The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

REFORM OF THE CISTERCIANS. 24I
Orders could, if they so wished, keep themselves free from the
general decadence, these shining exceptions could not disguise
the fact that the decadence existed, and it was these very men
who so eminently represented their Orders who made the fact
clear. ^ To this matter the Council had set its hand. In its
decrees on the reform of the religious, both men and women,
it struck a mortal blow at the principal existing abuses, and
wherever these decrees took effect and vv-ere carried oat the
Orders took on a new lease of life. In reality, during the
century that followed the Council, all the ancient Orders were
reformed, while some of them attained to a state of perfection
such as had never been seen even in the best period of religious
life.
In the case of several of the Orders the difficulties in the
way of a renewal were so great as to seem almost insuperable,
even with the best will in the world. By order of Pius V.
in 1569 the procurator-general of the Cistercian Order, Nicholas
Boucherat, and his companion, Dionigi de Laceronis, made a
visitation of all their convents in south and central Italy,
as well as in Sicily. ^ In the 27 Cistercian houses on the
mainland they only found 56 Cistercians, distributed over
^Testimony of Musso, Seripando, etc., in Tacchi Venturi, I.,
46 seq.
^Cf. A. PosTiNA in Zisterzienser-Chronik, XIII. (igoi), 193
seqq. Postina (p. 196, n.) attributes the report of the visitation
to 1561, but it bears the date 1569, though in another hand ;
moreover, the * brief giving faculties for the visitation is dated
January 28, 1569 (Nicolao Boucherat, proc. gen. ord. Cist, de
Recluso Trecensis dioec, ac Dionysio de Laceronis de Morimondo
Mediolanensis dioec. Monasterii dicti ordinis Cist, prioribus com-
missariis : Archives
of Briefs, Rome) ;
lastly, in the bull of
March 8, 1570, the visitation is spoken of as having taken place
recently (recenti visitatione). Nor is any proof to the contrary
furnished by the mention, made in the report, of Cardinal Taddeo
Gaddi (died 1561), because it does not state that Gaddi was still
alive. For the reform of the Cistercians at Florence, cf. Guil-
LAUME, L'abbaye de Cava, Cava de' Tirreni, 1877, 324. A brief
of September 7, 1566, on the reform of the Cistercians in Tuscany
in Wadding, XX., 429.
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