The Cistercian order was founded in 1119, and St. Robert imposed the _Rule_ of St. Benedict in its primitive severity. To mark his separation from the degenerate Benedictines, whose dress was black, he gave his monks a brown habit. After determining their religious duties he gave minute instructions as to the arrangement of the buildings. The condition chiefly insisted upon was that the site of the monastery should be of such extent and so ordered that the necessaries of life could be provided within its precincts. Thus all causes of distraction through communication with the outside world were removed. The monasteries, whenever possible, were to be built beside a stream or river; they were to contain, independently of the claustral buildings, the church and the abbot's dwelling, which was outside the principal enclosure, a mill, a bakehouse, and workshops for the manufacture of all things requisite to the community, besides gardens for the use and pleasure of the monks. The Abbey of Clairvaux was an embodiment of the reforms brought about by St. Robert, and later by St. Bernard. The general arrangement and the details of service were almost identical with those of Citeaux, just as Citeaux itself had been modelled upon Cluny in all respects, save that a severe observance of the primitive Benedictine rule was insisted upon in the disposition of the later foundation. All superfluities were proscribed, and the rules which enjoined absolute seclusion as a means towards moral perfection were sternly enforced. The result is undoubtedly interesting as a religious revival; but we may be permitted to regret that the intellectual impetus given to art progress by the great Benedictine lords spiritual of Cluny should have been checked by the frigid utilitarianism to which architecture--then an epitome of all the arts--was reduced by the purists of Citeaux in its application to the monasteries of the reform. The Cistercian monuments are not, however, wanting in interest. Of Clairvaux and Citeaux little remains but fragments embedded in a mass of modern buildings, for the most part restorations of the last century. As records these are less to be relied upon than the historical and archæological documents which guided Viollet-le-Duc in his graphic reconstruction of famous Cistercian abbeys, an essay not to be bettered as a piece of lucid demonstration (see his _Dictionary_, vol. i. pp. 263-271). CHAPTER III ABBEYS AND CARTHUSIAN MONASTERIES