CISTERCIANS, in Church History, a religious order founded in the eleventh century, by St Robert, a Benedictine. They became so powerful that they governed almost all Europe, both in spiritual and temporal concerns. Cardinal de Vitri, describing their observances, says, they wore neither skins nor shirts, nor ate flesh, except in sickness; they abstained from fish, eggs, milk, and cheese; they lay
upon straw-beds, in tunics and cowls; they rose at midnight to prayers; they spent the day in labour, reading, and prayer; and in all their exercises they observed a continual silence. The habit of the Cistercian monks is a white robe, in the nature of a cassock, with a black scapulary and hood, and it is girt with a wooden girdle. The nuns wear a white tunic and a black scapulary and girdle.
CISTERN denotes a subterranean reservoir of rain water, or a vessel serving as a receptacle for rain or other water, for the necessary uses of a family.