Notre Dame de Rouen. The façade of the Gothic Church in France. Photographer: Hippo1947. Licence: SHUTTERSTOCK.
Showing posts with label Abbey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abbey. Show all posts

Tuesday 7 August 2012

Worcester Cathedral (Part Two)


Text and illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia,
unless otherwise stated.



Worcester Cathedral's West Window.
Author: Greenshed
Photo: January 2007.


Other notable burials include:

Richard Edes (died1604), a chaplain to Elizabeth I and James I.
William Hamilton, 2nd Duke of Hamilton (1616-1651), Scottish Royalist Commander during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms
John Gauden (1605–1662), Bishop of Worcester
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947), Prime Minister

An image of the Cathedral's West Facade appeared on the reverse of the Series E British £20 note, commemorating Sir Edward Elgar, issued between 1999 and 2007. The notes are gradually being withdrawn from circulation to be replaced by a new series.

Architecture

Worcester Cathedral embodies many features that are highly typical of an English Mediaeval Cathedral. Like the Cathedrals of Salisbury and Lincoln, it has two transepts crossing the nave, rather than the single transept, usual on the Continent. 

This feature of English Cathedrals was to facilitate the private saying of the Holy Office by many clergy or monks. Worcester is also typical of English Cathedrals in having a chapter house and cloister. To the North Side of the Cathedral is an entrance porch, a feature designed to eliminate the draught which, prior to the installation of modern swing doors, would blow through Cathedral whenever the Western Doors were open.





The Screen and Nave of Worcester Cathedral.
looking West towards the West Window. 



Worcester Cathedral has important parts of the building, dating from every Century from the 11th- to the 16th-Century. Its tower, in the Perpendicular style, is described by Alec Clifton-Taylor as "exquisite" and is best seen across the River Severn.

The earliest part of the building at Worcester is the multi-columned Norman crypt, with cushion capitals remaining from the original Monastic Church, begun by St. Wulfstan in 1084. 





The earliest part of the building at Worcester is the multi-columned Norman crypt, with cushion capitals remaining from the original Monastic Church, begun by St. Wulfstan in 1084. 
Photo: February 2011.


Also from the Norman period, is the circular chapter house of 1120, made octagonal on the outside when the walls were reinforced in the 14th-Century. The nave was built and rebuilt, piecemeal, and in different styles, by several different architects over a period of 200 years, from 1170 to 1374; some bays being a unique and decorative transition between Norman and Gothic. The oldest parts show alternate layers of green sandstone from Highley in Shropshire and yellow Cotswold limestone.


PART THREE FOLLOWS


Monday 6 August 2012

Hildegard von Bingen (Part Seven)



Text and illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia,
unless otherwise stated.





His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, extended the liturgical cult of Saint Hildegard to the universal Church in 2012.


Hildegard's name was, nonetheless, taken up in the Roman Martyrology at the end of the 16th-Century. Her Feast Day is 17 September. Numerous Popes have referred to Hildegard as a Saint, including Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the liturgical cult of St. Hildegard to the universal Church in a process known as "equivalent canonisation". Hildegard’s parish and pilgrimage Church in Eibingen, near Rüdesheim, houses her relics.

Hildegard of Bingen also appears in the calendar of saints of various Anglican churches, such as that of the Church of England, in which she is commemorated on 17 September.

Hildegard has also become a figure of reverence within the contemporary New Age movement, mostly due to her holistic and natural view of healing, as well as her status as a mystic. She was the inspiration for Dr. Gottfried Hertzka's "Hildegard-Medicine", and is the namesake for June Boyce-Tillman's Hildegard Network, a healing centre that focuses on a holistic approach to wellness and brings together people interested in exploring the links between spirituality, the arts, and healing.





German Emperor, Friedrich Barbarossa, mit seinen Söhnen König Heinrich und Herzog Friedrich. Miniatur aus der Welfenchronik (Kloster Weingarten, 1179-1191). Heute Landesbibliothek Fulda.

Frederic I Barbarossa and his sons King Henry VI and Duke Frederick VI. Medieval illustration from the Chronicle of the Guelphs (Weingarten Abbey, 1179-1191).



In recent years, Hildegard has become of particular interest to feminist scholars. Her reference to herself as a member of the "weaker sex" and her rather constant belittling of women, though at first seemingly problematic, must be considered within the context of the patriarchal Church hierarchy. Hildegard frequently referred to herself as an unlearned woman, completely incapable of Biblical exegesis. 

Such a statement on her part, however, worked to her advantage, because it made her statements that all of her writings and music came from visions of the Divine more believable, therefore giving Hildegard the authority to speak in a time and place where few women were permitted a voice. Hildegard used her voice to condemn Church practices she disagreed with, in particular simony.

In space, she is commemorated by the asteroid 898 Hildegard.


THIS CONCLUDES THE ARTICLE ON HILDEGARD VON BINGEN.


Friday 3 August 2012

Worcester Cathedral (Part One)


Text and illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia,
unless otherwise stated.






Worcester Cathedral.
Author: Newton2.
Photo: 2004.
From: Wikimedia Commons.



Worcester Cathedral is an Anglican Cathedral in Worcester, England; situated on a bank overlooking the River Severn. It is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Worcester. Its official name is The Cathedral Church of Christ and Blessed Mary the Virgin of Worcester.

Built between 1084 and 1504, Worcester Cathedral represents every style of English architecture from Norman to Perpendicular Gothic. It is famous for its Norman crypt and unique chapter house, its unusual Transitional Gothic bays, its fine woodwork and its "exquisite" central tower, which is of particularly fine proportion.

The Cathedral's West facade appeared, with a portrait of Sir Edward Elgar, on the reverse of the £20 note issued by the Bank of England between 1999 and 2007.




The Cattley Window, Worcester Cathedral. At the West End of the North Aisle. Dedicated by Richard Cattley, Honorary Canon of the Cathedral Church, in memory of his wife, Harriet Emma, who died 1854, and his son, Richard Thomas D'Arcy, who died 1894.
Author: Bob Embleton.
Photo: July 2007.
From: Wikimedia Commons.



The Cathedral was founded in 680 A.D., with Bishop Bosel as its head. The first Cathedral was built in this period, but nothing now remains of it. The existing crypt of the Cathedral dates from the 10th-Century and the time of St. Oswald, Bishop of Worcester. The current Cathedral dates from the 12th-Century and the 13th-Century.

Monks and nuns had been present at the Cathedral since the 7th-Century (see Bede). The Monastery became Benedictine in the second half of the 10th-Century. There is an important connection to Fleury, as Oswald, Bishop of Worcester 961 A.D. - 992 A.D., being prior at the same time, was professed at Fleury and introduced the Monastic Rule of Fleury to Worcester. The Benedictine monks were driven out in 1540 and replaced by Secular Canons.

The former monastic library of Worcester contained a considerable number of manuscripts which are, with other libraries, now scattered over Cambridge, London (British Library), Oxford Bodleian, and the Cathedral library at Worcester.




Worcester Cathedral's Gothic Vaulting.
Photo: January 2008.
Author: Mattana.
From: Wikimedia Commons.



Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the building was re-established as a Cathedral of Secular Clergy. The Cathedral was subject to major restoration work by Sir George Gilbert Scott and A. E. Perkins in the 1860s.

The Cathedral contains the tomb of King John in its chancel. Before his death in Newark in 1216, John had requested to be buried at Worcester. He is buried between the shrines of St Wulstan and St Oswald (now destroyed).

The Cathedral has a memorial, Prince Arthur's Chantry, to the young prince, Arthur Tudor, who is buried here. Arthur's younger brother and next in line for the throne was Henry VIII. Worcester Cathedral was doubtless spared destruction by Henry VIII, during the English Reformation, because of his brother's chantry in the Cathedral.


PART TWO FOLLOWS

Hildegard von Bingen (Part Six)


Text and illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia,
unless otherwise stated.





Hildegardis-Codex, sogenannter Scivias-Codex, Szene:
Der mystische Leib
(The Mystical Body).
circa 1165 A.D.
From: Wikimedia Commons.



Due to Church limitation on public, discursive rhetoric, the mediaeval rhetorical arts included: preaching, letter writing, poetry, and the encyclopedic tradition. Hildegard’s participation in these arts speaks to her significance as a female rhetorician, transcending bans on women’s social participation and interpretation of Scripture.

The acceptance of public preaching by a woman, even a well-connected Abbess and acknowledged Prophet. does not fit the usual stereotype of this time. Her preaching was not limited to the Monasteries; she even preached publicly in 1160 in Germany. She conducted four preaching tours throughout Germany, speaking to both clergy and laity in Chapter Houses and in public, mainly denouncing clerical corruption and calling for reform.




Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who advanced the work of Hildegard von Bingen at the Synod of Trier in 1147 and 1148.


Bernard of Clairvaux, O.Cist (1090 – August 20, 1153) was a French Abbot and the primary builder of the reforming Cistercian order.

After the death of his mother, Bernard sought admission into the Cistercian order. Three years later, he was sent to found a new Abbey at an isolated clearing in a glen known as the Val d'Absinthe, about 15 km southeast of Bar-sur-Aube

According to tradition, Bernard founded the Monastery on 25 June 1115, naming it Claire Vallée, which evolved into Clairvaux. There, Bernard would preach an immediate faith, in which the intercessor was the Virgin Mary.

 In the year 1128, Bernard assisted at the Council of Troyes, at which he traced the outlines of the Rule of the Knights Templar, who soon became the ideal of Christian nobility.



Many Abbots and Abbesses asked Hildegard for prayers and opinions on various matters. She travelled widely during her four preaching tours. She had several rather fanatic followers, including Guibert of Gembloux, who wrote frequently to her and eventually became her secretary, after Volmar died in 1173. In addition, Hildegard influenced several monastic women of her time and the centuries that followed; in particular, she engaged in correspondence with another nearby visionary, Elisabeth of Schönau.





Hildegard von Bingen corresponded with another visionary, 
Elisabeth of Schönau. This photo is of the Altar of St. Elizabeth of Schönau (with the reliquary in which Elizabeth's skull is kept) in the Monastery Church of St. Florin, Kloster Schönau-im-Taunus.


Hildegard communicated with Popes, such as Eugene III and Anastasius IV, statesmen, such as Abbot Suger, German Emperors, such as Frederick I Barbarossa, and other notable figures, such as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who advanced her work, at the behest of her Abbot, Kuno, at the Synod of Trier in 1147 and 1148.

Hildegard of Bingen’s correspondence with many people is an important element of her literary work because this is where we can see her speaking most directly to us.


Beatification and Canonisation

Hildegard was one of the first persons for whom the Roman canonisation process was officially applied, but the process took so long that four attempts at canonisation were not completed, and she remained at the level of her beatification.


PART SEVEN FOLLOWS

Tuesday 31 July 2012

Hildegard von Bingen (Part Five)


Text and Illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia,
unless otherwise accredited.




Benediktinerinnenkloster Eibingen
(Eibingen Abbey)
Author: Moguntiner
Photo: October 2006.


Eibingen Abbey (in German, Abtei St. Hildegard, full name, Benedictine Abbey of St. Hildegard) is a community of Benedictine nuns in Eibingen, near Rüdesheim, in Hesse, Germany.

The original community was founded in 1165 by Hildegard von Bingen. It was dissolved at the beginning of the 19th-Century during the secularisation of this part of Germany.

The present community was established by Charles, 6th Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg in 1904 and re-settled from St. Gabriel's Abbey, Bertholdstein. The nunnery belongs to the Beuronese Congregation within the Benedictine Confederation.

In 1941, the nuns were expelled by the Nazis; they were not able to return until 1945.



Abtei St. Hildegard in Eibingen,
Ortsteil von Rüdesheim am Rhein.
Innenansicht der Abteikirche.
Interior of the Abbey Church of Eibingen.
Author: Haffitt.
Photo: May 2012.
From: Wikimedia Commons.


In 1988, the sisters founded Marienrode Priory at Hildesheim, which became independent of Eibingen Abbey in 1998.

The nuns work in the vineyard and in the craft workshops, besides undertaking the traditional duties of hospitality. They can be heard (but not seen) singing their regular services.

The abbey is a Rhine Gorge World Heritage Site. The church has been used for concerts of the Rheingau Musik Festival, such as a "BachTrompetenGala" with Edgar Krapp, organ.



Eibingen Abbey: A Benedictine Abbey, full of the contemplative life.


It is claimed by some that it is likely Hildegard learned simple Latin, and the tenets of the Christian faith, but was not instructed in the Seven Liberal Arts, which formed the basis of all education for the learned classes in the Middle Ages: the Trivium of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric, plus the Quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.

The correspondence she kept with the outside world, both spiritual and social, transgressed the Cloister as a space of female confinement, and served to document Hildegard’s grand style and strict formatting of mediaeval letter writing.

Contributing to Christian European rhetorical traditions, Hildegard “authorised herself as a theologian” through alternative rhetorical arts. Hildegard was creative in her interpretation of theology. She believed that her monastery should not allow novices who were from a different class than nobility because it put them in an inferior position. She also stated that ‘woman may be made from man, but no man can be made without a woman.'


PART SIX FOLLOWS


Saturday 28 July 2012

Peterborough Cathedral (Part Four)


Text and illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia
unless otherwise annotated.






Cloisters, Peterborough Cathedral. 
A view across what remains of the cloisters, largely destroyed during the Civil War, with the South side of the Cathedral behind.
Author: Derek Harper
Photo: December 2007.
Taken from Wikimedia Commons.



The Cathedral was vandalised during the English Civil War, in 1643, by Parliamentarian troops. As was common at the time, almost all the stained glass and the Medieval Choir Stalls were destroyed, and the High Altar and reredos were demolished, as were the cloisters and Lady Chapel. All the monuments and memorials of the Cathedral were also damaged or destroyed.



King Henry VIII's wife, Katharine of Aragon, was buried here in 1536, as was Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587.
Mary was later removed to Westminster Abbey.
Author: Dave Hitchborne
Photo: April 2004.
From Wikimedia Commons.




The Choir of The Cathedral Church of St Peter, St Paul and St Andrew, Peterborough.
Author: Dave Hitchborne
Photo: April 2004.
From Wikimedia Commons.



Some of the damage was repaired during the 17th- and 18th-Centuries. In 1883, extensive restoration work began, with the interior pillars, the Choir and the West Front being completely rebuilt under the supervision of John Loughborough Pearson, and new hand-carved Choir Stalls, Cathedra (Bishop's Throne), Choir Pulpit and the marble pavement and High Altar being added. A stepped level of battlements was removed from the Central Tower, reducing its height, slightly.

In the early evening of 22 November 2001, the Cathedral was hit by a fire, thought to have been started deliberately amongst plastic chairs stored in the North Choir Aisle. Fortunately, the fire was spotted by one of the vergers, allowing a swift response by emergency services.




Peterborough Cathedral: Looking from the Nave to the High Altar.
Author: Dave Hitchborne
Photo: April 2004.
From Wikimedia Commons.



The High Altar.
Author: Dave Hitchborne
Photo: April 2004.
From Wikimedia Commons.



The timing was particularly unfortunate, as a complete restoration of the painted wooden ceiling was nearing completion. The oily smoke given off by the plastic chairs was particularly damaging, coating much of the building with a sticky black layer. 



Fan vaulting in the ambulatory at Peterborough Cathedral.
Author: NotFromUtrecht
Photo: March 2010.
From Wikimedia Commons.



The seat of the fire was close to the organ and the combination of direct damage from the fire, and the water used to extinguish it, necessitated a full-scale rebuild of the instrument, putting it out of action for several years.

An extensive programme of repairs to the West Front began in July 2006 and has cost in excess of half a million pounds. This work is concentrated around the statues located in niches, which have been so badly affected by years of pollution and weathering that, in some cases, they have only stayed intact thanks to iron bars inserted through them from the head to the body. This enabled people to "sponsor" a stone.


THIS CONCLUDES THE ARTICLE ON PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL


Sunday 22 July 2012

Hildegard von Bingen (Part Three)


Text and Illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia, unless otherwise accredited.




"Universal Man" illumination 
from Hildegard's Liber Divinorum Operum, 1165


Hildegard's Vita was begun by Godfrey of Disibodenberg, under Hildegard's supervision. It was between November 1147 and February 1148, at the Synod in Trier, that Pope Eugenus heard about Hildegard’s writings. It was from this that she received Papal approval to document her visions as revelations from the Holy Spirit, giving her instant credibility.

Before Hildegard’s death, a problem arose with the clergy of Mainz. A man buried in Rupertsburg had died after excommunication from the Church. Therefore, the clergy wanted to remove his body from the sacred ground. Hildegard did not accept this idea, replying that it was a sin and that the man had been reconciled to the Church at the time of his death.

On 17 September 1179, when Hildegard died, her Sisters claimed they saw two streams of light appear in the skies and cross over the room where she was dying.

Hildegard's musical, literary, and scientific writings are housed primarily in two manuscripts: the Dendermonde manuscript and the Riesencodex. The Dendermonde manuscript was copied under Hildegard's supervision at Rupertsberg, while the Riesencodex was copied in the century after Hildegard's death.





A Facsimile of the"Riesencodex"

(Hs.2 of the Hessische Landesbibliothek, Wiesbaden, fol. 466-481v)




Attention in recent decades to women of the Mediaeval Church has led to a great deal of popular interest in Hildegard, particularly her music. In addition to the Ordo Virtutum, sixty-nine musical compositions, each with its own original poetic text, survive, and at least four other texts are known, though their musical notation has been lost.

This is one of the largest repertoires among Mediaeval composers. Hildegard also wrote nearly 400 letters to correspondents ranging from Popes to Emperors to abbots and abbesses; two volumes of material on natural medicine and cures; an invented language called the Lingua ignota; various minor works, including a Gospel commentary and two works of hagiography; and three great volumes of visionary theology: Scivias, Liber vitae meritorum ("Book of Life's Merits" or "Book of the Rewards of Life"), and Liber divinorum operum ("Book of Divine Works").

One of her better known works, Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues), is a morality play. It is unsure when some of Hildegard’s compositions were composed, though the Ordo Virtutum is thought to have been composed as early as 1151. 

The morality play consists of monophonic melodies for the Anima (human Soul) and 16 Virtues. There is also one speaking part for the Devil. Scholars assert that the role of the Devil would have been played by Volmar, while Hildegard's nuns would have played the parts of Anima and the Virtues.


PART FOUR FOLLOWS


Wednesday 18 July 2012

Hildegard von Bingen (Part Two)


Text and Illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia, unless otherwise accredited.




Mutterschaft aus dem Geiste und dem Wasser
(Motherhood from the Spirit and the Water), 1165

In any case, Hildegard and Jutta were enclosed at Disibodenberg in the Palatinate Forest in what is now Germany. Jutta was also a visionary and thus attracted many followers who came to visit her at the enclosure. Hildegard also tells us that Jutta taught her to read and write, but that she was unlearned and therefore incapable of teaching Hildegard Biblical interpretation.

Hildegard and Jutta most likely prayed, meditated, read scriptures, such as the psalter, and did some sort of handiwork during the hours of the Divine Office. This also might have been a time when Hildegard learned how to play the ten-stringed psaltery. Volmar, a frequent visitor, may have taught Hildegard simple psalm notation. The time she studied music could also have been the beginning of the compositions she would later create.

Upon Jutta's death in 1136, Hildegard was unanimously elected as "magistra" of the community by her fellow nuns. Abbot Kuno of Disibodenberg also asked Hildegard to be Prioress, which would be under his authority. Hildegard, however, wanted more independence for herself and her nuns and asked Abbot Kuno to allow them to move to Rupertsberg. This was to be a move towards poverty, from a stone complex that was well established to a temporary dwelling place. 

When the abbot declined Hildegard's proposition, Hildegard went over his head and received the approval of Archbishop Henry I of Mainz. Abbot Kuno did not relent, however, until Hildegard was stricken by an illness that kept her paralyzed and unable to move from her bed, an event that she attributed to God's unhappiness at her not following his orders to move her nuns to Rupertsberg. 




Hildegard von Bingen's alphabet "Litterae ignotae"


It was only when the Abbot himself could not move Hildegard that he decided to grant the nuns their own monastery. Hildegard and about twenty nuns moved to the Saint Rupertsberg monastery in 1150, where Volmar served as provost, as well as Hildegard's confessor and scribe. In 1165, Hildegard founded a second monastery for her nuns at Eibingen.

Visions

Hildegard says that she first saw "The Shade of the Living Light" at the age of three, and by the age of five she began to understand that she was experiencing visions. She used the term 'visio' to this feature of her experience, and recognized that it was a gift that she could not explain to others. Hildegard explained that she saw all things in the light of God through the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.

She was hesitant to share her visions, confiding only to Jutta, who, in turn, told Volmar, Hildegard's tutor and, later, secretary. Throughout her life, she continued to have many visions, and in 1141, at the age of 42, Hildegard received a vision she believed to be an instruction from God, to "write down that which you see and hear." Still hesitant to record her visions, Hildegard became physically ill. The illustrations recorded in the book of Scivias were visions that Hildegard experienced, causing her great suffering and tribulations. In her first theological text, Scivias ("Know the Ways"), Hildegard describes her struggle within:

But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words, not with stubbornness but in the exercise of humility, until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, and by the witness of a certain noble maiden of good conduct [the nun Richardis von Stade] and of that man whom I had secretly sought and found, as mentioned above, I set my hand to the writing.

While I was doing it, I sensed, as I mentioned before, the deep profundity of scriptural exposition; and, raising myself from illness by the strength I received, I brought this work to a close – though just barely – in ten years. [...] And I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places. And again I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me, 'Cry out therefore, and write thus!'



PART THREE FOLLOWS


Wednesday 11 July 2012

Cluny Abbey (Part Three)



Coat of Arms of Cluny Abbey: 
"Gules, two keys in saltire, the wards upwards and outwards, or. Overall, a sword in paleargent".

Text is from Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia.

The Cluny library was one of the richest and most important in France and Europe. It was a storehouse of numerous very valuable manuscripts. During the religious conflicts of 1562, the Huguenots sacked the abbey, destroying or dispersing many of the manuscripts. Of those that were left, some were burned in 1790 by a rioting mob related to the excesses of the French Revolution. Others still were stored away in the Cluny town hall.

The French Government worked to relocate such treasures, including those that ended up in private hands. They are now held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France at Paris. The British Museum holds some sixty or so charters originating from Cluny.


The Consecration of Cluny III by Pope Urban II, 12th century (Bibliothèque Nationale de France).


In the fragmented and localized Europe of the 10th and 11th centuries, the Cluniac network extended its reforming influence far. Free of lay and episcopal interference, responsible only to the papacy, which was in a state of weakness and disorder with rival popes supported by competing nobles, Cluniac spirit was felt revitalizing the Norman church, reorganizing the royal French monastery at Fleury and inspiring St Dunstan in England. There were no official English Cluniac priories until that of Lewes in Sussex, founded by the Anglo-Norman earl William de Warenne c 1077. The best-preserved Cluniac houses in England are Castle Acre Priory, Norfolk, and Much Wenlock Priory, Shropshire. It is thought that there were only three Cluniac nunneries in England, one of them being Delapré Abbey at Northampton.

Until the reign of Henry VI, all Cluniac houses in England were French, governed by French priors and directly controlled from Cluny. Henry's act of raising the English priories to independent abbeys was a political gesture, a mark of England's nascent national consciousness.

The early Cluniac establishments had offered refuges from a disordered world but by the late 11th century, Cluniac piety permeated society. This is the period that achieved the final Christianization of the heartland of Europe.



Pope Callixtus II was elected at the papal election, 1119, at Cluny.


Well-born and educated Cluniac priors worked eagerly with local royal and aristocratic patrons of their houses, filled responsible positions in their chanceries and were appointed to bishoprics. Cluny spread the custom of veneration of the king as patron and support of the Church, and in turn the conduct of 11th-century kings, and their spiritual outlook, appeared to undergo a change. In England, Edward the Confessor was later canonized. In Germany, the penetration of Cluniac ideals was effected in concert with Henry III of the Salian dynasty, who had married a daughter of the duke of Aquitaine. Henry was infused with a sense of his sacramental role as a delegate of Christ in the temporal sphere. He had a spiritual and intellectual grounding for his leadership of the German church, which culminated in the pontificate of his kinsman, Pope Leo IX. The new pious outlook of lay leaders enabled the enforcement of the Truce of God movement to curb aristocratic violence.

Within his order, the Abbot of Cluny was free to assign any monk to any house; he created a fluid structure around a central authority that was to become a feature of the royal chanceries of England and of France, and of the bureaucracy of the great independent dukes, such as that of Burgundy. Cluny's highly centralized hierarchy was a training ground for Catholic prelates: four monks of Cluny became popesGregory VIIUrban IIPaschal II and Urban V.

An orderly succession of able and educated abbots, drawn from the highest aristocratic circles, led Cluny, and three were canonized: Saints Odo of Cluny, the second abbot (died 942); Hugh of Cluny, the sixth abbot (died 1109); and Odilo, the fifth abbot (died 1049). Odilo continued to reform other monasteries, but as Abbot of Cluny, he also exercised tighter control of the order's far-flung priories.


Cluny and the Gregorian reforms



A plan of the Abbey

Cluny was not known for its severity or asceticism, but the abbots of Cluny supported the revival of the papacy and the reforms of Pope Gregory VII. The Cluniac establishment found itself closely identified with the Papacy. In the early 12th century, the order lost momentum under poor government. It was subsequently revitalized under Abbot Peter the Venerable (died 1156), who brought lax priories back into line and returned to stricter discipline. Cluny reached its apogee of power and influence under Peter, as its monks became bishops, legates, and cardinals throughout France and the Holy Roman Empire. But by the time Peter died, newer and more austere orders such as the Cistercians were generating the next wave of ecclesiastical reform.

Outside monastic structures, the rise of English and French nationalism created a climate unfavourable to the existence of monasteries autocratically ruled by a head residing in Burgundy. The Papal Schism of 1378 to 1409 further divided loyalties: France recognizing a Pope at Avignon and England one at Rome, interfered with the relations between Cluny and its dependent houses. Under the strain, some English houses, such as Lenton PrioryNottingham, were naturalized (Lenton in 1392) and no longer regarded as alien priories, weakening the Cluniac structure.

By the time of the French Revolution, the monks were so thoroughly identified with the Ancien Régime that the order was suppressed in France in 1790 and the monastery at Cluny almost totally demolished in 1810. Later, it was sold and used as a quarry until 1823. Today, little more than one of the original eight towers remains of the whole monastery.




Pope Gregory VII was once a monk at Cluny


Modern excavations of the Abbey began in 1927 under the direction of Kenneth John Conant, American architectural historian of Harvard University, and continued (although not continuously) until 1950.

Decline and destruction of the buildings.

Starting from the 12th century, Cluny had serious financial problems, caused mainly by the construction of the third abbey. Charity given to the poor increased the expenditure. The influence of the abbey weakened gradually as other religious orders rose (Cistercians in the 12th, then Mendicants in the 13th century). Bad management of the grounds and unwillingness of the subsidiary companies to pay the annual taxable quota helped to lessen Cluny's revenue. Cluny raised loans and ended up being involved in debt to its creditors, who were merchants of Cluny or Jews of Mâcon.

The conflicts with the priories multiplied and the authority of the pope became heavier. To the 14th-Century, the Pope frequently named the abbots. The crises at the end of the Middle Ages and the wars of religion in the 16th-Century weakened the abbey a little more. The monks lived in luxury and there were not more than about 60 monks in the middle of the 15th-Century. With the Concordat of Bologna in 1516, overseen by Antoine Duprat, the king gained the power to appoint the abbot of Cluny.

The years following the French Revolution were fatal to all the monastic buildings and its church. In 1793, its  archives were burned and the church was delivered to plundering. The abbey estate was sold in 1798 for 2,140,000 francs. Until 1813, the abbey was used as a stone quarry to build houses in the town.

Today, there remain only the buildings built under the Old Mode as well as a small portion of Cluny III. Only the Southern Transept and its Bell-Tower still exist. The remaining structure represents less than 10% of the floor area of Cluny III, which was the largest Church of Christendom, until the construction of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, five centuries later.

In 1928, the site was excavated and recognized by the American archaeologist Kenneth J. Conant with the backing of the Medieval Academy of America.


THIS CONCLUDES THE ARTICLE ON CLUNY ABBEY



Friday 6 July 2012

Hildegard von Bingen (Part One)


Text and Illustrations from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia,
unless otherwise accredited.




Illumination from the Liber Scivias showing Hildegard receiving a vision
and dictating to her scribe and secretary


Saint Hildegard of Bingen, O.S.B. (German: Hildegard von Bingen; Latin: Hildegardis Bingensis) (1098 A.D. – 17 September 1179 A.D.), also known as Saint Hildegard, and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath. Elected a magistra by her fellow nuns in 1136, she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. One of her works as a composer, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play.

She wrote theological, botanical and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, and poems, while supervising brilliant miniature Illuminations.

On 10 May 2012, Pope Benedict XVI extended the liturgical cult of Saint Hildegard to the universal Church, in a process known as "equivalent canonization". On 27 May 2012, the Pope announced that, on 7 October 2012, he will declare Saint Hildegard to be the 35th Doctor of the Church.




Eibingen Abbey was founded by Hildegard von Bingen in 1165.


Eibingen Abbey (in German, "Abtei St. Hildegard", full name, Benedictine Abbey of St. Hildegard) is a community of Benedictine nuns in Eibingen, near Rüdesheim, in Hesse, Germany.

The original community was founded in 1165 by Hildegard von Bingen. It was dissolved at the beginning of the 19th-Century during the secularisation of this part of Germany.

The present community was established by Charles, 6th Prince of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg in 1904 and re-settled from St. Gabriel's Abbey, Bertholdstein. The nunnery belongs to the Beuronese Congregation within the Benedictine Confederation.

In 1941, the nuns were expelled by the Nazis; they were not able to return until 1945.

In 1988, the sisters founded Marienrode Priory at Hildesheim, which became independent of Eibingen in 1998.

The nuns work in the vineyard and in the craft workshops, besides undertaking the traditional duties of hospitality. They can be heard (but not seen) singing their regular services.

The Abbey is a Rhine Gorge World Heritage Site. The Church has been used for concerts of the Rheingau Musik Festival, such as a "Bach Trompeten Gala" with Edgar Krapp, organ.




Hildegard's date of birth is uncertain. It has been concluded that she may have been born in the year 1098. Hildegard was raised in a family of free nobles. She was her parents' tenth child, sickly from birth. In her Vita, Hildegard explains that from a very young age she had experienced visions.

Monastic life

Perhaps due to Hildegard's visions, or as a method of political positioning, Hildegard's parents, Hildebert and Mechthilde, offered her as an oblate to the Church. The date of Hildegard's "Enclosure in the Church" is contentious. Her Vita tells us she was enclosed with an older nun, Jutta, at the age of eight. However, Jutta's enclosure date is known to be in 1112, at which time Hildegard would have been fourteen. Some scholars speculate that Hildegard was placed in the care of Jutta, the daughter of Count Stephan II of Sponheim, at the age of eight, before the two women were enclosed together six years later. There is no written record of the twenty-four years of Hildegard's life that she was in the convent together with Jutta. It is possible that Hildegard could have been a chantress and a worker in the herbarium and infirmarium.


PART TWO FOLLOWS


Cluny Abbey (Part Two)






Coat of Arms of Cluny Abbey:
"Gules, two keys in saltire, the wards upwards and outwards, or. Overall, a sword in pale, argent".

Text is from Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia.



Partly due to the Order's opulence, the Cluniac nunneries were not seen as being particularly cost-effective. The Order did not have interest in founding many new houses for women.

The customs of Cluny represented a shift from the earlier ideal of a Benedictine monastery as an agriculturally self-sufficient unit. This was similar to the contemporary villa of the more Romanised parts of Europe and the manor of the more feudal parts, in which each member did physical labour as well as offering prayer.

In 817 A.D., Saint Benedict of Aniane, the "second Benedict", developed monastic constitutions at the urging of Louis the Pious to govern all the Carolingian monasteries. He acknowledged that the Black Monks no longer supported themselves by physical labour. Cluny's agreement to offer perpetual prayer (laus perennis, literally "perpetual praise"), meant that it had increased a specialisation in roles.

As perhaps the wealthiest monastic house of the Western world, Cluny hired managers and workers to do the labor of monks in other orders. The monks devoted themselves to almost constant prayer, thus elevating their position into a profession. Despite the monastic ideal of a frugal life, the abbey in Cluny commissioned candelabras of solid silver and gold chalices made with precious gems for use at the abbey Masses. Instead of being limited to the traditional fare of broth and porridge, the monks ate very well, enjoying roasted chickens (a luxury in France then) and wines from their vineyards and cheeses made by their employees. The monks wore the finest linen habits and silk vestments at Mass. Artifacts exemplifying the wealth of Cluny Abbey are today on display at the Musée de Cluny in Paris.

Cluniac Houses in Britain

All of the English and Scottish Cluniac houses which were larger than cells were known as priories, symbolising their subordination to Cluny. Cluny's influence spread into the British Isles in the eleventh century, first at Lewes, and then elsewhere. The head of their order was the Abbot at Cluny. All English and Scottish Cluniacs were bound to cross to France to Cluny to consult or be consulted unless the Abbot chose to come to Britain, which he did five times in the 13th century, and only twice in the 14th.

At Cluny, the central activity was the liturgy; it was extensive and beautifully presented in inspiring surroundings, reflecting the new personally-felt wave of piety of the 11th century. Monastic intercession was believed indispensable to achieving a state of grace, and lay rulers competed to be remembered in Cluny's endless prayers; this inspired the endowments in land and benefices that made other arts possible.

The fast-growing community at Cluny required buildings on a large scale. The examples at Cluny profoundly affected architectural practice in Western Europe from the tenth through the twelfth centuries. The three successive churches are conventionally called Cluny I, II and III. In building the third and final church at Cluny, the monastery constructed what was the largest building in Europe before the 16th century, when St. Peter's in Rome was rebuilt. The construction of Cluny II, ca. 955-981, begun after the destructive Hungarian raids of 953, led the tendency for Burgundian churches to be stone-vaulted.





                     Cluny III, reconstruction.


The building campaign was financed by the annual census established by Ferdinand I of León, ruler of a united León-Castile, some time between 1053 and 1065. (Alfonso VI re-established it in 1077, and confirmed it in 1090.) Ferdinand fixed the sum at 1,000 golden aurei, an amount which Alfonso VI doubled in 1090. This was the biggest annuity that the Order ever received from king or layman, and it was never surpassed. Henry I of England's annual grant from 1131 of 100 marks of silver, not gold, seemed little by comparison. The Alfonsine census enabled Abbot Hugh (who died in 1109) to undertake construction of the huge third abbey church. When payments in the Islamic gold coin later lapsed, the Cluniac order suffered a financial crisis that crippled them during the abbacies of Pons of Melgueil (1109 – 1125) and Peter the Venerable (1122 – 1156). The Spanish wealth donated to Cluny publicized the rise of the Spanish Christians, and drew central Spain for the first time into the larger European orbit.


PART THREE FOLLOWS


Wednesday 4 July 2012

Cluny Abbey (Part One)



Coat of Arms of Cluny Abbey: 
"Gules, two keys in saltire, the wards upwards and outwards, or. Overall, a sword in paleargent".

Text is from Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia.

Cluny Abbey (or Cluni, or ClugnyFrench pronunciation: [klyˈni]) is a Benedictine monastery in ClunySaône-et-Loire, France. It was built in the Romanesque style, with three churches built in succession from the 10th to the early 12th centuries.

Cluny was founded by William I, Duke of Aquitaine in 910. He nominated Berno as the first Abbot of Cluny, subject only to Pope Sergius III. The Abbey was notable for its stricter adherence to the Rule of St. Benedict and the place where the Benedictine Order was formed, whereby Cluny became acknowledged as the leader of western monasticism. The establishment of the Benedictine order was a keystone to the stability of European society that was achieved in the 11th century. In 1790 during the French Revolution, the abbey was sacked and mostly destroyed. Only a small part of the original remains.

Dating around 1334, the abbots of Cluny had a townhouse in Paris known as the Hôtel de Cluny, what is now a public museum since 1833. Apart from the name, it no longer possesses anything originally connected with Cluny.

In 910, William I, Duke of Aquitaine "the Pious", and Count of Auvergne, founded the Benedictine abbey of Cluny on a modest scale, as the mother house of the Congregation of Cluny. In donating his hunting preserve in the forests of Burgundy, William released the Cluny abbey from all future obligation to him and his family other than prayer. Contemporary patrons normally retained a proprietary interest and expected to install their kinsmen as abbots. William appears to have made this arrangement with Berno, the first abbot, to free the new monastery from such secular entanglements and initiate the Cluniac Reforms. The abbots of Cluny were statesmen on the international stage and the monastery of Cluny was considered the grandest, most prestigious and best-endowed monastic institution in Europe. The height of Cluniac influence was from the second half of the 10th century through the early 12th. The first female members were admitted to the order during the eleventh century.


The monastery of Cluny differed in three ways from other Benedictine houses and confederations:
  • organizational structure;
  • prohibition on holding land by feudal service; and
  • execution of the liturgy as its main form of work.
While most Benedictine monasteries remained autonomous and associated with each other only informally, Cluny created a large, federated order in which the administrators of subsidiary houses served as deputies of  the abbot of Cluny and answered to him. The Cluniac houses, being directly under the supervision of the abbot of Cluny, the autocrat of the Order, were styled priories, not abbeys. The priors, or chiefs of priories, met at Cluny once a year to deal with administrative issues and to make reports. Many other Benedictine houses, even those of earlier formation, came to regard Cluny as their guide. When in 1016 Pope Benedict VIII decreed that the privileges of Cluny be extended to subordinate houses, there was further incentive for Benedictine communities to insinuate themselves in the Cluniac order.


PART TWO FOLLOWS

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