Cluny: from the Abbey to the Cluniac Order in the 10th–18th centuries
Publisher
:
Armand Colin
Parution date
:
EAN
:
9782200351069
Number of pages
:
330
Description
On this, the 1,100th anniversary of Cluny’s founding, Daniel-Odon Hurel and Denyse Riche have prepared a scholarly but highly readable history of the greatest medieval monastic order. Cluny: from the Abbey to the Cluniac Order reflects the most current research and the most in-depth examination of the more than eight centuries of Cluny’s impact on its world.
The Abbey, subject to no authority but that of the pope, developed a centralized power previously unknown to monastic orders. Less than two centuries after its founding, a network of more than a thousand priories had spread throughout Western Europe, each overseen by a prior who reported to the abbot of Cluny. The Cluny abbots were almost as powerful as popes, and four early abbots later became popes. In its early centuries, Cluny was one of Christendom’s most influential bodies, introducing reform and strict religious observance in a period of general monastic laxity.
The eleventh century saw the admission of female religious into the order, and the spread of Cluny’s influence into the British Isles. The first decades of the twelfth century, however, found the order suffering under poor government and economic difficulties. Faced with new and rival ecclesiastical reform movements, Cluny lost its preeminence and the order began to decline until, during the French Revolution, the Abbey was sacked and almost destroyed.
In Cluny: from the Abbey to the Cluniac Order in the 10th–18th centuries, the authors go beyond the classical chronological overview of the Abbey and the order’s history. They emphasize the dynamism and influences between this particular monastic model and its main actors: the monks and the political and cultural society at large.
Bringing together studies by both American and European scientists and historians, this well-documented book offers new perspectives on that French historical institution that has now become a place of pilgrimage.
Author
Daniel-Odon Hurel :
Daniel-Odon Hurel is a research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, and the head of the European Center of Research on Religious Orders and Congregations.
Odon Hurel :
Denyse Riche :
Denyse Riche is a professor at the Université Lumière in Lyon.
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