Cistercians in the Czech lands

Cistercian communities appeared on the Czech territory in the 12^th centuries owing to Jindřich Zdík, Bishop of Olomouc. Their first community formed in the Sedlec monastery in Kutná Hora. The oldest Moravian Cistercian monastery is Velehrad, founded by monks from Plasy in Bohemia. In 1292 King Wenceslaus II founded the monastery Aula Regia in Zbraslav (now on the territory of the city of Prague) and the local Church of the Mother of God was also meant to serve as a royal mausoleum. The famous Chronicle of Zbraslav was later written there by the local abbot Petr Žitavský. The first women’s convent, Porta Coeli, was founded in the 13^th century. All the Czech monasteries belonged to the order’s branch named after the Marimond Abbey in France. Cistercian abbots were very influential in the Czech lands from the beginning, often participating in the monarch’s policy in the Czech lands. After a decline during the Hussite Wars, the order again grew in importance in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Most of the monasteries were also modified, e.g. the Plasy Monastery and the Sázava Monastery were rebuilt in Baroque style, according to architect Jan Blažej Santini’s design.

The dissolution of many Cistercian monasteries due to Joseph II’s secularisation efforts, some important relations between motherhouses and daughter houses were broken. New, territorial connections gradually appeared and thus a new Austro-Hungarian congregation appeared, confirmed in 1859 as the Congregation of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, active until the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1918. After that, the congregation split into three entities: Austrian, Hungarian and Czech, founded in 1923 as the Congregation of the Most Sacred Heart of Virgin Mary. The order was significantly influenced by both totalitarian systems of the 20^th century. The Cistercian Order was restored only after the fall of the communist regime in 1989. The women’s Cistercian Order renewed its activities in the Porta Coeli Convent and brothers Cistercians did the same in Vyšší Brod and in Osek. In 2002, a community of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, called Trappists after the monastery Soligny-la-Trappe in France, was founded in the Nový Dvůr Monastery in Toužim.