discuss monastic decay and monastic reform. Already we were just talking yesterday about reforms going on, things picking up, but a generation, two generations later, we've got a real bad situation. More so in the West than in the East. In the East, basically they continue to see progress monastically through the 10th century, where it starts going down in the 900s in the West. I mean, yes, in the West. So the decay was more evident. By the time these reforms come up, we're talking mainly about three reforms, the reforms of Paul, Roy, and Gorse. It becomes evident to everybody how far they had slipped. Just from Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh a century earlier, in all of his reforms, it dawned on them when

[01:06]

they started reforming again how far they had gone away from the previous reform. In other words, the things I've underlined in red are the things that you might want to tag in your memory. The rest of it I'm just going to run by you because I haven't said them before, so they're on there for your spelling. And also remember, there are really thousands and thousands of monasteries. You don't have to remember all of these things. I could show you maps of just, for instance, when the Cluny phenomenon comes. We're going to talk about that next week. I could show you a map with dots on it of just the Cluny houses in France, and it's just like black with dots. Same thing with the Cistercians. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Cistercian abbeys all over the place, from Yugoslavia to Denmark to all over. It's just coming up, and there's going to be more and more and

[02:06]

more monasteries. Why did things slip so fast and so badly in the West? Well, there are basically three inescapable reasons. And in some ways, it's the same old reasons that we had two or three centuries ago back East. So in Gaul and in Italy, what happened there that ruined things? Invasion. Same thing all over again. Only the different people, new tribes, and they're in the West, and they do the same thing. Only this time, they're much more ruthless in some cases. The three main groups are the Normans, who are going to, just a couple generations

[03:08]

down the line, be the great saviors of monasticism, and are going to be building wonderful Norman monasteries all over the place. But right now, they're on the march. And their strongholds are in northern France. Normandy. Normans. Normandy. And what's my bloodline? Brittany. Brittany and Normandy. And they're also going into, they're soon to go into southern Italy. They're going to take over England. They're going to have a good old time. Where did they come from? Northern France. They're in northern France right now. Where did they come from originally? East, like everybody else. In France itself, the Normans. The Normans are coming into France now, and settling

[04:11]

in France, especially in the north. What they do to France, they almost totally destroy what set, what social fabric there is, what social order there is in France now. They completely throw it this way, because they love destroying things. Now when they get to Italy, they'll be a lot better about that. They won't be so much into destroying buildings and whatnot. Although their own architecture will take over in many ways. But right now, they're on the, on the, thank you, on the barge. And these abbeys are plundered beyond belief. Saint-Germain. Do I have it on here? Maybe I set it yesterday. I didn't put it on here because I think I've already had it on there. Saint-Germain in the years 847, 857, 861.

[05:13]

Everyone, everyone of those times, almost destroyed, monks, everything taken. Just, it's very sad. How many times can a community go through that sort of thing? You know, the morale just plummeted in the monastery. Imagine if we had the people of Carmel come here, and not just cart away our water, but take away our precious things. Yeah, our fruitcake supply. And then two years down the road, do it all over again after we set up again. Economically, what does that do to you? You just take all the storerooms, everything, all the food, everything. And nobody can do anything about it. And before you know it, you've got Gorda coming in and trying to get their share. Saint-Denis, very famous abbey, 866, absolutely plundered. Fleury, Fleury-sur-Loire, I had that on there already. Fleury, very important because it's been on a number of occasions throughout the centuries

[06:18]

a core of reform. And just coming up again now, when we hit Cluny and their reform, Fleury also has a wonderful reform going. And the Fleury reform is going to, which is already going before Cluny, is going to profoundly affect the English monastic scene. We'll see why. Cornelius Munster, Cornelius Munster, just talked about him. That was Benedict's own monastery, right? Benedict de Bagnanes, one of his two. That was supposed to be the priceless gem and the model of all, plundered by the Normans in the year 881. In the next year, 882, and then 10 years down, I think it came in 10 years, 892, the abbey of Proulx. Proulx, absolutely plundered twice in Rome, decimated. Okay, that's one. And right now

[07:28]

it's mainly in France, but also in Germany, in the empire there. The Normans are sweeping through what was the Carolingian empire, and they're real tough. We have another problem. You can see up here, Magyars, another tribe, fierce tribe comes through. Where do they settle? What is hungry now. They're messing around all over the place. They go south and east, and they're messing around. They end up settling what's hungry now. But see, we haven't escaped. Centuries later, we still have these tribes going through, doing the same old thing all over again. They did a lot of damage in what is now Bavaria. There are lots of monasteries in Bavaria, and they suffered tremendous loss. In the year 927, they were at the walls of St. Gall in Switzerland. They just went all through

[08:28]

that area and wreaked havoc with the monasteries. Also at this time, you have the Arab pirates, Saracen pirates, bands of them, and they are going to mainly do their destruction from the sea. So they're going to send pirate packs into what is now the Cote d'Azur, Riviera, where Lorraine was, that whole southern part of France, and then they go up into Provence. They go up, but never too far away from the ocean, and they do their campaigns of destruction. They were merciless, these Arab pirates. I mean, they didn't leave people behind. They didn't just plunder. They massacred. These monastery groups have had some pretty nice stuff. Well, you know, remember with Carolingian, even before Carolingian times, the Anglo-Saxon

[09:34]

influence was, well, you at least have to do the liturgy right. So you had a lot of gold, silver, artifacts, icons, that type of thing, tapestries, mainly in the churches. But also it started over the years developing so that the, well, the refectory would have some nice things in it, you know. Different objects, precious objects were given by kings and by nobles to the monastery in order to repent for something they did or instead of going to the holy man, you know. And so people, they naturally collected things like this. Also, that stuff became important as backup, economically, for the monasteries. They always could hawk something, you know, if they had to. But yeah, also the Danes. The Danes were after precious metals when they came through, too. Although they just seemed to like to slaughter and rape also in England. They especially liked nunneries.

[10:34]

But these pirates were mainly, it was mainly for the pirates. When the air pirates come sweeping through, they're mainly after two things. Money, or precious objects, and slaves. And what they don't, the slaves they don't take, they slaughter the rest. That's usually their method. Of the kind of havoc they spread around. And so what you get with all of this going on, and remember we have the Danes coming, too, on the horizon, off and on. They're sporadic, the Vikings. That's mainly up in England, but they go elsewhere. You've got all kinds of interior struggle and interior chaos within the monasteries going on, too. First of all, because of all this uncertainty, and just the hell of living under conditions like this, where your own country is constantly, you don't have security. You never know when they're going to come again.

[11:38]

And inside, you have a lot of problems going on, because their economy was so tied to political life as well. Remember, now we're talking about feudalism, but feudalism modified. It's slowly changing to the point where we're going to go to a different kind of, the actual economy is going to change the politics more than anything else. A new approach to economy down the line. But what unions we had in the West, from Benedict to Banyan and these other little cohesive groupings, have fallen apart by this time, because no one can trust anything anymore. Everybody's on their own, and they're building up defense. These monasteries had to fight, by the way. When they were attacked, they didn't just open the doors and whatnot. You had monks who had to pour hot oil and stuff, just like anybody else. So, you know, well, maybe some got off on it, but I mean, how long can a monk do that and try to keep interior peace?

[12:48]

I mean, you can imagine what it does to you, to your spirituality, your spiritual life, having lived like that for decades, decades, and knowing that everybody else is going through the same thing, and never knowing when it's going to end. Also, you have a lot of the abbeys have gotten more and more secularized before this time, and certainly during it, because so many have been given away as gifts to nobles and knights and counts, I mean, remember, for the money, for the money. A lot of these people would really have nothing to do with the abbeys, and wouldn't do anything to, you know, you've got upkeep, you've got an economy, you've got people to feed, you've got works, households to do, and whatnot. They just let them, let the money, okay?

[13:56]

Taxes became so high during this time because what fabric of society was left politically had to fight off these invasions and fight off the effects of the dissolution of society, and it got harder and harder to get enough people in your own area, or mercenaries, to hire mercenaries to do the fighting for you in order to try to keep value, what is left of the fabric. And so who do you tax? You tax the monasteries. More than anything else, the monasteries, anybody else, the monasteries got taxed to the point where many of them went into ruin. Not that their walls fell down, but I mean, they had been just absolutely desolate, they devastated, they didn't have money to eat, and the monks fled. The monks left their communities just the way they were. This is not an isolated phenomenon. This happens a lot during this time. Well, of course, remember how many monasteries there are.

[15:01]

There are lots of monasteries. Any given area can have five or six monasteries competing. These monks who left because they couldn't eat anymore, and they had to grow up, were called lapsi. Lapsi. We've run into lapsi before, do you remember? A couple of times, the word where lapsi is used. It's used in different senses. Carthage. Carthage with whom? Cyprian. Cyprian and Carthage, right. And there we're talking about, what? Under the Deacian persecution, how they would sacrifice the false idols and actually curse Christ sometimes. In order to? In order to escape punishment and murder.

[16:02]

And so they became called lapsi because? Because they had given up their faith. But then when the Deacian persecution was over, they were allowed to come back into the church. And function. That was the big controversy, whether or not to let them back in. Okay, so there they lapsed from the faith and sacraments. It was mainly a sacramental thing. We have lapsi also in terms of? No, I forgot. It's one of the heresies. Another one of the heresies. Not Donatism, but another one of the earlier heresies where the lapsi, the word was used, meant something else. Here it means monks who aren't living in a monastery anymore. And they really had bands of monks. Again, remember the Circumcellians, Chelians?

[17:05]

Here you have bands of monks who are stealing to live. And they sort of become like bands of bandits in many cases. Or just monks. A lot, a lot of monk bums. And it's really sad because it's forced on them because of the situation. In the area of Lorraine, Alsace-Lorraine, they don't even remember what the Rule of Benedict was. But we were just talking a couple of generations ago about the whole, everybody had to use the Rule of Benedict. Already, it doesn't take long. If you stop using it, you can't even find it in your library. If you have a library left that hasn't been sold off to pay the taxes and whatnot. Yeah, who's going to remember if it's not in effect?

[18:06]

And you still don't have a Benedictine order. They forgot. When Odo and his band originally went through France to find a monastery to live in before they did their thing with Cuny and whatnot, when they tried to find a monastery that met their expectations, in other words, a regular monastery, that is, a monastery with a regula, they couldn't find any. They had all stopped living the rules. They're just trying to survive, the ones that were still left in monasteries. The whole fabric of the empire is ready to fall apart at this time. Charles the Bald, when he was in charge, wanted to try to help the situation, help the monasteries and help these poor monks.

[19:09]

And they really are destitute at this time. And he calls a church synod, the Synod of Soissons, at which a nice reform is planned, but they never get to effect the plan. They never get to bring this reform to a head or into effect because that year they had a strong wave of Norman invasions, and they were just fighting for their lives, much less trying to reform the monasteries. They just didn't get around to it. So these invasions are also wreaking havoc on the whole Carolingian Empire. Mainly. The Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire. Yeah, mainly that. So it's just not the monasteries that are suffering, the whole empire? That's why I said they couldn't trust anyone. They couldn't trust the political fabric. No one could save them. The monks were on their own, and they were being bled dry of their wealth.

[20:13]

Towards the end of the 9th century, so towards the end of the 800s and beginning of the early 10th century, early 900s, you have a series of synods that keep trying to, what do we do? How do we save things? How do we get the church together? How do we keep the monasteries from falling apart any further? This synod in 909 is one that I've marked out specifically. This one is important because it directs, it's mainly looking at this problem, Lapsi. Because now, by now, there have been bum monks and groups of them for 20, 30 years. And there are old hands at it, and they're actually burning villages. They're killing people. They're stealing. Bad. Bad situation. And what houses are left by this time, there's no observance left. Everybody's for himself.

[21:15]

If you can eat one square day, you're pretty well off. And most of the abbots at this time are illiterate because you don't have to know how to read when you're swinging your sword. They aren't real abbots. They're just all in them. And so, during that time, you lost all monastic education going on because they could care less whether anyone was literate. I mean, these were soldiers, more than anything. So you have a real bad, real bad situation. Why would people join? Just because it was another way of hopefully surviving. Under circumstances like this, I don't know how many did join, but there are thousands and thousands of monks at this time when all this begins. So, you really don't see growth

[22:17]

until you look puzzled. No, I'm just concentrating. I thought I said something. Sometimes I say the opposite of what I mean. Following this period, then, when they're trying to get their program together, and when these reforms start kicking in, then you see growth again. Because people really only really want to join, this sort of thing, when they're getting their program together. There's hope. There's hope. Well, some of this, of course, is going to coincide with no more invasions, things are quieting down. That's often the case. Things quiet down politically, culturally, economically, then they're able to get off the ground again. And so we enter a period of monastic reform. And the first place I want to talk about is BAUME. BAUME, B-A-U-M-E. This was a monastery that already had existed.

[23:24]

This isn't one they just built now. It's an old monastery, and Abbot Verno of Guigny was in charge there. Well, he was, let's put it this way, it was one of his abbeys. And he wasn't living there. But he decided, he got this, he got religion. And he decided he was going to go live at BAUME. And if we're going to live at BAUME, we're going to live the right way. We're going to go back to a regular discipline, regular, and bring in the R.B. again. And the Count Duke, excuse me, Duke of Aquitaine, was very impressed with what Verno did there and with some influence he was having on other houses. And so he gave, he gave one of his men, named Verno, some property, which later on is going to, to build a monastery there,

[24:27]

which is going to become very, very important. The name of that property is Cluny. Cluny in the Diocese of Mâcon. And the invasion stopped, or is this the same day? No, it's quieting down, yeah. Yeah, things are quieting down. At the same time, in Brogne, B-R-O-G-N-E, there is a reform movement. Right now, in this period of history, for the next 50 years or so, more than that, the area of Lorraine is going to be incredibly rich with reform. And this happens to be in that area. With Alsace-Lorraine, we're basically talking about what? We're talking about northeastern, northeastern France, between Germany, and what is Germany now, and what is France now. Right in that area, that border area. And a lot of reform is going on there.

[25:28]

In the northern part of Lorraine, Brogne is going to be the center. And there we have a man named Count Gerard of Brogne. Gerard, at this time, is a very popular name. And he was the leader there, and he spent some of his youth in court, so he knew that whole scene. And while he was in court, he felt called to religious life. So he founded a community on his own estate, his own family lands, called Brogne. So this is a new place. And he decided to become a monk after that. Even though he had founded a monastery, he decided to become a monk. He went to Saint-Denis. Saint-Denis is back on its feet again. It had been plundered a few times. And he got some formation there.

[26:32]

And then, after a few years of formation, he came from Saint-Denis back to Brogne to his family estate, where he had built a small monastery. He brought 12 Saint-Denis monks with him, and they started a new community at Brogne, following a strict Benedictine observance. So according to the rule, a strict interpretation. And the Duke of Lorraine, at this time, was so impressed with that and saw them getting a program together. It was just so nice to see order brought back into the situation. That he helped him all he could to send out, go out to satellite monasteries and help them get back on their feet. Bring in a reform, sort of like form a small congregation. That's really what happened with a lot of these reform movements. And some of the places they did reform, and you can go down the line, were Saint-Guiselin,

[27:35]

Saint-Bavo, and Saint-Pierre of Ghent. So, that's easy enough to spell. Saint-Berin, Saint-Amand, Saint-Omer, and others. Those are the famous ones. And just down the line, some, just like a second stage of this reform, some of the Norman abbeys. Something new. Some of the Norman abbeys. Already the Normans have built big abbeys in the northern part of France that are thriving. They just got through plundering the other ones. So you have Norman monasticism. Was Pierre a Christian as they were plundering the Normans? Yes and no. And a lot of that is just politics. It's not religion so much.

[28:36]

And economics. And the famous Norman abbeys at this time, I'm sure you've heard of one of them, Mont Saint-Michel, but also Saint-Ouen, and Fontenelle. Those three are the big names. Those also come into this bone reform. It starts out with one man on his property with 12 other young monks coming out of formation. Formation people. He ended up getting 18 monasteries into this reform. So it was a nice, small, nice, small congregational kind of situation. And this time, by the time he gets that little congregation together, Cluny is off. Cluny is built and it's off on its own and has started its phenomenon. We'll talk about that next week. One of the most phenomenal things in the history of Benedictines. Anyway, he keeps all of his reforms separate from Cluny.

[29:41]

There are a number of reforms that are going on. Some of them join up with Cluny. Others keep what they're doing on their own rather than add more stuff. Okay. The third main reform in this area, again in Lorraine, but in the southern part of Lorraine, is gores. At this time, things had really been bad because the bishops in southern Lorraine were plundering the monasteries in order to get money. So even the church hierarchy were doing it. I mean, he's a real bishop. These aren't just people who hold benefits. Lay people hold benefits. So you have that happening. Some farmer named John, sounds like a joke, went to the city of Metz where he studied with a famous teacher at that time,

[30:43]

named Beno of Metz, right on the bottom. And he became good friends with some nuns in Metz, which led him, through his experience with the nuns, to want to be a monk. It's not the first time or the last time that that's happened. He decides that he wants to be a monk, so he goes to Argonne and he lives in solitude with a very notoriously eccentric hermit named Lambert, or Lambert. And he was quite a character, so they said. And others end up joining them, but more because of John, John the farmer, than to be with Lambert. And at some point, he visits Rome, he visits Monte Cassino,

[31:44]

and he decides during that trip on how things need to be reformed in the southern part of Lorraine, and he effects that upon his return. And he's able to do that because the bishop of Metz, who is a friend, knows him well, gives them an old abbey, an old abbey that had pretty well fallen apart, or that, you know, was the victim of all this that I just talked about. And it was named Gord's Abbey. And they go in there with great guns and start another reform movement in the year 933, so at the end of the 10th century, in the southern part of Lorraine. Here, it's very strict, very ascetical, very, very strict reform. Just as at Cluny, in the beginning of Cluny, you're going to have absolute silence. Absolute silence.

[32:48]

You don't talk unless you really, really, really have to. And then you get permission for it. Absolute silence. They also had something unique to Gord's at this time, monastically, and it's called the Discipline. The Discipline. We're going to see much more of this down the line, just in the coming century, with Kamaluddin's phenomenon. We're going to run into the Discipline. Well, many others as well. You know, we're talking about the Discipline, with flagellation, penitential approach, not just whipping, but all hair, shirts, and extreme fasting. But usually when they say the Discipline, they're talking about some pain, one way or another, tied with penance. So they have that at Gord's, which is unique in this period, of this part of the world. Another thing they did at Gord's, and we're going to see this in Cluny also, and maybe they were affected by Cluny,

[33:49]

because of this, but they lengthened the choirs, where at Cluny, as you're going to see next week, you end up with a 24-hour choir. And the choir monks are in three communities, three sections of the community. And you go on your eight-hour shift, you come off, and the next one processes in, and they take their eight-hour shift, so that there's a constant 24-hour-a-day chant going on. And that's at the height of Cluny. That's going to be something that developed. But at the beginning of Cluny, you're going to have the beginnings by seeing longer offices. They elaborate the offices. Here at Gord's, that's what they're doing too. More time in prayer. More time in church. John the farmer was elected abbot. He never changed his name. They didn't call him a farmer, but John was elected abbot. And he died in the year 976. Oh, John, of course.

[34:50]

Okay. The reform. These reforms spread. That's the good news. That is, several houses around the city of Metz joined, so you're talking about, again, the border areas of France and Germany today. Some of the more famous ones that joined in that area are St. Maximin's, Ekternach, Saint-Vin, and that's near, it's going to become a very important place in the First World War, Verdun. Saint-Vin is there. These all became great houses in this reform movement. And they're sort of like a second wave that joined the Gord's movement. Also, ones we've seen before, we've seen Niederalltag. I don't know how to pronounce Niederalltag. This one, Einsiedlung.

[35:58]

Einsiedlung. Somehow Einsiedlung needs a reform. Fulda. Abby, we were just talking about how great Fulda was. Great school and everything. Here it is needing reform again. And so it, in a second wave, joins this movement. Usually how they work with the reform is that the community brings in one of the monks from Gord's, or from Broin, or from Cluny. Now we're not talking about Cluny today. That's the classic way for Cluny. Cluny will send a band of monks in. And they start living Cluny. Cluniac reform. Well, they would bring the monk in, get some information, be introduced to the reform, how you need to change things, da-da-da-da-da. Excuse me. And in this particular reform, as opposed to Cluny, like with Gors,

[36:59]

you get 170 monasteries hooked up with Gors. And how it differed with Cluny is that there wasn't a strong centralization program with Cluny. That's exactly what you're talking about. Cluny is the center. And what Cluny says goes. There's no bucking. But with Gors, it's just sort of a loose federation following accepted common principles of reform. And communities can differ. They have their own character and whatnot in this particular part of the reform. And that's protected. So it's sort of like a loose federation. 31 of those 170 are very closely aligned with Gors and do it the way Gors does it. But you don't have to do that with Gors. So there's 170 total who more or less are in this particular reform movement. And you have certain areas that overlap,

[38:01]

certain reforms. There's more than one reform going on, notice. And you have that overlapping with some of these reforms. Some houses get influence from both reform movements. Or you have areas where some houses in that area belong to one reform movement and the others in the other. There isn't a lot of infighting or anything like that going on. It's just an interesting phenomenon at this point. Another strong Fleury is going to rise up again in reform and is going to become a very important reform center during the Cluniac reform also. Excuse me. Common to all these reforms, all of them, Fleury, Cluniac, Gors, Bohm, and Brouin, you have certain principles that are in play. Four of them. First,

[39:02]

there is enclosure, again, and strict asceticism. Now, it differs from reform to reform, but that's a general principle that they all have one way or another embodied. Secondly, choir is longer in all the reforms. Choir is longer. There's more time praying in the church together as a community. Thirdly, liturgy becomes a very delineated art form. You're going to have a lot of liturgical rules, liturgical customs of how to do things, how to do a parade the Benedictine way, that type of thing. And Cluniac, of course, is going to be the specialist in this area. But they all develop their liturgy that way.

[40:04]

And fourthly, no more conditional obedience. Back to strict obedience. No more of this stuff they got out of Spain. Okay. There are two more areas I want to cover today with reform, and those areas are England, and a particular look at one house in Switzerland, which we just talked about getting reformed by Gores, that's Einstein, which becomes itself a gem of reform. So, what's going on in England? Well, around this same time, but totally independent of these things that are going on in France, Germany, border areas, and in Normandy, and this is before the Norman invasion,

[41:05]

1066, you have a reform starting out on different grounds, in different ways, through historical circumstances in England. What did you have? Well, the Danish invasions, the first waves, pretty well erased almost all monasticism in the land by the end. By the year 900, monasticism was almost zilch. Now, I have given you a map, I think, of houses in England, Anglo-Saxon houses. Forget all of those. They're no longer functioning by 900, for the most part. Except for two abbeys, which have sort of a half-community left, and a community life going on. Those are the abbeys of Glastonbury, and Abingdon. These

[42:09]

two abbeys were founded by reformers, under the patronage of King Edgar. Now, all we need is a little bit of background on the King situation. And this comes in parallel with the man, Dunstan of Glastonbury, Saint Dunstan. Because Dunstan is the founder of the reformers. He was educated, Dunstan was, by Celtic monks. And he became a counsellor to King Athelstan in England. And while he was a counsellor, and part of the court scene, there's another one of those, Ron Robbins, decides he has a vocation to religious life, and is disgusted by the court life. So he becomes a monk,

[43:10]

and later introduces a regular observance at Glastonbury. He became the abbot of Glastonbury in the year 943. Now, this abbey became a religious centre, but also a centre for scientific study. Now, you know, use that word guardedly. You're talking about the 10th century. Now, but the sciences were studied there. And they ran a school for future bishops and monks, basically. Under King Eldred, who started in 946, following Athelstan,

[44:12]

there might have been one other person in there, but anyway, Eldred kept pushing Dunstan forward. Dunstan was, in other words, he had royal patronage under Eldred. He retained his influence, but then after Eldred, his son, Edwin, Edwin was only the king for two years, but during that two years, he did like Dunstan. And Dunstan was forced into exile, where he went to St. Peter's Abbey in Ghent. I had just mentioned it before, as part of the Reform Movement. So he lived there in Ghent, and he became familiar with the Lorraine Reform Movements that were going on. King

[45:15]

Edgar, who loved Dunstan, brings him back after Edwin is no longer on the scene, and makes him the bishop of Worcester and London. And then Archbishop Canterbury during his reign, not all at once. And during his entire life, which goes all the way to 988, he continues Reform activity the whole time, to the point where he restores himself, restores 48 monasteries that had pretty well gone out of existence. So he resurrected that many monasteries in his lifetime. He had the king's patrons, that helps. Ethelwald, another important

[46:16]

figure at this time, monk, was Dunstan's assistant, his main assistant in all of this Reform work, in setting up these new houses and getting them on their feet again. And he became Abbot of Edinburgh, the second most important house at this point, in the year 954. And he sent away one of his monks to Fleury-sur-Loire because he heard Fleury was flowering with the new Reform movement in France. And so he sent one of his monks over there to live there a while and see what was going on, because he had heard good things. And he also reestablished a number of old Anglo-Saxon monastic houses. He became the bishop of Winchester and remained, all through his life, Dunstan's right-hand man. Even while they're bishops, they're doing all of this.

[47:18]

They're monk bishops, abbot bishops. And they keep refounding monasteries. Oswald, the other important one, was trained at Fleury for four years. And when he came back to England, to work he became renowned. And he himself has made a bishop. Bishop of Worcester. No, no, we're talking about a monk here. He became the bishop of Worcester in 961. And when he became bishop, he brought Fleury monks over from France. And he imported them into England to bring the Fleury reform directly into the country. And he settles them mainly in his own foundation that he sets up, of Ramsey.

[48:19]

Ramsey Abbey. And this becomes a Fleury house and a core of reform. A new way to live monasticism. Or a revived way to live monasticism. So in general, what you have happening is a lot of these old Anglo-Saxon monasteries are going to be revived. Old names with new people and a new lifestyle, a new type of monastic life. Sometimes they literally had to be wrested from the hands of canons. Orders of canons who had settled in the old monasteries. And well, when you have Benedictine abbots who are the bishops and the abbots of that time and they want their Benedictine property back again, there's no way the canons were going to have much effect. And they kicked out

[49:21]

a number of communities of canons out of the Benedictine houses in order to make the Benedictine again. Because the canons had not done this legally. They had just usurped monastic properties and whatnot. Canons? Huh? Yeah. We're going to talk about canons when we talk about the new orders also. But you already have some canons existing now. And they are various groups that really start around a cathedral and the bishops are attached to a specific cathedral. It doesn't take long before they become orders as such. Big groups are no longer just singing and chanting in the bishop's cathedral, but are out doing all kinds of things. Some of them go monastic, some of them go much more active. Some of the more monastic ones we still have around would be the Croziers and the Premonster Tensions, or the Norbertines. Those two groups. Also Augustinians. But there's

[50:23]

various groups of Augustinians, various levels of that. Edgar, King Edgar, really became the Louis the Pious of England. He was a great patron of the church and of monasticism, just like Louis was. And he modeled himself on what the religion reform did. And kind of followed a program from a lay power perspective of how to get the, and that's mainly through synods and what you say at synods and how you work them to get the reforms that need to be done. And he called a series of synods and one in particular at Winchester, which was famous because the entire royal family and all

[51:25]

ecclesiastics in the country were to be present. And they were. And there if you're going to model yourself on the Carolingian reform, what are you going to set up as the standard? At the R.B. Just like, he just repeats things. The R.B. is set up as the standard for all the houses in England, rule of Benedict. And remember that at the synod of Isle-a-Chapelle, where Benedict of Aignan wrote his Regulars, Concordia, or something like that. Dunstan is the same thing out of this synod. He writes his Regulars, Concordia. And they just modeled themselves on what happened with Benedict of Aignan and the Carolingians to set up

[52:25]

their reform work. Lastly, I want you to look a little bit at Aignan's synod. Aignan's synod was founded in the 9th century, so in the 800s in Switzerland. My former community was a daughter house of Aignan's synod. And it was founded by, well basically a hermit named St. Meinrad, who became St. Meinrad, lived there. And on the spot where he lived and died, in 861, it became a place of pilgrimage. It's never lost that. It's still a pilgrimage center. Not so much for St. Meinrad, but for the Black Our Lady at Aignan's synod. It's one of those Black Madonnas. Benno, who's a famous name with

[53:25]

Aignan's synod, Benno and Eberhard, these two, join up there at this pilgrimage center and they decide, we're going to have a monastery here. And they start a real vigorous monastic lifestyle in the year 929. And actually Eberhard, not Benno, is the one who becomes the first abbot. Even though he dies first, he's the one who became the abbot. And Benno was the one who really was the first one to go there. Interesting. In the year 960, so just after Eberhard dies a couple years, an English monk joins the group. His name is Gregory. And Gregory, evidently was an exceptional person. He was made the next abbot.

[54:27]

So they were without an abbot for two years. And Gregory, the English monk who came in, was made abbot. Now there might be some history there. They might have known about him or asked for somebody who was, you know, would have made a good abbot or whatever out of one of the reform houses in England. It's at this time that you have some English practices from the reform going into Einsiedeln. Well, you're also going to get some influence from Gores going into Einsiedeln also as far as reform movement goes. But in no time at all, Einsiedeln on its own becomes a seedbed of a reform movement. So you have another reform movement started. So that's more or less one way or another, almost every house has a chance to be in a reform, if it wants to. And some of them, whether or not they wanted to, ended up in a reform. Einsiedeln was mainly involved

[55:28]

with houses all throughout what is now southern Germany. And this is the area devastated by the Magyars. Just prior to this. St. Wolfgang, now there's a name for you, Wolfgang, next to you. Wolfgang was educated at Reichenau, we've already talked about Reichenau. And he ran the school at Tres before he entered Einsiedeln. And once he got in Einsiedeln, he was very renowned as a scholar and a teacher. Lots of abbots sent their students to Einsiedeln because of his reputation. To be educated. In the year

[56:28]

971, he went to a missionary in Hungary. Why do you suppose? Why Hungary? I think so. I don't know that, but it just makes sense. They're working in the area that was just devastated by the Magyars. He went up into one place where people had been bringing in pillaging and he turned around and went up back into the area where they were. We've come across someone like that in the last few classes. Yeah, I've just said the group room. But in order to do that, in order to convert them. Well, a number of our commodities, early commodities are going to do that also. And he set out for Hungary and he became the bishop of Ratisbon in the year 972

[57:29]

and became very important in promoting monasticism all in that area. Around Ratisbon. Excuse me. And in that work, he reformed the monastery of St. Emeron, which is going to be important now and then throughout history. Which he gave absolute exemption. It's in his diocese. He's the bishop. He gives an absolute exemption so it has freedom. And he brings in monks from Trev to get it off on its own feet so we can get a monastic reform started in that area. St. Emeron Abbey is famous at this time because it's sort of like a meeting place for the various reforms. St. Emeron's Abbey ends up being influenced strongly by English reform, the reforms of Lorraine

[58:30]

and Einstein. All three are influences. And it became a source of reform throughout Bavaria. Other ones that I've just put on here that you probably don't know the spelling. One of them, Boiron. Benedict Boiron. Very famous down the line. That's why I underlined it. Also, Tegernsee. Isn't it Tegernsee? Yeah. I haven't spelled that. It's an R. Tegernsee. And Nederaltijk, which I have up there. They're all part of this reform. Yes, yes, yes. Orvangioi June. Pardon? Orvangioi June. Bavaria, huh? Bavaria. Yes, that's Boironese art. Yeah.

[59:31]

Okay. Wednesday, you want to have read Bring Your Reader? You want to have read the Golden Epistle? Part of it. And we'll talk about Cluny then. It fits into that nice theme.

[59:49]

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