Odilo of Cluny

Saint Odilo of Cluny was the fifth abbot of the monastery of Cluny, born around 962 in Auvergne and reposed on 1 January 1049. He led Cluny for about fifty-⁠four years after Majolus and was known for gentleness and for generosity to the poor. He is commemorated on 11 May.

The son of Berald of Mercoeur and Gerberga, of a noble family, he was partly paralysed as a child and carried on a stretcher by servants. It is told that one day, left at the door of a church, he crawled to the altar, tried to stand, succeeded on the second attempt and walked around the altar; it was believed that he had been healed by the intercession of the Mother of God, to whom he thereafter had a great devotion. He studied canon law at the seminary of Saint-⁠Julien in Brioude. Persuaded by William of Dijon, he entered Cluny in 991 at the age of twenty-⁠nine, and before the end of his probation he was made coadjutor to Abbot Majolus. In 994 he became abbot.

Under his rule Cluny became the most important monastery in western Europe. The Rule of Saint Benedict was established in place of a domestic rule, other Benedictine houses were reformed, and he fought simony and uncanonical marriages. He supported the Truce of God, which suspended fighting at certain times. He ordained that at Cluny and its monasteries all the faithful departed be remembered on 2 November, a custom soon adopted across the West. He also encouraged personal consecration to the Mother of God.

He defended the monastery's freedom against bishops and lords: he attended the synod of Ansa in 994, went to Rome in 997 and in 998 obtained from Pope Gregory V the freedom of Cluny from the diocesan bishop, a privilege extended in 1024 to all dependent houses. He stood in good relations with the emperors Henry II and Conrad II and several times interceded for the defeated. When Pope John XIX offered him the archbishopric of Lyons he refused. In the famine of 1006 he sold the gold crown Henry II had given the abbey to feed thousands, and also melted down sacred vessels for the same need.