Abbaye du Cluny

“ Of this the history of the Abbeys of Cluny and Citeaux form a remarkable illustration. The Abbey of Cluny was founded about 909 A.D. by Guillaume le Pieux, duc d’Aquitaine, but Odon, the second Abbot, was the real creator of the house. He introduced the idea of subordination and order amongst monasteries, i.e., that there should be one head Abbey, with numerous others subordinate to, and depend{20}ent on it. This plan was also adopted by the House of Citeaux (the Cistercians) , founded about 1100, and others. ”

“ As ever in the Middle Ages, a new monastic movement heralded in the work of reformation. As the Carolingian reformation is associated with Benedict of Aniane, so is the reformation of the eleventh century associated with the monks of Cluny.
The early history of Cluny. In 910 Duke William the Pious of Aquitaine founded a new monastery at Cluny, in French Burgundy, a few miles from the bishop’s town of Macon. He appointed Berno, a noble Burgundian, as its head, and procured for it absolute immunity from all external ecclesiastical jurisdiction save that of the Roman See. ”

“ Now the Cluniac Congregation, the first great reform of the Benedictine Order, had been founded there in the diocese of Macon in 910, and it was then at the height of its power and greatness. Cluny was the most completely feudal of the orders, for the Cluniac monks were governed by Priors each and all of whom were answerable only to the Abbot of Cluny himself, while every monk in the Order had to be professed by him, that mighty ecclesiastic at this time can have been master of not less than two thousand monks. ”

“ The famous monastery of Clugny, or Cluny, was founded A. D. 910, at Cluny, near Macon, in Burgundy, by the abbot Count Berno, who had previously established and ruled the monastery of Gigni, near Lyons. It was founded under the auspices and at the expense of William, Count of Auvergne, commonly called William the Pious. "In the disastrous times which followed the death of Charles the Great and the failure of his scheme to reorganize the Western world under a single head, the discipline of the religious houses fell with everything else ”

“ The great reform, however, with which the names of Edgar and Dunstan are associated, consisted not merely in the casting forth of the canons and the restoration of Benedictine regulars to their homes. It was also part of a great general movement for the purification of conventual life and the uplifting of the standard of morals in the whole Christian community; a movement which began in Eastern France, spread thence over Flanders, Germany and Italy, and will be for ever associated with the venerable name of the monastery of Cluny, founded in 910 by William, Duke of Aquitaine. ”

“ The glory of the monastery falls in the first three centuries of its existence. At the beginning of the twelfth century there were 460 monks in Cluny itself, and 314 monasteries subordinate to it. The order later fell a victim to misrule and demoralization, but lingered on until the French Revolution gave it its coup de grâce. ”

“ This great house replaces a one-time Cluniac monastery founded in 1102, though in 1407 the establishment abandoned the foreign rule of Cluny and became an ordinary English Priory. All that is left of the ancient buildings is a beautiful gateway with turrets and oriels dating from the fifteenth century. St. Michael's Hill, or "Mons Acutus," is remarkably like Glastonbury in outline, and is the scene of a wonderful legend. Here was found the sacred Rood that was eventually taken in the days of Canute to distant Waltham in Essex, where afterwards there arose the great Abbey of the Holy Cross. ”

“ Balance and temperance characterized its career. It was a monastic organization which by precept and example, and by the wide supervising powers it received from the papacy and from temporal authorities, promoted regularity and propriety of life among monks, and also among the secular clergy. The "reforms of Cluny" do not represent any specific intensifying of monastic principles, but rather the general endeavour of the better elements in Burgundian and French monasticism to overcome the crass secularization of the Church, within and without the cloister. ”

“ The growth of Cluny was marvellous; by the twelfth century two thousand houses obeyed its rule, and its wealth was so great, and its buildings so vast, that in 1245 Innocent IV., the Emperor Baldwin, and Saint Louis were all lodged together within its walls, and with them all the attendant trains of prelates and nobles with their servants.
In the eleventh century no other force of equal energy existed. The monks were the most opulent, the ablest, and the best organized society in Europe, and their effect upon mankind was proportioned to their strength. ”

“ At Mortain, at St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte, at St. Évroult, were monastery churches, and the picturesque ruins of Hambye cause one to mourn that Primary Gothic abbatial wrecked by the Revolution. St. Pierre-sur-Dives and the collegiate at Eu are later monastic works of the province. For its influence as a world power—what we may call the Cluny of Normandy—was Bec abbey that became, under Lanfranc the Lombard, and St. Anselm the Piedmontese, the intellectual leader of the West. Its mammoth church has gone the way of Cluny’s—scarcely stone left on stone.
BEC ABBEY [316]
O beata solitudo! ”

“ During the abbacy of Peter the Venerable (1122-1157) it became clear that, after a lapse of two centuries, a renewal of the framework of the life and a revival of its spirit had become necessary. Accordingly he summoned a great chapter of the whole order whereat the priors and representatives of the subject houses attended in such numbers that, along with the Cluny community, the assembly consisted of 1200 monks. This chapter drew up the 76 statutes associated with Peter’s name, regulating the whole range of claustral life, and solemnly promulgated as binding on the whole Cluniac obedience. ”

“ Pontius was godson of Pope Pascal II, who sent to the newly elected abbot his own dalmatic. Calixtus II visited Cluny, and while reaffirming the privileges granted by his predecessors, such as the freedom of Cluniac houses from visitation by the local bishop, he made the Abbot of Cluny ex officio a Cardinal of the Roman Church, and allowed that when the rest of the land was under an interdict the monks of Cluny might celebrate Mass within the closed doors of their chapels. ”

“ The wealth and privileges of Cluny made its failure all the more conspicuous. A few years after the expulsion of Pontius, St. Bernard wrote to the Abbot of the Cluniac house of St. Thierry a so-called apology, which, while professing a great regard for the Cluniacs Order and pretending to criticise the deficiencies of his own Cistercians, is in reality a scathing attack upon the lapse of the former from the Benedictine rule. He attacks their neglect of manual work and of the rule of silence; their elaborate cookery and nice taste in wines ”

“ The confraternity of Cluny, which had speedily risen to a high consideration throughout France, attained to a higher and more solidly-established reputation during the period extending through nearly forty years of the administration of Peter the Venerable. The renovation of the Benedictine Order in its original spirit which had been effected by the Cluniac reform became renowned in other countries as well as in France, and awoke the desire of attempting to accomplish the same happy results elsewhere by the use of similar methods. ”

“ It is when religion is purified of its dross that man’s respiritualized faith out-flows in generous donations to the Church.
St. Benedict had taught his sons that work as well as prayer was a part of salvation. The monks of Cluny fostered agriculture, thus taking away its stigma as serf’s work. Thierry speaks of the mediæval monastery as a model farm. In Cluny craftsmen of every kind were trained; its school of music was noted, and along the roads, as they traveled, the monks from Burgundy sang canticles. ”

“ Martène tells us that in the early years of the 18th century in the monastery of Baume, one of Berno’s original group of Cluny houses—indeed the parent house of Cluny itself—no one was admitted as a monk who had not sixteen quarterings in his coat of arms. A reform movement took root in the Cluny congregation, and during the last century of its existence the monks were divided into two groups, the Reformed and the Unreformed, living according to different laws and rules, with different superiors, and sometimes independent, and even rival, general chapters. ”

“ His education was directed by the monks of Cluny,--that princely abbey in Burgundy where "monks were sovereigns and sovereigns were monks." Like all earnest monks, he was ascetic, devotional, and self-sacrificing. Like all men ambitious to rule, "he learned how to obey." He pondered on the Holy Scriptures as well as on the canons of the Church. So marked a man was he that he was early chosen as prior of his convent ”

“ The most liberal hospitality was lavished in the abbey on all travellers of every rank; women only were excluded; and precise rules specified the manner of the reception of strangers according to their rank and quality. At different times Cluny had entertained Pope Innocent IV., twelve Cardinals, with their entire suite, two patriarchs, three Archbishops, and eleven Bishops, and the King of France, with his mother, brother, sister, and the whole court; the Emperor of Constantinople, the heirs-apparent to the crowns of Castile and Aragon, and several Dukes with their knights and retinues. ”

“ Seemingly exempt from this domination, the{158} powerful monks of Cluny knew no lord nor master. On one occasion a Pope and a King of France, with numberless prelates and nobles in their train, took refuge in the old abbey, but not a brother put himself out in the least to do them honour. ”

“ In the case of the great united corporations like the Cluniacs, the Cistercians, the Premonstratensians, and later the Carthusians, the dependence of the individual monastery upon the centre of government was very real both in theory and in practice. The abbots or superiors had to attend at General Chapters, held, for instance, at Cluny, Citeaux, or Prémontré, and were subject to regular visitations made by or in behalf of the general superior. ”

“ He has still the old enthusiasm for reason and for the deepening and widening of our natural knowledge. Both knowledge and faith come from God, and cannot contradict each other. It was the last gleam of the dying light, but it was wholly unchanged in its purity.
With the approach of spring the abbot sent the doomed man to a more friendly and familiar climate. Cluny had a priory outside the town of Chalon-sur-Saône, not far from the bank of the river. It was one of the most pleasant situations in Burgundy, in the mild valley of the Seine, which Abélard had learned to love. ”

“ In France the reform of the monks comes first, impelled by Cluny; and when Cluny herself becomes less zealous, because too great and rich, the spirit of soldiery against sin reincarnates itself in the Grand-Chartreuse, in Citeaux and Clairvaux. The reform of the secular clergy follows, with Hildebrand the veritable master ”

“ With the Norman irruptions, however, and the rise of the real French monarchs under Eudes and the Capets, the new sovereigns found it safest to transfer their seat to the Palace on the Island (now the Palais de Justice) , and the Roman fortress was gradually dismantled. In 1340 the gigantic ruins came into the hands of the powerful Benedictine Abbey of Cluny, near Mâcon, in Burgundy; and about 1480, the abbots began to erect on the spot a town mansion for themselves, which still bears the name of the Hôtel de Cluny. ”

“ When each monastery was as independent for all practical purposes as a modern Congregational chapel, it was impossible, in an age when public opinion hardly existed, to reform a lax community, and it was difficult for an isolated flock of unwarlike men to protect themselves from feudal violence or the equally fierce hostility of the secular clergy. Besides unity of organisation, the control exercised over the whole order of Cluny gave the brethren unity of purpose, doctrine, and policy. ”

“ Cluny, indeed, represented monasticism rather in its magnificence than in the more evangelic aspect of poverty and abasement, yet in the midst of all her lordly splendour, she continued fruitful in saints. Even the austere St. Peter Damian, whilst he disapproved of the wealth of the monks, was edified at their sanctity, and left them, marvelling how men so rich could live so holily. Their revenues were not spent on luxury; they went to feed 17,000 poor people, and to collect a library of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew authors, such as had not its equal in Europe. ”

“ Many have passed away, but many still exist.
Among the first of their kind were those founded by St. Hilaire at Poitiers and St. Martin at Tours. The great Burgundian pride was the Abbey of Cluny; much the largest and perhaps as grand as any erected in any land. Its church covered over seventy thousand square feet of area, nearly equalling in size the cathedrals at Amiens and at Bourges, and larger than either those at Chartres, Paris, or Reims. This great church was begun in 1089, was dedicated in 1131, and endured for more than seven centuries. ”