KIRKSTALL ABBEY

1152 - 2002

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The Cistercians

The origins of monastic life can be said to have their origins in the times of the Roman Empire. In an attempt to escape adulatory and become supposedly nearer to god, some people withdrew from society and either lived on their own as hermits or became part of religious communities.

The Cistercian Order was the most important of the new religious orders which developed in western Europe in the late eleventh century in response to movements for reform in the Church. Cistercians - also known as White Monks - dominated the spread of new monastic foundations in Europe and spread rapidly from Burgundy where the order began throughout France, Britain and Ireland. In Britain, their greatest impact was in the north, where Yorkshire became the nerve-centre of the monastic life.

The Cistercian way of life placed great stress on solitude and isolation; Cistercian monasteries were therefore frequently founded far away from towns and villages. Driven by an ideal of individual poverty, Cistercian monks had no personal property and the monks worked the land with their own hands to support themselves. A successful monastery needed, however, to obtain grants of land from lay benefactors to give it an endowment large enough to support the community. Rules were agreed to govern the internal affairs of each monastery and the Cistercian Order as a whole was regulated by statutes produced at Cîteaux in Burgundy, the mother-house of the Order.

 

 

 

 

 

 

St. Bernard reading the rule to fellow Cistercians

 

 

 

 

In keeping with their ideals of simplicity and austerity, the Cistercian monks wore simple habits of coarse undyed woolen cloth. This gave way to the order sometimes being known as the White Monks. For St. Bernard, the colour white had symbolic significance as the colour of purity and chastity, health and the Virgin Mary.

This fifteenth century painting shows St. Bernard and fellow Cistercians, in the Chapter House at Clairvaux. This shows their characteristic white habits over which the monks wore a black scapular.

The word Cistercian comes from the Latin word citerna. The swampy nature of the remote site thus gave this abbey in Burgundy the name Cistertium or Citeaux.