Cistercian nuns

The most celebrated was Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas near Burgos, founded in 1187 by Alfonso VIII of Castile.

In Italy, 1171 CE, were founded the monasteries of Santa Lucia at Syracuse, San Michele at Ivrea, and that of Conversano, the only one in the peninsula in which the abbesses carry a crosier.

The decline which manifested itself in the communities of monks of the Cistercian Order towards the middle of the fourteenth century was felt also in the monasteries of nuns.

Queen Marie de Medicis declared herself protectress of this institution, and Pope Urban VIII exempted it from the jurisdiction of the Abbot of Cîteaux, placing it under that of Paris.

However, the vicinity of the Abbé de Saint-Cyran became dangerous for them, and they saw the suppression and destruction of Port-Royal des Champs by order of the Louis XIV in 1710, while they themselves were dispersed.

The property and abbatial titles were annexed to Port-Royal de Paris, which subsisted up to the time of the French Revolution, before being transformed first into a prison, and then into a maternity hospital.

In 1795, he gave them a monastery which he called the Holy Will of God (La Sainte-Volonté de Dieu), situated in the Bas-Valais, Switzerland.

A Cistercian novice who came from Europe at the same time as the Trappists, and who was joined by seventeen women from the United States, tried to establish a community, but circumstances prevented its success.

The Monastery of Our Lady of Good Counsel, at Saint-Romuald near Quebec City, the first genuine community of Cistercian nuns in America, was established in 1902 by Hémery Lutgarde, Prioress of Bonneval, France, when on 21 November 1902, she brought a small colony of religious women.

Another, Notre-Dame de l'Assomption Abbey at Nouvelle-Arcadie, New Brunswick, where there were already some Cistercian monks, was established by the sisters expelled by the French Government from their Monastery of Vaise, at Lyon.