The Divine spirit and the past history of Christianity made it certain that a revival of life must come. The dry bones would feel the breath and would live {173} again. [Sidenote: S. Odo.] On the borders of the lands of Maine and Anjou was born in 879, of a line of feudal barons, Odo, the regenerator of monasticism, the ultimate reviver of the papacy, the spiritual progenitor of Hildebrand himself. Promised to God at his birth, he was long held back by his father for knighthood and the life of a warrior such as he himself had led; a grievous sickness gave him, on his recovery, to the monastic life. The disciple alike of S. Martin and S. Benedict, he took inspiration from them to revive the strict monastic rule. From a canon he became a monk, after a noviciate at Baume, the foundation of Columban in the wild and beautiful valley between the Seille and the Dard, in the diocese of Besançon. For a time he tasted the life of the anchorite and the coenobite. Then he passed to the abbey of Cluny, founded in 910 by William of Aquitaine in the mountains above the valley of the Grosne, and ruled till 927 by Berno, who came himself from Baume. On his death Odo became abbat; and to him the great development of the revival of strict monasticism is due.
[Sidenote: Cluny.]
Cluny became the type of the exempted abbeys, and the highest representative of the monastic privileges. It embodied in itself the best expression of the resistance to feudalism; it became the most powerful support of the papacy and of the much-needed movement for the reform of the Church. The first necessity of the new monasticism was an absolute independence of the lay power. Thus the founder attached it from the first to the Roman Church, and gave up all his own rights of property. Its situation, in the heart of Burgundy, {174} removed it from the power of the king. Charles the Simple permitted its foundation, Louis d'Outremer confirmed its privileges. When Urban II., a militant Cluniac, became pope the interests of Cluny and Rome were more than ever identified. The monks elected their abbat without exterior interference. To prevent this becoming an abuse, the first abbats always proposed their coadjutors as their successors. Thus it was with Berno(910-27), Odo (927-48), Maieul (948-94), Odilo (990-1049). After that there arose the custom of appointing the grand prior as successor—as in the case of S. Hugh (1049-1109). From the confirmation of its foundation in 931 by John XI. Cluny received the greatest favours at the hands of the papacy, its abbats being created archabbots with episcopal insignia; and it was made entirely independent of the bishops.
[Sidenote: The rule of Cluny.]
Cluny soon attracted attention, wealth, and followers. Corrupt old communities or new foundations sought the guidance or protection of its abbats. When each monastery was independent and isolated it was impossible to reform a lax community, or for it to defend itself from feudal violence and the hostility of the secular clergy. Odo, the saint who saw these evils, therefore started what soon became the Congregation of Cluny. The daughter-houses were regarded not as independent, but as parts of Cluny. There was only one abbat, the arch-abbat of Cluny, who was the head of all. Necessary local control was exercised by the prior, responsible to and nominated by the abbat. Some houses resisted annexation to Cluny, such as S. Martial at Limoges, which kept up the contest from 1063 to 1240. Contact {175} between the abbey and its dependencies was preserved by visitation of the abbat; and the dependent houses sent representatives to periodical chapters, which met at Cluny under the abbat. In the eleventh century these were merely consultative, but in the thirteenth they had become political, administrative, and judicial, even subjecting the abbat to their control. The rule of S. Benedict was followed in the abbey and its dependencies. The monks did some manual labour, but devoted themselves chiefly to religious exercises, to teaching the young, to hospitality and almsgiving.
But the Cluniacs, protected by the papacy, and enriched by the offerings of the faithful all over Europe, taught an extreme doctrine as to the power of the Holy See. Their ideal was the absolute separation of Church from State, the reorganisation of the Church under a general discipline such as could be exercised only by the pope. He, in their ideal, was to stand towards the whole world as the Cluniac abbat stood towards each Cluniac priory, the one ultimate source of jurisdiction, the Universal Bishop, appointing and degrading the diocesan bishops as the abbat made and unmade the priors.
How much of all this did the great Odo plan? Not very much. But it was his work to revive the discipline, the holiness, the self-sacrifice, which, through the reformed monasteries, should touch the whole Church.
And thus monasticism at the beginning of the eleventh century was a wholly new force in the life of Christendom. It was destined to reform the papacy itself.
[1] Bp. Stubbs in Dict. of Christian Biography, vol. i. p. 74.
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