| Cluny Dr. Marie-France Hilgar |
| "The Angelus"
December, 2002 Volume XXV, Number 12 http://www.angeluspress.org/angelus/2002_December/Cluny.htm |
| The Benedictine Abbey of Cluny
in the French department [i.e., an administrative division similar to
what Americans know as a "county"-Ed.] of Saône-et-Loire in Burgundy
was once the center of the highest spiritual and intellectual endeavor
in Europe and boasted, before St. Peter of Rome was built, the largest
church in Christendom. Cluny was
founded by William of Aquitaine as his family monastery in 910 and was
answerable directly to the Papal See. In its foundation charter
William not only gave up his right to all the monastery's income and
investitures, but even laid down the rule that no one, whether a bishop
or even the pope, should be allowed to seize the property belonging to
the monastery. The founding abbot was Berno of Baume (910-26) who built
the first church for his 12 monks. He is interred behind its altar of
St. Benedict. Following the death of Berno, whom William had appointed, the monks elected a successor from amongst their own ranks. It was under Odo, who became abbot in 927, that the real greatness of Cluny began. Odo was a saintly and apparently very charming man, who had found in the Benedictine Rule the most perfect guide to salvation and whose only wish was to establish it as widely as possible in its strictest and most orthodox form. He was so successful that as early as 932, he received permission from Rome to spread the Cluniac reforms in Italy as well as France by founding daughter houses, and even more importantly, to reform existing monasteries and make them subordinate to Cluny. The daughter-houses were not governed by their own abbots but by priors answerable to the abbot of Cluny. This created a tightly-knit community of monasteries, and Cluny became a sort of secular feudal lord itself. Cluny's power was almost unlimited. This control continued to be exercised by Odo's successors. Gradually the idea of a Cluniac "congregation" grew up, a network of monasteries under one central authority. Some 1500 monasteries of the Order soon spread through Europe. The man at the head of this network was extremely powerful. The abbot of Cluny was second only to the pope in the hierarchy of Christendom. His townhouse in Paris, the Hotel de Cluny, survives as evidence of his prestige. Odo, the saint, had acted as a statesman. The almost autocratic position of the abbots of Cluny, and their exceptionally long life span-only three ruled in the period from 958 to 1109-facilitated a radical planning of spiritually cultural and social art. The first church, known as Cluny I, was consecrated in 915. This first, modest church was replaced with another, Cluny II, built around 954. In the course of the 55 years of his abbacy, Odilo complemented the church with new monastery buildings and the marble cloister which so amazed contemporaries. The church itself was a cruciform basilica with a narthex, atrium, and an entrance flanked by two towers. It was consecrated in 981. It comprised also a large west court with stables, guests' lodgings and an infirmary, a novices' cloister, and of course all the claustral buildings. Cluny was already famous then for its music. It had an important library, scriptorium [the room of monastery where the work of translating and copying manuscripts was carried on -Ed],and even goldsmith's and enameller's shops. Fifty years later the monastery had again outgrown its buildings. An entire century passed projecting the future enlargement of the church. Finally, the foundation stone for Cluny III was laid in 1088. Pope Urban consecrated the church in 1095. Abbot Hugh (1049-1103), encouraged by a message from on high, built a basilica like a tent for the glory of God...of such splendor that if the inhabitants from heaven could content themselves with our terrestrial dwellings, one would say that here was the angels "courtyard." (Cluniac text from L'esprit de Cluny [Zodiaque, 1963]) Hugh enlarged the church enormously, pulling down the old nave and incorporating the resulting space in the cloister, and added many other buildings on a similar scale. The whole complex covered over 25 acres. The massive basilica with its two naves, west choir, ambulatory with a dozen apsidal chapels [chapels in the apse, the sanctuary end of a church building, especially of Romanesque or Gothic architecture, usually semicircular-Ed.] and a triple-aisled narthex was finished by the start of the 13th century. Six belfries or lantern towers and roofs at varying levels dominated this splendid church. The interior, 614 feet long, was bathed in the light from 300 windows. In the choirstalls of the transept there was room for more than 300 monks. Cluny, "a place worthy of angels," observed the bishop of Le Mans in the 12th century, must have been a magnificent sight. Abbot Hugh's great church was bigger than any cathedral then standing. Besides its double aisles, it had two pairs of transepts, a chevet of chapels at the east end, tunnel vaulting, and in the arcades of the nave, pointed arches. A huge fresco of Christ in Glory gazed down from the apse and the church was filled with superb sculptures of which a few capitals representing the virtues, the Seasons, and the "tones" of Gregorian chant are all that remain. "Among all the abbeys beyond the Alps," said Pope Gregory VII at the Council of Rome in 1077, "there shines first and foremost that of Cluny." One must not forget that the building and rebuilding of the church and conventual structures was never the focus of attention. Building was done with the left hand, while the right ruled an empire. Building was to one end only: the life of a monk was to be almost exclusively devoted to the celebration of the liturgy. The monks occupied themselves with a liturgy of unusual beauty and elaboration. Liturgy was moved into the center of monastic life, indeed existence in general, in a way unknown until then. Along with the extension of the convent Mass (the standard celebration of the Mass with chant) by a procession and litany of all the saints, a Mass was added in the mornings, which on days that were not feastdays, was celebrated as a Requiem Mass. In addition, every monk who had been ordained was required to read a private Mass and to sing the entire Psalter every day. The convent Masses were attended by 200 monks dressed in white albs, and on feastdays in choir robes, and they were celebrated with an incredible display of splendor. The celebration of the Mass, which took up most of the day, became increasingly involved. It required special rooms and space in order to create and maintain a proper feeling of reverence. Cluny II and Cluny III were built to comply with these requirements. The magnificent wood cradle vault is above the room where flour and wheat were stored. The room was originally 178 ft. long. It was cut down to I 19 ft. in the 18th century. It is now a museum where the few remaining capitals are exhibited, and also the marble altar consecrated by Pope Urban II in 1095. The monks were also responsible in general for the Latin liturgy and books, the Classical and Christian traditions, and higher education. They were instructed to build schools and choose competent teachers, to copy carefully whatever books were necessary for teaching. Devotional poetry flourished, preserved in exquisitely written manuscripts. Cluny adopted the new mass movement of pilgrimages to faraway Santiago in Spain. Two of the four great pilgrimage routes to Santiago, Vezelay, and St. Gilles started at Cluny. In addition, the routes were lined with numerous hostels belonging to the Cluniac monasteries. The "art for God's sake" seemed the sole purpose of the monk. The few fragments of building or works of art that we know of or survive evince the exemplary character that was intended for them. Cluny gave the lead both as an order and in its artistic achievements. The church absorbed the energies of the best sculptors in France, who later took the style refined here to such abbeys as Vezelay and Autun, where it has survived better than at the motherhouse. Its architecture too was emulated, though not so much in France as in England, where there were a number of houses owing allegiance to Cluny. In many ways these developments were of tremendous benefit. It was in one sense the great age of the monasteries. Never again would there be such a power in politics, so rich, so lavish in their patronage, so splendid in the works that they created for the glory of God. The monastery must have showed itself at the peak of its powers at the encounter of Pope Innocent IV and St. Louis in 1245. Glowing with pride, the monks relate that they were in a position to lodge the Pope's retinue of twelve cardinals and twenty bishops, as well as the King and his court, his mother and his brother, not to mention the Byzantine Emperor and his train, without having themselves to give up their dormitory, refectory, chapter-house, or indeed any key building. As early as the 12th century we learn that up to 1200 fathers and brothers could be accommodated in the dormitories and dining halls. The church held thousands. The popes ensured that Cluny was richly provided with privileges and donations. Three popes emerged from the order: Gregory VII, Urban II, and Pascal II. But decline set in immediately after the death of Peter the Venerable (1122-56). It led in 1252 to the renunciation of independence and the submission of the monastery to the King's protection. Thereafter the abbots were no longer freely elected. Their power became diluted as the 1200 priories of the Order spread throughout Europe. Although controlled in theory by the motherhouse, these priories were becoming increasingly autonomous. Most abbots resided, like Richelieu and Mazarin, who were both Abbes commendataires [i.e., those who, in this case, had charge of the monastery, but lived off site-Ed.] of Cluny, in Paris. Even as a congregation Cluny was absorbed by the congregation of St. Maur (1634-44) and subsequently into that of St. Vanne. The last Abbe commendataire was Cardinal Dominique de la Rochefoucauld (1757 onward), who, on his sporadic visits to Cluny, lived in a special chateau and no longer in the monastery. Cluny suffered severely from the onslaughts of the two 18th-century movements hostile to anything medieval: the Enlightenment, with its classical mania for regularity and uniformity, and the Revolution. In 1727 the old monastery buildings were torn down. The Paris-produced plans for rebuilding, which would have given a chateau-like appearance to the whole, were only partially executed around 1750. Then came the Revolution. With its new belief in progress, the townsfolk of Cluny started to break down the huge church immediately after secularization in 1790 to liberate itself from all traces of the past. Justice demands that one should speak here of the historic crime by which the idealism of the monks was impugned, their treasures were barbarously destroyed and scattered, their vestments, manuscripts, precious ornaments stolen, their monasteries sold, their churches deconsecrated, and many of the finest of them torn down. The last abbot died under the guillotine in 1794. Cluny was sold in 1798, a street was built through the nave of the church; in 1811 the bell towers of the sanctuary were dynamited, the ruins used as a rock quarry up to 1823, till finally it was accorded protection in 1826. What remains of the largest church of Christendom is its south transept, not even one-tenth of its original size, and a few capitals. The campaign of restoration begun in the 1920's had no more than rubble to rescue. And though French archeology has ever since laid stress on the grandeur of the original achievement that was so destroyed, the French public has, in general, up till now, always sided with the Revolution. This is linked to the fact that large-scale excavations have never been conducted, and that the new owners, the French government, impede inspections of the remains. There are moving accounts of the distress of the expelled monks and of their despair over the destruction of the life's work of generations. Numerous factories and families prospered on the proceeds of monastic acquisitions. Monastic booty played a large part in the capital formation generating the Industrial Revolution. History has accepted the fact without counting the cost. Hardly a voice was raised to defend the monasteries. The onslaught organized against them was similar to a military campaign. This monastery did a tremendous amount for the development of Western architecture, with its churches, and its huge buildings for guests, the sick, and the abbot. One thing is certain: Cluny was the first place where the buildings around the cloister really achieved the status of conscious architecture. Here for the first time a care was lavished on each detail that was previously only thought appropriate for churches. Through a happy chance, out of all its features the very works survive which most faithfully embody this devotion, the sanctuary capitals with representations of the nine tones of plainchant. This is a remarkable and novel theme for capital sculptures. Nothing comparable is known. These masterpieces of early Burgundian classicism from the beginning of the 12th century have as their subject neither the attributes of the Evangelists, nor the symbolic or fabulous imagery of the Romanesque. They show the unshowable-the tones by which the temporal meets the eternal. Since music includes something of mathematics, where there is a preoccupation with musical harmony there is also preoccupation with architectural proportions and their higher significance. Archeologists have tried to resolve Cluny's measurements and arrange them into a numerical system. That there was such a system is almost as evident as the fact that it was one of the governing preoccupations of its builders. Beauty emerged through just proportions. The history of monastic architecture should also embrace the history of these numbers and their significance, but this basic work needs to be done. Dr. Marie-France Hilgar is a native of France, mother of four children, and assists at the Latin Mass at Our Lady of Victory Church, Las Vegas, NV. She was Distinguished Professor of French at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and International President of the Foreign Language Honor Society. She specializes in 17th-century history and has authored several books and more than 100 articles. |