No More Learning

There were the self-made communities, villages or federa-
tions of villages, which combined largely as a result of town example, to
gain material advance, freedom from the worst abuses of serfdom, and a
varying degree of self-government. And there were the natural com-
munities, such as the valley communes of the Vosges and Pyrenees, which
geographical conditions, old survivals, and the special character of the
country, had rendered very independent from the first, where serfdom had
never existed in its most extreme form, and where the lords' rights had
never been much more than nominal. In some cases, the attempt to get
their old rights officially recognised ended in a loss of freedom for these
natural communes; but in others the original independence was main-
tained in a greater or less degree down to modern days.
In both these divisions, however, the idea of combining, for the main-
tenance of common rights and the increase of material well-being, was
always the determining factor in their communal existence. In the
northern villages, however, it was the value of example which appears
most immediately prominent; in the mountain communes, the union
through rights of common. property.
It was naturally the rural towns which formed the best example for
the villages, and the customs of Lorris and Beaumont were always the
first to spread in country districts. The villes-neuves and bastides, again,
themselves little but rural communes, must have done much to lead the
still unenfranchised villages to crave for similar privileges. That small
rural cultivators like themselves should be granted freedom, defence, and
common rights, while they remained under the old conditions, would be
naturally galling to any ambitious villagers. It is never so easy to throw
off old obligations as to make a wholly fresh start without them; never-
theless, there were various rural settlements which pressed on by their own
exertions, and acquired privileges similar to those bestowed from the first
on the bastides. Some of the villages, especially in the south, fortified
themselves; or, if they could not manage to build complete walls and
gateways, they made the church a stronghold and centre of their defences
in times of danger, and they acquired for themselves rights similar to those
of their favoured neighbours. Sometimes it was the banlieu of an urban
commune, actively influenced by events in the town itself, which spread a
desire for equal rights throughout the neighbouring country. Thus, in
Ponthieu alone, where the examples of Abbeville and Amiens were before
all eyes, thirty-six village communes existed in the fourteenth century.
CH. XIX,


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652
Common property as a bond of union
Although the country profited by town example, the motives which
actuated them were not wholly the same, or at least they did not exist in
the same proportions. Direct growth from the old free village, the
desire to ameliorate servile conditions, and the influence of parish life
and church duties, were all more prominent in the country than in the
town; while commercial causes, seignorial rivalry, and the desire for
political independence, were less general, though not wholly absent.
Several isolated villages did organise themselves contrary to the will of
their lord, but the result was often fatal, for it was difficult for the
peasants to hold their own against opposition. Thus Masnière, a hamlet
dependent on the Abbey of Corbie, was put down by the abbot when it
had given itself communal government; and the same thing happened at
Chablis near Tours. It was to avoid this difficulty that villages came to
form federations for mutual support, and when they were near some
important urban centre they looked to help from that quarter also. This
was not always effective, for the Laonnais group had only a very short
and stormy career. It was generally the least ambitious developments
which were the most durable, and where advance was very gradual less
opposition was excited. Thus a community which united peaceably to
maintain old rights, which had assemblies chiefly for agricultural matters,
and which elected only a few officials of its own to share in justice and
taxation without repudiating the supreme seignorial authority, might
very likely get its advance recognised, its privileges confirmed, and its
organisation accepted by the lord. He could still exercise influence over
the community and at the same time reap the benefit of contented vassals
and willing cultivators.
The important part played by common possessions in bringing about
union has been already mentioned, but in rural districts this is particularly
striking, whether it was actual corporate property the communities
acquired or merely common use. In Alsace several villages were often
united by the possession of the almend, common pasture land for a group
of hamlets; just as in the Pyrenees the ports or mountain pastures were
almost always shared. In some parts pasture was not free, in which case
the inhabitants of one or more villages would often combine to pay
jointly for pasturing their beasts and gathering wood in the forests; this
happened in many rural communities of the Yonne. In Normandy there
are many examples of rights in wood and waste shared by the villagers,
while any stranger had to pay for the use of it, even for the rights of
driving Hocks through the land at all. At Brucourt a document shews
that here, at least, the pasture was real corporate property: “les communes
du dit lieu de Brucourt furent données au commune de la dite paroisse. ”
At Boismont-sur-Mer, a tiny village in Ponthieu, the habitants had
rights of common along the shore, because the land was too poor to be of
any use as private property, and they were called bourgeois in consequence
of being banded together for mutual protection and guarantee of their


## p. 653 (#699) ############################################

Common rights and duties
653
possession. Similarly, at Filieffes, in the same neighbourhood, two marshes
were common to the inhabitants of the village, and a mayor and échevins
appointed to supervise rural affairs.
Common property led very often to the passing of common bye-laws,
and to the appointment of common officials to direct, supervise, and see
that these regulations were kept. Constantly the men of a village
would appear as joint suitors in a case, or to receive concessions. In
1214 there was a contention “super quaedam communia ab homini-
bus de Coldres cum hominibus de Nonancourt inita, et super quibus-
dam consuetudinibus. ” Elsewhere it was “homines Henrici de Tillao,”
"homines de Deserto," and others, who owed money “pro recognitione de
servicio. ” In the fourteenth century such instances were particularly
numerous in Normandy, and the courts held suits concerning "le commun
du hameau du Becquet,” “les habitants des cinq paroisses de la forêt de
Conches,” and so on. In the cartulary of Carcassonne there are many
proofs of village claims. The men of Villegly assert that from time
immemorial they have had common pasture rights, the common privilege
of a sheaf at harvest time, and common liberty to settle amongst them-
selves what crops they would grow without any seignorial interference
(fourteenth century).
The lords, on their side, were also able to enforce common duties.
“L'université des habitants” at Villegly owed a pound of wax and were
bound to castle-guard in turns. At Gardie, a sum was paid annually
“pro omnibus hominibus de universitate predicta. ” The Church also
frequently demanded common dues and services; and sometimes parish
officials-syndics and others—were chosen from the whole community to
manage the common work of the parish.
The existence of these common rights and duties, the need for agree-
ment as to the cultivation and other local business, led to the holding of
popular assemblies in villages and rural groups, which gave an impulse
to the idea of self-government. In the county of Dunois, there are
frequent examples of general meetings to discuss money payments or
military contributions demanded by the lord, or village matters of all
sorts, such as the building of enclosures or any public work. At Lutz, in
1387, twenty-seven inhabitants, “faisant la greigneur et plus saine partie
des manans et habitans," met to choose representatives to appear before
the Parlement on the subject of forced taille. In 1440 several villages met
to discuss the sending of a body of horsemen which had been commanded
by the king. Sometimes the rural communities were so small that about
twelve people were all they could muster as their representatives.
Some of the most interesting examples of these village meetings are
to be found in the cours colongères of Alsace and Lorraine, very indepen-
dent assemblies, often exercising judicial and administrative powers,
evidently survivals of old rights, which they claimed to have existed
“from time immemorial. ” In the Vosges there were a number of these
CH, XIX.


## p. 654 (#700) ############################################

654
The colonges of Alsace
rural groups or colonges: associations of hamlets and scattered farms,
holding from a lord, but with their own rural regulations, their own
tribunals, for low justice as a rule but occasionally for more important
cases, and their popular assemblies, without the consent of which the lord
was not supposed to interfere in any communal business. Common rights,
in particular, were under the supervision of these assemblies, and the lord
was often on a par with the villagers, so far as regarded the use of woods
and pasture. To be a member of one of these colonges, residence for a
year was generally required, and the new colon was formally received as a
member in a general assembly. All had to attend, under pain of a fine,
and only four excuses were recognised for absence: war, illness, old age,
or deafness. The lord, or his representative, generally presided over this
cour colongère, but the suitors had final decisions in their hands, and
justice was administered by elected échevins. Occasionally, greater inde-
pendence than this was acquired. At Donnelay, near Metz, for example,
the inhabitants elected the mayor or president and did justice and levied
taxes without seignorial control. No charters to these colonges exist
before the thirteenth century, some are later still; but they always contain
a statement to the effect that they are recognising old rights. These
documents shew that the community itself might possess serfs, that it had
rural officials, shepherds, foresters, and so forth, and it could buy, sell, or
otherwise dispose of its common land according to its will. There are
many curious old customs and conditions in these charters, which give a
most interesting picture of rural life in these mountain hamlets, but
which unfortunately do not throw any special light on the actual com-
munal movement. Here, as time went on, the old free character of the
villages was more and more lost. It was territorial sovereignty in this
case which was swamping the communes, since in the Empire, of which
they were part, central power was not taking the place of the feudal lords,
as was the monarchy in France. A letter to the Count of Harbourg in
1529 says: “Votre coulonge a beaucoup de franchises, mais aujourd'hui,
hélas, on ne s'en soucie guère. ” Little by little, this interesting survival
of old free rights, which had developed into actual communal organisa-
tion, disappeared, and ordinary feudal seigneuries were left in possession
of the field.
In the valley communities of the Pyrenees conditions were very
similar. Here it was clearly geographical causes which first led to com-
munal organisations. Villages, tiny hamlets, and scattered homesteads,
which would have had little importance as isolated units, naturally com-
bined while enclosed in one mountain valley, secure from much outside
interference or even intercourse, and already united for the use of pasture
land on the slopes of the hills. There was little reason here for much
seignorial supervision or interference; little for any lord to gain out of
these simple pastoral communities. From early days they had managed
their own affairs; during the winter months they were cut off almost


## p. 655 (#701) ############################################

Valley communes of the Pyrenees
655
entirely from outside relations; and in the summer they were chiefly
concerned in arranging for the feeding and management of the flocks and
herds which were their chief source of livelihood.
In Roussillon there were seven rural seigneuries, associations of villages,
not exactly republics, but with considerable independence, making their
own treaties, building their own fortifications, and holding general
meetings to regulate local business of all sorts. The little community of
Andorra still exists to illustrate something of the condition of these
mountain settlements. A group of six parishes, Andorra manages its
own affairs and simply pays an annual tribute to its feudal superiors: two-
thirds to the government of France, one-third to the Bishop of Urgel in
Spain. Though generally called a republic, it is in reality a very inde-
pendent seigneurie held in pariage by two lords.
In the western Pyrenees there were some large and important valleys,
which were able to develop considerable powers, free from all but nominal
subjection to their overlords. The Vallée d'Ossau still retains its own
distinctive dress, though this is fast disappearing, and it keeps its own
local archives in the principal village. In the Middle Ages it was directly
under the Viscount of Béarn, but otherwise independent. The Vallée
d'Aspe was practically a republic. Its narrow defiles and the high moun-
tains blocking it in were natural defences which secured its separate
existence, and it had self-government in the hands of its own jurats.
A document of 1692 speaks of its freedom in ancient times: "elle se
condisoit par des lois et des coûtumes qu'on n'a jamais empruntés, non
pas même depuis qu'elle s'est donnée volontairement au seigneur de Béarn. "
The valley of Cauterets had its own legislative assemblies, composed of
women as well as of men, and the fines and profits of justice were shared
between the community itself and its ecclesiastical seigneur, the abbot.
The Vallée d'Azun had its popular parliament and its local customs for
all the inhabitants, which the seigneur confirmed on request of “tot lo
pople d’Assun. "
These rural communes were known as beziaus, the inhabitants as
beziis, the local word for voisins; and it was quite usual for the bezias or
voisines to share equally with the men in government and administration-
in any case, when they were householders. The almost sovereign power
of these communities is especially shewn in their treaties with other valleys;
the lies and passeries were generally agreements as to pasture-rights,
which followed actual warfare between the villages. One of the most
famous of these treaties was between the French valley of Barétous and
the Spanish community of Ronçal, which was signed in 1373, and arranged
for a yearly tribute of three cows to be paid by the Frenchmen. This has
given rise to a curious ceremony which was kept up in full until late in
the nineteenth century. On the summit of the pass between the valleys,
representatives from each side used to meet and, with their hands inter-
laced on crossed lances, proclaim Pazavant (paix dorénavant). After this,
CH. XIX.


## p. 656 (#702) ############################################

656
General conclusions
the
COWS, bedecked with ribbons, were led across the frontier, and the
day ended in dancing and feasting.
Enough has been said to shew that the Pyrenean valleys were primitive
communities which had inherited customs from very early days and which
had never been under severe seignorial control. The communal movement
in their case was truly a natural growth; but they were so far affected by
the general tendency of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as to get
their rights recognised and their fors written down and confirmed. Their
special characteristics were elected officials, common rights and common
property, and a very popular and independent form of local government.
To sum up shortly the results arrived at in this chapter, two principal
conclusions seem to emerge—the difficulty of generalisation and the
natural and economic character of the movement.
First, as to the difficulty of generalising. It is almost impossible to
argue from events in a few towns the probable course of events in another.
Communal growth can best be studied through individual instances, but
it is unsafe to draw general conclusions from them as to the line of advance
throughout the whole country. Local differences have resulted in a very
great variety of local developments and causes, which helped the growth
of communes in one part of the country and were often absent in another.
The seignorial support, apparently beneficial in one instance, in another
may have meant the complete loss of communal independence.
Secondly, as to the natural character of the movement. The communal
movement was clearly a stage in economic development; instead of being
a break with old conditions and a revolution against feudal ideas, it was
consistent with the period of feudalism in which it arose. It was an attempt
of communities to rise by force of union in the feudal hierarchy and them-
selves to rank side by side with feudal seigneurs; sometimes as their vassals,
but whenever possible, as suzerains themselves and tenants-in-chief of the
Crown, privileged and independent of all but nominal allegiance.
As a general rule, it may be said that the older towns were the most
progressive in their actions, that they developed their own communes and
acquired the highest degree of independence for a short time. New towns
were often favoured by the lords and became privileged, but under con-
trol. Royal towns, though often in earlier possession of charters and
privileges, were always less completely free. Rural communities were very
frequently peaceful in their development and could trace back their rights
to very early days, but the assertion of these rights generally followed
the formation of town organisations in point of time, and occasionally the
rural commune was a direct imitation of an urban union.
In France this movement was widespread and important but short-
lived; for it came at a time when the growth of centralisation was little
by little absorbing feudal rights and local independence. The higher the
position at which the communes arrived, the more they came into conflict


## p. 657 (#703) ############################################

Importance of the movement
657
with the development of royal supremacy, and the more completely they
were destroyed. But, even though short-lived, the communal movement
in France, both urban and rural, had important results which outlasted
its own existence. Serfdom was distinctly diminished in severity and
extent; local patriotism was excited and continued, even though it might
be turned into other channels; commerce and trade were invigorated and
the energy of the burgesses could extend in that direction when self-
government disappeared; above all, it was the medieval commune which
formed the cradle of that important element of French society, the Tiers
État.
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. XIX.
42


## p. 658 (#704) ############################################

658
CHAPTER XX.
THE MONASTIC ORDERS.
The Rule of St Benedict was the fountain of monastic discipline in the
West, the source, not of a single religious order, but of religious order in
the most comprehensive sense of the phrase. Composed in the beginning
for a single community of cenobites, it took into account no system which
involved the grouping of monasteries in an organised federation or sub-
ordinated a number of houses to one common head. The successors of
St Benedict at Monte Cassino could make no claim to any but an hono-
rary primacy among Benedictine abbots. The Benedictine monastery was
a self-ruling corporation; its abbot, the father of the convent, was supreme
in it and in the dependent priories which formed integral, though locally
detached, portions of the organism. The Rule supplied the main prin-
ciple of its life; but in details it was governed by its own customary
code, the result of local conditions and individual convenience. Such
bodies of customs would necessarily have strong family and local like-
nesses; but they would shew no trace of a rigid uniformity. Relations
between neighbouring communities might be fraternal, but each was a
separate household, recognising a common paternity, not in any supreme
monastery, but in St Benedict, the founder of the monastic order.
This autonomy of the Benedictine community, with its healthy en-
couragement to free development on natural lines, was nevertheless not
without its drawbacks. The history of such great houses as Monte Cassino
- and Farfa shews, on the one hand, that a body of monks unprotected by
any central authority or mutual bond of union was peculiarly liable to
dispersion under the pressure of external attack. During the Lombard
invasions in the sixth century, and the Saracen inroads in the ninth, both
monasteries were left desolate for long periods. On the other hand, the
community ran the continual risk of internal decay. The rule of a weak
or careless abbot, under no effective supervision, was inevitably a source
of danger; while the growth of temporal possessions, given by benefactors
with the best intentions, brought with it temptations to the relaxation
of religious observance and to the admission of secular customs out of
keeping with the Rule. Both causes, in the disturbed condition of Euro-
pean society, combined against the steady maintenance of the founder's
principles. A convent scattered by invaders, and forced to lead a vagrant
life in search of casual hospitality, was unlikely, when it was restored to


## p. 659 (#705) ############################################

St Benedict of Aniane
659
its old home, to enter upon its duties with its pristine zeal and to prefer
austerity to comfort.
The restoration of discipline in monasteries was a necessary accom-
paniment of the establishment of law and order in the Carolingian Empire.
Charlemagne, with his sense of the value of learning to civilisation, saw
in well-ordered religious houses centres of culture and study which would
be an ornament to his realm and exercise a salutary influence upon their
surroundings. During his reign, an organised movement towards reform
began in the Aquitanian kingdom, with the encouragement of its ruler
Louis, his youngest son. The chief agent in this movement was Benedict,
Abbot of Aniane. Like many of his followers in the work of monastic
administration, he found himself dissatisfied with the normal routine of
the religious house in which he had made his profession. As a monk at
Saint-Seine, regarding the Rule of St Benedict as a system merely for
beginners, he endeavoured to follow the severe practices of Eastern mo-
nachism. About 780 he founded upon his inherited estates the monastery
of Aniane. At first, the customs which he prescribed to his monks were
too drastic; and experience probably taught him the wisdom of the Rule
which, in his ardour, he had underrated. After a period of disappoint-
ment, Aniane began to flourish. Monks went out from it to spread its
teaching in other parts of Gaul; old foundations received new life, and
new houses were founded under its influence. Twenty monks were sent
from Aniane to colonise Alcuin's monastery of Corméry; William, Duke
of Aquitaine, placed others in the monastery of Saint-Guilhem-du-Désert.
Benedict gained the favour of Charlemagne as a defender of orthodoxy
against the adoptionist heresy of Felix, Bishop of Urgel; and Louis the
Pious committed to him full authority to reform the monasteries of
Aquitania. When Louis succeeded to his father's dominions in 814, this
authority was extended over the whole of Gaul. Benedict was induced
to follow Louis northwards, and eventually to take up his abode in the
Kornelimünster, an abbey founded by him with the Emperor's help on
the Inde, near Aix-la-Chapelle. Here he died in February 822.
In his endeavours for reform, Benedict had to contend with three
main abuses. The custom of granting monasteries as fiefs to lay pro-
prietors endangered the whole system. Benedict prevailed upon Louis to
appoint only regulars as abbots, and to modify the requisition of services
from religious houses. Closely connected with this first abuse was the
prevalent abandonment of regular observances. In some prominent houses,
such as Saint-Denis at Paris and Saint-Bénigne at Dijon, the inmates had
abandoned the title of monks for that of clerks and canons. Saint-Bé.
nigne was brought back to discipline in Benedict's lifetime by its Abbot,
Herlogaud. At Saint-Denis his efforts had little success; the monks
who were introduced to leaven the house were expelled by the canons;
and it was not until some years after his death that the reform was
effected by Hilduin and Hincmar. But the crying evil which Benedict
сH. Xх.
42-2


## p. 660 (#706) ############################################

660
The Council of Aix-la-Chapelle, 817
recognised as the root of irregularity was diversity of observance. If he
was urgent in enforcing the Rule of St Benedict as the foundation of an
orderly system, his panacea for disorder was uniformity of custom.
His reform was the first of a series of attempts to mould the monastic
life upon a fixed pattern of observance. At the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle
in 817 the Rule was interpreted and supplemented by a series of ordi-
nances, the effect of which was to bind monasteries to one scale of simple
living. All luxury was forbidden; monks must look after the offices of
the house themselves and do their own work. While they were given a
somewhat more liberal allowance of raiment than was contemplated by
the Rule, they were restricted in the care of their persons. The visits of
strangers to the cloister were prohibited, and even visiting monks were to
be entertained in a separate dormitory. The abbots spiritual authority
was strongly upheld, but his private liberty was curtailed; he must live
as one of the monks over whom he bore rule. The only children who
might be taught in a monastery were those who were offered to it by
their parents, and these, when they came to years of discretion, should
be given a free choice between remaining with the monks or going out
into the world. Where a monastery had dependent priories, each must
be served by six monks at least, or entrusted to canons. The literary
fruit of Benedict's studies in monastic polity is seen in the Codex
Regularum, a collation of existing monastic rules, and in the Concordia
Regularum, in which their precepts were applied in the form of a com-
mentary to the governing Rule itself.
It will be noticed that the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle recognised the
existence of canons, or persons leading the canonical as distinct from the
monastic life, among the constituent parts of ecclesiastical machinery.
St Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz (742–766), had composed a rule for the
clerks of his cathedral church, by which they were given a quasi-monastic
constitution embodying the principles of the common life and com-
munity of goods. His rule was the starting-point of reform in similar
bodies of clergy, to whose members the title of canons was generally
applied. Its origin is sometimes attributed to the canon or rule under
which they lived; but it was more probably derived from the canon, the
official list or matriculus of a community. Although this system was in
itself an attempt to apply to corporations of secular clerks a constitution
upon modified Benedictine lines, its growth presented an alternative mode
of life to the inmates of monasteries. The claims of the monks of Saint-
Denis and Dijon to be styled canons or regular clerks was a rejection of
the mixed constitution of a monastery, in which only a certain propor-
tion of the monks were in holy orders. It also excused the possession of
private property by individuals, as the canon had his special allowance
from the common fund or, where he was bound by no rule, lived
upon the income derived from an individual estate. At Aix-la-Chapelle
regulations were also drawn up for canons by a committee of bishops


## p. 661 (#707) ############################################

Carolingian monasticism
661
and clerks; and the code attributed to Amalarius, Dean of Metz, on the
lines of the Rule of St Chrodegang, was intended for the use, not merely
of cathedral and collegiate chapters, but of clerks in general. It was not
until a much later date that the so-called Rule of St Augustine was
formulated for the use of bodies of clerks vowed to a common life of the
monastic type.
For Carolingian monasticism in its full vigour we must look to the
abbeys of Gaul and Germany, to Saint-Maur, St Gall, or Fulda. In Italy
such monasteries as Monte Cassino and Nonantula flourished under the
Carolingian Emperors as centres of civilised and scholarly activity. But
the general tendency of the Italian monasteries was towards secularisation.
Farfa, between the Sabine hills and the Tiber, was especially favoured by
Lothar, the son of Louis the Pious. Its abbot was a prince ruling over
a large territory and commanding the allegiance of powerful vassals; he
owned no superior but the Emperor, and was able to resist successfully the
encroachments which successive Popes, grudging him the privilege of ex-
emption from their authority, made upon his lands. The great monastery,
with its circle of embattled walls, its four churches, its imperial palace
and splendid monastic buildings adorned with spacious colonnades, was
more like a fortified town than a place of retirement from the world.
It withstood the attacks of the Saracens for seven years before its eventual
fall. Such a foundation was an easy prey to the irregularities against
which Benedict of Aniane had striven. Even within the main area of his
reform, the dissolution of the Empire of Charlemagne, rent by intestine
quarrels and harassed by the invasions of the Northmen, caused the
temporary extinction of monastic life after its brief revival. The advance
of the northern pirates along the Loire and Seine was marked by the
abandonment and pillage of Marmoûtier, the shrine of St Martin of
Tours, Fleury, to which the body of St Benedict had been translated
after the Lombard destruction of Monte Cassino, and Saint-Denis. The
monasteries of the southern coast, such as Saint-Victor at Marseilles and
Lérins, formerly a notable link between eastern and western monachism,
were sacked by more than one invader during the eighth and ninth
centuries. When, after the fury was past, monks returned to these sites,
it was with disheartenment and little hope of safety.
A period came, however, when the religious life, under the protection
of powerful territorial magnates, had a chance of recovery. In 910
William the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine, founded a monastery at Cluny
in the diocese of Mâcon, and set over it Berno, a noble Burgundian, who,
as Abbot of Gigny, a house founded by himself upon territory of his own,
had already given proof of reforming energy. The monastery of Baume,
which had been placed under his direction and furnished with customs
closely modelled upon the precepts of Benedict of Aniane, also contributed
its example to the new abbey.
Cluny, entrusted with the administration of
CH. XX.


## p. 662 (#708) ############################################

662
Odo of Cluny
other monasteries, was, before Berno's death in 927, the head of a small
congregation, the nucleus of the Cluniac order. Berno, in the last year of
his life, resigned his office, and divided his monasteries between his rela-
tive Guy and Odo, a monk who had found at Baume the discipline
abandoned by his earlier companions, the monks of Marmoûtier. While,
under the unworthy Guy, Gigny and Baume became centres of reaction,
Cluny and the two other houses given to Odo persevered in the work of
reform. Without Odo, indeed, the Cluniac movement might have come
to nothing. During the fourteen years between 927 and 941, he earned
the title of the reformer of Benedictine observance, not only in France,
but in the West generally.
In France, Odo's most remarkable success was the reform of Fleury,
to which he was called in 930. At first the monks resisted his entry with
violence; but his personal fearlessness overcame opposition, and, with
the help of Hugh the Great, the father of Hugh Capet, he purged the
convent of abuses and converted it into an active missionary centre,
second only to Cluny in influence. In 936, on the invitation of Alberic,
- the temporal sovereign of Rome, Odo paid his first of several visits to
Italy. He was given authority over the monasteries in Roman territory:
St Paul's without the walls of Rome was successfully reformed, and other
houses followed suit. A beginning was made at Monte Cassino; but
Farfa, divided by a schism between two rival abbots who had murdered
their predecessor, resisted the introduction of Cluniac monks by Odo and
got rid by poison of the abbot whom Alberic installed by armed force.
Yet, if Odo's personal success in Italy was limited, he at any rate sowed
the seed of a much needed revival. Neither Alberic nor his step-father and
rival, King Hugh of Italy, can be credited with an ardent zeal for religion;
but both, in the favour which they shewed to the Abbot of Cluny, paid
testimony to the importance of religious activity in the restoration of
general order.
The work of Odo was continued with unabated energy by his suc-
cessors. Mayeul (Maiolus), Abbot of Cluny from 954 to 994, was able,
with the favour of Otto the Great and his son, to advance the Italian
reform in Ravenna, Pavia, and Rome. Through the influence of the
Empress Adelaide, the first offshoot of Cluny in the Burgundian king-
dom was founded at Payerne (Peterlingen) in the Jura. Among the
French monasteries reformed by Mayeul were Marmoûtier, Saint-Maur-
des-Fossés, and Saint-Bénigne at Dijon. He died on his way to Saint-
Denis, where his successor Odilo (994-1048) achieved some success. It
was under the rule of Odilo that the position of Cluny as the supreme
head of a monastic congregation was achieved.
Odo had succeeded to the headship of only half the monasteries which
Berno had ruled; and his influence as Abbot of Cluny depended entirely
upon his personal gifts and piety, not upon the established reputation
of a community which was as yet young and had acquired no great


## p. 663 (#709) ############################################

The Cluniac and kindred movements
663
possessions. Most of the houses which submitted to his guidance were
Benedictine monasteries with a history far older than that of Cluny. In
subjecting themselves to him for a time, they did not surrender their
independence. When he died, the number of houses immediately de-
pendent on Cluny was very small. They were slightly increased under his
next successor Aymard (942-954); but Mayeul, at his accession, had only
five dependent monasteries under his charge. Under Mayeul, again, the
work of reform did not include the principle of submission to Cluny.
Several of the Benedictine foundations whose life was quickened by Odo
and Mayeul initiated reforms of their own which were independent of
Cluniac effort. Thus Fleury and Marmoûtier had each its own congrega-
tion of reformed monasteries, which modelled their customs upon those of
the reforming house, but were not members of a distinct order. The Lom-
bard William of Volpiano, to whom Mayeul committed the government
of Saint-Bénigne in 990, migrated from Dijon to Normandy and intro-
duced practices learned from Cluny into the Norman monasteries, either
in person or through his disciples. Yet, though these were closely allied
in ties of friendship, they owned no superior house to which obedience
was due, but preserved the Benedictine principle of local autonomy.
Again, parallel movements may be traced with which Cluny was only
indirectly connected. Thus the reform of monasteries in the Netherlands,
under Gerard of Brogne, and that which proceeded from Gorze in the
diocese of Metz, were purely spontaneous in origin. The monks of
Gorze adopted certain customs which bore a strong resemblance to
those of Cluny; and it is possible that the reform of the Abbey of
Saint-Evre at Toul, achieved by monks of Fleury in 934, brought
them into contact with Cluniac observances. Equally indigenous in its
beginnings was the reform and restoration of the English monasteries,
in which the prime mover was Dunstan, ably seconded by Aethelwold
and Oswald. If Dunstan, during his exile from the court of Eadwig,
learned much from continental monachism in the abbey of Saint-Pierre
or Blandinium at Ghent, his policy had been matured in his own brain
during years of quiet meditation at Glastonbury. The aid of Abbo of
Fleury was subsequently invoked to kindle popular enthusiasm, when
Aethelwold repeopled the ruined monasteries in the east of England, and
when Oswald, in the Severn valley and at Ramsey, founded new houses
in which the Benedictine Rule was strictly observed. Such movements
felt the influence of the Cluniac revival, but were distinct from it. Once
more, the German reform undertaken a century later by William, who,
formerly a monk of St Emmeram at Ratisbon, was elected Abbot of the
distracted monastery of Hirschau in the diocese of Spires in 1069, owed
much to Cluny, then at the height of its power. William modelled his
reform directly upon Cluniac principles; Ulrich's edition of the custonis
of Cluny, compiled at his request, was dedicated to him; some of his
monks were sent to Cluny to learn regular observance, and the customs
OH. XX.


## p. 664 (#710) ############################################

664
Odilo of Cluny
of Hirschau were compiled from their report. The German congregation,
however, owed no allegiance to the monastery to which it was thus in-
debted. Similarly, the reform of Farfa, achieved by the Abbot Hugh
whose purchase of his office in 997 was the unpromising beginning of a
praiseworthy career, followed the Cluniac methods which the monastery
had rejected at an earlier date. The customs of Farfa, compiled shortly
after Hugh's death in 1039, belong, like the Ordo Cluniacensis of Bernard
and Ulrich's Antiquiores Consuetudines, to the main group of authorities
for Cluniac practice, and include a most valuable description of the
arrangements of a model Cluniac monastery. But Farfa remained out-
side the Cluniac order.
Odilo's rule at Cluny was distinguished by the intensive application
of Cluniac customs to a congregation of dependent houses. Roving
commissions to administer the affairs of foreign monasteries became less
frequent; we hear more, on the other hand, of gifts of monasteries to
Cluny, which were affiliated directly to her as their parent and mistress.
The biographer of Odilo enumerates some of the principal churches
which he ruled and enriched with possessions, buildings, and ornaments-
Payerne and Romainmôtier in the diocese of Lausanne, Saint-Victor at
Geneva, Charlieu and Ambierle near Lyons, Ris, Sauxillanges, Souvigny,
la Ferté-Hauterive, and Saint-Saturnin in Auvergne, the priory founded
by Mayeul at Pavia, and la Voulte-sur-Rhône, founded by Odilo himself
in the last years of his life. He adorned the cloister of Cluny with
marble columns, shipped from distant places down the Durance and the
Rhône, so that he was wont to boast that he had found Cluny of wood
and left it of marble.
It may be said with equal truth that he left Cluny, hitherto merely a
spiritual power among Benedictine houses, the head of an order, as distinct
from a mere congregation of monasteries, within the Benedictine system.
Each house of the order owed absolute obedience to the sovereign abbot.
Odo had acquired for Cluny the privilege of exemption from any authority
but that of the Pope. Her priories, members of the mother-house and
incapable of independent action apart from her, were similarly exempt
from control by diocesan bishops or secular princes; in whatever country
they were founded, they were subjects of Cluny, amenable only to the
decrees of the annual chapter at which the priors of the order were
gathered together under the presidency of the abbot. The title of abbot,
accorded to the head of an old house like Vézelay, which had been drawn
within the Cluniac system, did not imply independence of the central
government. Certain houses had an honorary pre-eminence, la-Charité-
sur-Loire, Saint-Martin-des-Champs at Paris, Souvigny and Sauxil-
langes, and Lewes, the first Cluniac foundation in England, established
in 1077. For visitatorial purposes, the order was divided into ten
provinces, for each of which two visitors and other officers were appointed
at the general chapter. The provincial organisation, however, did


## p. 665 (#711) ############################################

Cluny and the Papacy
665
not imply local autonomy; the visitors were responsible to the central
autocracy.
This constitutional machinery was perfected during the long rule of
Odilo's successor Hugh (1049–1109). His abbacy, glorious as it was in
the continual addition of monasteries to the order and in the foundation
of the splendid abbey church of Cluny for the 300 or 400 monks for
whom the old buildings were insufficient, was in some respects the turn-
ing-point of the history of the Cluniac movement. It covered the period
of the struggle between the Emperor Henry IV and the Papacy which
his father had taken action to reform. In this conflict Cluny was naturally
in sympathy with the Pope. Its exemption from local authority made a
strong Papacy essential to its undisturbed existence. Its early success
had been largely due to its geographical position in a district little af-
fected by the strife of the last days of the Carolingian Empire. But,
with the spread of the order over Europe, and with the growth of the
spirit of nationality, the safeguard of its central authority was, more than
in earlier times, the protection of the supreme spiritual power. On the
other hand, while the Papacy was menaced by the power which had re-
stored it, Cluny was surrounded by enemies of the reforms demanded by
Gregory VII. It is hardly surprising that its abbot preferred a cautious
neutrality to a whole-hearted espousal of the cause of Gregory, and to
the consequent risk of provoking the active enmity of Henry IV and the
prelates whose jealousy of Cluniac privileges was ready to take advantage
of Cluniac weakness. Tradition, founded upon the supposed association
of Hildebrand with Cluny, has represented the order as a chief instru-
ment of the policy which, as Pope, he sought to carry out. We may
assume with justice that he looked for support to the great influence of
the abbot. He found friendship and consolation; the fulness with which
he poured out the anxieties of his heart in his letters to Hugh admits of
no other interpretation of their spirit. But with these confidences was
mingled a tone of impatient reproach which shews that Hugh's regard for
him did not go to the length of overt action. The voice of the abbot was
not heard in the Pope's synods; Cluny was unprepared to throw its
weight into the scales upon his side. As Gregory complained, there were
occasions when the abbot's holiness shunned trouble, and when he was
slothful in answering the demands of serious business.
The days of Cluniac reform, in fact, were numbered with the settled
organisation of the Cluniac order. In a monastery which had increased
in power and riches, the mistress of some two hundred priories, piety might
still be found and the opus Dei still flourish; but its missionary energy
had been exchanged for concentration upon internal polity. The patriarchs
of Cluny had insisted upon a strict observance of the Rule, upon silence
in church and cloister, upon the banishment of meat from the convent
table, upon eradication of the nequissimum vitium of private property.
While this was so, the success of Cluny as an agent of reform was obviously
CH. XX.


## p. 666 (#712) ############################################

666
Influence of Cluny on monasticism
due in no small degree to its moderation and avoidance of extreme forms
of asceticism. It presented an ideal which it was possible for the ordi-
nary monk to follow. In spite of its remissness in the cause of Gregory VII,
it still sent out great men to champion the papal claims. Urban II, the
inheritor of the Hildebrandine policy, had been Prior of Cluny; Paschal II
who followed him in the papal chair was also a Cluniac monk. It was to
Cluny that Gelasius II, Paschal's successor, came to die, and the next
Pope, Calixtus II, was chosen in the abbey. Its fame suffered a temporary
eclipse under the rule of Pons, who succeeded Hugh in 1109 and was
obliged to resign in 1122; but the wisdom and devout learning of Peter
the Venerable, who compiled a revised code of statutes, kept its reputation
alive long after. Even so severe a critic as Peter Damian could refer to
Cluny in the days of Hugh as “a paradise watered by the streams of the
our Gospels, a garden of delights, a spiritual field where earth and heaven
meet, a ground of conflict, in which, as in a wrestling-school of the spirit,
the frailty of the flesh contends against the powers of the air. ” St Bernard's
quarrel with Cluny arose in the evil days of Pons, when his cousin Robert
was enticed from Clairvaux by specious arguments, and his condemnation
of the pride and magnificence of Cluny and its preference of the letter
to the spirit of the Rule was doubtless affected by this circumstance. Yet
this splendour and monastic luxury was not the growth of a few years
of misrule; for one point which Bernard attacked, the architectural
beauty of the churches and cloisters, with their profusion of ornament
and sculpture, we have abundant evidence from the time of Odilo onwards.
It was through the imperceptible effect of wealth and power upon a never
excessively rigorous system that the state of things arose in which, as
Bernard said, the welfare of the order and its observance of religious
discipline were held to consist in the magnificence of its feasts, its furniture,
and its buildings.
In these respects Cluny set the example to Benedictinism in general.
The great revival of monastic life in England which followed the Norman
Conquest was a revival of decent order rather than of stringent obser-
vance. Lanfranc, in issuing his ordinances to the monks of his metro-
politan church, had in view a well-ordered community, pursuing the life
of church and cloister with exemplary decorum and following the Rule
without extravagant professions of asceticism. The land-owning monas-
teries of Domesday, the churches whose monks formed cathedral chapters,
the splendid buildings which were in progress before the end of the
eleventh century, were certainly not homes of an excessively severe
discipline. Local instances of disorder, no doubt, occurred; and the
strife between William Rufus and Anselm had dangerous effects upon the
religious life, exposing monasteries to the intrusion of unworthy nominees
of the Crown. It is to be noticed, however, that such movements as that
which led in 1132 to the secession of the monks of Fountains from
St Mary's at York were due, not to any definite scandals but to the


## p. 667 (#713) ############################################

The Order of Camaldoli
667
failure of abbots and convents to live up to the stricter precepts of
the Rule.
Even in the days of the greatest activity of Cluny, sporadic efforts at
a high standard of asceticism are noticeable outside the main movement.
In Italy the traditions of the austerities practised by the hermits and
anchorites of the East were never dormant. Fonte Avellana in the diocese
of Faenza, founded shortly before the year 1000, was a monastery of
bare-footed anchorites. Some forty years later, under the guidance of
Peter Damian, its strict practices were introduced into other houses, and
daughter-monasteries were founded. The mortifications of the community
provoked such criticism that the ardent abbot himself felt bound to
restrain them. The enthusiasm of Peter Damian, which contributed so
much to the revival of the papal authority in Italy, was fostered by the
example of Romuald, the founder of the Camaldolese order. The life of
Romuald is an extraordinary romance of spiritual fervour. He settled in
one hermitage after another, imbuing disciples with his own enthusiasm,
establishing communities of hermit-monks, but constantly disappointed
by their failure to reach his own almost unattainable standard. The
Emperor Otto III found in him a visionary after his own heart, and placed
him in charge of the abbey of Sant' Apollinare in Classe near his native
city of Ravenna; but here his attempt to impose his severe discipline upon
the convent forced him to resign. He was, in fact, wholly unadapted for
the cenobitic life; and such success as he achieved was found in solitude
and desert places. After abandoning, owing to a sudden illness, a mission-
ary expedition to Hungary, he settled at Camaldoli, near Arezzo, about
1012. Here, on a desolate mountain, he and a few brethren lived in
separate cells, attending common offices in their oratory, but passing the
rest of their time in silent prayer and meditation, and working on the
barren soil for their living. Romuald himself left Camaldoli after a time,
migrating to Sitria, near Sassoferrato, where he attracted so many
followers that Sitria, says his biographer, became another Nitria, full of
hermits, some living in their cells as in tombs. He died in 1027 at
Valdicastro, near Camerino, where he had founded a hermitage at an
earlier date.
Camaldoli survived the departure of its founder, and became the head ·
of an order of hermit-monks, which received papal approval in 1072. The
original severity of the order was modified in the direction of humanity
by successive priors of Camaldoli, its permanent generals. An important
step was taken in 1102 by the foundation of the monastery of Fontebuono,
at the foot of the mountain of Camaldoli, a cenobite establishment which
ministered to the wants of the hermits and gave them a place of retirement -
in case of sickness. Henceforward the double element, hermit and ceno-
bite, existed in the order; and one of the congregations into which it was
eventually divided, that of San Michele at Murano,was exclusively cenobite.
CH. XX.


## p. 668 (#714) ############################################

668
La Cava, Vallombrosa, and Grandmont
Other hermit orders and congregations came into being during the
same period. La Cava, near Salerno, was famous as the retreat of
St Adalferio, who, falling ill at the monastery of Chiusa in Piedmont,
devoted his life to God and made his profession to Odilo at Cluny. His
monastery at la Cava, however, was on the hermit model; after his death
in 1050, the mountain, covered with establishments of hermits, became
a second Mount Athos. Large bodies of monks were sent out to form
new colonies, one of which, Monreale in Sicily, became within a few years
of its foundation the seat of an archbishop and a monastic chapter. The
offshoots of Cava thus reverted to the normal Benedictine model. Vallom-
- brosa, on the other hand, founded in 1038 or 1039 by St John Gualbert
on the model of Camaldoli, became the source of another distinctively
hermit order. The enthusiasm of the founder was equal to that of
ald; but his temper was more gentle, and his power of administration
probably greater. In the mingling of the cenobite with the recluse element
which was characteristic of Vallombrosan houses, an advance is noticeable
upon the distinction between them which was preserved by the Camaldo-
lese. At Vallombrosa also we find the first specific mention of the
conversus who afterwards became a marked feature of Cistercian organi-
sation, the permanent lay brother whose part in the monastic scheme
was the exercise of his craft as distinct from the occupation of the monk.
The Camaldolese and Vallombrosan orders had little success outside
Italy. In France, the hermit movement developed upon individual lines,
and one order, French in origin, spread its branches throughout Europe.
- The first distinctively French order, that of Grandmont, was inspired
from Italian sources. Its founder, St Stephen, as a boy accompanied his
father on a pilgrimage from their home in Auvergne to the shrine of
St Nicholas at Bari in Apulia. Taken ill on the return journey, he
remained in Italy under the care of the Archbishop of Benevento. The holy
conversation of some Calabrian hermits impelled him to imitate their life;
and, upon his patron's death, he returned, armed with the papal blessing,
to his native country. Here he took up his abode on the hill of Muret,
near Limoges, where, in 1076, he renounced the world for a life of solitary
abstinence and poverty. The usual band of disciples gathered round him,
to whom he prescribed a life entirely separate from worldly distractions,
avoiding the acquisition of property, and depending upon the voluntary
alms of the faithful. After his death, the desert in which he had settled
was claimed by a convent at Limoges; and the new prior migrated, to
avoid disputes, to a neighbouring solitude at Grandmont. The rule
founded upon the counsels of St Stephen, and approved by Hadrian III
in 1156, was that of a cenobite community with common buildings. Each
house of the order was divided into clerici and conversi, the first busied
entirely with divine worship and contemplation, the second with the
temporal care of the cell, the name applied collectively to the habitation
of each convent. The dependent cells, few in number when the rule was


## p. 669 (#715) ############################################

St Bruno and the Grande-Chartreuse
669
composed, were entirely subordinate to the prior of Grandmont, to whose
election each sent two proctors. Thus, in general character, Grandmont
closely resembled Vallombrosa; while, in its congregational organisation,
the method of Cluny was followed. At no time was the order large, and,
during its early years, it passed almost unnoticed. But it spread beyond
France: small Grandimontine houses were to be found in remote places in
England, at Grosmont on the Yorkshire moors and at Craswall on the
slopes of the Black mountains in the Welsh march. Its rule underwent
various modifications at the hands of the Popes of the thirteenth cen-
tury; and in 1917 John XXII raised the prior to the dignity of an abbot.
The founder of the Carthusian order was Bruno, a native of Cologne,
who, at the time of his conversion to the hermit life, was canon of Rheims
and master of the cathedral school there. In 1084, after spending some
time in a hermitage near the abbey of Molesme, he and six companions,
four clerks and two conversi, besought Hugh, Bishop of Grenoble, to grant
them a place of settlement in his barren and mountainous diocese. Hugh
amply satisfied their ambition for solitude. The desert of Chartreuse,
entered by a cleft in the rocks at the top of a steep ascent, inhabited only
by wild beasts and generally covered with snow, was, in the bishop's words,
more like a prison or purgatory than a human dwelling-place. Bruno and
his companions built their church and little cells near the summit of the
site, round a spring which gave them their daily drink. The founder
himself, called away to Rome by Pope Urban II, sought the congenial
society of the hermits of southern Italy, and died in a monastery which
he founded at la Torre in the diocese of Squillace. His departure seems
to have been followed by the temporary desertion of Chartreuse, which he
commended in his absence to the Abbot of la Chaise-Dieu in Auvergne;
but it was restored to one of the original inmates, Landoin of Lucca,
before Bruno's death in 1101.
The recognition of the Grande-Chartreuse as the head of an order
was not fully achieved before 1176; but daughter-houses had come into
existence by 1128, when Guigues du Châtel, prior from 1110 to 1137,
drew up the Consuetudines Carthusienses, at the request of three priors of
dependent convents. The essential points in the constitution of the
Grande-Chartreuse, as in that of Grandmont, were isolation from worldly
affairs and complete poverty. Beyond the bounds of the desert, which
surrounded the monastery and afforded some scanty pasturage for a
limited number of sheep and cattle, the acquisition of property was for-
bidden. Any temptation to further possession was checked by the
limitation of the conventual body to a prior and twelve monks, sixteen
conversi, and a few hired servants, shepherds, and herdsmen. As at
Camaldoli, the monastery consisted of two distinct parts, the hermitage
proper with its separate cells, and the lower house, tenanted by conversi
and administered by a proctor chosen from among the hermits. Dressed
in habits of coarse white cloth, with hair-shirts next their skins, the
CH. XX.


## p. 670 (#716) ############################################

670
The Carthusian Order
brethren abstained wholly from meat, fasting three days a week on bread,
salt, and water, and on other days eating only vegetables, with the
occasional addition of cheese or some milk-food, and drinking watered
wine. Not even the sick were permitted the use of meat; gifts of fish
were allowed, but not its purchase. The lesser hours were said privately
by the monks in their cells; only certain hours were said in church, and
in the early days of the monastery mass seems to have been celebrated
only on Sundays and feast-days, when the monks left the cells to eat
together in the refectory. The life of solitary prayer, varied only by
work on the plots of ground adjoining the cells, was the ideal long main-
tained by the Carthusian community. Guests were merely tolerated. The
monastery was founded in the desert to afford refreshment to men's souls,
not to their bodies; its site furnished no conveniences for visitors and
horses; as for alms to the poor, it was better to send surplus food to
neighbouring towns than to attract a crowd of beggars.
The spirit of the Carthusian customs and statutes is a rigorous deter-
mination to maintain the strictest self-denial. Those who framed them
kept in view all the dangers which beset a nascent order. The novice was
warned of the hardness of the life; if its demands were too onerous for
him, he was not encouraged to persevere. The poor and compulsorily
small monasteries were unattractive homes for men who wished to retire
from the world with a certain degree of comfort. From the beginning,
Carthusian monks recognised that their life was fit only for the few.
They refused to affiliate large houses to their order. When Stephen of
Obasine consulted Guigues with a view to uniting his house to some strict
order, he was told that the Carthusians had no room for it, and was
advised to join the Cistercians, who kept the royal road and whose
statutes led to all perfection. The hermit Carthusians admired but had
no desire to emulate the rapid growth of cenobite reform under the
Cistercians. Their humility and rejection of ambition met with its reward
in the later Middle Ages, when, amid the decay of the cenobite orders,
they still preserved their pristine zeal.
Another order of a somewhat novel type was developed from experience
gained in hermitages. Robert of Arbrissel, a Breton, was, like Bruno,
a learned theologian, who left his lectures at Angers to become an
anchorite in the forest of Craon, where he was joined by a crowd of
imitators. The place was too strait for them all, and they parted to form
distinct bands in neighbouring forests. Their leaders seem to have learned
by experience that the solitary life in separate cells could not be of the
same profit to all. Robert himself founded a monastery for those who
- preferred a cenobite life. One of his principal followers, Vital, a canon of
Mortain, founded the cenobite congregation of Savigny, afterwards merged
in the order of Cîteaux; another, Bernard of Abbeville, was the founder
of the congregation of Thiron. Robert, however, called upon by Urban II
to join in preaching the Crusade, conceived the idea of founding a house


## p. 671 (#717) ############################################

Fontevrault
671
of prayer for those who, smitten with penitence but unable to take part
in the holy war, might compensate for their disability by devoting them-
selves to God. From the first this house, established at Fontevrault about
1100, was intended to include women as well as men. Nunneries had
played a very small part in the recent history of monasticism. The great
abbeys ruled at an earlier date by women, such as Whitby and Chelles,
had disappeared; others, like Remiremont in the Vosges, seem to have
lost their regular character early, and developed as houses of secular
canonesses. In 1028 Fulk the Black of Anjou had founded a nunnery at
Ronceray, to which he attached four clerks or canons as chaplains: an
arrangement which we find repeated in the canonries annexed to the
important nunneries in the south of England, which owed their origin to
the royal house of Wessex and, whatever decline they may have suffered
during the period before the conquest, recovered their vigour under the
Norman kings. With the approach of the twelfth century, nunneries
began to assume a larger part in religious organisation. The existence of
communities of women, however, raised special problems. Nunneries,
without adequate protection, were exposed to the risk of secular violence;
they needed the ministrations of priests in spiritual things, of manservants
in temporal. Thus there grew up, in more than one order, those double
monasteries in which a cloister of clerks and lay brothers existed side by
side with a cloister of nuns.
The symbolic idea of the double community at Fontevrault, whose
patrons were St Mary and St John, was the care which the beloved
disciple bestowed upon the mother of our Lord. The abbess was supreme
over the monastery. The women, of whom there were 300 in the largest
cloister alone, were consecrated to prayer; the men were charged with
the temporal needs of the house. Cloisters, dedicated to St Lazarus and
St Mary Magdalene respectively, were set apart for the diseased and the
penitent. The Rule of St Benedict was stringently enforced; the use of
meat was forbidden, and the community was ordered to receive no gifts
of parish churches or tithes. In 1106 the new order was approved by
Paschal II, and in 1113 it received the privilege of exemption. Daughter
houses soon grew up in Anjou, Touraine, Berri, and Poitou; and the
success of the order was so great that in 1145 there were said to be more
than 5000 nuns at Fontevrault itself. Nuns were brought from it into
England by Henry II to reform the abbey of Amesbury; others were
settled at Nuneaton and at Westwood in Worcestershire; and the church
of Fontevrault became the chosen resting-place of the Angevin royal
family.
Hitherto, none of the organised congregations which had arisen since
the days of Cluny had produced a far-reaching effect outside certain
localities.