25 Facts About Cistercian

Term Cistercian derives from Cistercium, the Latin name for the locale of Citeaux, near Dijon in eastern France.

Keynote of Cistercian life was a return to literal observance of the Benedictine Rule.

Cistercian returned the community to the original Benedictine ideal of manual work and prayer, dedicated to the ideal of charity and self sustenance.

Cistercian abbeys refused to admit boy recruits, a practice later adopted by many of older Benedictine houses.

Outlines of the Cistercian reform were adumbrated by Alberic, but it received its final form in the Carta caritatis, which was the defining guide on how the reform was to be lived.

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Cistercian order maintained the independent organic life of the individual houses: each abbey having 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 outside interference.

Cistercian had a predominant influence and the power of enforcing everywhere exact conformity to Citeaux in all details of the exterior life observance, chant, and customs.

Cistercian granted monks from the Ebrach Abbey in Bavaria an area of land just north of what is today the provincial capital Graz, where they founded Rein Abbey.

At the time, it was the 38th Cistercian monastery founded but, due to the dissolution down the centuries of the earlier 37 abbeys, it is today the oldest surviving Cistercian house in the world.

The very raison d'etre of the Cistercian order consisted of its being a reform, by means of a return to primitive monasticism with its agricultural labour and austere simplicity.

Cistercian found his life threatened, his representatives attacked and his party harassed, while the three key houses of Mellifont, Suir and Maigue had been fortified by their monks to hold out against him.

Cistercian promulgated a series of regulations to restore the primitive spirit of the Cistercian Order.

Cistercian identified the causes of this decline as the ceaseless wars and hatred between the two nations; a lack of leadership; and the control of many of the monasteries by secular dynasties who appointed their own relatives to positions.

Cistercian architecture has made an important contribution to European civilisation.

Cistercian foundations were primarily constructed in Romanesque and Gothic architecture during the Middle Ages; although later abbeys were constructed in Renaissance and Baroque.

Usually Cistercian churches were cruciform, with a short presbytery to meet the liturgical needs of the brethren, small chapels in the transepts for private prayer, and an aisled nave that was divided roughly in the middle by a screen to separate the monks from the lay brothers.

In Poland, the former Cistercian monastery of Pelplin Cathedral is an important example of Brick Gothic.

The largest Cistercian complex, the Abbatia Lubensis, is a masterpiece of baroque architecture and the second largest Christian architectural complex in the world.

Some Cistercian abbeys did contain later medieval wall paintings, two examples being found in Ireland: Archaeological evidence indicates the presence of murals in Tintern Abbey, and traces still survive in the presbytery of Abbeyknockmoy.

The English science historian James Burke examines the impact of Cistercian waterpower, derived from Roman watermill technology such as that of Barbegal aqueduct and mill near Arles in the fourth of his ten-part Connections TV series, called "Faith in Numbers".

Cistercian order was innovative in developing techniques of hydraulic engineering for monasteries established in remote valleys.

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.

Cistercian was charged with the task of promulgating Pope Eugene's bull, Quantum praedecessores, and his eloquence in preaching the Second Crusade had the desired effect: when he finished his sermon, so many men were ready to take the Cross that Bernard had to cut his habit into strips of cloth.

Cistercian rejected the notion that crusaders could be regarded as martyrs if they died while despoiling non-Christians.

Many Cistercian monasteries make produce goods such as cheese, bread and other foodstuffs.

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