TRAPPISTS, Cistercian monks of the reform instituted by Armand J. le B. de Rance (q.v.), abbot of La Trappe, 1664. La Trappe was a Cistercian abbey near Soligny, in the diocese of Sees, in Normandy, founded 1140. It suffered grievously from the English wars and from commendatory abbots. Armand Jean de Rance became commendatory abbot at the age of ten, 1636; and on his conversion from a worldly life he began to interest him self in his abbey and conceived the project of restoring the monas tic life therein, 1662. With this object he visited La Trappe, but the monks were recalcitrant and threatened his life ; through the intervention of Louis XIV. he was able to pension them off ; they were replaced by a community of Cistercians of the strict observance, and the monastic buildings, which had fallen into ruin, were repaired at de Rance's expense. He himself then entered the novitiate in one of the reformed Cistercian abbeys, and came to La Trappe as regular abbot, 1664. He persuaded his community to adopt a manner of life beyond Cistercian practice, and far beyond St. Benedict's rule. The Trappist regime is probably the most penitential that has ever had any permanence in the Western Church. Yet it attracted vocations in such numbers that de Rance had 30o monks under him. Through age and ill health he resigned his abbacy in 1695, and died five years later.
During the 18th century La Trappe continued faithful to de Rance's ideas, but the observance spread only into two monas teries in Italy. It was the dispersal of the community at the French Revolution that turned the Trappists into a congregation in the Cistercian order and finally into a separate order. Dom Augustine de Lestrange, the novice-master at the time of the sup pression in I79o, kept twenty of the monks together and obtained permission for them to settle at Val-Sainte in Fribourg, Switzer land. Here they made their life still stricter than that of La Trappe, and postulants flocked to them in such numbers that in two years' time colonies went forth to establish Trappist monas teries in England, Belgium, Piedmont, Spain and Canada; and in 1794 Dom Augustine was named by the Holy See Father Abbot of all these foundations, thus formed into a congregation. In 1817
they returned to La Trappe, many new foundations were made, and by Dom Augustine's death in 1827 there were in all some seven hundred Trappist monks. In the course of the century three or four congregations arose—a Belgian, an Italian, and two in France—each with a vicar subject to the general of the Cistercians. In 1892 these congregations were united into a single Order of Reformed Cistercians, or of Strict Observance, with an abbot-general resident in Rome and independent of the general of the Cistercians of the Common Observance. In 1898 the Trap pists recovered possession of Citeaux, the mother-house of the Cistercians, secularized since the Revolution, and it was declared to be the mother house of the Reformed Cistercians.
The Trappists are a thriving and vigorous order, represented in all the countries of western Europe ; also in the United States and in Canada. Besides they have a house in China, one each in Japan, Asia Minor, Palestine, Bosnia and Dalmatia, and four in various parts of Africa. In heathen countries the Trappists now give themselves up to missionary work.
The first Trappist nunnery was the abbey of Les Clairet, near Chartres, which de Rance persuaded to adopt his reforms. Dom Augustine de Lestrange established another in 1796, and now there are fifteen with 35o choir nuns and Soo lay sisters. One is in England at Stapehill, near Wimborne, founded in 1802.