Cluny

Consecration of the abbey of Cluny by Pope Urban II in 1095, from the 12th-century Book of Offices. Founded in 909 in central Burgundy, the abbey grew to become the most influential Christian monastery of the Middle Ages. The Clunaics were great supporters of the arts, and the church was highly decorated with Romanesque sculpture; they also revolutionized French manuscript illumination.

Town in Saône-et-Loire département of Burgundy, eastern France, on the River Grosne, 23 km/14 mi northwest of Mâcon; population (1990) 4,700. Its abbey, now in ruins, was from 910 to 1790 the foundation house of the Cluniac order, originally a reformed branch of the Benedictines. Cluny was once a lace-making centre; it has a large cattle market, and attracts many tourists.

History A village in 910, Cluny owed its later importance entirely to the monastery. The fame of the Cluniac order is due to the greatness of its abbots. Odo, the second abbot, made Cluny the centre of a great monastic revival. The result of his work and that of his successors was that, by 1150, 314 monasteries in all parts of Europe had embraced the Cluniac regime, and were completely subject to Cluny. The abbey and the town suffered during the 16th-century Wars of Religion, and the monastery fell into decline; the order was finally abolished in 1790 after a schism between the reformed and unreformed. As commendatory abbots, both Richelieu and Mazarin initiated projects of reform. The original abbey church was the largest in the Christian world, surpassed in size only marginally by St Peter's in Rome 500 years later.