The Abbey of Cluny

cluny-iii
Cluny III © 2015 Professor Carol

Cluny. A name on a music history test. A place in Burgundy, at the Eastern edge of France, where something or other important happened about a monastery and Abbey in the early Medieval period. That much I remembered—couldn’t forget it if I tried, really, since it was on so many tests.

Fast forward to June 2015, with me driving a stick-shift SEAT Leon over curvy roads glued onto the sides of mountains to get to Cluny in order to film a sequence for our Early Sacred Music course. West Virginia, move over: you’ve got a lot to learn from these mountains.

I arrive in a sun-washed late June afternoon, two days after the summer solstice. The town squares glisten in a pastel wash of Romanesque and Gothic architecture leading to the spot where the great Abbey church of Cluny stood. The Abbaye de Cluny—Christendom’s largest church for nearly 500 years until the construction of St. Peter’s of Rome in the 16th century.

Cluny III begun in 1088
Cluny III begun in 1088

Now it all makes sense. The Abbey, vast, 555 feet long, with towers more than 100 feet high. Cluny, a spot of extraordinary ecclesiastical influence with its Romanesque vaults and endless stone sculptures showing every symbol mentioned either in scriptures or in early Christian tradition. Awash in light and alive in symbolism!

And then, poof, its downfall. First it was political, as the French Kings took over an Abbey that had been outside of their jurisdiction. Then, the Huguenots sacked the church in the 16th century. But that damage was reparable.

It’s what the French did to their own treasure chest that could never be repaired: the Revolutionaries after 1789 cursed the Church and God, nationalized religious properties, spit on their heritage, and used Cluny as an in-town quarry, dismantling it stone by stone for more “useful” projects. They cut a road straight across the nave, dissecting this sacred space with the very wagons that would carry off her treasures. The only part of the Abbey left intact is the tower over the south transept.

cluny-south
Cluny South Transept © 2015 Professor Carol

So, standing here, filming a script for addition to our DVD version of Early Sacred Music, I wanted to weep for the people who had no choice but to watch this tragedy happen. They were powerless to stop the newly empowered Revolutionaries. The very folk who would embrace Napoleon and acquiesce to his power grabs. The very men who ultimately would perish in his defeated army.

It’s all here in the remaining walls (just a few) and the wide-open spaces, framed by fractured arches and speckled by the bases of massive columns. Where the devout once sat, kids skate-board and climb on the ruins. The road still runs through, with growling motorcycles, squatty French delivery trucks, and stylish Peugeots cautiously traversing the busy path.

Oh, William the Pious, how you would weep to see what has become of your Abbey. But one thing is clear: it probably leaves a bigger impression on the thousands of people who visit every year by virtue of being a ruin. A ruin, desecrated not by time and weather, but by the stupidity of the human race. How could they do this to such a dazzling site, especially at the height of the Enlightenment? But they did, much as people do it today to sacred sites in the Middle East. It’s an older tragedy than we often think.

Cluny. I’m very glad it leapt off the page for me, finally, after all these decades.

1 thought on “The Abbey of Cluny”

  1. What a parallel with now! It makes me sad to think about it. I knew about destruction during wars, but I had no idea such a thing ever happened on a slow, systematic basis in Western Europe, especially during the Enlightenment, and done by the people themselves, not by invaders. This is eye-opening and tragic. Thank you for writing about it.

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