in church-history, a religious order founded in the 11th century by St Robert, a benedictine. They became so powerful, that they governed almost all Europe, both in spirituals and temporals. Cardinal de Vitri describing their observances, says, they neither wore skins nor shirts; nor ever eat flesh, except in sickness; and 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 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 is girt with a wooden girdle. The nuns wear a white tunic, and a black scapulary and girdle.