Odo of Cluny (879–942), Benedictine monk and abbot. Born at Tours, the son of a knight, Abbo of Maine, Odo was brought up in the household of William of Aquitaine, the future founder of Cluny. He became a canon of Tours, studied for some years at Paris, was specially interested in music and read the Rule of St. Benedict for the first time. This led to his resigning his canonry at Tours and becoming a monk at Baume under the first abbot of Cluny, St. Berno. Meanwhile Cluny, founded in 909, began its life as a reformed monastery following St. Benedict's Rule in comparative obscurity; few would have prophesied its rapid rise to become the most important abbey in Europe.
A considerable share in this development belongs to Odo. He was soon put in charge of the monastic school at Baume; when he succeeded Berno as abbot of Cluny in 927, he continued and transformed the founding abbot's achievements. One of the most important of these was the obtaining of papal and royal charters which recognized Cluny's immunity and freedom from all secular interference and domination. For the internal regime of Cluny and the dependencies which it soon attracted, Odo insisted much on silence, abstinence, and the exact observance of authentic inherited custom in the interpretation of the Rule. The fundamental points of the reform were the common life of poverty and the exact observance of chastity. These were in contrast to the practice of many clerics of the time; through them the Monastic Order helped the formation of clerical ideals which were to be realized later through the Gregorian Reform.
Odo's influence and jurisdiction extended far beyond Cluny itself. Monasteries in France like Fleury (important for England) and Bourg-Dieu were ruled directly by him, while his reforms were promulgated in many other monasteries in south-east and central France under papal influence. At Rome itself Odo reformed St. Paul's-outside-the-walls and deeply influenced both Monte Cassino and Subiaco. His withdrawal from the world led to his being invited to act as impartial mediator in political matters, particularly between Hugh ‘king of Italy’ and the Patrician Alberic of Rome. By the end of his life Odo had become extremely influential and much respected. Stories were told of his generosity to the poor and of his compassion to prisoners. He died at the monastery of St. Julian at Tours, a few days after taking part in the feast of his patron, Martin of Tours, on 11 November. His own death and feast were on 18 (19) November.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- J. Mabillon, AA.SS. O.S.B., v, 150–99. Life by John of Cluny with works ascribed to Odo in P.L., cxxxiii. 105–854; G. Sitwell, St. Odo of Cluny (1958), which includes tr. of John's Life and of the Life by Odo of Gerald of Aurillac, see also À Cluny (1950); N. Hunt, Cluny under St. Hugh (1967); H. E. J. Cowdrey, The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform (1970); J. Leclercq, ‘Pour une histoire de la vie à Cluny’, R.H.E., lvii (1962), 385–408 and 783–812;B. Hamilton, Monastic Reform: Catharism and the Crusades (1979)
