In 1098 a small group of monks left the Burgundian monastery of Molesme to establish a new monastery in the forest of Cîteaux, about 25 km south of the town of Dijon. By the end of the twelfth century this one community had spawned an international monastic Order with over 500 abbeys of men and an indeterminate number of women, spread from Spain to the Baltic, from Scotland to Sicily. Over the course of the century Cistercian monks became powerful figures in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, Cistercian writings and spiritual ideas influenced the prevailing religious culture and many Cistercian monasteries became centres for economic and technological change.

Scholars have long debated the character of the new community at Cîteaux and the process by which the Cistercian Order formed. They have argued about Cîteaux’s relationship to older forms of monasticism and to movements of monastic and ecclesiastic reform, about the nature of the documents that claim to describe the foundation of this new Order and about the Order’s ideals and organisational structure. They have questioned the influence of its spiritual leaders, and the extent to which they articulated a unified Cistercian culture. They have asked whether this Order included women’s houses as well as those of men. And they have debated whether the monks’ political activities, economic success and growing status distinctions within their communities illustrate their early ideals or instead demonstrate a quick decline from their initial reform.