In the middle ages 25

people depending on them ; they also awakened the

same spirit in a great many other monasteries.

This was effected through a far reaching reform:

the federation of monasteries. For, up to that time,

the Benedictine monasteries had been independent.

But Cluny organized these groups and placed it-

self at the head of a strongly centralized regime.

It became a mother-house whose daughters spread

rapidly abroad throughout all France and England

and Germany and Northern Spain and Hungary

and Poland. At the beginning of the twelfth cen-

tury, two thousand Benedictine houses were de-

pendent on the Cluny system ; and today dozens of

French villages still bear the name of St. Bene-

dict, in memory of one or another of those Bene-

dictine monasteries. All western Christendom was

enmeshed in a great network of monastic institu-

tions, of which Cluny was the soul and the inspira-

tion; and thus one mind and one polity permeated

the whole system.

In this process of federalization the abbey of

Cluny was successfully modelled after the feudal

system ; but it then in turn proceeded to impregnate

that same feudalism with its own spirit. Thus, the

feudal conception appears in th^ vow of devotion

which attached a monk to his monastery as a vassal

to his lord, and which he might not break without

his superior's consent ; in the sovereignt}^ of the ab-

bot ; in his visits as chief to his subordinates ; in the

contributions of the affiliated monasteries to the

26 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

mother-house ; and in the graded series of federated

groups. But, by its far reaching influence, so

mighty a power could successfully combat the

forces of evil in contemporary society, and it could

also turn current ideas to the service of Christian-

ity. Cluny christianized feudalism. This influence

is revealed to us in four main aspects, which we

shall now consider.

First, the monks treated their serfs with justice

and kindness ; those fellow human beings who were

born on their land and who worked with them in

forest and field. And this was done at a time when

the lay barons considered their serfs as slaves and

mere instrmnents. "We exercise the same author-

ity as the seigneurs," writes Peter the Venerable,

abbot of Cluny at the beginning of the twelfth cen-

tury, "but we make a different use of it. . . . Our

serfs are regarded as brothers and sisters. Servos

et ancillas, non ut servos et ancillas, sed ut fratres

et sorores hahent."^

Second, and most important, the monks intro-

duced Christian ideals into the minds of feudal

barons. By the sublime morality of Christ, com-

pounded of gentleness and love, they tempered all

that was })rutal in the ways of those developing

Gallo-Franks and Anglo-Celts, whose blood was

eager for war and for combat and for cruelty.

Cluny imposed on them the Peace and Truce of

God, wherein we find sometliing of those rights of

Epint. 28, Migne, Patr. lat. vol. 189, col. 146.