A mere village at the time when the abbey was founded (910), Cluny gradually increased in importance with the development of the religious fraternity, and in 1090 received a communal charter from the abbot St Hugh. In 1471 the town was taken by the troops of Louis XI. In 1529 the abbey was given "in commendam" to the family of Guise, four members of which held the office of abbot during the next hundred years. The town and abbey suffered during the Wars of Religion of the 16th century, and the abbey was closed in 1790. The residence erected in Paris at the end of the 15th century by the abbots Jean de Bourbon and Jacques d'Amboise, and known as the Hôtel de Cluny (see HOUSE, Plate I., fig. 6), is occupied by the du Sommerard collection; but the Collège de Cluny founded in 1269 by the abbot Yves de Vergy, as a theological school for the order, is no longer in existence.
_The Order of Cluniac Benedictines._--The Monastery of Cluny was founded in 910 by William I. the Pious, count of Auvergne and duke of Guienne (Aquitaine). The first abbot was Berno, who had under his rule two monasteries in the neighbourhood. Before his death in 927 two or three more came under his control, so that he bequeathed to his successor the government of a little group of five or six houses, which became the nucleus of the order of Cluny. Berno's successor was Odo: armed with papal privileges he set to work to make Cluny the centre of a revival and reform among the monasteries of France; he also journeyed to Italy, and induced some of the great Benedictine houses, and among them St Benedict's own monasteries of Subiaco and Monte Cassino, to receive the reform and adopt the Cluny manner of life. The process of extension, partly by founding new houses, partly by incorporating old ones, went on under Odo's successors, so that by the middle of the 12th century Cluny had become the centre and head of a great order embracing 314 monasteries--the number 2000, sometimes given, is an exaggeration--in all parts of Europe, in France, Italy, the Empire, Lorraine, Spain, England, Scotland, Poland, and even in the Holy Land. And the influence of Cluny extended far beyond the actual order: many monasteries besides Monte Cassino and Subiaco adopted its customs and manner of life without subjecting themselves to its sway; and of these, many in turn became the centres of reforms which extended Cluny ideas and influences over still wider circles: Fleury and Hirsau may be mentioned as conspicuous examples. The gradual stages in the growth of the Cluny sphere of influence is exhibited in a map [VI. C.] in Heussi and Mulert's _Handatlas zur Kirchengeschichte_, 1905.