The times were still so stormy, and secular life so rough, that the impulse which drove pious minds into the cloister was as strong as ever. The feudal anarchy that still prevailed in France, perhaps continued to give that country the leading part, both in spreading hierarchical ideas and in bringing about further monastic revivals. [Sidenote: Further development of the congregational idea.] The great question for the new race of monastic reformers was how to keep up the spirit of the older rule while avoiding its dangers. Cluny had not quite solved the problem, though the congregational idea, the more disciplined austerity, and the admission of _conversi_ or lay brothers, were steps capable of wider development. How to avoid the wealth, pride, and idleness that came from success was a still harder problem. The importance of the new orders that arose in the end of the eleventh and the early years of the twelfth century depended upon the skill with which the founders answered these fundamental questions. [Sidenote: Order of Grammont.] The first new order was the order of Grammont. Its founder, St. Stephen, an Auvergnat noble, settled in 1076 with a few companions at Muret, north of Limoges, though after his death the house was removed to the bleak granitic plateau of the neighbouring Grammont. A large number of daughter houses grew up in Aquitaine, Anjou, and Normandy, all of which, after the Cluniac fashion, were subject to the prior of Grammont. St. Stephen’s wish was to follow no fixed definite system, but to be content with the Gospel rules of poverty, humility, and long-suffering, and his successors embodied this aspiration in a form of life which forbade the order to possess land, cattle, or churches, to exclude seculars from its services, and allowed it, if no alms came, to beg for sustenance. This was a remarkable anticipation of the chief characteristic of the mendicant orders of the thirteenth century, but it did not prevent the early decay of these disorderly idealists. A stern fixed rule was necessary to a mediæval monastery.