He resigned as abbot in 925, his abbeys being divided between his relative Vido and his disciple Odo of Cluny.
St Benedict of Nursia had founded his famous monastery at Monte Cassino in the 5th century, and from it, his ideas and his Rule would come to influence western European monasticism.
Bishops meeting in 909 in the diocese of Soissons, received reports of lay abbots living in monasteries with their families, guards, and dogs.
His father may have been the French nobleman Odon, who gave a refuge for the Benedictine community from Glanfeuil Abbey after the monks had been driven from the monastery by Norman attacks in 862.
Berno joined the Benedictine Abbey of St. Martin at Autun, where Hugh of Anzy le Duc had introduced stricter adherence to the Rule of Saint Benedict.
In this he was supported by Rudolph I of Burgundy In 894, Berno travelled to Rome and got papal approval for the charter of Gigny.
The monasteries at Gigny and Baume followed the rule as interpreted by Benedict of Aniane, who had sought to restore the primitive strictness of the monastic observance wherever it had been relaxed.
One account states that when Berno was abbot of Baume, he had such a good reputation, that William of Aquitaine gave him the monasteries at Deols and Massay.
William was acquainted with Berno when he was abbot of Baume, and was supportive of the reformers who wanted to bring monasticism back to a stricter observance of the Benedictine rule.
[7] William guaranteed that the monastery would be free from control by him, his successors or any other temporal power, and it was placed under the direct authority of the Pope in Rome, who accepted Cluny's charter.
Anyone who violated the charter that placed Cluny under Rome, was to be subject to a terrible curse including eternal hellfire.
[1] Berno administered six monasteries by the time he died, which were at Gigny, Baume, the abbey of Aethicens with the cella of St Lautenus, Deols, Massay and Cluny.