Cistercians and Cluniacs

Founded in 910 to return to the authentic montasticism of St. Benedict, the Abbey of Cluny led a revolution in the medieval Church. Wresting secular hands from control of monastic orders and finances, the great burgundian monastery and its hundreds of daughter houses inspired eleventh-century churchmen to seize control of the Church from petty lords and outraged emperors. Powerful and respected, the Clunic order cast a long shadow over the European Church, but its very position of leadership brought prosperity into the cloister and and, in its train, complacency. The Cistercians were founded in 1098 to revive the primitive observance of the Rule of St. Benedict. Having experienced the worldly dangers threatening, even embraced by, the Black Monks of Cluny, the White Monks of Cîteaux resolved to withdraw from, not to reform, the world. Their uncompromising asceticism attracted scores of young men, and soon the Cistern Order outstripped the Cluniac in pious prestige and personnel. Cluniac felt censured; Cistercians grew smug. As rumors mounted in the spring of summer of 1125, William, the Benedictine abbot of Clairveaux, to take pen in hand to check mutual rancor. The Apologia, composed by Bernard and approved by William, is the result. It exorciates monks black and white: Cistercians who had become slanderers, Cluniacs who had grown self-indulgent, Bernard's satirical wit spared no one who had lost sight of the monk's first duty, the love of God and the brethren.

שנה

1970

שפה

English

הוצאה

Cistercian Publications

מהדורות

1

עמודים

69

ISBN

9780879071028

מקור הנתונים: Wikidata