itive Benedictine system, whereby each abbey
was autonomous and isolated, and the complete centralization of Cluny,
whereby the abbot of Cluny was the only true superior in the body.
Citeaux, on the one hand, maintained the independent organic life of the
houses--each abbey had its own abbot, elected by its own monks; its own
community, belonging to itself and not to the order in general; its own
property and finances administered by itself, without interference from
outside. On the other hand, all the abbeys were subjected to the general
chapter, which met yearly at Citeaux, and consisted of the abbots only;
the abbot of Citeaux was the president of the chapter and of the order,
and the visitor of each and every house, with a predominant influence
and the power of enforcing everywhere exact conformity to Citeaux in all
details of the exterior life--observance, chant, customs. The principle
was that Citeaux should always be the model to which all the other
houses had to conform. In case of any divergence of view at the chapter,
the side taken by the abbot of Citeaux was always to prevail (see F.A.
Gasquet, _Sketch of Monastic Constitutional History_, pp. xxxv-xxxviii,
prefixed to English trans, of Montalembert's _Monks of the West_, ed.
1895).

By the end of the 12th century the Cistercian houses numbered 500; in
the 13th a hundred more were added; and in the 15th, when the order
attained its greatest extension, there were close on 750 houses: the
larger figures sometimes given are now recognized as apocryphal. Nearly
half of the houses had been founded, directly or indirectly, from
Clairvaux, so great was St Bernard's influence and prestige: indeed he
has come almost to be regarded as the founder of the Cistercians, who
have often been called Bernardines. The order was spread all over
western Europe,--chiefly in France, but also in Germany, England,
Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, Italy and Sicily, Spain and
Portugal,--where some of the houses, as Alcobaca, were of almost
incredible magnificence. In England the first foundation was Furness
(1127), and many of the most beautiful monastic buildings of the
country, beautiful in themselves and beautiful in their sites, were
Cistercian,--as Tintern, Rievaulx, Byland, Fountains. A hundred were
established in England in the next hundred years, and then only one more
up to the Dissolution (for list, see table and map in F.A. Gasquet's
_English Monastic Life_, or _C