monks alone, whose choir and religious duties took up a considerable portion of their time; The lay brothers were recruited from the peasantry and were simple uneducated men, whose function consisted in carrying out the various fieldworks and plying all sorts of useful trades: they formed a body of men who lived alongside of the choir monks, but separate from them, not taking part in the canonical office, but having their own fixed round of prayer and religious exercises.
A lay brother was never ordained, and never held any office of superiority. But it often happened that the number of lay brothers became excessive and out of proportion to the resources of the monasteries, there being sometimes as many as 200, or even 300, in a single abbey. thus in England by the close of the 14th century it had shrunk to relatively small proportions, and in the 15th century the régime of the English Cistercian houses tended to approximate more and more to that of the Black Monks.
Polity
The Cistercian polity calls for special mention. 1377), a document which arranged the relations between the various houses of the Cistercian order, and exercised a great influence also upon the future course of western monachism. From one point of view, it may be regarded as a compromise between the primitive Benedictine system, in which each abbey was autonomous and isolated, and the complete centralization of Cluny, where the abbot of Cluny was the only true superior in the body. Citeaux, on the one hand, maintained the independent organic life of the houses each abbey had its own abbot, elected by its own monks;
On the other hand, all the abbeys were subjected to the general chapter, which met yearly at Citeaux, and consisted of the abbots only: the abbot of Citeaux was the president of the chapter and of the order, and the visitor of each and every house, with a predominant influence and the power of enforcing everywhere exact conformity to Citeaux in all details of the exterior life observance, chant, customs.
Cistercian Houses
By the end of the 12th century the Cistercian houses numbered 500;
Nearly half of the houses had been founded, directly or indirectly, from Clairvaux, so great was St Bernard's influence and prestige: indeed he has come almost to be regarded as the founder of the Cistercians, who have often been called Bernardines. The order was spread all over western Europe, chiefly in France, but also in Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Italy and Sicily, Spain and Portugal, where some of the houses, like the Monastery of Alcobaça, were of almost incredible magnificence.
In England the first foundation was Furness Abbey (1123), and many of the most beautiful monastic buildings of the country, beautiful in themselves and beautiful in their sites, were Cistercian, as Tintern Abbey, Rievaulx Abbey, Byland and Fountains Abbey.
For a hundred years, till the first quarter of the 13th century, the Cistercians supplanted Cluny as the most powerful order and the chief religious influence in western Europe.
In the first place, there was the permanent difficulty of maintaining in its first fervour a body embracing hundreds of monasteries and thousands of monks, spread all over Europe; and as the Cistercian very raison d'être consisted in its being a reform, a return to primitive monachism, with its field-work and severe simplicity, any failures to live up to the ideal proposed worked more disastrously among Cistercians than among mere Benedictines, who were intended to live a life of self-denial, but not of great austerity.
Relaxations were gradually introduced in regard to diet and to simplicity of life, and also in regard to the sources of income, rents and tolls being admitted and benefices incorporated, as was done among the Benedictines;
Later History
The later history of the Cistercians is largely one of attempted revivals and reforms.
In 1335 Pope Benedict XII, himself a Cistercian, promulgated a series of regulations to restore the primitive spirit of the order, and in the 15th century various popes endeavoured to promote reforms.
In 16th century had arisen the reformed congregation of the Feuillants, which spread widely in France and Italy, in the latter country under the name of Improved Bernardines.
The Reformation, the ecclesiastical policy of Joseph II, the French Revolution, and the revolutions of the 18th century, almost wholly destroyed the Cistercians; Gandhi visited a Trappist abbey near Durban in 1895 and wrote an extensive description of the order.
At the beginning of 20th century they were divided into three bodies:
The Common Observance, with about 30 monasteries and 800 choir monks, the large majority being in Austria-Hungary; they do not carry on field-work, but have large secondary schools, and are in manner of life little different from fairly observant Benedictine Black monks; The Strict Observance, or Trappists, with nearly 60 monasteries, about 1600 choir monks and 2000 lay brothers.In all there are about 100 Cistercian monasteries and about 4700 monks, including lay brothers.
Accounts of the beginnings of the Cistercians and of the primitive life and spirit will be found in the lives of St. Bernard, the best 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.
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