Cluny
Cluny
Celebrated Benedictine monastery , founded in 909 by William, Duke of Aquitaine, in Cluny, Saone-et-Loire, France , which became the mother-house of a vast group of monasteries forming the Congregation of Cluny. It played an important part in the Church reform of the 11th century , and reached the zenith of its glory in the 12th century , when it is said the congregation had 2,000 monasteries . It was governed by a series of remarkable men; among them were Abbot Bernon (910-927), Saint Odo (927-942), Blessed Aymard (942-965), Saint Mayeul (965-994), Saint Odilo (994-1049), and Saint Hugh (1049-1109). Several reforming popes, e.g., Saint Gregory VII (Hildebrand), Blessed Urban II, and Paschal II, received their training at Cluny. The abbey -church of Cluny was the largest monument in Christendom before the building of Saint Peter’s of Rome, and a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture . After the suppression of the monastery , 1790 , it was bought by the town and practically razed to the ground. The library was partly destroyed by the Huguenots and again by the mobs of the French Revolution.