Gorze Reform

Gorze Abbey was a Benedictine monastery in Gorze in the present arrondissement of Metz, near Metz in Lorraine. It was prominent as the source of a monastic reform movement in the 930s.

Gorze Abbey was founded in 749 by Bishop Chrodegang of Metz, who obtained for it from Rome the relics of Saint Gorgonius. The new community at first followed his Rule, but decline later set in. The highly placed Frankish lord Bivin of Gorze (810–863), married to a daughter of Boso the Elder, functioned as lay abbot of Gorze. In 933 the premises, by then semi-derelict, were given by Adalbero, Bishop of Metz, to John of Gorze and Einald of Toul so that they could restore observance of the Rule of St. Benedict. They did so extremely successfully and the customary of Gorze soon spread to many other monasteries, at first local, such as St. Maximin's Abbey, Trier, and St. Evre's Abbey, Toul, and later in more distant places, such as Bavaria, through the mediation of Wolfgang of Regensburg.

The Gorze Reform was similar to the Cluniac Reform in that it aimed at a re-establishment of the Rule of St. Benedict, but quite different in several major areas. In particular, whereas Cluny created a centralised system of authority in which the religious houses adopting its reforms became subordinate to Cluny itself, the Gorze reforms preserved the independence of the participating monasteries, and resulted instead in a network of loosely connected affiliations based on several centres, such as Fulda, Niederaltaich, Einsiedeln and St. Emmeram's Abbey in Regensburg.

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