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. Walter Map
Erlande-Brandenburg, p 28 The Cistercians acquired a reputation in the difficult task of administering the building sites for abbeys and cathedrals. Source: Internet
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. Source: Internet
By the 15th century, however, of all the orders in Ireland, the Cistercians had most comprehensively fallen on evil days. Source: Internet
In 1129 Margrave Leopold the Strong of Styria called upon the Cistercians to develop his recently acquired March which bordered Austria on the south. Source: Internet
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. Source: Internet