he lands owned by the Cistercian monasteries were the basis of their economic welfare. The Cistercians stressed the importance of manual labour and, unlike several other monastic orders, were actively engaged in farming.
By the Late Middle Ages many villages from Vasalemma to Nõva had come into the ownership of the Padise Monastery. A separate parcel of land possessed by the monastery was near Raasiku in East Harju county. In the 14th century the Padise Cistercians had landholdings near the present-day Helsinki and Vantaa, in South Finland, then part of the Kingdom of Sweden, in addition to fishing rights in the Vantaa River.