Cistercian clothing: footnotes

1. They especially favour white in their habit and thereby seem remarkable and conspicuous to others. Black represents humility in many places in Holy Scripture; therefore up to now monks in their devotion have chosen to wear that colour. Now, however, as if to make a show of righteousness, the men of our time reject black which the earlier fathers always adopted as a mark of humility.
[Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and tr. M. Chibnall (6 vols., Oxford, 1969-80), IV, pp. 311-13 (VIII: 26). Orderic, a monk of St Evroul, Normandy, was writing c. 1135.]

2. J. M. Canivez, Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis ab anno 1116 ad anno 1786 8 vols (Louvain, 1933-41), I: 1191:12.

Cistercian Life Bibliography