Cistercians

By the end of the 13th century, the Cistercian houses numbered 500.^[1] 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.^[2] 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.^[3]

Cistercian influence more than kept pace with the material expansion.^[4] Bernard had become mentor to popes and kings, and in 1145, King Louis VII's brother, Henry of France, entered Clairvaux.^[5] That same year, Bernard saw one of his monks elected pope as Pope Eugene III.^[6] 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.^[7]

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.^[8] In Dublin, the two Savigniac houses of Erenagh and St Mary's became Cistercian.^[9] 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.^[10]

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,^[3] in Ireland,^[11] Wales^[12] 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.^[13] 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.^[3]

In Ireland, the information on the Cistercian Order after the Anglo-Norman invasion gives a rather gloomy impression.^[14] 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".^[15]

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.^[16] 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.^[17] 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.^[18] 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.^[19] Stephen dissolved the Mellifont filiation altogether, and subjected 15 monasteries to houses outside Ireland.^[14] 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."^[20] The arrangement lasted almost half a century, and in 1274, the filiation of Mellifont was reconstituted.^[21]

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.^[22] By this time, however, "the Cistercian order as a whole had experienced a gradual decline and its central organisation was noticeably weakened."^[21]

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.^[23]

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.^[24]

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.^[47] 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."^[48]

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.^[49]

Successful farmers, the white monks introduced and propagated many improvements in medieval agriculture.^[50] They developed an organised system for selling produce, cattle and horses, and notably contributed to commercial progress in Western Europe.^[51] To the wool and cloth trade, which was especially fostered by the Cistercians, England was largely indebted for the beginnings of her commercial prosperity.^[8]

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.^[52]

One Cistercian monk claims that, until the Industrial Revolution, most of the technological advances in Europe were made in the monasteries.^[53] 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."^[54] 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.^[55] The monks used their own numbering system, which could express all the numbers from 0 to 9999 in a single sign.^[56]

The Cistercian order was innovative in developing techniques of hydraulic engineering for monasteries established in remote valleys.^[32] 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.^[57] 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.^[58] 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.^[59]

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."^[60] Bernard was an ascetic and intellectual, which he demonstrated in his sermons on Grace, Free will and the Song of Songs.^[5] 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.^[5] 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.^[61]

Although Bernard's De laude novae militiae was in favour of the Knights Templar,^[62] the English Cistercian Abbot Isaac of Stella, near Poitiers, preached against the very same group as a "new monstrosity."^[62] In the course of the 12th and 13th centuries, many Cistercian authors wrote on spiritual topics.^[63] 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.^[64] Besides Bernard, the others were only re-discovered in the 20th century.^[65]

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.^[66]

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

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Butler, Edward Cuthbert (1911). "Cistercians". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 393–395.
• 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) ^{[ISBN missing]}
• 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. ^{[ISBN missing]}
• 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) ^{[ISBN missing]}
• 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.

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Mahatma Gandhi's 1895 Description of Cistercians Vegetarion Missionaries

• 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