Cluny soon attracted attention, wealth, and followers. Corrupt old communities or new foundations sought the guidance or protection of its abbats. When each monastery was independent and isolated it was impossible to reform a lax community, or for it to defend itself from feudal violence and the hostility of the secular clergy. Odo, the saint who saw these evils, therefore started what soon became the Congregation of Cluny. The daughter-houses were regarded not as independent, but as parts of Cluny. There was only one abbat, the arch-abbat of Cluny, who was the head of all. Necessary local control was exercised by the prior, responsible to and nominated by the abbat. Some houses resisted annexation to Cluny, such as S. Martial at Limoges, which kept up the contest from 1063 to 1240. Contact {175} between the abbey and its dependencies was preserved by visitation of the abbat; and the dependent houses sent representatives to periodical chapters, which met at Cluny under the abbat. In the eleventh century these were merely consultative, but in the thirteenth they had become political, administrative, and judicial, even subjecting the abbat to their control. The rule of S. Benedict was followed in the abbey and its dependencies. The monks did some manual labour, but devoted themselves chiefly to religious exercises, to teaching the young, to hospitality and almsgiving. But the Cluniacs, protected by the papacy, and enriched by the offerings of the faithful all over Europe, taught an extreme doctrine as to the power of the Holy See. Their ideal was the absolute separation of Church from State, the reorganisation of the Church under a general discipline such as could be exercised only by the pope. He, in their ideal, was to stand towards the whole world as the Cluniac abbat stood towards each Cluniac priory, the one ultimate source of jurisdiction, the Universal Bishop, appointing and degrading the diocesan bishops as the abbat made and unmade the priors. How much of all this did the great Odo plan? Not very much. But it was his work to revive the discipline, the holiness, the self-sacrifice, which, through the reformed monasteries, should touch the whole Church. And thus monasticism at the beginning of the eleventh century was a wholly new force in the life of Christendom. It was destined to reform the papacy itself. [1] Bp. Stubbs in _Dict. of Christian Biography_, vol. i. p. 74. {176} CHAPTER XVI SACRAMENTS AND LITURGIES [Sidenote: Baptism.]