ABSTRACT
The expression of the monastic ideal in ninenth and early tenth centuries was very diverse; but all the organised monastic orders owed something to the sixth-century Rule of St Benedict of Nursia, and most monastic communities claimed to model themselves first and foremost on Benedict's prescriptions. Most famous of the foundations was the Burgundian abbey of Cluny, founded, strangely enough, by a duke of Aquitaine, in 910. The two most influential centres of reform were Cluny and Gorze. After came the re-establishment of Brogne, in Lower Lorraine, and of Gorze in Upper Lorraine and the revival of monastic life at Glastonbury by St Dunstan. The association of Cluny with the papal reform received its plausibility from three circumstances: the great fame of Cluny among historians of the period; the chronology of the movement the revival of the papacy in the heyday of Cluny's influence; and the notion that Pope Gregory VII himself had been a monk of Cluny.
