Cistercian monks

St Bernard motivated his ecclesiastical workforce by declaring that work is prayer. The Gothic cathedrals erected by this practical prayer became the magnificent New Jerusalem, rebuilt everywhere in Europe." After St Bernard s discoveries were incorporated into the great cathedrals, the Church rapidly lost interest in Jerusalem itself With the discoveries of the Melchizedek knights safely hoarded away, even St Bernard never saw the need to visit Jerusalem. Quite pointedly, he asserted that Cistercian monks need only travel to Clairvaux Abbey where " " ... 

The Cistercians were a monastic order founded in 1098CE at Citeaux by Benedictine monks from the Abbey of Molesme. St Bernard, who lived from 1090 to 1153, joined the monastery of Qteaux in 1113. Two years later, he became the founding abbot of Clairvaux. The Cistercians then became the most influential order within the Roman Catholic Church. Over the next fifteen years, they established more than three hundred monasteries. St Bernard built sixty-eight of these. The... 

The mother order of the Cistercians was the Benedictines, created by St Benedict at Monte Cassino in 529. People commonly called them black monks because of their black tunic and scapular. In stark contrast, the Cistercians adopted a white or grey tunic. It was an emblem of the purity fitting of their Jemsalem discoveries and they became the white monks. 

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