The Cistercian Order was initially a male order. Cistercian female monasteries began to appear by 1125. The first Cistercian monastery for women,
Le Tart Abbey, was established at
Tart-l'Abbaye in the
Diocese of Langres (now Dijon) in 1125, by nuns from the
Benedictine monastery of Juilly, and with the cooperation of
Stephen Harding,
abbot of Cîteaux. At Juilly, a dependency of
Molesme Abbey,
Humbeline, the sister of Saint
Bernard of Clairvaux, lived and died. The Cistercian nuns of Le Tart founded daughter houses in Europe, In Spain, the first Cistercian house of women was that of
Tulebras (1134) in the
Kingdom of Navarre. with only a minority receiving documentation from the Papacy to confirm this. The fully incorporated English nunneries were Tarrant Kaines in Dorset and
Marham Abbey in Norfolk. In Italy, 1171 CE, houses were founded of Santa Lucia at
Syracuse, San Michele at
Ivrea, and that of Conversano, the only one in the peninsula in which the abbesses carry a
crosier. in
Jodoigne, was an important centre of learning, where Cistercian nun Ida the Gentle of Goresleeuw copied and corrected church books and
Beatrice of Nazareth supervised the production of an
antiphonary. Queen
Marie de Medicis declared herself protectress of this institution, and
Pope Urban VIII exempted it from the jurisdiction of the Abbot of Cîteaux, placing it under that of Paris. The religious of Port-Royal de Paris and of Port-Royal des Champs ended by consecrating themselves to the adoration of the
Blessed Sacrament. However, the vicinity of the
Abbé de Saint-Cyran became dangerous for them, and they saw the suppression and destruction of Port-Royal des Champs by order of the
Louis XIV in 1710, while they themselves were dispersed. The property and abbatial titles were annexed to Port-Royal de Paris, which subsisted up to the time of the
French Revolution, before being transformed first into a prison, and then into a maternity hospital. After the French Revolution another reform took place.
Augustin de Lestrange gathered the scattered Cistercian nuns of France, with members of other orders that had been equally dispersed, and reconstructed the Cistercian Sisterhood. In 1795, he gave them a monastery which he called the Holy Will of God (La Sainte-Volonté de Dieu), situated in the
Bas-Valais, Switzerland. The Trappistines, for so the new religious were called, were obliged to leave Switzerland in 1798. They followed the
Trappist monks in their travels over Europe, returned to Switzerland in 1803, and remained there until 1816, when at length they were able to return to France and take up their abode at
Forges, near
La Trappe. Two years later they occupied an old monastery of the Augustinians at Les Gardes, in the Diocese of Angers. The Trappistines spread over France, and into other countries of Europe. Since the reunion of the three congregations of La Trappe, in 1892, they have been officially entitled
Reformed Cistercians of the Strict Observance. == Statutes ==