they ever remained true to their state as monks, without loss of piety or religion. Four of them, indeed, Odo, Maieul, Odilo and Hugh, are venerated as saints.
In the movement associated with the name of Hildebrand the influence of Cluny was thrown strongly on the side of religious and ecclesiastical reform, as in the suppression of simony and the enforcing of clerical celibacy; but in the struggle between the Papacy and the Empire the abbots of Cluny seem to have steered a middle course between Guelfs and Ghibellines, and to have exercised a moderating influence; St Hugh maintained relations with Henry IV. after his excommunication, and probably influenced him to go to Canossa. Hildebrand himself, though probably not a monk of Cluny, was a monk of a Cluniac monastery in Rome; his successor, Urban II., was actually a Cluny monk, as was Paschal II. It may safely be said that from the middle of the 10th century until the middle of the 12th, Cluny was the chief centre of religious influence throughout Western Europe, and the abbot of Cluny, next to the pope, the most important and powerful ecclesiastic in the Latin Church.
Everything at Cluny was on a scale worthy of so great a position. The basilica, begun 1089 and dedicated 1131, was, until the building of the present St Peter’s, the largest church in Christendom, and was both in structure and ornamentation of unparalleled magnificence. The monastic buildings were gigantic.
During the abbacy of Peter the Venerable (1122–1157) it became clear that, after a lapse of two centuries, a renewal of the framework of the life and a revival of its spirit had become necessary. Accordingly he summoned a great chapter of the whole order whereat the priors and representatives of the subject houses attended in such numbers that, along with the Cluny community, the assembly consisted of 1200 monks. This chapter drew up the 76 statutes associated with Peter’s name, regulating the whole range of claustral life, and solemnly promulgated as binding on the whole Cluniac obedience. But these measures did not succeed in saving Cluny from a rapid decline that set in immediately after Peter’s death. The monarchical status of the abbot was gradually curtailed by the holding of general chapters at fixed periods and the appointment of a board of definitors, elected by the chapter, as a permanent council for the abbot. Owing to these restrictions and still more to the fact that the later abbots were not of the same calibre as the early ones, their power and influence waned, until in 1528 (if not in 1456) the abbey fell into “commendam.” The rise of the Cistercians and the mendicant orders were contributory causes, and also the difficulties experienced in keeping houses in other countries subject to a French superior. And so the great system gradually became a mere congregation of French houses. Of the commendatory abbots the most remarkable were Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, who both initiated attempts to introduce reforms into the Cluny congregation, the former trying to amalgamate it with the reformed congregation of St Maur, but without effect. Martène tells us that in the early years of the 18th century in the monastery of Baume, one of Berno’s original group of Cluny houses—indeed the parent house of Cluny itself—no one was admitted as a monk who had not sixteen quarterings in his coat of arms. A reform movement took root in the Cluny congregation, and during the last century of its existence the monks were divided into two groups, the Reformed and the Unreformed, living according to different laws and rules, with different superiors, and sometimes independent, and even rival, general chapters. This most unhappy arrangement hopelessly impaired the vitality and work of the congregation, which was finally dissolved and suppressed in 1790, the church being deliberately destroyed.
Cluniac houses were introduced into England under the Conqueror. The first foundation was at Barnstaple; the second at Lewes by William de Warenne, in 1077, and it counted as one of the “Five Daughters of Cluny.” In quick succession followed Thetford, Montacute, Wenlock, Bermondsey, and in Scotland, Paisley; a number of lesser foundations were made, and offshoots from the English houses; so that the English Cluniac dependencies in the 13th century amounted to 40. It is said that in the reign of Edward III. they transmitted to Cluny annually the sum of £2000, equivalent to £60,000 of our money. Such a drain on the country was naturally looked on with disfavour, especially during the French wars; and so it came about that as “alien priories” they were frequently sequestered by the crown. As the communities came to be composed more and more of English subjects, they tended to grow impatient of their subjection to a foreign house, and began to petition parliament to be naturalized and to become denizen. In 1351 Lewes was actually naturalized, but a century later the prior of Lewes appears still as the abbot of Cluny’s vicar in England. Though the bonds with Cluny seem to have been much relaxed if not wholly broken, the Cluniac houses continued as a separate group up to the dissolution, never taking part in the chapters of the English Benedictines. At the end there were eight greater and nearly thirty lesser Cluniac houses: for list see Table in F. A. Gasquet’s English Monastic Life; and Catholic Dictionary, art. “Cluny.”
The history of Cluny up to the death of Peter the Venerable may be extracted out of Mabillon’s Annales by means of the Index; the story is told in Helyot, Hist. des ordres religieux (1792), v. cc. 18, 19. Abridged accounts, with references to the most recent literature, may be found in Max Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen (1896), i. § 20; Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (ed. 3), art. “Cluni” (Grutzmacher); and Wetzer und Welte, Kirchenlexikon (ed. 2), art. “Clugny” (Hefele). The best modern monograph is by E. Sackur, Die Cluniacenser (1891–1894). In English a good account is given in Maitland, Dark Ages, §§ xviii.-xxvi.; the Introduction to G. F. Duckett’s Charters and Records of Cluni (1890) contains, besides general information, a description of the church and the buildings, and a list of the chief Cluniac houses in all countries. The story of the English houses is briefly sketched in the second chapter of F. A. Gasquet’s Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries (the larger ed., 1886). (E. C. B.)
CLUSERET, GUSTAVE PAUL (1823–1900), French soldier
and politician, was born at Paris. He was an officer in the
garde mobile during the revolution of 1848. He took part in
several expeditions in Algeria, joined Garibaldi’s volunteers
in 1860, and in 1861 resigned his commission to take part in
the Civil War in America. He served under Frémont and
McClellan, and rose to the rank of general. Then, joining a
band of Irish adventurers, he went secretly to Ireland, and
participated in the Fenian insurrection (1866–67). He escaped
arrest on the collapse of the movement, but was condemned to
death in his absence. On his return to France he proclaimed
himself a Socialist, opposed militarism, and became a member
of the Association Internationale des travailleurs, a cosmopolitan
Socialist organization, known as the “Internationale.” On the
proclamation of the Third Republic in 1871 he set to work to
organize the social revolution, first at Lyons and afterwards at
Marseilles. His energy, his oratorical gifts, and his military
experience gave him great influence among the working classes.
On the news of the communist rising of the 18th of March 1871
he hastened to Paris, and on the 16th of April was elected a
member of the commune. Disagreements with the other communist
leaders led to his arrest on the 1st of May, on a false
charge of betraying the cause. On the 24th of the same month
the occupation of Paris by the Versailles troops restored him to
liberty, and he succeeded in escaping from France. He did not
return to the country till 1884. In 1888 and 1889 he was returned
as a deputy to the chamber by Toulon. He died in 1900.
Cluseret published his Mémoires (of the Commune) at Paris in 1887–1888.
CLUSIUM (mod. Chiusi, q.v.), an ancient town of Italy, one of the twelve cities of Etruria, situated on an isolated hill at the S. end of the valley of the Clanis (China). It was according
to Roman tradition one of the oldest cities of Etruria and indeed
of all Italy, and, if Camars (the original name of the town,
according to Livy) is rightly connected with the Camertes
Umbri, its foundation would go back to pre-Etruscan times.
It first appears in Roman history at the end of the 7th century
B.C., when it joined the other Etruscan towns against Tarquinius Priscus, and at the end of the 6th century B.C. it placed itself,
