I’ve been reading Larry Siedentop’s excellent Inventing the Individual recently. Siedentop argues that the origins of modern liberalism, with its emphasis on individual freedom, comes from the Christian tradition. In short, his argument is that the ideas of St. Paul, with their emphasis on individual salvation and an individual relationship with God, constituted a massive break with the Roman / Pagan focus on the family and innate social hierarchy. The revolutionary nature of these ideas and their implications for society and individual freedom were slowly brought to fruition by the medieval Catholic Church over a period of centuries.
There’s an awful lot in the book to think about and I’ll probably come back to this at a later date, but one thing that stood out for me was Siedentop’s description of the role of Cluniac monasticism as a vanguard for ethical reform in Western Europe:
In 910, with the foundation of the abbey of Cluny, Frankish monasticism turned the corner towards enduring reform… The founder, Duke William of Aquitaine, enabled the monks of Cluny to elect their abbots, free not only from interference by his own descendants but also from the local bishop. Cluny would be subordinate only to the authority of the papacy.
This was a big deal. Kings and nobles (not to mention the Frankish / German emperors) frequently treated monasteries (and the clergy) as parts of their domain, undermining the social role of these religious institutions and co-opting them into the ruling power structure.
By making institutional freedom an explicit part of the Cluniac movement, the monks were free to concentrate on reform relatively free of the corruption and nepotism affecting other parts of the Church. Siedentop describes what to me sounds awfully like the expansion of a kind of ‘franchise’ model of Cluniac monasticism:
The second abbot of Cluny, Odo, extended this reform by founding other monastic houses, which became ‘priories’ subject to the disciplines of Cluny. In this way a network of reformed monasteries spread throughout the Frankish domains, free from the threats of corruption assailing the Frankish episcopacy.
The success of this model was such that Cluniac priories became an important source of elected bishops – and once elected these bishops played a leading role in locally rooting out corruption and poor clerical behaviour. As such:
The indirect influence of Cluny was perhaps even more important. It restored the prestige of monasticism as representing a truly Christian life, an ordered life of personal dignity, work and self-government… The Cluniac reform movement raised the sights of the church inciting it to defend moral authority in a world apparently given over to mere power.
The reform movement went further, promoting the ‘Peace of God’ which argued that labouring and peasant classes – men, women and children – should be left undisturbed from the low level warfare and banditry of the aristocratic class. A new festival created in 994, the Feast of All Souls, celebrated the importance of the salvation of all people and the equality of the populace in God’s eyes. The symbolic changes were matched with an ‘extraordinary upsurge of new church building in the eleventh century’.
Lastly, Siedentop makes the point that by restoring a strong, independent monasticism this created ‘the opportunity for advancement through a career in the Church…[which] weakened the perception that social standing was entirely governed by fate’.
To me, this seems like a great example of how the institutions and incentive structures of organisations makes a huge difference. Prior to Cluny, it wasn’t as though there weren’t people throughout Europe who were appalled by the corruption and degradation of the feudal system, and the impact this had on local church organisation, but without an explicit guarantee of independence of action, it was difficult to marshal this sentiment into meaningful change.
In a 21st century context we would describe this as being heavily ‘disruptive’. Through an important innovation in the ‘business model’ of Western monasticism, the Church made key strides in a progressive (by the standards of the time at least) social agenda.
As above, there’s a lot more in Siedentop’s book, but this is a great example of how a small but significant institutional change can create a wave of social change.
