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 ate 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.