cluny, the reliquaries rediscovered

Thanks to its possession of relics, Cluny Abbey became a place of pilgrimage very early on. Ancient texts bear witness to the great wealth of the reliquaries preserved in the abbey treasury.

Looted during the Wars of Religion, the treasury was destroyed during the French Revolution. The unexpected rediscovery of several 17th and 18th century reliquaries provides an opportunity to take stock of the situation.

Cluny was late in acquiring relics. In a letter to Pons de Melgueil (seventh abbot of Cluny, who died in 1126), Hugues de Gournay states that it was in 981, at the dedication of the second church of Cluny, that the relics of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, obtained thanks to the monks of Saint-Paul-hors-les-Murs, were placed in the high altar. This account from the 1120s recounts the transfer of the relics from the catacombs to the Vatican, then to the monastery of Saint-Paul-hors-les-Murs; they were entrusted to Odon (the first abbot of Cluny, who died in 942) before the prevailing insecurity in Rome prompted him to return them to Cluny.

As a "little Rome", Cluny was able to replace the pilgrimage"ad limina" and accumulate relics. It also redistributed relics: Abbot Odilon (fifth abbot of Cluny, who died in 994), for example, gave part of the arm of Saint Maur, a companion of Saint Benedict, to Mont Cassin.

An early inventory in the Liber Tramitis, before 1040, mentions a reliquary in the "image of Saint Peter" containing no fewer than 17 prestigious relics! In fact, under Abbot Pons, a piece of the True Cross and the finger of Saint Stephen arrived, obtained thanks to the abbot of Notre-Dame de Josaphat, a former Cluniac monk.

Maïeul's wick in its simple glass jar exalts the humility of the abbey, which at the end of the first third of the 11th century was thinking more and more clearly of itself as the spiritual centre of Christendom.