The foundation of these Orders, greater or less, did not exhaust the
impetus in favour of monasticism. Single houses and smaller Orders
were founded during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, of which
many attained a merely local importance. The common feature of the
great Orders was that each of them formed a Congregation, that is to
say, an aggregate of numerous houses scattered over many lands, but
following the same rule and acknowledging some sort of allegiance to
the original home of the Order. The invention of this model was due to
Cluny, although even among the Cluniacs the organisation of the
Congregation, with its system of visiting inspectors who reported on
the condition of the monasteries to an annual Chapter-General meeting
at Cluny, was not completed until the thirteenth century. From the
first, however, the Abbot of Cluny was a despot; with the exception of
the heads of some monasteries which became affiliated to the Order he
was the only abbot, the ruler of the Cluniac house being merely a
prior. All the early abbots were men of mark, who were afterwards
canonised by the Church. The fourth abbot refused the Papacy; but
Gregory VII, Urban II, and Pascal II were all Cluniac monks. The real
greatness of the Order was due to its fifth and sixth abbots, Odilo
who ruled from 994 to 1049, and Hugh who held the reins of office for
an even longer period (1049-1109); while the fame of the Order
culminated under Peter the Venerable, the contemporary of St. Bernard.

[Sidenote: Its decay.]

But the history of the abbot who came between Hugh and Peter shows the
strange vicissitudes to which even the greatest monasteries might be
subjected. Pontius was godson of Pope Pascal II, who sent to the newly
elected abbot his own dalmatic. Calixtus II visited Cluny, and while
reaffirming the privileges granted by his predecessors, such as the