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  Cluniacs                       

St. Berno reformed the Benedictine Rule and created the Cluniac Order in the tenth century, co-founding a monastery at Cluny (in Saône-et-Loire, Bourgogne, France), from which the order takes its name. The Cluniac Order became extraordinarily rich and powerful, and is still active today.  On this page you will find links to some of this information, as well as information from Abbot Gasquet's book English Monastic Life. Gasquet published the book through The Antiquaries Book series in 1904.  It is now out of print and not generally available.  There may be a number of factual errors in the text, or points on which historians or theologians do not agree.    Gasquet's text, notes & links>>
           

Cluniac
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Cluniacs

     The Cluniac adaptation of the Benedictine Rule took its rise in A.D. 912 with Berno, abbot of Gigny.  With the assistance of the Duke of Aquitaine he built and endowed a monastery at Cluny, near Macon-sur-Saone.  The Cluniac was a new departure in monastic government. Hitherto the monastery was practically self-centered ; any connection with other religious houses was at most voluntary, and any bond of union that may have existed, was of the most loose description.  The ideals upon which Cluny was established was the existence of a great central monastery with dependencies spread over many lands, and forming a vast feudal hierarchy of subordinate establishments with the closest dependence on the mother-house.  Moreover, the superior of each of the dependent monasteries, no matter how large and important, was not the elect of the community, but the nominee of the abbot of Cluny ;  and in the same way the profession of every member of the congregation was made in his home and with his sanction.  It was a great ideals ;  and for two centuries the abbots of Cluny form a dynasty worthy of so lofty a position.  The first Cluniac house founded in England was that of Barnstable.  This was speedily followed by that of Lewes, a priory set up by William, earl of Warren, in A.D. 1077, eleven years only after the Conquest.  The last was that of Stonesgate, in Essex, made almost exactly a century later.  On account of their dependence upon the abbot of Cluny, several of the lesser house were suppressed as “alien priories” towards the close of the fourteenth century, and those that remained gradually freed themselves from their obedience to the foreign superior.  At the time of the general suppression in the sixteenth century there were thirty-two Cluniac houses ‘one only, Bermondsey, was an abbey ; the rest were priories, of which the most important was that which had been nearly the first in order of time, Lewes.   

English Monastic Life by F.A. Gasquet.  (pages 217-218)


Cluniac Houses in England
(see Religious Houses index page):

Barnstaple Priory

Devon.
Bermondsey
fd.1082              ds. 1538
Abbey
(cell to Charité-sur-Loire, France)
Surrey.
Bromholm Priory

Norfolk.
Carswell

(cell to Montacute) Devon.
Castleacre Priory

Norfolk.
Clifford
Priory

Hereford.
St. Cyrus

(cell to Montacute) Cornwall.
Daventry Priory

Northants.
Dudley

(cell to Wenlock) Stafford,
Farleigh, or Farley

Wilts.
Heacham, or Hitcham
(cell of Lewes)
Norfolk.
St. Helen'


Isle of Wright.
Holme

(cell to Montacute) Dorset.
Horkesley Parva Priory

Essex.
Horton, Monks (or Monks Horton)
(cell to Lewes)
Kent.
Kershall

(cell to Lenton) Lancaster.
Lenton
Priory

Notts.
Lewes
Priory

Sussex.
Malpas

(cell to Montacute) Monmouth.
Mendam


Suffolk.
Monk Bretton Priory

Yorks.
Montacute
Priory

Somerset
Northampton, St. Andew's
Priory

Northants.
Pontefract


Yorks. WR
Preston Capes
(translated to Daventry) Northampton.
Prittlewell, or Pipwell Priory
Essex.
Slevesholme, or Methwold
 (cell of Castleacre) Norfolk
Stanesgate
 (cell to Lewes) Essex.
Stow
(cell of Castleacre) Norfolk
Thetford Priory
Norfolk.
Thetford

Norfolk.
Wangford Priory
Suffolk.
Wenlock Priory
Salop.
Arthington
Female House (Nuns)
Yorks.
Northhampton, De La Pré
Female House (Nuns)
Northants.



Cluniac Links:


An article on the Cluniac Order though the Order of Saint Benedict homepage.

Wonderful photographs of the abbey at Cluny on the Art and Architecture website, Courtauld Institute of Art.

Cluny Abbey visitor information from sacred-destinations.com.

Information about the history and archaeology of Lenton Priory by Herbert Green through the Nottinghampshire History Page

The Lewes Priory Research website.

The Monk Bretton Priory website.

The House of Cluniac monks: The Priory of Lenton, from A History of the County of Nottingham: Volume 2 (1910), pp. 91-100.  Posted by British History Online.



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