d, Odo, Maieul, Odilo and Hugh, are venerated as saints.

In the movement associated with the name of Hildebrand the influence of
Cluny was thrown strongly on the side of religious and ecclesiastical
reform, as in the suppression of simony and the enforcing of clerical
celibacy; but in the struggle between the Papacy and the Empire the
abbots of Cluny seem to have steered a middle course between Guelfs and
Ghibellines, and to have exercised a moderating influence; St Hugh
maintained relations with Henry IV. after his excommunication, and
probably influenced him to go to Canossa. Hildebrand himself, though
probably not a monk of Cluny, was a monk of a Cluniac monastery in Rome;
his successor, Urban II., was actually a Cluny monk, as was Paschal II.
It may safely be said that from the middle of the 10th century until the
middle of the 12th, Cluny was the chief centre of religious influence
throughout Western Europe, and the abbot of Cluny, next to the pope, the
most important and powerful ecclesiastic in the Latin Church.

Everything at Cluny was on a scale worthy of so great a position. The
basilica, begun 1089 and dedicated 1131, was, until the building of the
present St Peter's, the largest church in Christendom, and was both in
structure and ornamentation of unparalleled magnificence. The monastic
buildings were gigantic.

During the abbacy of Peter the Venerable (1122-1157) it became clear
that, after a lapse of two centuries, a renewal of the framework of the
life and a revival of its spirit had become necessary. Accordingly he
summoned a great chapter of the whole order whereat the priors and
representatives of the subject houses attended in such numbers that,
along with the Cluny community, the assembly consisted of 1200 monks.
This chapter drew up the 76 statutes associated with Peter's name,
regulating the whole range of claustral life, and solemnly promulgated
as binding on the whole Cluniac obedience. But these measures did not
succeed in saving Cluny from a rapid decline that set in immediately
after Peter's death. The monarchical status of the abbot was gradually
curtailed by the holding of general chapters at fixed periods and the
appointment of a board of definitors, elected by the chapter, as a
permanent council for the abbot. Owing to these restrictions and still
more to the fact that the later abbots were not of the same calibre as
the early ones, their power and influence waned, until in 1528 (if not