Cluny Foundation Charter: Monastic Life and Protections

The Monastic Mission and Stakeholder Benefits

According to the Cluny Foundation Charter, the central work of the monks' lives was to be the work prescribed by the Rule of St. Benedict. The monks were to pray and perform "works of mercy toward the poor, the needy, strangers, and pilgrims."¹ The beneficiaries of this arrangement were numerous: the monks themselves, the Church as a whole, those who would receive the monks' attentions, and William and his wife — who donated the land — along with their families.

William notes several times that he is donating the land because he is wealthy and believes it is good for the wealthy to care for others and to give to the Church. He asserts that he wishes to reap a portion of the rewards of those monks who, despising the world, are able to give their lives to the everlasting and thereby obtain mercies and graces from God. By providing the monks with a place to call their own, William stands to benefit spiritually from his charity, hoping that his gesture and gift will secure everlasting life for his soul and body, for his wife's soul, and for the rest of his family as well. In short, all stakeholders in the land essentially stand to benefit from the donation.

Protection from Outside Interference

The Abbey of Cluny was founded in 910 and became one of the most influential monastic establishments of the medieval period, serving as a model for Benedictine reform across Western Europe.

The abbey is protected from outside interference by the explicit terms of the deed as drawn up by William. He writes that the "monks shall have power and permission to elect any one of their order whom they please as abbot and rector, following the will of God and the rule promulgated by St. Benedict — in such wise that neither by the intervention of our own nor of any other power may they be impeded from making a purely canonical election."² William further stipulates that no one is to interfere with the monks in any way whatsoever in their governance of the land — not even the Roman Pontiff himself — and that all the saints in Heaven are to watch over the monks and the abbey to ensure that they are not violated: "It has pleased us also to insert in this document that, from this day, those same monks there congregated shall be subject neither to our yoke, nor to that of our relatives, nor to the sway of any earthly power."³

In other words, the constitution of the deed explicitly forbids any member of the Church from taking the abbey from the monks. William calls upon Heaven for its protection to this end: "And, through God and all his saints, and by the awful day of judgment, I warn and abjure that no one of the secular princes, no count, no bishop whatever, not the pontiff of the aforesaid Roman see, shall invade the property of these servants of God, or alienate it, or diminish it, or exchange it, or give it as a benefice to any one, or constitute any prelate over them against their will."⁴

Should anyone attempt to transgress or interfere with the terms of the charter, William warns that they are to be excommunicated from the Church and denied access to salvation — a stern warning indeed. Such transgressors are to "incur the wrath of God" and "everlasting damnation." The Rule of St. Benedict, which served as the foundation for the monks' daily life, underpinned the entire spiritual logic of these provisions. William is thus not lacking in his description of the penalty to be paid by those who attempt to circumvent the charter as he has written it.