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I think most Westerners have missed the metaphor. They are not prepared to think of the Monastic tradition as an Anschluss or even an invasion. When Christianity was a pup it faced a Eurasia which was solid Pagan. So what the new faith had was a logistical problem in Communications. They had to get the message out and to do that they needed relay stations out there in the Pagan Noise thru which they could transmit Christianized Reality in a Code which the little people could grok. Pictures. Icons. Bones of gods & titans & saints & jin. They needed gris-gris to gawk at and rub. And they needed monks and priests and nuns and deacons and subdeacons and bishops and cardinals and acolytes to be their cabana boys. They needed structure and infrastructure. That would take villages and forest clearing and the dredging and draining of lowlands. You need fields where the rocks are and barns where the swamp used to be. If Christianity was going to conquer the west it needed Pioneers to go out there among the heath and heathens and transform the world into the Speculum Maius of Jesus H. Christ. So orders of Monks went out into the wilderness and built walled compounds where there were no stone buildings at all. So protected, and so capable of offering protection, they spread their monkish gnosis like classic Infection Topologies. Christianity filled in the Pagan topos in irregular hexagrams, just like bees fill the hive with their honeycombed structures - because it's the best geometry to fill all available space. 12 men would leave safety and venture out into the wilderness. Usually they would go 3 to 5 days walk from the Satellite house and there they would settle. Building the monastery, clearing the lands, and bringing their sense of order to wherever they stopped. They would convert and recruit more monks from among the Pagans who swallowed Jesus and when they had 50, 12 of them would leave and walk 3 to 5 days and there they would settle. Do this for 500 years and the demographics skew Christian. The map turns rouge with the blood of the lamb. So the Cistercians were just the Tip of the Spear - there were as many kinds of religious orders as there are Cereals in the Piggly-Wiggly.

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I think most Westerners have missed the metaphor. They are not prepared to think of the Monastic tradition as an Anschluss or even an invasion. When Christianity was a pup it faced a Eurasia which was solid Pagan. So what the new faith had was a logistical problem in Communications. They had to get the message out and to do that they needed relay stations out there in the Pagan Noise thru which they could transmit Christianized Reality in a Code which the little people could grok. Pictures. Icons. Bones of gods & titans & saints & jin. They needed gris-gris to gawk at and rub. And they needed monks and priests and nuns and deacons and subdeacons and bishops and cardinals and acolytes to be their cabana boys. They needed structure and infrastructure. That would take villages and forest clearing and the dredging and draining of lowlands. You need fields where the rocks are and barns where the swamp used to be. If Christianity was going to conquer the west it needed Pioneers to go out there among the heath and heathens and transform the world into the Speculum Maius of Jesus H. Christ. So orders of Monks went out into the wilderness and built walled compounds where there were no stone buildings at all. So protected, and so capable of offering protection, they spread their monkish gnosis like classic Infection Topologies. Christianity filled in the Pagan topos in irregular hexagrams, just like bees fill the hive with their honeycombed structures - because it's the best geometry to fill all available space. 12 men would leave safety and venture out into the wilderness. Usually they would go 3 to 5 days walk from the Satellite house and there they would settle. Building the monastery, clearing the lands, and bringing their sense of order to wherever they stopped. They would convert and recruit more monks from among the Pagans who swallowed Jesus and when they had 50, 12 of them would leave and walk 3 to 5 days and there they would settle. Do this for 500 years and the demographics skew Christian. The map turns rouge with the blood of the lamb. So the Cistercians were just the Tip of the Spear - there were as many kinds of religious orders as there are Cereals in the Piggly-Wiggly.