Читать книгу The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273. Investiture Contest, Crusades & The Famous Conflicts онлайн

83 страница из 100

The Church was not yet in so sound a position. She had outlived the worst brutalities of the tenth century, but the fierce, lawless, grasping baron, who feared neither God nor man, was still an element to be reckoned with. The revived lay-power tended of itself to correct the worst abuses. The Empire had, as we have seen, reformed the Papacy. But if the Church was to live, it could not owe its life to the patronage or goodwill of outside reformers. The Church must reform itself.

Signs of such a purification of the Church from within had long been manifest, but the little band of innovators found it no easy task to preach to a world that knew no law but the law of the stronger. As ever in the Middle Ages, a new monastic movement heralded in the work of reformation. As the Carolingian reformation is associated with Benedict of Aniane, so is the reformation of the eleventh century associated with the monks of Cluny. The early history of Cluny.

In 910 Duke William the Pious of Aquitaine founded a new monastery at Cluny, in French Burgundy, a few miles from the bishop’s town of Macon. He appointed Berno, a noble Burgundian, as its head, and procured for it absolute immunity from all external ecclesiastical jurisdiction save that of the Roman See. Berno strove to establish a complete and loyal observance of the rule of St. Benedict, and the piety and earnestness of his monks soon attracted attention, wealth, followers. Corrupt old communities or new foundations sought the guidance or the protection of the abbots of Cluny. But the Benedictine system was limited to a single house, and afforded no room for the crowd of disciples who wished to attach themselves to the model monastery. Odo, the second abbot (927–941), started the memorable monastic reformation which, in a few years, was embodied in the ‘Consuetudines Cluniacenses,’ and the ‘Congregation of Cluny.’ By it a plan was found for combining formal adherence to the strict rule of St. Benedict with the practical necessity of maintaining the rule of Cluny over its dependent communities. If under the old system a new house were formed under the direction of a famous monastery, the new establishment, when it had received its constitution, parted company from its parent stock, and, like a Greek colony, became independent and self-governing. The Cluniacs prevented this by regarding the daughter communities as parts of themselves. In whatsoever part of Christendom a monastery on Cluniac lines was established, it was still in law a part of the great Burgundian convent. ⁵⁰ Its head was the arch-abbot, the abbot of Cluny. What local self-government was necessary was delegated to a prior, who was appointed by the abbot of Cluny, to whom he was responsible. From time to time the dependent communities sent representatives to the periodical chapters that met at Cluny, under the presidency of the abbot. By this means a unity of organisation, a military discipline, a control over weak brethren, and a security was procured, which was impossible under the Benedictine rule. When each monastery was as independent for all practical purposes as a modern Congregational chapel, it was impossible, in an age when public opinion hardly existed, to reform a lax community, and it was difficult for an isolated flock of unwarlike men to protect themselves from feudal violence or the equally fierce hostility of the secular clergy. Besides unity of organisation, the control exercised over the whole order of Cluny gave the brethren unity of purpose, doctrine, and policy.