Traces the history of the Cistercian Order from its founding in 1098, through the reforms of the seventeenth century, its spread to the Americas and Asia, and its responses to the stresses of the Outside World.

An examination of the roots of the Cistercian Order, founded in 1098, its development and waning, and the seventeenth-century reforms by the Abbé de Rance, which began the second flowering that continues today. Throughout, Merton illuminates the purposes of monasticism. Index photographs. -- Publisher description.