Hugh of Cluny, Saint

HUGH OF CLUNY, Saint. - Son of Count Dalmatius of Semur, born at Semur (Burgundy) in 1024, died at Cluny on 28 April 1109. A Benedictine at Cluny at the age of 14, a priest at 20, at 25 he already succeeded Odilo in the office of abbot. Under his rule, which lasted 60 years, Cluny (v.) reached its apogee, thanks to his energetic prudence and his wise balance in interpreting the Benedictine Rule.

He exercised a moderating influence with popes, emperors and kings, whom he visited frequently: present at Canossa, he bent Gregory VII toward mercy, sought to temper the rigor of the legate Hugh of Die, whose companion he was for a time; and to him is attributed the relaxation that is observed in the government of the Church under Urban II; the part played by Cluny in the beginnings of the Crusade is also well known. The drafting, in 1068, of the Consuetudines, explains the radiation of the Cluniac Statutes; the Ordo Cluniacensis no longer indicates merely a way of interpreting the Rule of St. Benedict, but a confederation of abbeys and priories.

By softening the earlier rigorism, the Consuetudines distribute manual, intellectual and artistic work in balanced fashion among the monks, the oblates and the servants; the liturgy and chant reach their perfection in the recollected setting of the majestic basilica of St. Peter of Cluny, built by H. beginning in 1088, which later became the model of the Cluniac churches scattered throughout all Christendom. Priories and abbeys, with a very flexible diversity, elect their own heads themselves, or, receiving them from the abbot H., form an immense family, wealthy and present everywhere, linked by their common sharing of the Rule. In France, in Spain, in Italy, where it counted respectively about 80, 25 and 50 monasteries, the Cluniac Order had nothing else to do but enlarge and extend its foundations. It penetrated, instead, for the first time into England after the conquest of Duke William, thanks to Lanfranc and the Norman abbeys; into Flanders, with the support of Countess Clementia; into Germany, where the radiation around the abbey of Hirsau would prove brilliant, but ephemeral, because of internal dissensions provoked by the struggle between the priesthood and the Empire; even Poland, the Latin East and indeed Byzantium entered the orbit of Cluny. When H. died, the Order, free from episcopal jurisdictions thanks to the privileges of exemption, formed in the service of the Pope, on whom it depended directly, the center and the effective instrument of the reform of the Church. Callistus II recognized as early as 1119 the merits of the abbot H., placing him upon the altars. Feast on 29 April. - See plate LXX.

Guglielmo Mollet