Was There an Observant Cistercian Movement? Reform in the Medieval History of the Cistercian Order

This article confronts the problem that in late medieval/early modern Cistercian historiography the concept of Observant reform seems absent, and that there did not exist a distinct Observant movement within the Cistercian order in a way that was comparable with what happened in the Mendicant world. Nevertheless, a close analysis of Cistercian sources indicates that Observant ideas did exist at different levels, and that Observantist developments evolved in relation to contacts with other religious orders, such as the Carthusians and the Devotio moderna movement.