Porkopolis

Editor’s Note:

In 1098 Abbot Robert and a group of his French monks from Molesme, who were dissatisfied with contemporary monasticism and sought solitude and seclusion in woods south of Dijon, founded the Cistercian Order. They wished to follow a harsher and more disciplined way of life, according to a literal interpretation of the Rule of St Benedict. The Cistercians did not see themselves as starting a new system of monastic life but rather as restoring the pure form of the Benedictine life.

The Cistercian Order was the most important of the new religious orders that 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, rapidly moving from Burgundy where the order began throughout France, Britain and Ireland.

The Cistercians had their critics, as well as their admirers, but their rigorous lifestyle attracted more than it deterred. Within fifty years of their foundation the white monks had taken Europe by storm, and by the mid-seventeenth century there were more than 1500 Cistercian houses in Europe, stretching from Scandinavia to Sicily.