Celebrated Benedictine monastery, founded in 909 by William, Duke of Aquitaine, in Cluny, Saone-et-Loire, France, which became the mother-house of a vast group of monasteries forming the Congregation of Cluny. It played an important part in the Church reform of the 11th century, and reached the zenith of its glory in the 12th century, when it is said the congregation had 2,000 monasteries. It was governed by a series of remarkable men; among them were Abbot Bernon (910-927), Saint Odo (927-942), Blessed Aymard (942-965), Saint Mayeul (965-994), Saint Odilo (994-1049), and Saint Hugh (1049-1109). Several reforming popes, e.g., Saint Gregory VII (Hildebrand), Blessed Urban II, and Paschal II, received their training at Cluny. The abbey-church of Cluny was the largest monument in Christendom before the building of Saint Peter's of Rome, and a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture. After the suppression of the monastery, 1790, it was bought by the town and practically razed to the ground. The library was partly destroyed by the Huguenots and again by the mobs of the French Revolution.