But the very fame and prosperity of Cluny proved a temptation and cause of decline. An
unworthy abbot, Pontius, wasted the funds, and was at last deposed and excommunicated by the
pope as a robber of the church. Peter the Venerable, the friend of St. Bernard and kind patron of
the unfortunate Abelard, raised Cluny by his wise and long administration (1122–1156) to new life
and the height of prosperity. He increased the number of monks from 200 to 460, and connected
314 convents with the parent institution. In 1245 Pope Innocent IV., with twelve cardinals and all
their clergy, two patriarchs, three archbishops, eleven bishops, the king of France, the emperor of
Constantinople, and many dukes, counts and knights with their dependents were entertained in the
buildings of Cluny.^386 This was the end of its prosperity. Another decline followed, from which
Cluny never entirely recovered. The last abbots were merely ornamental, and wasted two-thirds of
the income at the court of France. The French Revolution of 1789 swept the institution out of
existence, and reduced the once famous buildings to ruins; but restorations have since been made.^387
A similar reformation of monasticism and of the clergy was attempted and partially carried
out in England by St. Dunstan (925-May 19, 988), first as abbot of Glastonbury, then as bishop of
Winchester and London, and last as archbishop of Canterbury (961) and virtual ruler of the kingdom.
A monk of the severest type and a churchman of iron will, he enforced the Benedictine rule, filled
the leading sees and richer livings with Benedictines, made a crusade against clerical marriage
(then the rule rather than the exception), hoping to correct the immorality of the priests by abstracting
them from the world, and asserted the theocratic rule of the church over the civil power under Kings
Edwy and Edgar; but his excesses called forth violent contentions between the monks and the
seculars in England. He was a forerunner of Hildebrand and Thomas à Becket.^388
CHAPTER VIII.
CHURCH DISCIPLINE.
Comp. vol. II. § 57, and vol. III. § 68.
§ 85. The Penitential Books.
I. The Acts of Councils, the Capitularies of Charlemagne and his successors, and the Penitential
Books, especially that of Theodore of Canterbury, and that of Rome. See Migne’s Patrol. Tom.
99, fol. 901–983.
II. Friedr. Kunstmann (R.C.): Die latein. Pönitentialbücher der Angelsachsen. Mainz 1844. F. W.
H. Wasserschleben: Bussordnungen der abendländ. Kirche. Halle 1851. Steitz: Das röm.
Buss-Sacrament. Frankf. 1854. Frank (R.C.): Die Bussdisciplin der Kirche. Mainz 1867. Probst
(R.C.): Sacramente und Sacramentalien. Tübingen 1872. Haddan and Stubbs: Councils and
Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, vol. III. Oxf. 1871. H. Jos.
(^386) Hurter, l.c. p. 45.
(^387) The material of the church was sold during the Revolution for not much more than 100,000 francs. When Napoleon
Bonaparte passed through Macon, be was invited to visit Cluny, but declined with the answer: "You have allowed your great
and beautiful church to be sold and ruined, you are a set of Vandals; I shall not visit Cluny." Lorain, as quoted by Hurter, p. 47.
The last abbot of Cluny was Cardinal Dominicus de la Rochefaucauld, who died in exilea.d.1800.
(^388) See Dunstan’s life in the Acta Sanct. for May 19; and in Butler’s Lives of the Saints, under the same date. Comp.
Wharton, Anglia Sacra, II.; Lingard Hist. of the Anglo-Saxon Church; Soames,Anglo-Saxon Church; Lappenberg, Gesch. von
England; Hook, Archbishops of Canterbury; Milman, Latin Christianity, Bk. VII., ch. 1; Hardwick; Robertson; also Lea, History
of Sacerdotal Celibacy.