Odo of Cluny

Odo was born around 878 near Le Mans, in France, into a noble family. As a boy he was sent to the court of William of Aquitaine, the same duke who in 910 would found Cluny. Then he chose a different road: he became a canon at Tours, in the church of Saint Martin, and went to study in Paris. Around the age of thirty he entered the abbey of Baume as a monk; its abbot was Berno. In 927, after Berno died, he became abbot of Cluny. Cluny had something rare about it: it answered to no lord, because its founder had placed it under the direct protection of the pope. Odo made it a model. Common life, choral prayer, silence, the Rule of Saint Benedict taken seriously. Soon other monasteries were calling for him, to set them in order again. He traveled a great deal, in France and in Italy, and in Rome he reformed several monasteries. Among other things, he wrote the life of Saint Gerald of Aurillac, a nobleman who had become a saint without leaving the world: a new idea for those times. He died in Tours, the city of Saint Martin, on November 18, 942. Under him Cluny began to become what it would be for two centuries: the heart of a network of monasteries spread across Europe. If your name is Odo, today is your name day.