Cistercian Abbey monastic life of monks living within the closure. His spirituality was ordered by the rule: silence, discipline, obedience to the abbot, rigorous schedule distributed to many prayers in common, religious readings and manual labor. In addition, Abbey lived a second community of converts. Spiritual surrender lived in daily work in the field, forges and mills, could not read and did not maintain any contact with the community of monks. The latter was achieved by designing two areas in the monastery watertight and isolated from each other. The area of the converts had the same construction quality as that of the monks. The uniformity of the order set out in the Exordium of Citeaux and Summary of the Charter of Charity: To enter the abbeys always remains an indissoluble unity, establish, first, that the rule of St. Benedict is understood by all of the Similarly, without deviating from it one iota.Secondly, everyone has the same books, at least as regards the Divine Office, the same clothes, the same foods and finally the same uses and the same customs. All abbeys also have a similar architecture. First, constructive solutions were sought for each unit that would promote the spirit of the rule, which is called the establishment of the program type, or in short plane type, where Bernard of Clairvaux had a decisive influence. Second, once set the map type is imposed on new construction. The flat rate was applied in the construction of all new monasteries.Thus the church was oriented in the east-west direction with the head to the east, the cloister adjoining the church, the east wing of the cloister was dedicated to units of the monks with the chapter house on the ground floor and bedroom the first floor with two staircases, one going down into the church and the other to the cloister, in the wing of the cloister opposite the church provided for the refectory and the kitchen in the west wing (usually with independent access from the cloister ), a two-story building was used for the converts and stores with independent access to the rear of the church. Each abbot father passed its subsidiaries on architectural plan that had previously applied in the construction of its own abbey and his whole experience. In addition, all gathered in Cistercian abbots at the General Chapter, once a year, and there is evidence that there was much talk of building new works.Finally, the actual construction of the new monastery, living day to day work, the abbot had commissioned a monk, called cellarer, whose responsibility was to control the works and also carried the abbey’s finances under the supervision of the abbot. The monk cellarer controlled masons (united in a union corporation which integrated the masons and piece-rate), blacksmiths and carpenters (andamioss and formwork for a lot of wood was needed). It is a question still debated whether the architects were hired them monks or craftsmen. Since the secret guild of construction at this time, the high qualifications required and the huge construction activity that unfolded in a short time, it seems reasonable that craftsmen used specifically for the construction contract. In the Middle Ages used as a very complex organization, various forms of wages and prices, various types of contracts, and took a rigorous accounting of all expenditures.Amazing how, when visiting the abbeys, always find the same distribution.