A thousand years ago the French abbey of Cluny was the hub of one of the mightiest empires of the Middle Ages, and the spiritual heart of Europe. Cluny was a Benedictine monastery in Burgundy, its church the largest and greatest ever built. Nearly 1,500 monastic houses were subject to Cluny’s authority, and its abbots, like Hugh the Great and Peter the Venerable, were confidants to countless emperors, popes, and kings.

Cluny tells the story of the abbey from its humble beginnings in the early Middle Ages, through its centuries of immense wealth and sacred glory, to its long decline—until it was destroyed during the French Revolution. It examines Cluny’s little-known role in the reconquest of Spain from the Moors, its dubious part in organizing the First Crusade, the bitter rivalry with Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians, and its delicate involvement in the tragic love story of Heloise and Abelard.

A monastery like no other, much of Cluny’s enduring legacy lies in the great cultural innovations that the abbey sponsored, from the famous pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela to some of the most magnificent churches in all of France and England, including Autun and Vézelay, Chartres and Canterbury.

EDWIN MULLINS is an Oxford-educated writer, journalist, and filmmaker who has published numerous books on the visual arts and architecture. A former art correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Telegraph, he lives and works in London and southern France.

“Mullins vivdly portrays Cluny’s meteoric rise, unbelievable wealth, and brilliant abbots. The Cluniac order’s eclipse by the austere Cistercians, after dominating Europe for two centuries, unfolds with elegiac pathos.”
—Adrian House, author of Francis of Assisi

“Mullins’s particular gift is that he can write about Art with a capital A from a bedrock of scholarship and insight, but in a language available to the layman.”
—The Financial Times

“Edwin Mullins makes the stones of Cluny speak, expertly reconstructing the magnificent building and its history. The beautifully detailed narrative captures everything from the day-to-day lives of the monks to the sweeping historical events that turned an architectural wonder into one of the most powerful institutions on earth. A splendid achievement.”
—Ross King, author of Brunelleschi’s Dome

“This loving paean to Cluny by Mullins...traces the abbey’s history from its inception in 910 to its ultimate destruction in the late 18th century. Mullins’s affection and admiration for Cluny provide a glimpse into a mostly forgotten medieval abbey.”
—Publishers Weekly