Cluny III and the Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela

Author(s): O. K. Werckmeister
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Gesta, Vol. 27, No. 1/2, Current Studies on Cluny (1988), pp. 103-112
Published by: International Center of Medieval Art
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/766998 .
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Cluny III and the Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela*
O. K. WERCKMEISTER
Northwestern University

Abstract
The third abbey church at Cluny is designed on
a plan whose essential features are those of the
mass-audience churches on the pilgrimage roads to
Santiago, particularlySaint-Martinat Tours and Saint-
Sernin at Toulouse. I am attempting to show that this
adaptation was prompted by a Cluniac takeover at- +44
tempt on the pilgrimage roads. In the years from 1082
to 1096, while Abbot Hugh had to deal with the uncer-
tainties and ultimate cessation of gold contributions
by King Alfonso VI of Le6n and Castile to the abbey
budget, he embarked on an effort to increase the in-
ternational scope of money contributions by expand-
ing the abbey's connections with the pilgrimage to ::;
* *~
Santiago de Compostela. Cluny acquired the abbey of
Saint-Martial at Limoges in 1063. Since 1082 Abbot
rj? AL

Hugh pursued a protracted legal and political cam-

paign to take control of Saint-Sernin at Toulouse and . ,
Sainte-Foy at Conques. However, Pope Urban II's '
, *=I'' itI
o 2oso
decision at the council of Nimes in 1096 confirming '*.''
the independence of both sanctuaries put a stop to
this scheme.
The change from the closed-off, staggered monks' P.
choir of Cluny II to the open ambulatory choir of *.

Cluny III amounted to a programmatic shift in the . . 0 45M

direction of making the monastic liturgy accessible to
:o
a lay audience. It suggests that the church was de- ,si ..

signed either in order to serve in some way as a start-

ing sanctuary for rites connected with the send-off on 45M
the pilgrimage, or in order to attract a mass audience
to the monastic office on its own terms. However, the
mass appeal of the new abbey church apparently
never materialized. Cluny's financial failure in the
twelfth century contrasts markedly with the affluence FIGURE1. Comparative plans of 5 pilgrimagechurches:Tours,Saint-
of the great established pilgrimage sanctuaries. Martin;Limoges,Saint-Martial;Conques,Saint-Foy;Toulouse,Saint-
Sernin;and Santiagode Compostela(afterConant).

The Problem
In 1088, Abbot Hugh of Cluny started the construc-
tion of the third and last in a sequence of progressively
larger abbey churches replacing one another in his growing
monastery. He designed it on a plan whose essential
features were those of the mass-audience churches destined
for the pilgrimage roads to Santiago de Compostela,
particularly those of Saint-Martin at Tours and Saint-
Sernin at Toulouse (Fig. 1). Like these two pilgrimage
churches, Cluny III had four aisles, an ambulatory around
the main apse with five radiating chapels, two secondary
apses on either arm of each one of the two transepts, and
a two-tower fagade (Fig. 2). To what extent are these
analogies due to a similarity of liturgical functions? Why
would the monastic community of Cluny undertake a
comparatively giant building for a mass audience when
not directly involved in the pilgrimage traffic? Thus far,
Cluny III has been perceived in terms of its monastic
community rather than its lay audience. The judgment of
Conant, to whom we owe the historical and archeological
reconstruction of the vanished monument, is representa-
tive in this regard:
The Ecclesia Major, Cluny III, was the hearth of the
whole spiritual household of the Cluniac order. [
...]
Actually it could have held the entire membership,
standing, of the Cluniac Order, had the Order ever been

GESTA XXVII/ I and 2 ? The International Center of Medieval Art 1988 103
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assembled. The great church must be understood in on three of the five pilgrimage roads leading to Santiago de
these terms, as a focus for the devotion of the whole Compostela.
Order, and logically a more splendid building than any Cluny's pilgrimage connection has not been studied
which Abbot Hugh had seen in forty years of journey- thus far in architectural history, and yet it presents the
ing throughout western Europe.' most obvious opening for an art historical understanding
of the new church. Aymery Picaud's pilgrims' guide con-
Conant's appraisal of Cluny III as the supreme symbolic tained in the Codex Calixtinus ends on the assertion that
monument of medieval monasticism is aesthetically deter- the book "is being written," that is to say, copied, read
mined by values of greatness and beauty. His functional and used, "above all" in the abbey of Cluny,2 although
determination remains hypothetical, predicated on the that abbey figures nowhere in the travel routes he de-
ideal projection of a monastic mass community which scribes. And Bernard of Clairvaux criticizes the attraction
never assembled. The conclusions I propose to draw from of money-paying masses through the cult of relics as a
the similarities between the design of Cluny III and that of major feature of contemporary monastic, including Clu-
the pilgrimage churches are more realistic in intent. I will niac, art production,3 although there is no evidence of the
argue that the adaptation of the pilgrimage church plan was public cult of the relics of any outstanding saint at the
prompted by a political scheme: a Cluniac takeover attempt abbey itself. Both these texts are hard to understand in

104
reference to the abbey of Cluny alone. Actually, they
address Abbot Hugh's geopolitical response to the chang-
ing economic conditions under which his abbey operated
at the time when the new church was built.
From Agricultural to Exchange Economy
Cluny's domain had been amassed mainly in the tenth
4 . . creased in the abbey's budget. In 1122, only a quarter of
century.4 It was subdivided into eighteen autonomous
seigneuries, each of which was administered by one resi-
dent monk and controlled by the prior on annual in-
spection tours. Such a centralized administration of the
domain, however, considerably reduced its yield. Since the
peasant tenants' obligations were not sufficientfor the work
needed on the abbey's own holdings, paid laborers had to
be hired. The scattered lots leased out to tenants farther
away required numerous lay officials for collecting rents.
Here one of the drawbacks of medieval estate economy
became apparent: the running expenses accumulate as
soon as the manor grows in extension, and the big estate is
less profitable than the small one. Thus, the community of
Cluny could not subsist on the yield of its domain, but
had to purchase additional food. Still more money was
needed for charity and wages. The abbey's income had to
support about three hundred monks living in great com-
fort, and, in addition, numerous servants who, along with
their families, tended to them. Moreover, the abbey regu-
larly provided for numerous visitors. Still, before 1080, the
production of the domain, food and money combined,
apparently sufficed to sustain this consumption.
Between 1080 and 1120, new sources of money from
outside its holdings fundamentally changed the abbey's
budget towards dependency on monetary exchange. After
the congregation had been consolidated, every dependent
abbey had to pay the mother abbey a fixed annual con-
tribution which, however, may have amounted to no more
than a few pounds of silver. More substantial were the
cash contributions from a few outstanding lay magnates
who in earlier times had supported Cluny with land dona-
tions. Already in 1062 King Ferdinand of Le6n and Castile
had committed himself to an annual payment of 1,000
mancus in gold. In 1077, his son, Alfonso VI, doubled this
amount, which far exceeded the income from Cluny's
domain.
The land donations of the tenth century, made in
return for intercessory rites, had been fed into Cluny's
own production, as they became part of the domain
exploited by the monks. The new money contributions, on
the other hand, if they were not spent outright, were not
invested in purchases of more land but in what may be
called a 'sacred economy', since it was founded on the
development of the monastic liturgy towards ever more
extensive services for the lay community. The main in-
vestment was the rebuilding of the abbey church. It could
not be accomplished through the domestic labor force
absorbed by its daily tasks, or through the services of the
tenants who were unaccustomed to heavy manual labor
and inexperienced in professional building. The stone-
cutting in the quarries, the huge transports of stone and
wood for the lime ovens, the actual masonry, all required
trained specialists as well as supportive workers who had
to be paid or fed. Thus, purchases of food quickly in-
the total food consumption came from the yield of the
domain. It has been estimated that by then Cluny was
spending 240,000 deniers on food each year. And the more
it spent, the higher food prices went up in the region,
gradually decreasing the abbey's purchasing power in an
inflationary manner.
The Patronage of King Alfonso VI
The mainstay of Cluny's income since 1077 was the
regular contributions by King Alfonso VI of Le6n and
Castile.5 In that year Alfonso resumed payments and
doubled the amount of the annual census promised, in
1062, by his father, Ferdinand I, but interrupted for
perhaps ten years. This promissory note, however, was
based on a self-defeating premise of Alfonso's reconquest
policy: Islamic territorial rulers of Southern Spain who
acknowledged the king's supremacy were no longer in a
position to pay tribute once they came under attack and
their territories became part of Alfonso's expanding king-
dom. Thus, Zaragoza ceased to be tributary before 1081,
Toledo in 1083 and Seville in 1086 at the latest. In 1085,
the year when Alfonso conquered Toledo, he also had to
interrupt his payments to Cluny. In a letter to Abbot
Hugh of 1088 or 1089-90, he apologized for his past lack
of payments and expressly promised support for the new
church building already in progress. The 10,000 talents
mentioned in the letter were back payments for the five
years of the doubled annual census. They were again
tribute money from the Islamic territorial ruler Abdallah
of Granada, who in 1089 wanted thereby to secure his self-
protective alliance with the Christian king against the
Almoravid Sultan Yussuf. When Alfonso assured Hugh in
their meeting at Burgos in 1090 of what he ventured to call
'eternal' payment of the census, he perhaps expected fur-
ther tribute payments of this kind. However, from the year
1090, when the reconquista began to be reversed by the
Almoravids, until Alfonso's death in 1109, the time of his
defeats by the Almoravid counterattacks, nothing more is
known about any of his payments to Cluny. Thus, the
principal income on which the abbey had come to depend
was subject to political uncertainty.
In the years 1077 to 1090, Abbot Hugh increased the
liturgical services on behalf of King Alfonso VI twice,
commensurate with the augmefited contributions which
the latter had promised him. In the accord concerning the
doubling of the census on July 10, 1077, the king had
105
 stipulated a continuous, specific commemoration of him-
self, his ancestors, and his descendents in the Morrow
Masses of the Dead. Hugh's promise of continuing prayer
for the future members of the dynasty was in return for
the hereditary commitment of the king's successors to the
doubled census. The association was strengthened when
the king and the abbot met at the council of Burgos in
1090. In return for Alfonso's payment of 10,000 talents,
for his promise in the future to subsidize the construction
of the church, and for his confirmation of the doubled
census ad perpetuum, Hugh promised to decree that his
own successors as abbots would celebrate the liturgical
commemoration of the most important members of the
dynasty forever. After his return, he issued a set of statutes
which address themselves to all the present and future
monks of Cluny. In the new abbey church built through
Alfonso's gifts, one of the principal altars was to be
reserved for the recital of Masses for his salvation only.
The new liturgical privilege complemented Alfonso's daily
commemoration in the Masses of the Dead already estab-
lished in the accord of 1077.
This projection of large-scale, long-distance royal
patronage into eternity was the boldest undertaking of
Cluny's sacred economy. The huge new abbey church
which was erected on this calculation had no physical
connection with its patron. Alfonso VI never crossed the
Pyrenees to visit it, and when he died he was buried in the
new 'Pantheon' of San Isidoro at Le6n, the royal burial
church of his own kingdom.6 Accordingly, the new abbey
church contained no throne loge or any other provision for
the presence of a king, nor did it contain an area for royal
burial. Indeed, no feature of the architectureor the imagery
known to us makes reference to this patronage which was
as crucial as it was remote. The relationship of the church
with its patron was purely financial and spiritual. Was the
church then designed as an autonomous abode for the
monastic opus Dei, securely based on "eternal" royal
support? Or was it already designed with a different
audience in mind, as an alternative to the political risks
which this remote patronage entailed?
The Questfor a New Audience
The payments fromnthe Spanish kings had provided a
sudden, excessive, and one-sided expansion of Cluny's
outside funding resources. They were initially by no means
earmarked for the building of the new abbey church, and
their interruption put the upkeep of the abbey itself in
jeopardy, not just that of the construction site. Thus, the
gradual economic transition from agriculture to money
exchange was soon followed by a social transition of lay
patronage from aristocratic, landed, settled individuals to
lower-class, mobile, coin-carrying masses.
Just in the years 1082 to 1096, while Hugh was plan-
ning and building his new church and at the same time
106
dealing with the ups and downs of Alfonso VI's contribu-
tions, he embarked on an effort to increase substantially
the international scope of money contributions from a
different source. To this end, he undertook a concerted
effort to expand the abbey's connection with the pilgrim-
age to Santiago de Compostela. He must have realized
that Cluny's transition from a predominantly agricultural
to a largely money-based economy was irrevocable and
required new resources. In 1063, he had already acquired
one of the four major pilgrimage sanctuaries in France,
the abbey of Saint-Martial at Limoges. Saint-Martial
joined the ranks of preeminent Cluniac abbeys-V6zelay,
Saint-Gilles, Saint-Bertin, and Moissac-which were ex-
empt from the demotion of their head to prior, although
their abbots were appointed by the abbot of Cluny. Now,
in 1082, Hugh embarked on a protracted political cam-
paign to take control of two more key sanctuaries: Saint-
Sernin at Toulouse and Sainte-Foy at Conques.
The Acquisition of Saint-Martial at Limoges in 1062
In 1062, Viscount Ademar of Limoges sold the abbey
of Saint-Martial to Cluny.7 Probably in the same year
King Ferdinand I of Le6n and Castile undertook the
agreement to subsidize Cluny permanently, and it is pos-
sible that the proceeds of one transaction provided for the
expenses of the other. The viscount acted with the consent
of Bishop Iterius of Limoges, but without that of the
resident abbot, Mainardus, and his monks. In the charter
of sale, he stipulated that the abbey must continue paying
him 200 solidi at the time of vintage and provide
bread and wineailnually
on the occasion of visits by the count of
Poitiers. It appears that he saw the transfer as an eco-
nomic improvement for Saint-Martial and hence indirectly
for himself.
However, when the Cluniacs arrived to take posses-
sion, Abbot Mainardus and his monks refused them entry,
and the monks continued their resistance even after the
abbot's death. Eventually Abbot Hugh of Cluny himself,
accompanied by a detachment of his own monks, arrived
in secret and hid in the nearby church of Saint-Michel-
des-Lions. Meanwhile, Viscount Ademar pretended to
hold a new election of an abbot at Saint-Martial, but
forced the community's own candidate, Gaufredus, out of
the abbey, whereupon the rest of the monks escaped. Now
Hugh entered the abbey, had all its residents detained, and
appointed as abbot a monk from Cluny, Ademar. The
fugitive monks of Saint-Martial at first did not return to
their cells but continued their resistance from the city.
They finally did return, but only to rise violently against
the Cluniac regime. Armed mercenaries of both parties
engaged in house-to-house fighting in the city. Abbot
Hugh of Cluny was unable to establish his authority. Only
when Peter Damian, the papal legate, who at this moment
happened to be at Cluny, travelled to Limoges and threat-
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FIGURE 3. Map of the Pilgrimage Routes to Santiago de Compostela (after Person and Leroux, based on Cohen).

ened the monks of Saint-Martial with excommunication,
did they finally submit.
With this violent enforcement of their acquisition, the
Cluniacs had annexed the key sanctuary on the Via
Lemovicensis (Fig. 3),8 upgraded in 1031 by the elevation
of its patron saint to apostolic status. The Via Lemo-
vicensis was located to the east of what one may call the
"royal" route in France, the Via Turonensis, which led
from Saint-Denis to Saint-Martin at Tours, two sanctu-
aries firmly controlled by the Capetian kings and, accord-
ingly, beyond contestation. Once the new Cluniac abbot of
Saint-Martial, Ademar, had secured his authority, he
completed, or at least embellished, the pilgrimage church
of his abbey with an ambitious artistic program which
included the silver plating of the barrel vault of the nave.9
Saint-Martial became the major Cluniac pilgrimage sanc-
tuary in France.
Abbot Hugh was, therefore, following a successful
precedent when twenty years later, he set his sights on
major stopovers along the two other pilgrimage roads with
Cluniac starting sanctuaries. Conques lay on the Via
Podiensis leading from Le Puy to the Cluniac abbey of
Moissac.10 Toulouse lay on the economically crucial
southern Via Tolosana which started at the Cluniac abbey
of Saint-Gilles.1
The Immediate Failure at Toulouse
The Cluniac penetration of Toulouse, aided by the
counts of that city, had been gradual.12 It had started in
1055, when the Cluniac Abbot Durandus of Moissac
became bishop. In 1067 Count Guilhem IV introduced
Cluniac monks from Moissac into the allod and villa of
Saint-Pierre-des-Cuisines. Then, around 1073, Bishop
Isarn, Durandus's successor, invited the monks of Moissac
to revitalize the important city parish of La Daurade. In
order to secure their independence, the canons of Saint-
Sernin in the same year adopted the Augustinian rule of

107
communal life and placed themselves directly under the
Holy See. Pope Gregory VII exempted them and accorded
them protection.
However, the newly secured autonomy of the canons
of Saint-Sernin did not deter Hugh of Cluny, in league
with Count Guilhem IV and Bishop Isarn, from reaching
for this most important missing piece of their scheme. In
1082, Isarn decided to subject the church to the Cluniac
Abbot Hunaldus of Moissac, the canons were expelled, and
Cluniac monks moved in. Saint-Sernin became a Cluniac
priory. However, Pope Gregory VII opposed the move. His
legate even excommunicated the newly arrived Cluniac
monks, although Gregory VII himself subsequently lifted
the excommunication. Already in July 23, 1083, Count
Guilhem IV backtracked, and somewhat later Abbot Hugh
of Cluny himself ordered his monks to return the sanctuary
to the canons, who carried on with the construction of
their pilgrimage church. In 1090, Pope Urban II renewed
the privileges granted by Gregory VII. Bishop Isarn held
out until December, 1093, when he agreed to restore to
Saint-Sernin most of its possessions and burial rights
previously usurped by the cathedral. In the same year, he
deposed Abbot Hunaldus of Moissac, who actually had
usurped his office from the rightful abbot, Ansquetil. On
May 4, 1096, the pope visited Toulouse and on this
occasion consecrated the chevet and transept of Saint-
Sernin for the independent canons. Soon afterwards, at
the council of Nimes, Urban II confirmed Saint-Sernin's
indepenidenceonce again.
The Protracted Struggle at Conques
Although the Via Podiensis was economically less
important than the other pilgrimage routes, it was of
particular interest to Abbot Hugh since it actually ex-
tended beyond Le Puy to Cluny itself.13 Thus, it offered
the potential of magnifying the attraction of his abbey as a
starting sanctuary on the lines of Saint-Denis or V6zelay.'4
Perhaps it is for this reason that Hugh engaged in a
struggle for the abbey of Conques drawn out much longer
than in the case of Saint-Sernin.
The takeover attempt at Conques was launched by
way of the abbey of Figeac, which had been intermittently
united to that of Conques since the late ninth century.15In
1035 it split off, but Count Begon, the lord of Calmont
d'Olt, subjected it to Conques by force of arms. In order
to regain independence from Conques, Figeac in turn
subjected itself to the Cluniac congregation. Since Count
Begon's father, Hugh of Calmont, had become a monk at
Cluny, he prevailed on his son to change sides in favor of
Figeac. As a result, in 1083 or earlier, the count trans-
ferred the rights he had previously granted to the abbot of
Conques to the abbot of Cluny. Protracted litigation
ensued.
When Abbot Stephen II of Conques appealed to
Pope Gregory VII, the latter, in a bull of 1084, reaffirmed
108
the supremacy of Conques, but decided that the abbots of
both monasteries should remain in office as long as they
lived and that the survivor should again rule over both.
But when Abbot Stephen of Conques was the first to die,
the monks of Conques refused to recognize Abbot Ayrard
of Figeac and instead elected one of their own, Begon II.
In 1095, the Cluniac abbot of Figeac appealed to the
council of Clermont, and his superior, Abbot Hugh of
Cluny, was there to intervene on his behalf. As a result,
Pope Urban II deposed Abbot Begon II on the spot.
However, the latter refused to step down, and his monks
supported him. In the end, in 1096 at the council of
Nimes, when Urban II confirmed the independence of
Saint-Sernin at Toulouse, he also acknowledged the per-
manent separation of Conques from Figeac.
The Cluniac Hold on the Via Lemovicensis
In 1083, immediately after Hugh's setback at Tou-
louse, construction of a pilgrimage church was started at
the Cluniac abbey of Saint-Etienne at Nevers. In 1096, the
year when Pope Urban II, at the council of Nimes, defi-
nitively confirmed the failure of both takeover attempts,
construction was started on a new choir for the pilgrimage
church at the Cluny-associated abbey of La Madeleine at
V6zelay. During these years, then, the Via Lemovicensis
was developed through the construction of two new pil-
grimage churches, both devoted to apostolic saints. In
1097 Urban II confirmed Cluny's rights to Saint-Martial,
and in the same year, on December 15, the church of
Saint-Etienne at Nevers was consecrated.
If Urban II in 1096 had stopped the Cluniacs at
Conques, he backed them all the more vigorously in
furthering their control of Limoges.16Bishop Humbaldus
of Limoges had been newly elected while Abbot Ademar
of Saint-Martial was out of town. The abbot, who was
entitled to vote, protested. Since Humbaldus was not even
a consecrated priest, the archbishop of Bourges declined
to recognize the election. Humbaldus put up armed re-
sistance. Violent clashes ensued between the inhabitants of
the city, partisans of the bishop, and those of the castrum,
partisans of the abbot. When Bishop Humbaldus traveled
to Rome and returned with a bull of investiture allegedly
obtained from Pope Urban II, Abbot Ademar was obliged
to recognize him. However, when after the council of
Clermont in 1095 Urban II himself visited Limoges, the
situation was reversed. As a former monk of Cluny,
Urban II took up residence at Saint-Martial. On Decem-
ber 29, he consecrated the cathedral of Saint-Etienne and
on December 30, the newly reconstructed abbey church of
Christ the Savior. When the pope to his surprise en-
countered Bishop Humbaldus in the course of the cere-
monies, the falsification of the latter's bulls of investiture
was uncovered, and Urban II deposed and excommuni-
cated him on the spot. On August 24, 1096, a new bishop
was elected: William, prior of Saint-Martial. In 1097
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FIGURE 4. Cluny II. Plan of the abbey, ca. 1050 (after Conant).

Urban II confirmed all privileges and possessions of the Gospels at this moment, already descends from his hands
abbey, enjoined its continued submission to Cluny, made to the apostles at his side. This rare figure of the en-
it exempt from the bishop, and subordinated it directly to throned Christ in an image of Pentecost recurs in a
Rome. He also stipulated the abbot's right to be consulted lectionary illustration painted around 1100 in the scrip-
on important issues of the see, to take part in episcopal torium of Cluny,18 and in a sacramentary illustration of
elections, and to share in the administration of the diocese the same date painted in the scriptorium of the cathedral
during vacancies. Urban's successor Paschal II reconfirmed of Limoges, by then firmly in Cluniac hands.19 It seems
these privileges. significant that the exceptional iconography appears in
these three places at this time. On the tympanum at
The Image of Christ at Pentecost V6zelay, it signals an expansive claim to a universal audi-
ence advanced by the pilgrimage sanctuaries on the Via
Starting in 1120 while Peter of Montboissier, the later Lemovicensis.
Peter the Venerable, was prior, a team of sculptors began
to work at V6zelay on the portal of the new west faqade.
The Dedication of Cluny III
Some of their works are so similar to the sculpture of
Cluny that it has even been assumed that two of them It was in 1085 or 1086, after the setback at Toulouse
actually came from there." By that time, the two major but in the middle of the struggle for Conques, that Abbot
sculpture projects at Cluny, the choir and the west portal, Hugh began his preparations for the construction of the
were complete, and no figurative sculpture seems to have third abbey church at Cluny. On September 30, 1088, the
been projected for the nave still in progress. If the sculp- foundations were formally laid. In that year the ecclesias-
tors did move on to V6zelay, they would have participated tical policies of both the royal patron and the abbot
in an ambitious program of imagery exceeding that of the reached their high points of success. Urban II, a monk of
mother abbey. Instead of the relatively abstract Majestas Cluny, became pope, and Archbishop Bernard of Toledo,
Domini in the tympanum at Cluny, the tympanum at originally also a Cluniac monk, was appointed primate of
V6zelay presents a multifigured historical scene: the ap- Spain with jurisdiction over all bishops of the country,
pearance of the resurrected Christ after his death, among securing King Alfonso VI's political control over the
his disciples, when he sends them on their mission into the church of his kingdom. Abbot Hugh of Cluny, for his part,
world (Matthew 28:18-19; Mark 16:15, 19). Extraordi- received the pontifical insignia, which empowered him to
narily, the Holy Spirit, which Christ announces in the accept in his abbey monks from any other order.

109
 However, by contrast to the political prestige of its
abbot, Cluny's economic and social situation was already
precarious. When Urban II arrivedto consecrate the chevet
on October 25, 1095, he delivered a sermon which ad-
dressed itself to nothing but emergencies.20 The pope
expressly said that he had come to the aid of his former
abbey. He seems to have seen his most urgent task in an
elaborate ceremony whereby he surveyed Cluny's local
territory place by place as a zone of a sacred bannus, of
"immunity and security," within which no one was to
encroach:
Within these limits, no man, no matter of what standing
or power, should ever dare, or even contemplate daring,
to commit any invasion, big or small, or arson, armed
robbery, or theft, or take away a man, or hurt any man
out of anger, or, what is much graver, to commit
homicide, or to maim anyone.21
Urban II addressed this ban, complete with the threat of
excommunication and anathema as punishments for trans-
gression, directly to the audience in attendance at the
ceremony on the unfinished site, and extended it into the
future to their descendants.22Was Cluny now the scene of
social conflicts like Vezelay in 1104 and Santiago de
Compostela in 1116, when overtaxed townspeople rebelled
against their ecclesiastical lords pursuing ambitious build-
ing projects? In any event, the setting of a sacred limitation
zone of civil security within a potentially hostile environ-
ment was the most urgent public appeal during the
ceremony whereby the pope was perambulating on the
geometrically outlined construction site, measured and
calculated as it was according to celestial and biblical
numbers.
The Liturgical Disposition of the New Plan
Which liturgical functions were the monks of Cluny to
offer to the expected large lay public in their new abbey
church? Further research will have to find answers to this
question from the evidence of liturgical texts. The pil-
grimage plan, to the extent it was adopted, suggests that the
church was designed for an audience from outside the
region which the abbey wished to attract to its services in
emulation of the great pilgrimage churches. The ambulatory
design of the Cluny III choir, which in pilgrimage churches
served for circulation of the lay audience, amounted to a
programmatic shift from the closed-off, staggered monks'
choir of Cluny II (Figs. 2, 4). However, crucial differences
from the standard pilgrimage design preclude Cluny III's
functions from being the same. First, the principal altar was
not built over a major saint's grave and therefore had no
crypt below it. Second, the transepts had no aisles and
hence could not serve for continuous lateral movements of
110
people from the aisles of the nave into the ambulatory.
Cluny III's comparatively narrow transepts were no more
than giant vertical enlargements of continuous pairs of side
chapels projecting laterally on either side of the choir and
nave respectively, a structurallydifferent arrangementfrom
the liturgical integration of the transept into the nave in the
plan of the pilgrimage churches. Accordingly, the lay public
attending the mass services at Cluny lacked a central
turning point of movement and must have been stationary
rather than dynamic. In this functional modification of the
pilgrimage plan, the relative seclusion of the altar spaces
provided by the staggered plan of Cluny II was preserved.
"Non-integration of the aisleless, double transepts meant
little invasion of these spaces by circulating crowds while
achieving the addition of quiet areas for altars needed for
commemorative rites."23
Apparently it was the monastic office itself which was
staged as a spectacle in the choir. Accordingly, the sculpted
choir screen, recently reconstructed,24 was a low, free-
standing arcade one meter in height in which two open
arches alternated with a blind one, differentfrom the higher
choir enclosures of many other churches of this time. It
placed the chanting choirs of monks in plain view of the
surrounding audience. With this disposition, the monastic
office was produced in competitive terms with the large-
scale staging of the cult of relics in the pilgrimage churches.
If Hugh did plan to make his new abbey church the starting
sanctuary for the Via Podiensis, rites of send-off for the
pilgrimage could have been performed here on a grand
scale.25If, on the other hand, he settled for a mass-audience
church in its own right on the strength of Cluny's interces-
sory services and monastic opus Dei, his enterprise would
have been a competitive venture to pilgrimage itself,
recalling a story related in Peter the Venerable's De
miraculis about a pilgrim from Cluny who despite his
compliance with his pilgrimage vows still appeared to
certain people in their dreams, asking them for prayers on
behalf of his salvation.26
Peter the Venerable'sAusterity Program
After 1077, Cluny's large new income in money had
made Abbot Hugh believe that for the foreseeable future he
would be able to rely on the proceeds of the abbey's
liturgical services, first from royalty and aristocracy, and
failing that, from travelling masses. Hence his economic
policy was based on maximum expenditure, above all in the
two main spiritual programs of the abbey, the building of
the new church and large-scale poverty relief. After this
reliance on the sacred economy of Cluny was shaken, by
both the payment stop from the king of Spain and the
failure to annex the pilgrimage churches of Toulouse and
Conques, the mass appeal aimed for by means of the new
abbey church apparently did not materialize. The record of
 Cluny's financial failure at this time contrasts with the
affluence of the great established pilgrimage sanctuaries,
including its own associated abbey of Vezelay.
When Peter the Venerable, the former prior of Veze-
lay, became abbot of Cluny in 1122, he found it in a
financial crisis.27 If he ascribed that crisis, as the sources
say, to excessive payments from the treasure which his
predecessor Pontius of Melgueil had made to his mer-
cenaries, he was unaware of the dynamics of Cluny's sacred
economy. For those expenditures of the immediate past did
not affect the continuing resources, and it is these which
were no longer sufficient for the upkeep of the abbey and
for the continuance of the building campaign. The huge
monetary contributions from Spain were no longer forth-
coming and were not matched by the contributions of the
abbey's new patron, King Henry I of England. Further-
more, prices continued to rise because the large expenses
had devalued the local currency. Since 1125, the monks'
living standard had declined. As one monk described the
daily staple served in the refectory: "Bread is poor, black,
and branny; wine is very much watered down, stale and
really bad."28
Thus, in 1132 Peter the Venerable devised an austerity
program of drastically reduced expenditures. In a series of
statutes, he argued against too costly dress, reduced the
expenses for lighting and festivities, and replaced certain
domestic employees with lay brothers. Concurrently, he
sought to increase the production of the domain. His
program of restoring the old agrarian economy was even-
tually codified in his Dispositio reifamiliaris of 1148, where
the abbot established a Mesaticum, that is, an obligation
for each deanery to provide for the abbey's needs during a
set period of time. However, production could only be in-
creased on the estates directly exploited by the abbey, since
dues from the fiefs leased out to others were fixed by
contract. Hence Peter the Venerable had to borrow. At
first, Jewish merchants at the neighboring town of Macon
extended loans against objects from the sacristy as security.
Then, Christian merchants from Cluny itself lent money. In
1149, the abbey's debts amounted to over 2,000 marks of
silver.
It is remarkable that the proceeds from the liturgical
services of the abbey church figure nowhere in Peter the
Venerable's austerity program. The completion of the
church was apparently no longer considered an investment
but a liability. The precariousness of art production in this
time of financial crisis was apparent when Peter the
Venerable was forced to pawn the gold plating of the
abbey's crucifix to the Jews of Micon, a gesture whose
symbolic overtones were hard to overlook, particularly for
such a doctrinaire anti-Jewish theologian. The business of
the abbey of Cluny was torn between an old-fashioned
concept of agricultural production, based on direct exploi-
tation of the land, and an equally old-fashioned concept of
money economy built on the expectation that the liturgical
services offered by the monks to the lay community would
remain profitable. The precarious success of this sacred
economy with a few high-placed patrons towards the end of
the eleventh century had severed the abbey of Cluny from
its immediate socioeconomic setting in the region and made
it dependent on the politically uncertain spiritual concerns
of far-away Western European leaders. It had prompted an
overinvestment in sacred art, perhaps even exaggerated
beyond necessity by the monastic community's own spiri-
tual notions of divine sacrifice and liturgical splendor.
However, not only did the investment fail to bring in the
expected returns, but the exchange economy on which it
was predicated adversely affected the abbey's interests in
the region. And by contrast to Abbot Suger's flexible lease
policies in managing the estates of Saint-Denis, which had
prompted an interrelated growth of both agricultural and
monetary economies, Peter the Venerable's austerity mea-
sures were based on the outmoded concept of direct land
exploitation. But then, Suger was presiding over an abbey
church which functioned as a focal sanctuary on the
pilgrimage road, something Hugh of Cluny had failed to
achieve.
NOTES
* The following paper, based on work in progress, is published here
at the urging of the editors, but I am responsible for its short-
comings. I am juxtaposing short digests of well-known publications
on the various topics touched upon without attempting to tackle the
vast bibliographies attached to each of them. The conclusions which
might follow from such juxtapositions are submitted for discussion.
My thanks to Walter Cahn and Ilene H. Forsyth for encouraging
me with this project and for their constructive criticisms.
K. J. Conant, Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture 800-1200,
I.
Pelican History of Art (Harmondsworth, 1954), 198-99.
2. J. Vielliard, Le Guide du pelerin de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle
(MAcon, 1963), 124, pl. V: "Hunc codicem primum Ecclesia romana
diligenter suscepit; scribitur enim in compluribus locis, in Roma
scilicet, in hierosolimitanis horis, ... et precipue apud Cluniacum."
Cf. the facsimile of the page in Libro de la Peregrinaci6n del C6dice
Calixtino (Madrid, 1971). The last word is conspicuously extended
across the entire last line of the colophon.
3. Bernard of Clairvaux, XXX.
4. The following account is derived from G. Duby, "Economie
domaniale et 6conomie mon&taire:Le budget de l'abbaye de Cluny
entre 1080 et 1155," Annales, E.S. C., VII (1952), 154-71.
5. The following account is based on C. J. Bishko, "Liturgical Inter-
cession at Cluny for the King-Emperors of Spain," Studia monas-
tica, III (1961), 53-76; idem, "Fernando I y los origenes de la
alianza castellano-leonesa con Cluny," Cuadernos de Historia de
Espahia,XLVII-XLVIII (1968), 31,135; XLIX-L (1969), 50-116.
6. J. Williams, "San Isidoro in Le6n: Evidence for a New History,"
AB, LV (1973), 172-84.
111
 7. The following account is based on R. de Lasteyrie, L'abbaye de
Saint-Martial de Limoges (Paris, 1901), 83-91.
8. E. Cohen, "Roads and Pilgrimage: A Study in Economic Inter-
action," Studi medievali, XXI (1980), 321-41, esp. 329.
9. de Lasteyrie, L'abbaye, 309. See D. Gaborit-Chopin, La dicoration
de manuscrits a Saint-Martial de Limoges et en Limousin du IXe
au XIIIe siecle (Paris and Geneva, 1969), 18.
10. Cohen, "Roads," 327, 330.
11. Ibid., 332.
12. The following account is based on J. H. Mundy, Liberty and
Political Power in Toulouse, 1050-1230 (New York, 1954), 14-18,
45-46, 62-69; E. Magnou, L'introduction de la riforme gregorienne
a Toulouse (fin XIe-dibut XIIe siecle), Cahiers de l'Association
Marc Bloch de Toulouse, Etudes d'histoire r6gionale, 3 (Toulouse,
1958), passim; T. W. Lyman, "The Sculptural Programme of the
Porte des Comtes Master at Saint-Sernin in Toulouse," JWCI,
XXXIV (1971), 12-39, esp. 37-38.
13. Cohen, "Roads," 331.
14. Possibly the Parma Ildefonsus, a monument to the 'First Pilgrimage'
on the Via Podiensis undertaken by Bishop Godescalc of Le Puy, is
related to this initiative: see Schapiro (as in n. 18).
15. The following account is based on G. Gaillard et al., Rouergue
roman (La Pierre-qui-Vire, 1963), 89.
16. The following account is based on de Lasteyrie, L'abbaye, 89-90.
17. Salet, 154, 162-66. Diemer, 39, 86-87, 443, has pointed out that the
similarities in themselves are not close enough to warrant such a
conclusion. Conversely, Armi, 187 and passim, goes so far as to
112
assume that at least one sculptor went back and forth between both
abbeys.
18. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, nouv. acq. lat. 2246, fol. 79v:
M. Schapiro, The Parma Ildefonsus (New York, 1964), 42-44,
fig. 37.
19. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, lat. 9438, fol. 87: Gaborit-Chopin,
La dicoration, 127-30, 211-12, fig. 164.
20. PL, CLIII, col. 563B.
21. "Infra quos terminos, nullus homo, cuiuscunque conditionis ac
potestatis unquam invasionem aliquam grandem vel parvam, aut
incendium, aut praedam, aut rapinam facere, aut hominum rapere,
vel per iram ferire, aut quod multo gravius est, homicidium per-
petrare, vel truncationem membrorum hominis, sacra autoritate
arcente, ullatenus audeat, nec audendo pertentet."
22. "Lex autem banni huius non vobis solis ponitus qui praesentes estis,
sed et cunctis absentibus et filiis et posteris vestris."
23. This sentence is borrowed from a letter from Ilene Forsyth.
24. Armi/Smith.
25. L. Vazquez de Parga, J. M. Lacarra, J. Uria Riu, Las peregrina-
ciones a Santiago de Compostela, 3v. (Madrid, 1948-1949) I,
137-38.
26. E. R. Labande, "Recherches sur les pelerins dans l'Europe des XIe
et XIIe siecles," CCM, 1 (1958), 159-69, 339-47, esp. 346, with ref-
erence to Peter the Venerable, De miraculis, PL, CLXXXIX,
col. 875.
27. For the following, see Duby, "Economie," 162-66.
28. Ibid., 166: "Panis parvus, niger, furfureus; vinum maxime aquatum,
insipidum et vere vilum."