existence the Order of Cluny with its reformed Benedictine rule, so
now the failure of the Cluniacs to live up to the expectations and to
minister to the needs of the most fervent religious spirits caused the
foundation of a number of new Orders. In each such case the founder
and his first followers strove, by the austerities of their personal
lives and by the severity of the rule which they enjoined, to embody
and to maintain at the highest level that ideal of contemplative
asceticism which was the object of the monastic life. Such was the
origin of the Order of Grammont (1074) and of Fontevraud (1094) and of
the better known Orders of the Carthusians (1084) and the Cistercians
(1098).

[Sidenote: Grammont.]

Thus Stephen, the founder of the Order of Grammont, was the son of a
noble of Auvergne, who, in the course of a journey in Calabria, was so
impressed by the life or the hermits with which the mountainous
districts abounded, that he resolved to reproduce it, and lived for
fifty years near Limoges, subjecting himself to such rigorous
devotional exercises that his knees became quite hard and his nose
permanently bent! Gregory VII sanctioned the formation of an Order,
but Stephen and his first followers called themselves simply _boni
homines_. After his death the monastery was removed to Grammont
close by, and a severe rule continued to be practised; but the
management of the concerns of the house was in the hands, not of the
monks, but of lay brethren, who began even to interfere in spiritual
matters, and the Order ceased to spread.

[Sidenote: Carthusians.]