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Updated: June 9, 2025
At a later date, within fifty years of its institution, the Franciscan Order possessed 8000 houses, with 200,000 members. In the twelfth century the Cluniacs had 2000 monasteries in France. In England, as late as 1546, Hooper, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, declared that there were no less than 10,000 nuns in England.
Bernard seized the moment when laxity of observance of the rule had produced its bitterest fruit to break out in remonstrances and warnings, as well to his own Cistercians as to the Cluniacs, on the decline of the genuine monastic spirit. The invective of what he calls his "Apology" spares neither the softness, nor the ostentation, nor the avarice, of religious houses.
John's Church, will be found the entrance to the space once occupied by the first Priory of the Cluniacs in England. Founded in 1078 by William de Warenne and his wife Gundrada and dedicated to St. Pancras, the Priory was always closely allied with the parent house on the continent.
Hence reforms were attempted; and the Cluniacs and Cistercians and other orders arose, modelled after the original institution on Monte Cassino. These were only branches of the Benedictines. Their vows and habits and duties were the same.
He justifies the departure from the strict Benedictine rule partly on the ground of its severity, partly because of its unsuitability to the climate; but his defence clearly shows how far, even under so admirable a ruler, the Cluniacs had fallen away from the monastic ideal.
Thus, without looking too minutely into the matter, we find that when the thirteenth century opens, or if you will, when Henry III. came to the throne in 1216, there were three great orders of monks in England the old Benedictines, who had held houses and lands for centuries; the Cluniacs, who were the reformed Benedictines; and the Cistercians, who may be styled the reformed Cluniacs.
Carleton had been, as he said, in the novitiate at Canterbury for a few months, and was able to tell him a good deal about the life there; but the differences between the Augustinians and the Cluniacs made it impossible for him to go with any minuteness into the life of the Priory at Lewes.
A few years after the expulsion of Pontius, St. Bernard wrote to the Abbot of the Cluniac house of St. Thierry a so-called apology, which, while professing a great regard for the Cluniacs Order and pretending to criticise the deficiencies of his own Cistercians, is in reality a scathing attack upon the lapse of the former from the Benedictine rule.
"Dear lad," said the priest, "you must not feel it like that. Remember our Lord bore contempt as well as pain." There was silence a moment, and then Chris began again. "Tell me about Lewes, father. What will it be like?" "It will be bitterly hard," said the priest deliberately. "Christ Church was too bitter for me, as you know. I came out after six months, and the Cluniacs are harder.
He was already twenty-three, the Prior had given his conditional consent before, and there was no need for waiting. Yes, they were Cluniacs; but Ralph believed that they were far from strict just at present. It need not be the end of Chris so far as this world was concerned.
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