Cistercians
Synonyms
Examples
The Cistercians do not eat meat... Yet they keep pigs to the number of many thousands, and sell the bacon - though perhaps not quite all of it. The heads, legs, and feet they neither give away, throw away, nor sell. What becomes of them God knows.
Erlande-Brandenburg, p 28 The Cistercians acquired a reputation in the difficult task of administering the building sites for abbeys and cathedrals.
Decline and attempted reforms 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.
By the 15th century, however, of all the orders in Ireland, the Cistercians had most comprehensively fallen on evil days.
In 1129 Margrave Leopold the Strong of Styria called upon the Cistercians to develop his recently acquired March which bordered Austria on the south.
Cistercians honour him as the founder of the order because of the widespread activity which he gave to the order.sfn Saint Bernard's " Prayer to the Shoulder Wound of Jesus " is often published in Catholic prayer books.