the needs of the increasing community required, a new monastery complex on a high plateau on the opposite side of the Nagold river. The Sts Peter and Paul's abbey church, which was modelled on Cluny II finished about 981 under Abbot Majolus, was consecrated in 1091. The convent followed the next year, when it moved into the adjacent new monastic compound designed according to the Plan of Saint Gall, while old St Aurelius was converted into a priory. William also refounded the monastic school for which the abbey had formerly been famous throughout Germany. But the abbot's greatest work, perhaps, and that for which his name is best remembered, was the reformation that he effected within the community itself. Cluny was then at the height of its fame and William sent some of his monks there to learn the Cluniac customs and rule, after which the Cluniac discipline was introduced at Hirsau. By his Constitutiones Hirsaugienses, a new religious order, the Ordo Hirsaugiensis, was formed. Known as the Hirsau Reforms, the adoption of this rule revitalised Benedictine monasteries throughout Germany, such as those of Zwiefalten, Blaubeuren Petershausen, Saint Peter and Saint George in the Black Forest in Swabia, as well as the Thuringian monastery of Reinhardsbrunn, Franconian Comburg and St. Paul's Abbey in the Lavanttal in Carinthia. Hirsau priories were located at Reichenbach and Schönrain, in Bavarian Fischbachau and Thuringian Paulinzella. A friend and correspondent of Pope Gregory VII and Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury, William took active part in the politico-ecclesiastical controversies of his time. He was also author of inter alia the treatise De musica et tonis, as well as the Philosophicarum et astronomicarum institutionum libri iii. The abbot then wrote his well-known "Consuetudines Hirsaugienses" which for several centuries remained the standard of monastic observance. Under William monks were sent out from Hirsau to reform other German monasteries on the same lines, and from it seven new monasteries were founded. The numbers of the community increased to 150 under his rule, manual labour and the copying of manuscripts forming an important part of their occupations. Numerous exemptions and other privileges were obtained from time to time from emperors and popes. In the twelfth century the autocratic rule of Abbot Manegold caused for a time some internal dissensions and a consequent decline of strict discipline, but the vigorous efforts of several abbots checked the decadence, and temporarily re-established the stricter