Following upon the Gallo-Roman and early Christian periods, centred in the Autunois, the story of the rise of Cluny from humble beginnings to her apothegm of spiritual and temporal power marks the second notable period of Burgundian history. From this source, also, was to flow the main stream of progress, religious and artistic, that culminated in the mediæval triumphs of thirteenth-century European civilization. At the time of the rise of Cluny, Burgundy, under the capetian dukes, was already established as a vassal province of France, but the inwardness of Burgundian history—of French history, indeed, in the 11th and 12th centuries—will be understood only by those who realize that, until the advent of the semi-royal dukes of the house of Valois, in 1364, the controlling forces of the duchy are to be sought, not in Dijon, nor in Auxerre, but here, in this the mother abbey of Western Europe.[68]
In the year 909, the veteran Duke William of Aquitaine, haunted by the shades of the many warriors who had fallen in the service of his ambition, or troubled by the whispers of conscience, or moved, perhaps, by that not wholly disinterested piety which sometimes awakens with the approach of death, decided to follow the course then usual in such cases, and to found a monastery. For this purpose, he took into his confidence his friend, Bernon, Abbot of Gigny, who, accompanied by Hugues, Abbot of St. Martin at Autun, paid a visit to the Duke in his villa of Cluny, and was bidden to search out a place meet for the service of God. But the monk, gifted with a keen eye for all the amenities of a monastic site, could find none more fitting than this "in a spot withdrawn from all human society, so full of solitude, of repose and of peace, that it seemed in some sort a picture (image) of the heavenly solitude."[69] The Duke, however, stung by a last pang of regret for the loss of his lovely valley, had objections to raise. The spot was not suitable; for, all day long, the shouts of huntsmen and the baying of hounds broke the silence of the neighbouring forest.
"Drive the dogs away," said Bernon, with a laugh, "and replace them with monks; for you well know which shall stand you best before God, the bay of the hounds, or the monks' prayers."
"Surely, Father," replied the Duke, "your advice is sound, and since you give it unfeignedly, be it done, with Christ's aid, as thy goodness bids me do."
In the year 909, the 11th year of Charles the Simple, the old Duke, lest, at his last hour, he should deserve the reproach of having thought only of the care of his body, and of the augmentation of his earthly possessions, wrote in his will, as follows:—"I declare that, for the love of God and of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, I give and bequeath to the holy apostles, Peter and Paul, all that I possess at Cluny ... without excepting anything dependent upon my domain of Cluny (Villa), farms, oratories, slaves of both sexes, vines, meadows, fields, water, water-courses, mills, rights of way, lands, cultivated or uncultivated, without any reserve."[70]
