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Cluny: the order that covered Europe before Cîteaux
Chevalier Georges · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Cluny: the order that covered Europe before Cîteaux

13 min read

Foundation charter of 11 September 909 or 910; height under Odilo (994-1049), Hugh of Semur (1049-1109) and Peter the Venerable (1122-1156); more than a thousand houses in the West; commendam after 1516, suppression in 1790, demolition of the abbey church from 1798

By giving an estate in the Mâconnais “to the apostles Peter and Paul”, William the Pious removes an abbey from every earthly power, king and bishop included: from this clause will come the largest monastic network of the Middle Ages, a thousand houses from Scotland to Castile, governed by six abbots in two centuries. Cluny establishes there a liturgy of a hundred and thirty-eight psalms a day, invents All Souls' Day, supports the Peace of God and builds the largest church in Christendom before St Peter's in Rome. The route runs from Berno's Jura to the Brionnais of the abbots, from the eldest daughters in Auvergne to the priories of Spain and Switzerland — and ends in front of the eighth of the abbey church that still stands at Cluny.

The Bourges charter

On 11 September 909 or 910 — the year is disputed, the deed being ambiguously dated — William, Count of Mâcon, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Auvergne, whom his contemporaries called the Pious, had a donation drawn up at Bourges. He gave “to the apostles Peter and Paul”, that is to say to the Church of Rome, an estate in the Mâconnais named Cluny, with its serfs, its vineyards, its mills and its waters, so that a monastery of twelve monks living under the Rule of Saint Benedict might be built there. He added a clause that changed everything: the monks gathered in this place, the charter says, “shall not be subject to the yoke of any earthly power, not even our own, nor to that of our kin, nor to that of the royal majesty”; they would freely elect their abbot. At a time when monasteries were family property that lords granted as benefices to their followers, this refusal was a weapon, and the donor knew it: in return he asked that prayers be said for his soul, without ceasing, “with profound will and total ardour”.

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