concrete in prayers and Masses that the monks performed or in lists of lay friends in a
book of commemoration. Laypeople were frequently buried at the monastery, near both
the saint and the monks. At Cluny, prayers for the dead took a major proportion of the
monks’ day, and manual labor essentially disappeared.
Although the monastic reaction to the secular world, whether in the time of the
Egyptian desert fathers or in the Carolingian period, had always been withdrawal, this
reaction meant that monks as a group had much better relations with the world’s lords
than did members of the secular clergy. Bishops and priests, who saw their duty as
conversion of the world rather than withdrawal from it, tended to see the princes who
ruled this world as at least potential rivals, whereas the monks sought their friendship and
hoped that they would be helpful in areas in which the monks themselves did not care to
participate.
If the 9th and early 10th centuries were a period in which the large, wealthy monastery
became an established part of society—wealthy overall, even though the monks were
individually poor—it was also a period in which the monasteries continued to face threats
to their integrity. The Viking incursions in the west of France, the Magyar invasions in
the east, and the continuing raids of Muslim pirates in the south ruined a number of
monasteries and sent their monks fleeing. Burgundy, where Cluny was located,
experienced attacks from all three of these “barbarian” groups. Powerful laypeople and
even bishops were still tempted with some frequency to take over the direction and the
revenues of a monastery.
In response, the monasteries tried to band together. Benedict of Aniane had been abbot
of most of the existing monasteries of Aquitaine at the beginning of the 9th century, and
such associations were revived in the late 9th and 10th centuries as a form of protection.
Affiliations of prayers were formed among monasteries within a region. A house that had
been ruined or lost the regularity of its life might have the abbot of another house become
its abbot as well, until the monastic life was fully reestablished. In some cases, two
houses might be permanently affiliated under the same abbot, although this practice was
less common.
Toward the end of the 10th century, such affiliations became the most common way
for a ruined or dissolute monastery to be reformed. A layman or bishop who controlled
such a monastery would ask the abbot of a house of undoubted holiness of life to send
him a group of monks to reestablish the regular life, sometimes under their own abbot,
who would bring with him the consuetudines and liturgical practices of the house where
he had been trained, or sometimes under the continuing direction of the reforming house.
In different parts of France, different monasteries took the lead in this reform movement.
In Burgundy, Cluny, which in its initial three generations had reformed houses primarily
in southwest France and in Italy, now became the chief source and model for reform.
Gorze played a similar role in Lorraine, as did Montmajour in Provence, Marmoutier in
western France, and Brogne in Flanders.
From the 8th through the 11th century in France, Benedictine monasticism was the
most visible form of the religious life. It was virtually the definition of a holy and devout
way of living, even though most houses followed the Rule slightly differently during
these “Benedictine centuries.” During the 11th century, however, French Benedictine
monasticism began to receive its first competition in several centuries. These new forms
of institutionalized religion gradually spread north from Italy. Hermits appeared in
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