The Trappists

The Trappist order was founded by a nobleman who became a monk after his close friend died, leading him to renounce his wealthy lifestyle and impose extreme austerity on his abbey. That nobleman was Armand Jean le Bouthillier de Ranc, a French aristocrat born in 1626 who held the title of commendatory abbot at La Trappe Abbey in Normandy, a common arrangement where nobles collected church income without taking monastic vows. The year was 1664, and de Ranc's reforms at that monastery would, over the next two centuries, grow into a distinct branch of the Cistercians, themselves a reform movement founded in 1098 to restore discipline to Benedictines Monasticism. The Trappists' official name is the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, and they follow the Rule of Saint Benedict, the sixth-century monastic guide written by Benedict of Nursia.

De Ranc lived as a wealthy, well-connected nobleman until his close friend, the Duke of Luxembourg, died in 1664. He abandoned his aristocratic privileges, took monastic vows, and transformed La Trappe Abbey into a model of strict discipline. He demanded manual labor, enforced strict silence, and stripped away comforts that other monasteries had come to accept. He saw laxity in the existing monastic world and responded with a regime so severe that it shocked contemporaries. Word spread, and other communities adopted his reforms, creating congregations within the broader Cistercian family. Female Trappists, called Trappistines, joined the same strict observance in cloistered communities of nuns. Both monks and nuns remained enclosed within their monasteries, dedicating themselves to prayer and labor.

The Trappists operated as reform congregations within the Cistercian order for 228 years before Pope Leo XIII formally constituted them as a separate religious order in 1892. That separation gave them independent governance while preserving the strict observance de Ranc had established. Today, Trappist monasteries operate worldwide, and their name remains associated with austerity, silence, and, in several famous abbeys, the beer and cheese they produce to support themselves through manual labor.