Cluny

A small village in modern eastern France where the Cluny Abbey was founded in 909-10 which became the center of spiritual renewal ("the reformation before the Reformation"), and of Beneditine monasticism in particular, that was to influence Western Christianity for centuries afterwards. The Abbey was to become the largest church building in the world between the 11th and 16th Cent. In hatred for the institutional church, the mob during the French Revolution sacked the church and it was later ordered torn down by Emperor Napoleon. A tower is all that is left of the once majestic building.