How a Benedictine Abbey’s Charter Changed Monasticism
Cluny Abbey’s original charters contained some remarkable provisions
Humble origins don’t preclude the accumulation of power, especially if accompanied by safeguards. The founding of Cluny Abbey in France proves this. It grew to become one of medieval Europe’s most influential religious institutions.
St. Berno of Cluny was born to a wealthy noble family in Burgundy, France, around 850. He became a Benedictine monk, and about 886, he was assigned to restore Baume Abbey near the Swiss border. Four years later, he became the abbot at a Benedictine monastery at Gigny in north-central France, which was established, at least in part, with his own funds.
Berno became acquainted with William I, the Duke of Aquitaine from 893 to 918. Known as William the Pious, he wanted to found a monastery and asked for Berno’s advice, according to The Early History of the Monastery of Cluny by Oxford historian Lucy Margaret Smith. When Berno picked William’s favorite hunting lodge near Cluny in Burgundy as the prime site, William was disconcerted. When William told Berno he kept his pack of hunting dogs here, the monk suggested relocating them. Smith wrote,
“’Impossible,’ William replied, ‘I cannot have my dogs removed.’ Jocularly the abbot answered, ‘Drive out the dogs, and put monks in their place, for thou canst well think what regard God will give thee for dogs and what for monks.’”
William did more than move the dogs. On September 11, 910, in exchange for the building of a monastery, he donated the town of Cluny and “all the things pertaining to it, the vills, indeed, the chapels, the serfs of both sexes, the vines, the fields, the meadows, the woods, the waters and their outlets, the mills, the incomes and revenues, what is cultivated and what is not, all in their entirety.” It wasn’t uncommon for noblemen to give land for abbeys, convents, and churches, but William made the charter unique.
Although requiring the Rule of St. Benedict to apply, it also granted the monastery nearly unlimited authority. William specifically said it not only would be free from his control but also from any secular or church authority except the pope. And even the pope couldn’t take the property…
