At the end of the ninth century, a group of Roman Catholic monks in France struck out on their own. Dissatisfied with the rules of the Benedictine abbey they called home, they created the Cistercian ...

The books hail from Clairvaux Abbey, founded in 1115 by Cistercian monks in northern France, and its daughter monasteries. Some tomes are nearly 900 years old. Researchers had thought they were ...