The Age of Division a united monastic network ruled from a single source was reborn at Cluny. Liberated from the proprietary system that was choking the life out of contemporary monasticism, Cluny could turn to the restoration of Benedictine monasticism. But it did not do so spontaneously. Its influence was the result of the leadership of a series of visionary abbots whose lengthy periods of governance elevated the network above all other reforming centers. Abbots like Odo (r. 927–942), Maiolus (r. 964–994), Odilo (r. 994–1049), and Hugh the Great (r. 1049–1109) labored tirelessly to restore the healthy ascetical practices that had, in centuries past, supported the union of heaven and earth. Cluny revived Western monasticism and became an equal to the spiritually transformative life of other cloisters in eleventh-century Christendom, such as Athos and the Caves in Kiev. Behind its walls one could once again hope to snatch “a glimpse of paradise.”8 But outside those walls, Western Christendom was still in shambles. So great was the spiritual disorder of the world in which monastic reformers lived that they were forced to draw a line of division between the world, which in traditional Christian cosmology radiated God’s presence, and the monastery. Only in a “world-weary monasticism,” one historian of the reform movement has noted, could Cluniacs experience “a fulfillment of the first Pentecost, a return to man’s original state and the actual beginning of his future glory.”9
The Fading Influence of the East of decadence, monastic reformers looked to the past to chart the future. The vast spiritual wealth of Eastern Christendom was a possible source of inspiration, as the life of Benedict of Aniane had shown. In fact, historians have recently noted the continued and ironic influence of Eastern Christianity throughout the West on the eve of the Great Division. AS VISIONARIES IN A TIME
8 9
Tom Holland, The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 164. Bede K. Lackner, The Eleventh-Century Background to Citeaux (Washington, D.C.: Cistercian Publications, 1972), 45.
32 Copyright ©2020 by John Strickland. All Rights Reserved. Published by Ancient Faith Publishing
