The method of government adopted for the Cistercian Order is also a
contrast by imitation of the Cluniac arrangements. It was an essential
point that a Cistercian house should be subject to the bishop of the
diocese in which it was situated. The episcopal leave was asked before
a house was founded, and a Cistercian abbot took an oath of obedience
to the local bishop. The actual organisation of the whole Order may be
described as aristocratic in contrast with the despotism of the Abbot
of Cluny. The Abbot of Citeaux was subject to the visitation and
correction of the abbots of the four daughter houses mentioned above,
while he in turn visited them; and each of them kept a similar
surveillance over the houses which had sprung from their houses. In
addition to this scheme of inspection, an annual general chapter met
at Citeaux. The abbots of all the houses in France, Germany, and Italy
were expected to appear every year; but from remoter lands attendance
was demanded only once in three, four, five, or even seven years.

[Sidenote: Decay.]

The Cistercians certainly wrested the lead of the monastic world from
Cluny, and until the advent of the Friars no other Order rivalled them
in popularity. But no more than any other Order were they exempt from
the evils of popularity. The very deserts in which they placed
themselves for protection, and the agricultural work with which they
occupied their hands, brought them the corrupting wealth; in England
they were the owners of the largest flocks of sheep which produced the
raw material for the staple trade of the country. They accepted
ecclesiastical dignities; they became luxurious and magnificent in
their manner of life; they strove for independence of the
ecclesiastical authorities, until in the middle of the thirteenth
century one of their own abbots quotes against them the saying that