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=**The Abbey Church of Cluny**=



The Abbey Church of Cluny is in the town of Cluny which is in east centeral France. It owed its early importance to its celebrated Benedictine Abbey. The church was founded in 910 by Duke William the Pious of Aquitaine as a reform house. He also installed Abbot Berno and placed the abbey under the immediate authority of Pope Sergius III. The abbey was also built on a forested hunting preserve donated by William I the Pious, duke of Aquitaine and count of Auvergne.

The Cluniac reform was often imitated by other monasteries, and a succession of able abbots gradually built up throughout Roman Catholicism: A period of decadence. ) It was the fatherhouse of the Congregation of Cluny.The fast-growing community at Cluny demanded buildings on a large scale. The examples set at Cluny profoundly affected architectural practice in Western Europe from the tenth through the twelfth centuries. The three successive churches are called Cluny I, II and III. When building the third and final church at Cluny, the monastery constructed the largest building in Europe before the rebuilding of St. Peter's in Rome in the 16th century. The construction of Cluny II, ca. 955-981, begun after the destructive Hungarian raids of 953 led the tendency for Burgundian churches to be stone- vaulted. Another attack was in 1790 by a mob of revolutionaries.One transept of the 12th-century abbey church remains. Only a small part of the original, along with 15th-century abbots' residences and 18th-century convent buildings.





The Cluny library was, arguably, one of the richest and most important in France and indeed Europe. It was a storehouse of a large number of very valuable manuscripts. The sacking of the abbey by the Huguenots in 1562 led to many of these items' destruction or dispersal. Of those that were left, some were burned in 1790 by a rioting mob. Others still were stored away in the Cluny town hall. Many of these volumes, along with others that fell into private hands, have been recovered by the French Government and are now to be found at the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. At the British Museum there are also some sixty or so charters originating from Cluny. At Cluny the central art was the liturgy itself, extensive and beautiful in inspiring surroundings, reflecting the new personally-felt wave of piety of the 11th century; monastic intercession appeared indispensable to achieving a state of grace, and lay rulers competed to be remembered in Cluny's endless prayers, inspiring the endowments in land and benefices that made other arts possible.

Cluny was not known for its severity or asceticism, but the abbots of Cluny supported the revival of the papacy and the reforms of Pope Gregory VII. The Cluniac establishment found itself closely identified with the Papacy, rich and dignified and worldly. In the early 12th century, the order lost momentum under poor government. It was subsequently revitalized under Abbot Peter The Vulnerable (died 1156), who brought lax priories back into line and returned to stricter discipline. Cluny reached its last days of power and influence under Peter, as its monks became bishops, legates, and cardinals throughout France and the Holy Roman Empire. But by the time Peter died, newer and more austere orders such as the Cistercians were generating the next wave of ecclesiastical reform. Outside monastic structures, the rise of English and French nationalism created a climate unfavourable to the existence of monasteries autocratically ruled by a head residing in Burgundy. The Palpal Schism of 1378 to 1409 further divided loyalties: France recognizing a pope at Avignon and England one at Rome, interfered with the relations between Cluny and its dependent houses. Under the strain, some English houses, such as Lenton Priority, Nottingham, were naturalized (Lenton in 1392) and no longer regarded as alien priories, weakening the Cluniac structure. By the time of the French Revolution the monks were so thoroughly identified with the Ancien Regime that the order was suppressed in France in 1790 and the monastery at Cluny almost totally demolished in 1810. Later it was sold and used as a quarry until 1823. Today little more than one of the original 8 towers remains of the whole monastery. Modern excavations of the Abbey began in 1927 under the direction of Kenneth John Conant, American architectural historian of Harvard University, and continued ( not continuously) until 1950.



Works Cited

"Cluny Abbey." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 13 Nov. 2008 .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluny_Abbey

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/cluny-abbey.htm