f view that the importance of their extension in northern Europe is to
be estimated. The Cistercians at the beginning renounced all sources of
income arising from benefices, tithes, tolls and rents, and depended for
their income wholly on the land. This developed an organized system for
selling their farm produce, cattle and horses, and notably contributed
to the commercial progress of the countries of western Europe. Thus by
the middle of the 13th century the export of wool by the English
Cistercians had become a feature in the commerce of the country. Farming
operations on so extensive a scale could not be carried out by the monks
alone, whose choir and religious duties took up a considerable portion
of their time; and so from the beginning the system of lay brothers was
introduced on a large scale. The lay brothers were recruited from the
peasantry and were simple uneducated men, whose function consisted in
carrying out the various field-works and plying all sorts of useful
trades; they formed a body of men who lived alongside of the choir
monks, but separate from them, not taking part in the canonical office,
but having their own fixed round of prayer and religious exercises. A
lay brother was never ordained, and never held any office of
superiority. It was by this system of lay brothers that the Cistercians
were able to play their distinctive part in the progress of European
civilization. But it often happened that the number of lay brothers
became excessive and out of proportion to the resources of the
monasteries, there being sometimes as many as 200, or even 300, in a
single abbey. On the other hand, at any rate in some countries, the
system of lay brothers in course of time worked itself out; thus in
England by the close of the 14th century it had shrunk to relatively
small proportions, and in the 15th century the regime of the English
Cistercian houses tended to approximate more and more to that of the
Black Monks.

The Cistercian polity calls for special mention. Its lines were
adumbrated by Alberic, but it received its final form at a meeting of
the abbots in the time of Stephen Harding, when was drawn up the _Carta
Caritatis_ (Migne, _Patrol. Lat._ clxvi. 1377), a document which
arranged the relations between the various houses of the Cistercian
order, and exercised a great influence also upon the future course of
western monachism. From one point of view, it may be regarded as a
compromise between the prim