Baring-Gould’s sources: Gallican and Belgian Martyrologies. Authorities: — A life by Amandus de Castello, a contemporary, afterwards abbot of Marchiennes. Another life by Herimann of Laon, abbot of S. Martin at Toumai, cca. 1150; and an epistle containing an account of the death of Odo, by Amandus de Castello.] The Blessed Odo, or Oudard, was a native of Orleans; his father’s name was Gerard, and that of his mother Cecilia. Nothing is known of his early years, but it is evident frem the amount of learning he afterwards displayed, that they must have been spent in study. He taught philosophy in the city of Toul, when B. Odo.

…the canons of the church of Tournai, who had heard of his distinguished parts, offered him the direction of a school founded in that town. Odo betook himself thither, and speedily found himself surrounded by two hundred scholars. At this time the controversy between the Realists and the Nominalists divided the schools. Odo adopted the Realist faction, in opposition to Raimbert, a doctor who taught Nominalism at Lille, and with such success that he drew around his chair most of the pupils of Raimbert. His instructions were listened to with breathless interest, whether given in the lecture hall, or before the cathedral doors by night, when seated on the steps, he pointed out to his disciples the constellations of the firmament, and the movement of the planets. His enthusiastic disciples, wishing to give him some token of their gratitude, presented him with a gold ring, on which was inscribed the legend, “ Annulus Odonem decet aureus Aureliensem.”

The reputation of Odo spread through Flanders, Burgundy, Normandy, the other provinces of France, and even into Italy. Engrossed in the study of grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, and all other sciences, he felt little interest in the writings of the great Christian fathers, but loved rather to study Plato and Aristotle. One day a scholar brought him an old book, which he wished to sell; it was a work of S. Augustine on “ Free Will.” He bought it, and flung it into a box contemptuously. Two months after, he was expounding Boethius to his disciples, when he lighted in it on a reference to the book on Free AVill by Augustine. Then Odo remembered the volume, and wishing to verify the quotation, found the book, and began to read parts of it. He had not read many pages before he was engrossed. “ What a style ! ” he exclaimed. “ I had no fjwne T9.

idea that S. Augustine was such a master of eloquence.” He read on to the third book, and when he came to that passage in which the great doctor likens the sinful soul, labouring without profit and pleasure, to a slave condemned to empty the cesspools of a palace, he groaned aloud, and sighed, “ That is true; it is my own condition.” He realized now how the dialectics and scholastic studies of his day failed to satisfy and delight; it was endless toil of the mind, but all to no profit. He would cast off philosophy and try religion. His resolution was quickly made, and he broached the subject to his pupils. The people of Toumai took the alarm, and appealed to their bishop, Radbod II., to prevent the loss of so great a man to their city. The bishop offered him the ruined abbey of S. Martin [St. Martin of Tours (d. 397), soldier turned bishop] on a height outside the city, and the people of Tournai promised to render it habitable if he would settle there. Odo accepted the generous offer, and at the head of those of his scholars who desired to follow him, went in procession, accompanied by the bishop and people of Tournai, to his new abode. There they adopted the habit of regular canons, and embraced the rule of S. Augustine.

Odo must have exercised an extraordinary influence over the young, for numbers followed him, and embraced the religious life rather than be parted from their cherished master. The story is told of Adolphus, son of Sohier, chanter of the cathedral church of Tournai, forsaking his home and flying to S. Martin. His father pursued him, caught him by the hair, beat him, and brought him home, but the boy escaped again, and took refuge in the family of Odo. Again the father brought him home, and after having chastised him, locked him up. But Adolphus was not to be changed in his purB. Odo.

pose, and his resolution so moved his father and his uncle Hermann, that Sohier and Hermann brought the boy to Odo, and asked to be admitted with him into the community of S. Martin.

Odo, dissatisfied with the laxity of the rule, which permitted his religious to associate with the clergy of the town, consulted his friend Aymeric, abbot of Anchin, who advised him to adopt the rule of S. Benedict [father of Western monks (d. c. 547), author of the Rule]. Odo agreed, and received the Benedictine [monks following the Rule of St. Benedict] habit from the hands of Aymeric, and was followed by the majority of his religious. He was now elected abbot by his disciples, according to the rule of S. Benedict, and he applied himself with fresh fervour to the discipline of himself and of the souls committed to his charge. He set all his monks to work, some with their hands in the farm, others in the scriptorium, where he kept twelve incessantly employed in copying manuscripts, and thus formed the nucleus of the great library of S. Martin’s at Tournai.

Odo had governed the abbey thirteen years, when (in 1105) he was called to occupy the episcopal throne of Cambrai. This post was one of great difficulty, on account of the divisions which had broken out between the churches of Cambrai and Arras, on their separation a few years previously (in 1093). Gautier I., bishop of Arras and Cambrai, had been excommunicated by Pope Urban II. (in 1095) for receiving investiture from the emperor, and the see of Cambrai [a bishop’s “see” is his diocese, named from his seat (Latin sedes)], had been given to Manasses, archdeacon of Rheims, who died in 1105. This was at the period of the miserable contest between the Emperor Henry IV. and the successors of the great Hildebrand on the papal throne. In Cambrai a party clung to the side of the emperor and bishop Gautier, and refused to acknowledge the papal nominee, Manasses. On the death of Manasses, a party among the canons, favourable to the pope, elected Odo, in the city of Rheims, as Cambrai was in the hands of Gautier, whom the majority of the people, many of the clergy, and nearly all the nobles, supported in defiance of the papal excommunication. The election was made in obedience to the commands of Paschal II.

After his stormy career, Henry IV. seemed to have attained an old age on which the sun of prosperity was shining in tranquil splendour. His son Conrad, whom Pope Urban had stimulated to revolt against his father, had been declared by a diet of the empire at Cologne to have forfeited his title to succeed to the imperial throne, and had died in 1101. By skilful concessions, by liberal grants, by courteous demeanour, the old emperor had reconciled, or firmly attached to him, all the great princes and feudatories of the empire. Even religious hatred seemed to be dying out; his unrepealed excommunication was forgotten, and some of the severest ecclesiastics of the papal party condescended to accept promotion from the hands of the interdicted sovereign. S. Otho, the apostle of Pomerania, was his private chaplain, and taught him short sermons, which the aged monarch committed to memory, and his leisure was beguiled by the singing and composing of ecclesiastical music. The empire was at peace, and the great commercial cities, nearly ruined by the previous wars, had begun to revive in opulence and prosperity, when the new Pope Paschal II. fulminated against Henry IV. the excommunication formerly pronounced by his predecessors Gregory VII. and Urban II. Henry, the bestloved son of the old monarch, seized the occasion for raising the standard of revolt against his father. The emperor, heart-broken, sent messenger after messenger B. Odo.

to implore his son to respect his solemn oath of allegiance, to reverence his white hair. The son sent back a scornful reply that he would hold no dealings with an excommunicated man.

No evidence implicates the pope in the guilt of suggesting this impious and unnatural rebellion. But the first act of the young Henry was to consult the pope as to the obligation of his oath of allegiance. Paschal, daringly ascribing his revolt against his father to the inspiration of God, sent him without reserve the apostolic blessing, and promised him absolution in this world, and at the bar of Christ’s tribunal hereafter, for his rebellion against his father. Thus was Germany plunged once more into a furious civil war. Paschal seized the occasion to order the election of a bishop devoted to the papal chair, in Cambrai, to displace the imperialist, excommunicated Gautier. Thus Odo was chosen, but was unable to take possession of his see for a twelvemonth, as Cambrai adhered to the cause of the emperor and supported Gautier; he therefore spent his time in the abbey of Anchin, with his friends, the abbot Aymeric and the prior Amandus.

Henry IV. had placed himself at the head of his troops and marched against his rebellious son; but the emperor, discovering that he was betrayed by his followers, fled, in the sorrow of his heart. He had still numerous adherents in the Rhineland, and his son, finding force unavailing, attempted by cunning to oblige him voluntarily to abdicate the throne; and therefore proposed a conference at Coblentz. The emperor came, but struck to the heart at the sight of his ungrateful child, flung himself at his feet, exclaiming, “ My son, my son, if I am punished by God for my sins, at least stain not thine honour by sitting in judgment on thy father.” Thrice had that son solemnly sworn that if his father would trust him, and present himself before him, he should be allowed to depart unmolested; yet now that he had placed himself in his power, the gates were closed upon him, and he was a prisoner.

The emperor was shut up in the castle of Bingen, and was required by the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne to surrender the crown jewels. The aged emperor placed the imperial insignia of Charlemagne [king of the Franks, crowned emperor in 800] on his own person, and appearing in state before the bishops, defied them to touch the ornaments worn by the ruler of the world. But to these prelates nothing was sacred; the crown and mantle of Charlemagne were plucked off him, and they hasted to adorn with them the person of his son then at Mainz. The fallen emperor was given into the hands of Gebhard, bishop of Spires, who took a malignant pleasure in humbling and tormenting the prostrate monarch.

The fall of Henry IV. occasioned the fall of Gautier of Cambrai, and Odo was enabled, with the authority of Henry V., to establish himself in his diocese. The exultation of the papal party at their success exhibited itself in acts of retaliation which it is pitiful to record. The bishops who had sided with the emperor, and had died, were dug up, and their ashes dispersed, all their episcopal acts were declared to have been null, and all clerks ordained by them were suspended from the exercise of their offices.

But Henry IV. escaped from his prison, and a large force gathered around him. The people of Cambrai expelled Odo, or made it advisable for him to retire again into the abbey of Anchin. The death of Henry IV. left his son in undisputed possession of the realm; and Odo, returning to Cambrai, endeavoured to heal the v9. Juliana Falconieri divisions which still existed there, urging all to bury in oblivion the memory of the past. He does not seem to have been very successful, and in 1113 he resigned the see, and returned to Anchin, where he died a few months later.

Odo was the author of several works, the principal of which are those on “ Original Sin,” an “ Explanation of the Canon of the Mass,” and one on “ Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost.” His poem on “Troy” has been lost.