Cluny Attractions

The quiet little town of Cluny (pop. 4,371), northwest of Mâcon, grew up round the celebrated Benedictine abbey, mother house of the reforming Cluniac order.

The abbey of Cluny (Cluniacum) was founded in 910 by Duke William of Aquitaine on the site of a Franconian estate, and became from its earliest years the starting point and center of a great reform of the church which set out to effect a revival of monasticism, which had entered a state of crisis and to promote monastic life in accordance with the rules laid down by St Benedict. The impulse that went out from Cluny led to the reform of existing monastic houses and the foundation of new ones, until there were some 2,000 Cluniac houses all over western Europe. New architectural ideas were also developed at Cluny in order to give monumental form to the spiritual strivings of the order. The first church on the site (Cluny I), erected soon after the foundation of the order, was replaced by Cluny II (consecrated 981), a columned basilica with transepts and a type of choir (a main choir flanked by two subsidiary choirs) which found imitators in northern France and Germany. This in turn gave place in 1089 to the largest and most magnificent church of its time (Cluny III), a huge pillared and vaulted basilica 171 m/560ft long consisting of a three-aisled ante-church with a twin- towered west front, the five-aisled main church, a large transept with five towers, a smaller transept with a roof turret and a choir with a semicircular end, an ambulatory and a ring of chapels. During the French Revolution the abbey was closed down, and thereafter was sold for the sake of its stone and demolished. Only a few fragments survive.