a branch of the Roman Catholic Cistercians, founded by the converted courtier Armand de Rancé (1626–1700), who had governed the Cistercian abbey of La Trappe in France, which he transformed (1662) into a community practicing extreme austerity of diet, penitential exercises, and absolute silence. He became its regular abbot in 1664 and, for more than 30 years, kept the abbey under his forceful sway.

In 1792 the monks were ejected from La Trappe, and a number of them, led by Dom Augustine de Lestrange, settled at Val-Sainte in Fribourg, Switz., where they adopted an even more rigid life and made several foundations before their expulsion in 1798. Long years of wandering in Russia and Germany were followed in 1814 by a return to La Trappe; they were the first religious order to revive after the French Revolution and, at the death of Lestrange in 1827, numbered 700. Their increase has never ceased, and by the late 20th century there were abbeys worldwide, including several in England, Scotland, Canada, the United States, Australia, and South Africa. The three existing congregations of Trappists were united by Pope Leo XIII as the independent Reformed Cistercians of the Strict Observance; they follow the primitive custom of Cîteaux with an emphasis on silence and austerity but without the rigid regulations of the early Trappists. After World War II their growth was particularly notable in France and the United States.