Odo of Cluny

Saint Odo of Cluny was the second abbot of the monastery of Cluny and initiator of the Cluniac reform, a movement of renewal of monastic life in the tenth century. He died on 18 November 942. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and is commemorated on 18 November.

Youth

He was born around 878, son of Abbo, lord of Déols, near Le Mans, and Arenberga. According to the Life written by his disciple John of Salerno, the only life of him from that time, his parents had long been childless, and on Christmas Eve Abbo prayed to Our Lady to give him a son. When the child was born, his father entrusted him to the church of Saint Martin at Tours. Both parents later became monastics, and his brother Bernard too. Still a child, he was sent to the court of Fulk the Good, count of Anjou, then became a page at the court of William the Pious, duke of Aquitaine. He had a special devotion to the Mother of God, under the name “Mother of Mercy”.

At nineteen he was tonsured a canon of the church of Saint Martin at Tours, the tomb of Saint Martin being one of the holiest places of Western Christendom. He spent six years there, studying the classical authors, the Fathers, poetry and music. He later said that the monks of Tours had been spoiled by the wealth and gifts the pilgrims brought and had abandoned the rule; he even told that they no longer went to Lauds at night for fear of soiling their shoes. In 901 he went to Paris, where he spent four years completing his theological studies and learning philosophy from Remigius of Auxerre. Back at Tours he led a strict life. One day, reading the rule of Saint Benedict, he saw how far his life fell short of it and resolved to embrace the monastic state. The count of Anjou, his patron, would not let him, and Odo spent almost three years in a cell, with one companion, in penance and contemplation. At length he resigned his canonry and went secretly to the monastery of Baume, in the diocese of Besançon, where Abbot Berno received him into the monastic habit, around 909. He brought only his books, about a hundred.

At Baume and Cluny

Bishop Turpio of Limoges ordained him priest, which Odo had to accept in obedience, but he was so downcast that Berno sent him to the bishop. The two spoke of the evil state of the Church and of abuses. Odo spoke on the Book of Jeremiah, and the bishop was so impressed that he asked him to write it down; with Berno’s permission he wrote his second book, the “Collationes”. He became superior of the abbey school at Baume. In 910 Berno left to found Cluny Abbey, with some of the monks, and Odo followed him, taking charge of his library. After Berno’s death, in 927, he was elected abbot.

From 931, with authority from Pope John XI, he worked to reform the monasteries of Aquitaine, northern France and Italy, urging monks to a stricter observance of the Rule of Saint Benedict. He also managed the monastery of Romainmôtier and renewed Fleury Abbey. In 937 he went to Rome, where he was given the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, and between 936 and 942 he was several times in Italy, founding on the Aventine near Rome a monastery of the Mother of God, and sending disciples to Monte Cassino and Subiaco. Political missions were entrusted to him as well, such as the peace between Hugh of Arles and Alberic II of Spoleto. He began the custom, among the monasteries following Cluny, of holding every year, on the day after All Saints, a commemoration of all the faithful departed. His reform remained a model of monastic life for over a century. Three hymns and twelve antiphons in honour of Saint Martin are attributed to him.