The Grail in the Cathedrals

Glastonbury and the Cluniac Secret Societies

Cluny, to restate the case for its relevance to Glastonbury under Bishop Henri d' Blois, was a center for the reform and spiritual renewal of Western monasticism in the tenth through the twelfth centuries. It was founded in 909 under Abbot Berno, as a reformed monastery, observing the Benedictine Rule with a democratic liberality, unusual for the Late Dark Ages. Many monasteries in Europe at that time were dominated by a nearby king or nobleman or more than likely an abbot seeking favor from Rome.

From its inception, Cluny—which was heavily endowed directly fro the British throne and from the principalities of the Loire namely the Normans and the Thibaudians of Champagne— was designed to be independent of all but papal jurisdiction and even that was often mitigated under negotiation. At its peak, in the mid 12th century, Cluny even enjoyed absolute independence from the papacy.

Clearly the Cistercians, and several other sects, did not care for Cluny's liberality, or the Benedictine preoccupation with the glorification of God through art and wealth. As a reaction the Cistercians were given a competitive charter and soon had enough power to terrorize everyone in Europe, Ireland, and England.

We should review developments at Cluny through the hierarchy of abbots to understand why, the largest and farthest reaching religious order in history was beaten down and forced to form secret societies.

ODO
Of the Abbots relevant to Blois and to Glastonbury let us begin with Odo. Born 879 at Tours, ODO became a monk in 909, and was promoted to abbot in 927. As Odo I he was a duc and a Knight, almost a king. He ruled long and fairly, but eventually gave up public life for more contemplative duties.

He obtained papal and royal charters which guaranteed the monastery freedom from outside interference, including direct papal interference. Under his guidance Cluny attracted many French and English men and women, most of high rank and station, seeking to follow its discipline. Abbot Odo was instrumental in introducing the Cluniac observances into many Italian monasteries as well. He insisted on solitude, simplicity of diet, and strict observance of chastity for his monks, but he was not rigid of temperament and allowed song and sport, including, believe it or not, sword play and archery in defense of the Abbey.

His example of generosity to the poor and to prisoners, following Saint Benedict's lead, at Monte Cassino, remains a legend. Because he had no worldly ambitions, he was often called to mediate disputes between men in power.

That Bishop Blois followed this rule in England is well documented when we hear that Blois personally went to London as Bishop of Cantebury and freed hundreds of prisoners held illegally in the stockade. Also in the typical Cluniac style, Blois arbitrated several disputes between his brother, when he was made King of England, and his hundreds of enemies and allies.

Odilio
Odilo, the fifth abbot, was born around 962, became a monk as a young man, and became abbot in 994. He held office for 55 years, during which time thirty abbeys accepted Cluny as their mother house, and its practices were adopted by many more which did not affiliate directly. Thus the Cluniac reform spread through Burgundy, the Langudoc, Brittany, Auvergne, Poitou, and much of Italy and Spain. The Norman King Henry I was especially supportive in England. Enclaves were also well documented at Glastonbury, Salisbury and York. The abbot of Cluny appointed priors for the daughter houses, which were thus permanently under a central jurisdiction, making the Cluniac monasteries (or some of them) into the first monastic order in the modern sense.

In Abbot Odilo's day, faction fighting was more common than peace. Minor wars, raids, and skirmishes between feudal lords and up and coming land owners (Strong Farmers) were every day events. Odilo reduced the effect of this garrulousness by persuading the combatants to sign a "Hands-off" policy when it came to monastic holdings. Ironically, or perhaps by design, Blois made the same peace for Glastonbury when warring Saxons fought Celts and Angles against Norman rule.

Hugh
Hugh, the sixth abbot of Cluny hold specific moment for Henry Blois because Hugh carried out events that would later enable Blois to excel at Glastonbury. Like Blois, High d' Semur was of noble birth. Born in 1024,the oldest son of a Burgundian nobleman (the Count of Semur, a strong area ruler with roots to the Merovingians and early Troubadours.

Also likeBlois, Abbot Hugh was precocious. He entered Cluny at 16, and became abbot nine years later. This is an astonishing advancement for such a young monk and one can only assume his fathers knighthood paved the way for such a rapid political advantage. He was a good administrator and remained abbot for 60 years, during which time the number of monastic houses that recognized Cluny grew from about 60 to more than 2000, this included, Glastonbury under Blois after 1136, Although no official recognition was ever given, the very fact that the house at Glastonbury was rebuilt to its greatest splendor by a Cluniac, should tell us enough.

It was under Hugh's abbacy that the Cluniac reform came into England (at Lewes in Sussex in 1077). 22 years before the birth of Blois in Troyes. At that time Abbot Hugh increased the control of the mother house over the daughter houses. Hugh was an accomplished diplomat sent at various times by nine different popes to conduct delicate negotiations in Hungary, Toulouse, Spain,and all over Europe. He mediated between pope and emperor in the confrontation at Canossa, and must be reckoned as one of the most influential figures of his day. He died in 1109 when Henry Blois was ten years old, Blois indebtedness to Hugh d' Semur, even though the two never met, is direct. but several lives of the Abbots, which Henry would have read as de riguer, were published and Blois, more than likely knew, in great detail of Hughes contributions and traditions in keeping the rule of the order.

Peter the Venerable
Only slightly older than Blois, the eighth Abbot of Cluny was Peter the Venerable, born in 1092, prior of Vezelay in 1112, and elected abbot of Cluny in 1122. In 1125, when Peter was away, Blois was six years old, Pons returned with a band of armed men and seized control of the Cluny monastery. The Pope intervened and imprisoned Pons, who died in prison the following year. Peter was then involved in a direct dispute with Bernard of Clairvaux, the spokesman of the Cistercian monasteries, and disposed to view the Cluniac establishment in some sense a rival organization, who accused the Cluniac houses of being insufficiently strict in their monastic observances. Peter, instead of replying indignantly, considered the complaints, made some changes where he thought that changes were needed, and ignored the complaints that he considered unwise In 1140, just as Blois was beginning his tenure at Glastonbury, and only a few years after Bernard's condemnation of Abelard. XXXX add

Abelard at Cluny

Although not an Abbot, Abelard. was in residence at Cluny for many years and came and went as he pleased. Certain of his letters to Heloise were composed at Cluny and in essence the entire romantic love and courtly love movement was hatched at Cluny. This could not have escaped the attention of Blois who was in residence at Cluny when these affairs took place. Abelard's resurrection of the controversy of St. Denis versus Saint Dyonisis, as the founder of the basillica in Paris, was probably Engineered at Cluny. Saint Denis was the Christian martyr who was supposedly beheaded by pagans at Paris on the spot of the present Basilque St. Denys, the resting place of most of the Merovingian kings and queens of France. Now on the outskirts of South Paris it was once the center of Parisian life.

Peter gave Abelard shelter at Cluny, persuaded the Pope to deal mildly with him, and reconciled Abelard and Bernard. He refused to have anythingto do with the preaching of the Second Crusade, saying that the Moslem’s should be met, not with armies, but with scholars prepared for rational dialogue. He sponsored the first translation of the Koran into Latin, so that Christian missionaries could understand what the Moslem’s believed, but this idea wasn't tenable with Bernard and his crusade, out for glory and power. In this way we can assume that Blois had adequate insight into the Koran at Glastonbury.

Peter also knew Eleanor of Aquitaine directly. He served as papal envoy to Aquitaine, England, and various states in Italy and visited Glastonbury several times while Blois was Abbot there.

Peter wrote religious tracts, poems, hymns, and many letters, of which about two hundred survive. He defended the Jews, especially the families of Septenary, which was, for all intents and Purposes the full compass of the Languedoc at that time, against persecution and false accusations.

Peter was abbot for thirty-four years, during which time Cluny remained the most influential abbey in Europe. He died on Christmas day in 1156, with his student the great BVishop of Winchester at his side.

Blois himself ordered that Peter's heart be ensrined at Cluny and later his own shrine was erected there too.

With Peter's death the golden age of Cluny was over, but, as we see from events at Glastonbury, the Abbey and grounds in Central Somerset took its place for another two decades.

Bernard of Cluny
Henri Blois was a notoriously shy man, a genius of diplomacy and literature, an architect and Knight Templar who found no succor in fame, and although his contributions were manifold, he was overshadowed on the continent by yet another Bernard, one Bernard of Cluny (or of Morlaix), a Benedictine monk of the first half of the twelfth century, poet, satirist, and hymn-writer,author of the famous verses On the Contempt of the World. Not to be confused with the early Saint Bernard, His parentage, native land, and education are hidden in obscurity, but there is little doubthe had Celtic roots, as his poetry has a bardic ring to it, the ring of a writer who grew up using a Breton or Welsh mother tongue. The sixteenth-century writer John Pits (Scriptures Angle, Saec. XII) says that he was of English birth, but this would mean Welsh or possibly even Britannic Celt, not Anglo-Saxon per se. He is frequently called Morlanensis, which title most writers have interpreted to mean that he was a native of Morlaix in Brittany. But it could also mean that he came to Cluny from Morlaix, an ancient Celtic moinatsery founded by Gildas.

A writer in the "Journal of Theological Studies" (1907), VIII,354-359 contends that Bernard belonged to the family of the Seigniors of Montpellier in Languedoc, and was born at Murles, a possession of that distinguished family; also that he was at first a monk of St. Sauveur d'Aniane, whence he entered Cluny under Abbot Pons (1109-22). This would make his family a stem of the Troubadour tree and probably also Albigensian, if not at least influenced by the Gnostic Cathars and Albigensians at a time before they were wiped out and in heir prime.

It is certain that Bernad was a monk at Cluny in the time of Peter the Venerable (1122-56), for his famous poem is dedicated to that abbot.It may have been written about 1140. He left some sermons and is said to be the author of certain monastic regulations known as the Consuetudines Cluniacenses, also of a dialogue (Colloquium) on the Trinity.His De Contemptu Mundi contains about 3,000 verses, and is for the most part a diatribe against the moral disfunctions of the time.

Like his predecessor in Brittany, Saint Gildas, Bernard spares no one; priests, nuns, bishops, monks, and even Rome itself are mercilessly railed against for their sins against nature. For this reason it was first printed by Matthias Flaccus as one of his testes veritatis, or witnesses of the deep seeded corruption of the medieval Church (Varia poemata de corrupto ecclesiae statu, Basle, 1557). This was often reprinted by Protestants in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a justification of their cause to split away from Rome.In no small sense, therefor, Peter was a "protestant" in the literal meaning of the word, and gave permission to later movements such as the actions ofthe Medieval Socialists, The Rosicrucians, the Templars and even Martin Luther.

Again, like Saint Gildas, four centuries earlier, the later Bernard does not proceed in an orderly manner against the vices and follies of his age, instead, like a Celtic bard or poet — versed in triads — he takes 'Pot shots and engages in subtle colloquy and guileful rhetoric, more or less randomly parsing out his targets in sing-song as he runs. His style is both lampoon and violent condemnation simultaneously, a style which we see later in the Perlesvaus especially in the innocent and sad story of Percival.

Throughout his 'ranks" he seems to focus on two main points: the transitory character of all material pleasures and the permanency of spiritual joys. This sounds, I might point also out, amazingly like the speech of an Albigensian Parfait; dualistic, fatalistic, and yet resigned to a heavenly paradise. Here then we have both a bardic poet and a troubadour in one body speaking with a voice of a man fully comitted to a mystical Christ.

The early half of the twelfth century saw the appearance of several new factors of secularism stimulated by monks such as those at Cluny, but unknown to an earlier and more austere religiosity; namely the increase of a commercial middle class, educated at the monasteries themselves. Furthermore, I think this new grandeur was impelled by the decisive outcome of the first crusade,and only occurred in isolated areas where a kind of neoplatonic libralism was allowed, i.e., away from papal repression and the anti-christ known to the Cluniacs as the Inquisition.

In the more opulent medieval cities cultural pageantry and luxury developed away from a hitherto rude feudal world, breaking down feudalism and replacing it with a kind of barter capitalism and citizen based decision making process, a process which, although forbidden to serfs, was at least now available to a thriving Bourgeois's. This all took place against a backdrop of colors provided by the resurrection of latent paganism both in the church itself, and in certain cults like the Cathars and Troubadours. In this way, at least some of the areas of Europe, were experiencing a surcease from the grinding conflict of State and Church. A trend which threatened to spread to the entire continent. By 1210 this cultural Joyeux , was nearly dead, and yet some elements traceable to Cluny and the Grand Signueres of Troubadour fame survived. One of the main streams of this survival took hold in Troyes, the seat of the Champagne courts of the templars and from there, via men like Blois, and powerful women like his sister in law Matilda, it traveled to England and to Glastonbury. Another thread traveled though Eleanore of Aquitaine and the Anjevins.

Bernard of Cluny is indeed a lyrical writer, swept from one theme to another by the intense force of ascetic meditation and by the majestic power of his own verse, in which there lingers yet a certain fierce intoxication of poetic wrath. His highly wrought pictures of heaven and hell were probable known to Dante; the roasting cold, the freezing fire, the devouring worm, the fiery floods, and again the glorious idyl of the Golden Age and the splendours of the Heavenly Kingdom are couched in a diction that rises at times to the height of Dante's genius. The enormity of sin, the charm of virtue, the torture of an evil conscience, the sweetness of a God-fearing life alternate with heaven and hell as the themes of his majestic dithyramb. Nor does he dwell in generalities; he returns again and again to the wickedness of woman (one of the fiercest arraignments of the sex), the evils of wine, money, learning, perjury, soothsaying, etc.; this master of an elegant, forceful, and abundant Latinity cannot find words strong enough to convey his prophetic rage at the moral apostasy of his generation, in almost none of whom does he find spiritual soundness. Youthful and simoniacal bishops, oppressive agents of ecclesiastical corporations, the officers of the Curia, papal legates, and the pope himself are treated with no less severity than in Dante or in the sculptures of medieval cathedrals. Only those who do not know the utter frankness of certain medieval moralists could borrow scandal from his verses. It may be added that in medieval times "the more pious the chronicler the blacker his colours

In summation, at least as to style, the theme song of any Cluniac, including Henri Blois, is a great cry of pain wrung from a deeply mystical soul. This cry was however blunted and thence carried out into art and poetry, to the good of humanity. Unlike the stoic later followers of the Benedictines the true Cluniacs saw art as a manifestation of mans obligation to God. Thus the Cluniacs were the seed for the Grail tree which could, with proper attendance, grow and blossom throughout the crusades, pouring forth fruit for centuries into the late renaissance and even into our modern age or anywhere art and architecture are seen as manifestations of the love of God.
The Cluniac monks, especially as expressed by Henri Blois at Glastonbury, created the dawning consciousness of a new order. as order which gave permission to express new ideals and aspirations. The direct link between the cluniacs and the last days of the Celtic church in England is also a direct link to the Grail initiation. Understanding this transition, this unbroken chain of vision, is imperative to the understanding of the Grail understanding the later Rosicrucian enlightenment at the dawn of our own era. There is no doubt that certain visionaries of that era, a full millennium in the past, saw the seed of the Renaissance tree and attempted to assure its continuance through the Gothic church and the Abbey system.

In The Perlesvaus and the High History the Cluniac style can be seen with ease. The anguished and irregular flow of ideas, is patently obvious even in the English translation, its development into branches makes some sense, but still we see a need to place emotion above studied style. Interfolia, the recurrent theme of the denunciation of the corrupt order is everywhere and yet this negative spirituality is washed by an enlightening spirit, the promise of a golden future in the form pof the knight Perecival, a negative historical trend, halted frequently in a dramatic way by glimpses of a Divine order of things, either in thefaraway past under Arthur and the ideals of the Temple or in the near futureat the hand of the Templars soon to increase thier amazing temples and Hospitaliers soon to build their healing domains. Clearly the author of the Perlesvaus, who ever he proves to be, was an initiate into this cluniac style and emotional flagellation onto paper, as if the book itself were written in blood and tears.

The cluniac poet and preacher who wrote the Perlesvaus is a typical Melchizedek. He is also a prophet and a hermit. The metre of "Jerusalem the Golden," became particularly inspiring to the monks at Glastonbury and obviously to the Templars thus, I think, without the hands of one Henri d' Blois; Bishop of Winchester, Abbot of Glastonbury and Grand Master of the Knights Templars in England theses things might not have been accomplished.

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