CHAPTER II

THE ABBEY OF CLUNY--CISTERCIAN ABBEYS

The Benedictines, the Cistercians, the Augustinians, the Premonstrants, and notably the congregation of Cluny were all energetic builders, and the vast and magnificent structures of their creation were reckoned the most perfect achievements of their day. The study of their buildings--the church, the dwelling-places of abbot and monks, with all their dependencies--is most instructive. It fills us with admiration for the learning and judgment of the monkish builders who, accepting the limitations imposed by climate, locality, material, the numbers of their inmates, and the resources of their order, turned them all to account as elements of beauty and harmony.

The architects of the first abbeys undoubtedly adopted the constructive methods of the period, and built in the Latin, Roman, or Gallo-Roman manner. The double gateway of the Abbey of Cluny, the architect of which was probably Gauzon, sometime Abbot of Beaune, who laid the foundations of the famous monastery, is an interesting proof of this assertion. But monastic architecture underwent the same modifications to which ecclesiastical architecture had been subjected under those various influences which manifested themselves in the glorious monuments built from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, when Gothic architecture reached its apogee.

The abbots of the many abbeys of various orders built throughout this period were too enlightened to disregard the progress of their contemporaries, and they promptly applied the new principles to the construction or embellishment of their monasteries.

The Abbey of Cluny was founded in 909 by William, Duke of Aquitaine, and declared independent by Pope John XI., who in 932 confirmed the duke's charter. Its rapid development and growth in power is sufficiently explained by the social and political circumstances of its origin. At the beginning of the tenth century Norman invasions and feudal excesses had destroyed the work of Charlemagne. Western Christendom seemed to lapse into barbarism after the havoc made by the Saracens and Northern pirates among towns and monasteries. Civil society and religious institutions had alike fallen into the decay born of a conflict of rights and a contempt of all authority.

Cluny rapidly became a centre round which all the intelligence which had escaped submersion in the chaos of the ninth century grouped itself. Its school soon attained a distinction equal to that which marked the first great seats of learning at the beginning of the Middle Ages. Thanks to the _Rule_ of St. Benedict, on which the Benedictines of Cluny had grounded their community, the abbey developed greatly in extent and wealth. Throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries it seems to have been the prolific nursery-ground whence Europe drew not only teachers for other monastic schools, but specialists in every branch of science and of letters, notably architects, who aided in the expansion of Cluny and its dependencies, and further practically contributed to the construction of the numerous abbeys founded by the Benedictines throughout Western Europe, and even in the East, the cradle of Christianity.

While this struggle of intelligence against ignorance was in progress, a social revolution had accomplished itself by the enfranchisement of the communes, a development of the utmost importance in its relation to science, art, and material existence, in a word, to the whole social system.

Architecture, that faithful expression of the social state which had its origin in Pagan civilisation, became Christianised by its culture in the abbeys, and in its new development rose to that pre-eminence the marvels of which we have already studied in the first part of this work. But though the successes achieved by the architecture of this period were rapid and dazzling, its decadence was profound, for it was induced by too radical an emancipation from antique principles, the superiority of which had been established in the first centuries of the Middle Ages.

The Abbey of Cluny soon became too small for the increasing number of monks. St. Hugh undertook its reconstruction in the closing years of the eleventh century, and the monk Gauzon of Cluny began the works in 1089 on a much more extensive plan, indeed on a scale so magnificent that the church of the new abbey was esteemed the first in importance among Western buildings of the kind.

The plan (Fig. 134) shows the arrangement of the abbey at the close of the eleventh century, when the monastic buildings had been reconstructed some time previously. The ancient church was intact; the choir had been begun in the time of St. Hugh, but the building had not been consecrated till 1131. The chapel which precedes it on the west was completed so late as 1228 by Roland I., twentieth abbot of Cluny.

At A on the plan stood the entrance, the Gallo-Roman gateway which still exists. At B, in front of the church, a flight of steps led up to a square platform, from which rose a stone cross; a flight of broad steps gave access to the chapel entrance at C, an open space between two square towers. The northern tower was built to receive the archives; that on the south was known as the Tower of Justice. The ante-church or narthex at D seems to have been set apart for strangers and penitents, who were not allowed to enter the main building. Their place of worship was distinct from the abbey church, just as their lodging was separated from the buildings reserved for the brotherhood, who were permitted no intercourse with the outer world. At E was the door of the abbey church, which was only opened to admit some great personage whose exceptional privilege it was to enter the sanctuary.

At Cluny, as at Vézelay, one of the dependencies of Cluny, the Galilee, which is found in all Benedictine abbeys, was built with aisles and towers on the same scale as an ordinary church. It communicated with the buildings set apart for guests over the storehouses of the abbey to the west of the cloister at F on the plan. From the Galilee access to the abbey church was obtained at E, by means of a single doorway, which from descriptions seems to have resembled the great door of the monastery church at Moissac in arrangement and decoration.

The special characteristic of the Abbey Church of Cluny is its double transept, an arrangement we shall find reproduced in the great abbey churches of England, notably at Lincoln. According to a description written in the last century, the Abbey Church of Cluny was 410 feet long. It was built in the form of an archiepiscopal cross, and had two transepts: the first nearly 200 feet long by 30 feet wide; the second, 110 feet long and wider than the first. The basilica, 110 feet in width, was divided into five aisles, with semi-circular vaults supported on sixty-eight piers. Over three hundred narrow round-headed windows, high up the wall, transmitted the dim light that favours meditation. The high altar was placed immediately beyond the second transept at G, and the retro-choir and altar at H. The choir, which had two rood screens, occupied about a third of the nave. It contained two hundred and twenty-five stalls for the monks, and in the fifteenth century was hung with magnificent tapestries. A number of altars dedicated to various saints were placed against the screens and the piers of nave and side aisles. At a later period chapels were constructed along the aisles and on the eastern sides of the two transepts.

Above the principal transept rose three towers roofed with slate; the central, or lantern tower was known as the lamp tower, because from the vaults of the crossing below it were suspended lamps, or coronas of lights which were kept burning day and night over the high altar.

To the south of the abbey, at F on the plan, was a great enclosure, surrounded by a cloister, some vestiges of which still remain. K and L mark the site of the abbatial buildings which were restored in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; M and N the structures raised last century over the primitive foundations. To the east lay the gardens and the great fish-ponds which still exist, with portions of their enclosures. Another surviving fragment is a building of the thirteenth century, said to be the bakery, and marked O on the plan.

The abbots who succeeded St. Hugh were unable to preserve the primitive conditions of the foundation. The excessive luxury resulting from over-prosperity brought about demoralisation, and by the end of the eleventh century discord was rife at Cluny.

Peter the Venerable, who was elected abbot in 1112, restored order for a time, and established a chapter general, consisting of two hundred priors and over twelve hundred other monks. In 1158, at the time of Peter's death, these numbers had increased by more than four hundred, and the order had founded monasteries in the Holy Land and at Constantinople.

_The Abbey of Citeaux._--The reform of the Benedictine orders became a pressing necessity, and St. Robert, Abbot of Solesmes, entered upon the task about 1098. St. Bernard continued it, after having quitted his abbey, with twenty-one monks of the order, to take refuge in the forest of Citeaux, given him by Don Reynard, Vicomte of Beaune. His main achievement was reorganisation of such a nature as to deal effectually with the decay of primitive simplicity throughout the order, which had completely lost touch with monastic sentiment.

"Frequent intercourse with the outside world had demoralised the monks, who attracted within their cloister walls crowds of sightseers, guests, and pilgrims. The monasteries which, down to the eleventh century, were either built in the towns, or had become centres of population in consequence of the Norman and Saracen invasions, retained their character of religious seclusion only for a certain number of monks, who devoted themselves to intellectual labours. Besides which, the brethren had become feudal lords, holding jurisdiction side by side with the bishops, and St. Germain-des-Près, St. Denis, St. Martin, Vendôme, and Moissac owned no over-lordships but that of the Pope. Hence arose temporal cares, disputes, and even armed conflicts, among them. The greed and vanity of the abbots at least, if not of their monks, made itself felt even in religious worship, and in the buildings consecrated thereto."[46]

[46] Anthyme St. Paul, _Histoire Monumentale de la France_.

St. Bernard, in an address to the monks of his day, reproves their degeneracy, and censures the exaggerated dimensions of the abbey churches, the splendour of their ornamentation, and the luxury of the abbots. O vanity of vanities! he exclaims, and folly great as vanity! The Church is bedecked in her walls, but naked in her poor! She overlays her stones with gold, and leaves her children without raiment! The curious are given distractions, and the miserable lack bread! It was to suppress such abuses that the Cistercian order was founded by St. Robert and St. Bernard, and also to put an end to the disputes arising from ecclesiastical jurisdiction by making the new abbeys dependencies of the bishoprics. They were to be built in solitary places, "and to nourish their inmates by agriculture. It was forbidden to found them over the tombs of saints, for fear of attracting pilgrims, who would bring worldly distractions in their train. The buildings themselves were to be solid, and built of good freestone, but without any sort of extraneous ornament; the only towers allowed were small belfries, sometimes of stone, but more usually of wood."[47]

[47] _Ibid._

The Cistercian order was founded in 1119, and St. Robert imposed the _Rule_ of St. Benedict in its primitive severity. To mark his separation from the degenerate Benedictines, whose dress was black, he gave his monks a brown habit. After determining their religious duties he gave minute instructions as to the arrangement of the buildings. The condition chiefly insisted upon was that the site of the monastery should be of such extent and so ordered that the necessaries of life could be provided within its precincts. Thus all causes of distraction through communication with the outside world were removed. The monasteries, whenever possible, were to be built beside a stream or river; they were to contain, independently of the claustral buildings, the church and the abbot's dwelling, which was outside the principal enclosure, a mill, a bakehouse, and workshops for the manufacture of all things requisite to the community, besides gardens for the use and pleasure of the monks.

The Abbey of Clairvaux was an embodiment of the reforms brought about by St. Robert, and later by St. Bernard. The general arrangement and the details of service were almost identical with those of Citeaux, just as Citeaux itself had been modelled upon Cluny in all respects, save that a severe observance of the primitive Benedictine rule was insisted upon in the disposition of the later foundation. All superfluities were proscribed, and the rules which enjoined absolute seclusion as a means towards moral perfection were sternly enforced.

The result is undoubtedly interesting as a religious revival; but we may be permitted to regret that the intellectual impetus given to art progress by the great Benedictine lords spiritual of Cluny should have been checked by the frigid utilitarianism to which architecture--then an epitome of all the arts--was reduced by the purists of Citeaux in its application to the monasteries of the reform.

The Cistercian monuments are not, however, wanting in interest.

Of Clairvaux and Citeaux little remains but fragments embedded in a mass of modern buildings, for the most part restorations of the last century. As records these are less to be relied upon than the historical and archæological documents which guided Viollet-le-Duc in his graphic reconstruction of famous Cistercian abbeys, an essay not to be bettered as a piece of lucid demonstration (see his _Dictionary_, vol. i. pp. 263-271).