between the aristocracy, the clergy and the ordinary people considered just a labour reserve. Where the laypeople, religious auxiliaries coming from the plebeian, had still been subject to a system of quasi-serfdom, Bernard of Clairvaux made them free men, who shared fully in the life of the abbey, participating in the services and attending chapters.
The Cistercians´ days were long, divided between prayers and working the fields side by side with the laypeople, broken only by seven hours of rest a day.
The meals were taken in the common refectory : meager dishes accompanied by a little bead and wine. As you enter the dormitory, you can easily imagine the cistercians monks sleeping fully-dressed right on the floor, lit by a window to the east and one to the west to benefit from all the light of the day.
At the church´s threshold, one individual cell, cramped and bare, marks the sole privilege of the abbot. At the time of their death, the cistercians monks, carried by their brothers, crossed the door of death, to lie on an altar of rough stone, dressed in their only habit, before being buried directly in the ground.
With the decline of the cistercian order, the dormitories designed to accommodate the ever-increasing number of monks began to empty progressively until the French Revolution.
