CLUNIAC ORDER
. When Duke William I the Pious of Aquitaine (d. 918) and his wife founded the
monastery of Cluny in 909, it was not with the expectation that they were founding an
order. Rather, they were establishing a monastery like several that had already been
established in Burgundy in the second half of the 9th century, such as Vézelay and
Pouthières, where monks of a regular life would live and pray, at least theoretically free
from the outside interference of bishop or count.
Cluny followed the Benedictine Rule, but like all Benedictine houses it adopted its
own particular customs, or consuetudines, which regulated many of the details of daily
life not spelled out in the Rule. At Cluny, tremen-dous emphasis was given to the liturgy,
including prayers for the dead—both monks and secular friends of the monastery. As the
reputation of the monks’ holiness spread, laypeople made generous gifts to the
monastery, hoping to be associated with the monks and with St. Peter, their patron. It also
became increasingly common for a layperson who controlled a monastery that had lost its
regularity of life to give it to the abbot of Cluny for reform. In such a case, Cluny’s abbot
would become abbot, at least temporarily, of this monastery as well as of Cluny. Such a
practice had a long history; houses needing reform had long been put under the direction
of the abbot of a nearby house of undoubted regularity. When Cluny was first founded,
its abbot, Berno, continued to be abbot of Baume, his original house, even though Cluny
and Baume had separate abbots after his death. During the 10th century, Cluny’s abbots
undertook the reform of some several dozen houses, many in Italy or in Auvergne. In the
late 10th and 11th centuries, many old monasteries in Burgundy, closer to Cluny, were
similarly reformed. Although some, such as Paray-le-Monial or La Charité, remained
permanently under Cluny’s abbot, many others, such as Saint-Bénigne of Dijon or Bèze,
had their own abbots again after a short period. In the late 11th century, other
monasteries, like Vézelay, were added to the lists of dependent abbeys that popes
periodically confirmed to Cluny, even though they always had their own abbots. In the
12th century, perhaps 1500 houses can be considered Cluniac.
By the first generation of the 12th century, however, the Cluniacs were being
outcompeted for the affections of their Burgundian secular neighbors by the new order of
the Cistercians. Though Cluny had not declined from its own standards of holiness, many
people, both monastic and lay, were arguing that true spirituality lay in poverty more than
in liturgical observance. Cluny’s magnificent church, the largest in Christendom, was
completed in the first decade of the century, and laypeople continued to make gifts to the
house, but the overall level of generosity never again achieved that of ca. 1000, as
potential donors made more of their gifts to the new monastic orders or to the regular
canons.
Abbot Peter the Venerable of Cluny (r. 1122–56) carried out a long correspondence
with Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (r. 1115–53), the most visible spokesman of the
Cistercian order, on the relative merits of their ways of monastic life. Although Bernard
always argued that the Cistercians were more austere and closer to Benedict’s Rule, the
two men became friends, and, partly in imitation of the Cistercians, Peter adopted some
of their system of economic organization to deal with financial difficulties at Cluny.
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