Cistercian nuns

[4] Charity work was central to the activities of the Cistercian nunneries, and some were given specific responsibilities, such as Notre-Dame-de-Bondeville (founded between 1128 and 1154), in Seine-Maritime, Normandy, which sheltered young girls and mentally impaired laywomen.

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

"[8] In Italy, 1171 CE, houses were founded 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.

[7] La Ramée (1216)[9] in Jodoigne, was an important centre of learning, where Cistercian nun Ida the Gentle of Goresleeuw copied and corrected church books and Beatrice of Nazareth supervised the production of an antiphonary.

For example, La Cour Notre-Dame de Michery, in Sens, was originally a leprosarium (a hospital to care for people with leprosy), then was recognised as a Cistercian community in 1225-1226.

[7] The decline which manifested itself in the communities of monks of the Cistercian Order from the middle of the fourteenth century was felt also in the monasteries of nuns, with approximately 20% of Cisterican nunneries in France suppressed during the Hundred Years War.

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.

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.

[4] 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.