Everything about Cistercian Order totally explained
The
Order of Cistercians (
OCist; ), sometimes called the
White Monks (from the colour of the
habit, over which a black
scapular or apron is sometimes worn) is a
Roman Catholic religious order of
enclosed monks. The first Cistercian
abbey was founded by
Robert of Molesme in
1098, at
Cîteaux Abbey. Two others,
Saint Alberic of Citeaux and
Saint Stephen Harding, are considered co-founders of the order, and
Bernard of Clairvaux is associated with the fast spread of the order during the 12th century.
The keynote of Cistercian life was a return to a literal observance of the
Rule of St Benedict, rejecting the developments the
Benedictines had undergone, and tried to reproduce the life exactly as it had been in
Saint Benedict's time, indeed in various points they went beyond it in austerity. The most striking feature in the reform was the return to manual labour, and especially to field-work, which became a special characteristic of Cistercian life. The Cistercians became the main force of technological diffusion in medieval Europe.
The Cistercians were badly affected by the
Protestant Reformation, the
Dissolution of the Monasteries under
King Henry VIII, the
French Revolution, and the revolutions of the
18th century, but some survived and the order recovered in the 19th century. In 1892 certain abbeys formed a new Order called
Trappists (
Ordo Cisterciensium Strictioris Observantiae - OCSO), which today exists as an order distinct from the
Common Observance.
History
Foundation
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. The group was looking to cultivate a monastic community in which monks could carry out their lives in stricter observance of the
Rule of St Benedict. On
March 21,
1098, the small faction acquired a plot of
marsh land just south of
Dijon called
Cîteaux (
Latin: "Cistercium"), given to them expressly for the purpose of founding their
Novum Monasterium.
During the first year the monks set about constructing lodging areas and farmed the lands. In the interim, there was a small chapel nearby which they used for Mass. Soon the monks in Molesme began petitioning
Pope Urban II to return their abbot to them. The case was passed down to
Archbishop Hugues who passed the issue on down to the local bishops. Robert was then instructed to return to his position as abbot in Molesme, where he remained for the rest of his days. A good number of the monks who helped found Cîteaux returned with him to Molesme, so that only a few remained. The remaining monks elected
Prior 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 cowls (undyed wool). He returned the community to the original Benedictine ideal of work and prayer, dedicated to the ideal of charity and self sustenance. Alberic also forged an alliance with the
Dukes of Burgundy, working out a deal with
Duke Odo the donation of a vineyard (
Meursault) as well as stones with which they built their church. The church was sanctified and dedicated to
The Virgin Mary on
November 16,
1106 by the
Bishop of Chalon sur Saône.
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 created the Cistercian constitution, called
Carta Caritatis (
the Charter of Charity). Stephen also acquired farms for the abbey in order to ensure its survival and ethic, the first of which was
Clos Vougeot. He handed over the west wing of the monastery to a large group of lay brethren to cultivate the farms.
Polity
The lines of the Cistercian polity were adumbrated by Alberic, but it received its final form at a meeting of the abbots in the time of
Stephen Harding, when was drawn up the
Carta Caritatis, 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.
On the one hand, Citeaux maintained the independent organic life of the houses: each abbey had its own abbot elected by its own monks, its own community belonging to itself and not to the order in general, and its own property and finances administered without interference from outside. On the other hand, all the abbeys were subjected to the general chapter, which met yearly at
Cîteaux and consisted of the abbots only. The abbot of Cîteaux was the president of the chapter and of the order, and the visitor of each and every house. He had a predominant influence and the power of enforcing everywhere exact conformity to Cîteaux in all details of the exterior life observance, chant, and customs. The principle was that Cîteaux should always be the model to which all the other houses had to conform. In case of any divergence of view at the chapter, the side taken by the abbot of Cîteaux was always to prevail.
Spread
By 1111 the ranks had grown sufficiently at Cîteaux, and Stephen sent a group of 12 monks to start a "daughter house", a new community dedicated to the same ideals of the strict observance of Saint Benedict. It was built in Chalon sur Saône in
La Ferté on May 13, 1113. Also in 1113,
Bernard of Clairvaux arrived at Cîteaux with 30 others to join the monastery. In 1114 another daughter house was founded,
Pontigny Abbey. Then, in 1115 Bernard founded
Clairvaux, followed by
Morimond in the same year. Later, Preuilly, La Cour-Dieu, Bouras, Cadouin and
Fontenay were established. At Stephen's death (1134) there were over 30 Cistercian daughter houses; at Bernard's death (1154) there were over 280; and by the end of the century there were over 500 daughter houses. Meanwhile, the Cistercian influence in the
Roman 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.
There were 333 Cistercian abbeys in 1152. By the end of the 13th century, the Cistercian houses numbered 500. At the order's height in the 15th century, it would have nearly 750 houses.
Nearly half of the houses had been founded, directly or indirectly, from Clairvaux, so great was St Bernard's influence and prestige. Indeed he's come almost to be regarded as the founder of the Cistercians, who have often been called
Bernardines. The order spread all over western Europe, chiefly in
France, but also in
Germany,
Bohemia,
Moravia,
Silesia,
Croatia,
England,
Wales,
Scotland,
Ireland,
Italy (where the
Certosa di Pavia is their most famous edifice),
Sicily,
Poland,
Hungary,
Romania (
Kerz),
Norway,
Sweden,
Spain and
Portugal (where some of the houses, like the
Monastery of Alcobaça, were of almost incredible magnificence). One of the most important
libraries of the
Cistercians was in
Salem, Germany.
Monastic life and technological diffusion
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. The Cistercians rejected alike all mitigations and all developments, and tried to reproduce the life exactly as it had been in St Benedict's time, indeed in various points they went beyond it in austerity. The most striking feature in the reform was the return to manual labour, and especially to field-work, which became a special characteristic of Cistercian life.
To make time for this work they cut away the accretions to the divine office which had been steadily growing during three centuries, and which in Cluny and the other Benedictine 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.
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 civilisation 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 this is where the importance of their extension in northern
Europe is to be estimated.
The Cistercians at the beginning renounced all sources of income arising from benefices,
tithes, tolls and rents, and depended for their income wholly on the land. This developed an organised system for selling their farm produce, cattle and horses, and notably contributed to the commercial progress of the countries of western Europe. With the foundation of
Waverley Abbey in
1128, the Cistercians spread to England, 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 Abbey and
Fountains Abbey. A hundred were established in England in the next hundred years, and then only one more up to the Dissolution. Thus by the middle of the
13th century, the export of
wool by the English Cistercians had become a feature in the
commerce of the country.
In Spain, one of the earliest surviving Cistercian houses - the
Real Monasterio de Nuestra Senora de Rueda in the
Aragon region - is a good example of early
hydrologic engineering, using a large
waterwheel for power and an elaborate hydrological circulation system for
central heating.
Farming operations on so extensive a scale couldn't be carried out by the monks alone, whose choir and religious duties took up a considerable portion of their time; and so from the beginning the system of
lay brothers was introduced on a large scale. The lay brothers were recruited from the peasantry and were simple uneducated men, whose function consisted in carrying out the various 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. It was by this system of lay brothers that the Cistercians were able to play their distinctive part in the progress of European civilisation. But it often happened that the number of lay brothers became excessive and out of proportion to the resources of the monasteries, there being sometimes as many as 200, or even 300, in a single abbey. On the other hand, at any rate in some countries, the system of lay brothers in course of time worked itself out; thus in
England by the close of the
14th century it had shrunk to relatively small proportions, and in the
15th century the régime of the English Cistercian houses tended to approximate more and more to that of the
Black Monks.
Later History
The first Cistercian abbey in
Bohemia was founded in
Sedlec near
Kutná Hora in 1158. In the late 13th and early 14th centuries, 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, a chronicle written by Otto and Peter of
Zittau, abbots of the
Zbraslav abbey (Latin: Aula Regia, ie, Royal Hall; today situated on the southern outskirts of
Prague), 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.
Knowledge of certain technological advances was transmitted by the order, and the Cistercians are known to have been skilled
metallurgists. According to 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." 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,
France, from the mid-13th century to the 17th century, also using the
phosphate-rich slag from their furnaces as an
agricultural fertiliser.
For a hundred years, till the first quarter of the 13th century, the Cistercians supplanted Cluny as the most powerful order and the chief religious influence in western Europe. But then in turn their influence began to wane, chiefly, no doubt, because of the rise of the
mendicant orders, who ministered more directly to the needs and ideas of the new age. But some of the reasons of Cistercian decline were internal.
In the first place, there was the permanent difficulty of maintaining in its first fervour a body embracing hundreds of monasteries and thousands of monks, spread all over Europe; and as the Cistercian very
raison d'être consisted in its being a reform, a return to primitive monachism, with its field-work and severe simplicity, any failures to live up to the ideal proposed worked more disastrously among Cistercians than among mere Benedictines, who were intended to live a life of self-denial, but not of great austerity.
Relaxations were gradually introduced in regard to
diet and to simplicity of life, and also in regard to the sources of income, rents and tolls being admitted and benefices incorporated, as was done among the Benedictines; the farming operations tended to produce a commercial spirit; wealth and splendour invaded many of the monasteries, and the choir monks abandoned field-work.
The later history of the Cistercians is largely one of attempted revivals and reforms. The general chapter for long battled bravely against the invasion of relaxations and abuses.
The
English Reformation was disastrous for the Cistercians in England, as
Henry VIII's
Dissolution of the Monasteries saw the confiscation of church land throughout the country.
Laskill, an outstation of
Rievaulx Abbey and the only medieval blast furnace so far identified in
Great Britain, was the one of the most efficient blast furnaces of its time. Slag from contemporary furnaces contained a substantial concentration of iron, whereas the slag of Laskill was low in iron content, and is believed to have produced
cast iron with efficiency similar to a modern blast furnace. The monks may have been on the verge of building dedicated furnaces for the production of cast iron, Some historians believe that the suppression of the English monasteries may have stamped out an industrial revolution. In 1940, there were six Trappist monasteries in
Asia and the
Pacific, only one Trappist monastery in
Africa, and none in
Latin America. Of these, there are twelve monasteries of monks and five of nuns in the United States. This has actually never been the case, although silence is an implicit part of an outlook shared by Cistercian and Benedictine monasteries. These have become quite famous and are considered by many beer critics to be among the finest in the world. which provides recycled
laser toner and
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Legacy
Cistercian architecture has made an important contribution to European civilisation. The abbeys of France and England are fine examples of Romanesque and Gothic architecture. In Poland, the former Cistercian monastery of
Pelplin Cathedral is an important example of
brick gothic.
Wąchock abbey is one of the most valuable examples of Polish Romanesque architecture. The largest Cistercian complex, the
Abbatia Lubensis (
Lubiąż, Poland), is a masterpiece of
baroque architecture and the second largest Christian architectural complex in the world.
The following monasteries and abbeys are recognised as
UNESCO World Heritage Sites:
Abbey of Fontenay, Côte-d'Or, France
Fountains Abbey, North Yorkshire, England
Monastery of Alcobaça, Portugal
Poblet Monastery, Catalonia, SpainFurther Information
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