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.

By the end of the 12th century the Cistercian houses numbered 500; in the 13th a hundred more were added; and in the 15th, when the order attained its greatest extension, there were close on 750 houses: the larger figures sometimes given are now recognized as apocryphal.

Nearly half of the houses had been founded, directly or indirectly, from Clairvaux, so great was St Bernard's influence and prestige: indeed he has come almost to be regarded as the founder of the Cistercians, who have often been called Bernardines. The order was spread all over western Europe, chiefly in France, but also in Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, 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. One of the most important libraries of the Cistercian was in Salem, Germany.

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. A hundred were established in England in the next hundred years, and then only one more up to the Dissolution (for list, see table and map in F. A. Gasquets English Monastic Life, or Catholic Dictionary, art. Cistercians ). In Spain, one of the earliest surviving Cistercian house is the Real Monasterio de Nuestra Senora de Rueda in the Aragon region, a good example of early hydrologic engineering using a large waterwheel for power and an elaborate hydrological circulation system for central heating.

For a hundred years, till the first quarter of the 13th century, the Cistercians supplanted Cluny as the most powerful order and the chief religious influence in western Europe. But then in turn their influence began to wane, chiefly, no doubt, because of the rise of the mendicant orders, who ministered more directly to the needs and ideas of the new age. But some of the reasons of Cistercian decline were internal.

In the first place, there was the permanent difficulty of maintaining in its first fervour a body embracing hundreds of monasteries and thousands of monks, spread all over Europe; and as the Cistercian very raison d'être consisted in its being a reform, a return to primitive monachism, with its field-work and severe simplicity, any failures to live up to the ideal proposed worked more disastrously among Cistercians than among mere Benedictines, who were intended to live a life of self-denial, but not of great austerity.

Relaxations were gradually introduced in regard to diet and to simplicity of life, and also in regard to the sources of income, rents and tolls being admitted and benefices incorporated, as was done among the Benedictines; the farming operations tended to produce a commercial spirit; wealth and splendour invaded many of the monasteries, and the choir monks abandoned field-work.

The later history of the Cistercians is largely one of attempted revivals and reforms. The general chapter for long battled bravely against the invasion of relaxations and abuses.

In 1335 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. All these efforts at a reform of the great body of the order proved unavailing; but local reforms, producing various semi-independent offshoots and congregations, were successfully carried out in many parts in the course of the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 17th another great effort at a general reform was made, promoted by the pope and the king of France; the general chapter elected Richelieu (commendatory) abbot of Citeaux, thinking he would protect them from the threatened reform. In this they were disappointed, for he threw himself wholly on the side of reform. So great, however, was the resistance, and so serious the disturbances that ensued, that the attempt to reform Citeâux itself and the general body of the houses had again to be abandoned, and only local projects of
reform could be carried out.

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 French congregation of Sept-Fontaines (1654) also deserves mention. In 1663 de Rancé reformed La Trappe (see Trappists).



The Reformation, the ecclesiastical policy of Joseph II, the French Revolution, and the revolutions of the 18th century, almost wholly destroyed the Cistercians; but some survived, and since the beginning of the last half of the 19th century there has been a considerable recovery. 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 represent the main body of the order and follow a mitigated rule of life; they do not carry on field-work, but have large secondary schools, and are in manner of life little different from fairly observant Benedictine Black monks; of late years, however, signs are not wanting of a tendency towards a return to older ideas;

The Middle Observance, embracing some dozen monasteries and about 150 choir monks;

The Strict Observance, or Trappists, with nearly 60 monasteries, about 1600 choir monks and 2000 lay brothers.