Cluny III and the Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela
1988; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 27; Issue: 1/2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/766998
ISSN2169-3099
Autores Tópico(s)Religious Tourism and Spaces
ResumoThe third abbey church at Cluny is designed on a plan whose essential features are those of the mass-audience churches on the pilgrimage roads to Santiago, particularly Saint-Martin at Tours and Saint-Sernin at Toulouse. I am attempting to show that this adaptation was prompted by a Cluniac takeover attempt on the pilgrimage roads. In the years from 1082 to 1096, while Abbot Hugh had to deal with the uncertainties and ultimate cessation of gold contributions by King Alfonso VI of León and Castile to the abbey budget, he embarked on an effort to increase the international scope of money contributions by expanding the abbey's connections with the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Cluny acquired the abbey of Saint-Martial at Limoges in 1063. Since 1082 Abbot Hugh pursued a protracted legal and political campaign to take control of Saint-Sernin at Toulouse and Sainte-Foy at Conques. However, Pope Urban II's decision at the council of Nimes in 1096 confirming the independence of both sanctuaries put a stop to this scheme. The change from the closed-off, staggered monks' choir of Cluny II to the open ambulatory choir of Cluny III amounted to a programmatic shift in the direction of making the monastic liturgy accessible to a lay audience. It suggests that the church was designed either in order to serve in some way as a starting sanctuary for rites connected with the send-off on the pilgrimage, or in order to attract a mass audience to the monastic office on its own terms. However, the mass appeal of the new abbey church apparently never materialized. Cluny's financial failure in the twelfth century contrasts markedly with the affluence of the great established pilgrimage sanctuaries.
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