Odo of Cluny

Saint Odo of Cluny

memorial
18 November

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Our Saint today was born back in the 9th century in what we call France today. The year was 879. He studied theology in Paris and joined the clergy at the tender age of 19. After his studies he spent years as a near-hermit in a cell, studying and praying, the Theology classes must have been brutal. He joined the Benedictines and became a full time monk, bringing with him all his worldly possessions; a library of about 100 books.

In 931, the Pope asked Odo to clean up all the monasteries in Northern France and Italy, which he did most effectively. He was fairly bright, well noted for his administrative abilities, his skills as a reformer, and as a writer. He is also well known for personal acts of charity, it is said at least once he literally gave the poor the clothes off his back. The “reforming“Huguenots burned most of his relics in the “glorious” Protestant reformation.

He once left a book on the life of Saint Martin of Tours in the cellar of the monastery of Cluny. During a torrential downpour he sent a novice down to retrieve it. The cellar was flooded, but the book was undamaged. The big debate over the dinner table at the monastery became, was it because it was a book about Saint Martin, or was it because it was Odo’s book? Odo insisted it was the former, but whatever, he then became patron for rain…beneficial rain.  Like I said, Theology can be brutal sometimes.....

 He Died on 18 November 942 in Tours, France.