Editing Cistercians (section)

== Cistercian practices ==
The abbot general is the leader of the "administrative machinery" of a Cistercian order.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Williams |first1=David H. |title=The early Cistercian documents: what have they to say to us today? |journal=Cistercian Studies Quarterly |date=1999 |volume=34 |pages=299–310 |url=http://opac.regesta-imperii.de/id/488371}}</ref>

The burial practices for Cistercian monks involve complex rituals, and monks may be buried with or without shrouds.<ref>{{cite web |title=Death and burial – The Cistercians in Yorkshire |url=https://www.dhi.ac.uk/blogs/cistercians/cistercian-life/monastic-life/death-and-burial/}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Rudolph |first1=Conrad |title=Violence and daily life: reading, art, and polemics in the Cîtaux Moralia in Job |date=1997 |publisher=Princeton Univ. Press |location=Princeton, NJ |isbn=9780691026732}}</ref>

=== No vow of silence ===
Cistercian monks and nuns have a reputation of cultivating solitude and silence; the great monastics have explained silence as "the language of liberation, enlightenment, or union with God."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Teahan |first=John F. |date=1982 |title=Solitude: A Central Motif in Thomas Merton's Life and Writings |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1462940 |journal=Journal of the American Academy of Religion |volume=50 |issue=4 |pages=521–538 |doi=10.1093/jaarel/L.4.521 |jstor=1462940 |issn=0002-7189}}</ref> Some observers deduced, incorrectly, that Cistercians take a vow of silence.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fermor |first=Patrick Leigh |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cpPLWihINaoC&dq=cistercian+%22vow+of+silence%22&pg=PA93 |title=A Time to Keep Silence |date=2011-11-09 |publisher=New York Review of Books |isbn=978-1-59017-521-7 |pages=93 |language=en}}</ref> Watching over one's tongue is a general theme in the Rule of St. Benedict which, however, never required a [[vow of silence]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Hastings |first1=James |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ef2yrHAWUiAC&dq=cistercian+%22vow+of+silence%22&pg=PA650 |title=Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics |last2=Selbie |first2=John Alexander |last3=Gray |first3=Louis Herbert |date=1922 |publisher=Scribner |volume=12 |publication-date=1922 |pages=650 |language=en}}</ref>