CISTERCIANS, otherwise GREY or WHITE MONKS (from the colour of the habit, over which is worn a black scapular or apron) . In 1o98 St. Robert, born of a noble family in Champagne, at first a Benedictine monk, and then abbot of certain hermits set tled at Molesme near Chatillon, being dissatisfied with the manner of life and observance there, migrated with twenty of the monks to a swampy place called Citeaux in the diocese of Chalons, not far from Dijon. Count Odo of Burgundy here built them a mon astery, and they began to live a life of strict observance according to the letter of St. Benedict's rule. In the following year Rob ert was compelled by papal authority to return to Molesme, and Alberic succeeded him as abbot of Citeaux and held the office till his death in 1 109, when the Englishman St. Stephen Harding be came abbot, until 1134. In 1112, however, St. Bernard and thirty others offered themselves to the monastery, and a rapid and wonderful development at once set in. The next three years witnessed the foundation of the four great "daughter-houses of Citeaux"— La Ferte, Pontigny, Clairvaux and Morimond. With Clairvaux Bernard's work is specially associated. At Stephen's death there were over 3o Cistercian houses; at Bernard's over 280; and by the end of the century over 500 ; and the Cis tercian influence in the Church more than kept pace with this material expansion, so that St. Bernard saw one of his monks ascend the papal chair as Eugenius III.
The Cistercians rejected alike all mitigations and all develop ments of St. Benedict's rule, and tried to reproduce the life exactly as it had been in his 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. In order to make time for this work they cut away the accretions to the divine office which had been steadily growing during three cen turies, and in Cluny and the other Black Monk monasteries had come to exceed greatly in length the regular canonical office.
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 farm ing operations were introduced and propagated by them ; it is from this point of view that the importance of their extension in north ern Europe is to be estimated. They depended for their income wholly on the land. This developed an organized system for selling their farm produce, cattle and horses, and notably contrib uted to the commercial progress of the countries of western Europe. Thus by the middle of the i3th century the export of wool by the English Cistercians had become a feature in the com merce of the country. 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; and so from the beginning the system of lay brothers was intro duced on a large scale. The lay brothers were recruited from the peasantry and were simple uneducated men, whose function con sisted in carrying out the various field-works 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 distinc tive part in the progress of European civilization. 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 regime of the English Cistercian houses tended to approximate more and more to that of the Black Monks.
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'etre 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 grad ually introduced in regard to diet and to simplicity of life, and also in regard to the sources of income, rents and tolls being ad mitted and benefices incorporated, as was done among the Bene dictines; 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 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 endeavour@d 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 (com mendatory) 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 Citeaux itself and the general body of the houses had again to be abandoned, and only local projects of reform could be carried out.
The Reformation, the ecclesiastical policy of Joseph II., the French Revolution, and the revolutions of the 19th 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. They are at present divided into three bodies : (I) the Common Observance, with about 3o monasteries and Boo choir monks, the large majority being in Austria-Hun gary ; 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; (2) the Middle Observance, embracing some dozen monasteries, (3) the Strict Observance, or Trappists (q.v.), with nearly 6o monasteries.
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 whereof is that of Abbe E. Vacandard (1895) ; also in the Life of St. Stephen Harding, in the English Saints. See also Henry Collins (one of the Oxford Movement, who became a Cistercian) , Spirit and Mission of the Cistercian Order (1866) . Useful sketches, with references to the literature, will be found in the Catholic Encyclopaedia, art. "Cistercians" ; Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopddie, "Cistercienser" ; and Heimbucher, Orden and Kongregationen (1896), i. §§ 33, 34. On the English houses, see F. A. Gasquet's English Monastic Life; and on the Cistercian polity, see the same writer's "Sketch of Monastic Con stitutional History," prefixed to Eng. tr. of Montalembert's Monks of the West