Cistercian nuns

Cistercian nuns are female members of the Cistercian Order, a religious order of the Catholic Church.

The Cistercian Order was initially a male order. Cistercian female monasteries began to appear by 1125. The first Cistercian monastery for women, Le Tart Abbey, was established at Tart-l'Abbaye in the Diocese of Langres (now Dijon) in 1125, by nuns from the Benedictine monastery of Juilly, and with the cooperation of Stephen Harding, abbot of Cîteaux. At Juilly, a dependency of Molesme Abbey, Humbeline, the sister of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, lived and died.

The Cistercian nuns of Le Tart founded daughter houses in Europe, including at Ferraque (1140) in the Diocese of Noyon, Blandecques (1153) in the Diocese of St-Omer, and Montreuil-les-Dames (1164) near Laon. Charity work was central to the activities of the Cistercian nunneries, and some were given specific responsibilities, such as Notre-Dame-de-Bondeville (founded between 1128 and 1154), in Seine-Maritime, Normandy, which sheltered young girls and mentally impaired laywomen.

In Spain, the first Cistercian house of women was that of Tulebras (1134) in the Kingdom of Navarre. Then came Santa María la Real de las Huelgas (Valladolid) (1140), Espírito Santo Olmedo (1142), Villabona, or San Miguel de las Dueñas (1155), Perales (1160), Gradefes (1168), Cañas (1169) and others. The most celebrated was Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas near Burgos, founded in 1187 by Alfonso VIII of Castile. The observance was established there by Cistercian nuns who came from Tulebras, under the guidance of Misol, who became its first abbess. The second abbess was Constance, daughter of the founder, who believed she had the power of preaching in her church and hearing confessions of her religious. In 1190, the eighteen abbesses of France held their first general chapter at Tart. The abbesses of France and Spain themselves made the regular visits to their houses of filiation. The Council of Trent, by its decrees regarding the cloister of nuns, put an end to the chapter and the visits.

In 12th century England, up to thirty rural houses of nuns followed Cistercian practices, with only a minority receiving documentation from the Papacy to confirm this. The fully incorporated English nunneries were Tarrant Kaines in Dorset and Marham Abbey in Norfolk. As Williams has recorded: "Six Lincolnshire nunneries that claimed to belong to the Order and whose nuns wore the Cistercian habit, were exempted by King Henry III from taxation in 1268 on account of their status yet the abbot of Cîteaux wrote to the dean of Lincoln maintaining that even though they wore the white habit they were not members of the Order."

In Italy, 1171 CE, houses were founded of Santa Lucia at Syracuse, San Michele at Ivrea, and that of Conversano, the only one in the peninsula in which the abbesses carry a crosier.

By a century later the Cistercian nuns had established houses in Switzerland, Germany (St. Marienthal Abbey in 1234), and Flanders, and more had been established in France, England and Spain. Many of these new foundations were initiated by noble women. La Ramée (1216) in Jodoigne, was an important centre of learning, where Cistercian nun Ida the Gentle of Goresleeuw copied and corrected church books and Beatrice of Nazareth supervised the production of an antiphonary. Some nunneries of this period were begun by lay groups of women. For example, La Cour Notre-Dame de Michery, in Sens, was originally a leprosarium (a hospital to care for people with leprosy), then was recognised as a Cistercian community in 1225-1226. In the 1220s, Bishop Jacques de Vitry wrote that the observance of nuns of the Cistercian Order had multiplied like the stars of heaven.

The decline which manifested itself in the communities of monks of the Cistercian Order from the middle of the fourteenth century was felt also in the monasteries of nuns, with approximately 20% of Cisterican nunneries in France suppressed during the Hundred Years War. At this time, the Conceptionist Order was founded in Toledo, Spain, by Beatrice of Silva. Her nuns abandoned the Cistercian Rule for that of the Poor Clares. In France Jeanne de Courcelles de Pourlan, having been elected Abbess of Tart in 1617, restored regular discipline in her community, which was transferred to Dijon in 1625. Owing to the hostility of the Abbot of Cîteaux to the reform Abbess de Pourlan had the Holy See withdraw her abbey from the jurisdiction of the Order of Cîteaux.