Chief among Robert's followers included Alberic, a former hermit from the nearby forest of Colan, and Stephen Harding, a young monk from England.

[8] On 21 March 1098, Robert's small group acquired a plot of marshland just south of Dijon called Cîteaux (Latin: "Cistercium".

[9] During the first year, the monks set about constructing lodging areas and farming the lands of Cîteaux, making use of a nearby chapel for Mass.

Although it was revised on several occasions to meet contemporary needs, from the outset it emphasised a simple life of work, love, prayer and self-denial.

[21] Their number rose so quickly in the course of the next century that the historian and cardinal Jacques de Vitry wrote: "Cistercian nunneries multiplied like stars in the sky.

[30] In 1129 Margrave Leopold the Strong of Styria granted the Bavarian monks an area of land just north of what is today the provincial capital Graz, where they founded Rein Abbey.

[37] Other abbeys, such as at Neath, Strata Florida, Conwy and Valle Crucis became among the most hallowed names in the history of religion in medieval Wales.

[38] In Yorkshire, Rievaulx Abbey was founded from Clairvaux in 1131, on a small, isolated property donated by Walter Espec, with the support of Thurstan, Archbishop of York.

[40] In the spring of 1140, Saint Malachy, the archbishop of Armagh, visited Clairvaux, becoming a personal friend of Abbot Bernard and an admirer of Cistercian life.

[45] Similarly, the Irish-establishment of Abbeyknockmoy in County Galway was founded by King of Connacht, Cathal Crobhdearg Ua Conchobair, who died a Cistercian monk and was buried there in 1224.

They had abundant resources of men and wealth, lands and castles scattered along the borders of Castile, and feudal lordship over thousands of peasants and vassals.

Over time, as the Reconquista neared completion, the canonical bond between Calatrava and Morimond relaxed more and more, and the knights of the order became virtually secularized, finally undergoing dissolution in the 18th–19th centuries.

This chronicle was written by Otto and Peter of Zittau, abbots of the Zbraslav abbey (Latin: Aula Regia, "Royal Hall"), founded in 1292 by the King of Bohemia and Poland, Wenceslas II.

The order also played the main role in the early Gothic art of Bohemia; one of the outstanding pieces of Cistercian architecture is the Alt-neu Shul, Prague.

[51] In this period, the monks performed pastoral tasks in and outside of the monastery and began preaching and teaching, even though their movement originally forbade schools and parishes.

[42] It was in the latter case that medieval Dublin acquired a Cistercian monastery in the very unusual suburban location of Oxmantown, with its own private harbour called The Pill.

[57] For a hundred years, until the first quarter of the 13th century, the Cistercians supplanted Cluny as the most powerful order and the chief religious influence in western Europe.

[59] Two important papal bulls tried to introduce reforms: Clement IV's Parvus fons and Benedict XII's Fulgens sicut stella matutina.

[60] Absenteeism among Irish abbots at the General Chapter became a persistent and much criticised problem in the 13th century, and escalated into the conspiratio Mellifontis, a "rebellion" by the abbeys of the Mellifont filiation.

Visitors were appointed to reform Mellifont on account of the multa enormia that had arisen there, but in 1217 the abbot refused their admission and had lay brothers bar the abbey gates.

[63] He found his life threatened as a result of the Irish visitations: his representatives were attacked and his party harassed, while the three key houses of Mellifont, Suir and Maigue had been fortified by monks to hold out against him.

[60] In breadth and depth, his instructions constituted a radical reform programme: "They were intended to put an end to abuses, restore the full observance of the Cistercian way of life, safeguard monastic properties, initiate a regime of benign paternalism to train a new generation of religious, isolate trouble-makers and institute an effective visitation system.

[citation needed]St. Bernard saw church decoration as a distraction from piety, and the builders of the Cistercian monasteries had to adopt a style that followed his austere aesthetics.

[77] 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.

[83] The Cistercian abbeys of Fontenay in France,[84] Fountains in England,[85] Alcobaça in Portugal,[86] Poblet in Spain[87] and Maulbronn in Germany are today recognised as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

[89] In the purity of architectural style, the beauty of materials and the care with which the Alcobaça Monastery was built,[86] Portugal possesses one of the most outstanding and best preserved examples of Early Gothic.

[93] Bernard criticized abbey churches for their "immoderate length, their superfluous breadth, the costly polishings, the curious carvings and paintings which attract the worshipper's gaze and hinder his attention."

The lay brothers formed a body of men who lived alongside of the choir monks, but separate from them, not taking part in the canonical office, but having their own fixed round of prayer and religious exercises.

[54] He was quick to recognise heretical ideas, and in 1141 and 1145 respectively, he accused the celebrated scholastic theologian Peter Abelard and the popular preacher Henry of Lausanne of heresy.

[107] Although Bernard's De laude novae militiae was in favour of the Knights Templar,[108] the English Cistercian Abbot Isaac of Stella, near Poitiers, preached against the very same group as a "new monstrosity".