Saint Odilo of Cluny (960-1049)

We know Odilo through two early biographies of the first rank. The first, the Vita sancti Odilonis, is the work of Jotsald of Saint-Claude (Jotsaldus), monk and chancellor of Cluny, who lived alongside the saint and wrote shortly after his death, between 1049 and 1053^[10][11]. Dedicated to Odilo's nephew Stephen, bishop of Le Puy, it consists of three books: the life, then the miracles before and after death^[12]. It is a first-hand testimony, gathered by a close associate.

The second is by Peter Damian, the great hermit reformer: in 1063, to advance Odilo's cause, whose cult was already recognized, he composed a Vita beati Odilonis, a reworked abridgement of Jotsald's work^[13][14].

"Often I hear the spirits of darkness bitterly lamenting the power of the prayers and alms of the community of Cluny, and in particular of Abbot Odilo, who snatches souls from the place of their suffering." — words of the Sicilian solitary, as reported by Cluniac tradition^[15][16]

Like every medieval Vita, these accounts are hagiographies: they seek to edify as much as to inform. That is why several dates in Odilo's life — his year of birth, the exact day of his death, the year All Souls' Day was instituted — remain debated, and this article honestly presents them as ranges.

Birth c. 962 into the Mercœur family

Odilo was born c. 962 — the sources waver between 960, 961 and 962 — in the heart of Auvergne, into the powerful Mercœur family, a branch of the comital nobility of Auvergne^[17][18]. His father, Beraud of Mercœur, was a considerable lord; tradition gives him Gerberga as his mother and places his birth in a large family of siblings^[19][20]. By birth, Odilo belonged to the world of arms and power; but, like Saint Odo before him, he would leave it for God alone.

The healed child and the canon of Brioude

A pious tradition, reported by his Life, tells that as a sickly child, long ill, Odilo was laid by his nurse upon the altar of a church dedicated to the Virgin, and came back healed^[21]. Whether true or embellished, the story says one thing: Marian devotion would mark his whole life.

Still young, he was placed as a canon in the famous chapter of Saint-Julien of Brioude, one of the great sanctuaries of Auvergne, where he trained in letters and became, it is said, a specialist in canon law^[22][23]. This legal expertise would later serve him in defending Cluny's liberty against bishops and laymen.

The call of Cluny and entry under Majolus (991)

But the canonical life, too lukewarm, did not satisfy his thirst for the absolute. Around 991, aged about twenty-nine, Odilo asked for the monastic habit at Cluny, then ruled by its fourth abbot, Saint Majolus^[24][25]. The old abbot's holiness drew him: he placed himself in his school like a son.

Majolus soon discerned in him a successor. Even before the end of his probationary year, the young monk was made coadjutor to the ageing abbot^[26]. Then, shortly before Majolus's death (994), Odilo was designated to succeed him and received holy orders^[27][28]. The child of Auvergne thus became, at little more than thirty, the fifth father of the greatest abbey in the West.

Successor of Majolus

When Odilo took Cluny in hand, the abbey already had a century of holiness behind it: Berno, Odo, Aymard, Majolus. But it was under him that it became the spiritual centre of Latin Europe^[29][30]. His abbacy, one of the longest in monastic history, spans the hinge of the year 1000: half a century during which Cluny's influence reached kings, popes and emperors.

Cluny "of wood" become Cluny "of marble"

Odilo was not only a leader of souls: he was a builder. Between 1002 and 1018 he completed the great abbey church known as Cluny II (Saint-Pierre-le-Vieil), and raised in stone what had been only wood^[31][32]. Cluniac tradition lends him a saying that remained famous, a Christian echo of Augustus's words on Rome:

"I found an abbey of wood; I leave it of marble." — words Cluniac tradition lends to Saint Odilo^[33]

The phrase speaks to the scale of the work. Under Odilo, Cluny did not content itself with praying: it endowed itself with the walls, the liturgy and the prestige of a true spiritual capital.

The peak of the Cluniac "order"

The great fact of his rule is the expansion of the Cluniac family. On his arrival, Cluny counted only a handful of attached houses; at his death there were about seventy, spread from Auvergne to Italy^[34][35]. Above all, Odilo transformed a federation of monasteries into a genuinely centralized order: the priories were no longer merely reformed; they depended directly on the abbot of Cluny, who appointed and removed their superiors^[36]. It was the invention of a new structure in the Church — the first great monastic congregation.

The legend of the pilgrim and the souls in purgatory

The deed that made Odilo immortal has a legendary origin, told by Jotsald and then by Peter Damian. A pilgrim returning from Jerusalem was cast by a storm onto a coast of Sicily. There, a hermit living among the rocks, near a chasm from which groans rose, confided to him that he constantly heard the demons complaining: the prayers and alms of the monks of Cluny, and of their abbot Odilo, were snatching souls from the pains of purgatory^[45][46]. Once home, the pilgrim hastened to warn the abbot.

"The evil spirits lamented that, through the suffrages of the saints and especially of the monks of Cluny, the souls of the departed were rescued from their torments." — after Peter Damian, Life of Saint Odilo^[47][48]

The institution of the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed

Moved by this sign, Odilo ordered that, in all Cluniac monasteries, the day after All Saints — 2 November — be devoted to prayer, alms and the sacrifice of the Mass for all the faithful departed^[49][50]. What had been only a local devotion became a fixed feast: it is the birth certificate of All Souls' Day. From Cluny, the custom spread step by step, and the Roman Church would end by adopting it for the whole West^[51][52].

For the Catholic doctrine of purgatory itself — what the Church teaches about the purification of souls and prayer for the dead — see the article What does the Church say about purgatory?. The present article deals only with Odilo's founding act.

A debated date: 998 or after 1030?

Tradition readily places the institution in 998. But historical criticism is more cautious: the Catholic Encyclopedia notes that the feast was established "probably not in 998, but after 1030"^[53], and the New Catholic Encyclopedia places it around 1030-1031^[54]. Odilo's decree itself, though preserved, bears no certain date. On this point, honesty requires holding to a range rather than a certainty: what matters is not the exact year, but the fact that it was indeed at Cluny, under Odilo, that the universal commemoration of the dead was born.

In Odilo's time, the collapse of royal authority delivered Christendom to the private wars of the lords. To protect the weak, the Church launched two great movements: the Peace of God, which placed non-combatants (clerics, the poor, peasants) out of reach, and the Truce of God (Treuga Dei), which forbade fighting on certain days and in certain seasons.

Odilo was one of their most active promoters. He supported the Peace of God — notably at the council held near Lausanne (c. 1037) — and worked from 1041 for the extension of the Truce of God, whose conclusion had great social and economic significance^[55][56]. The unarmed monk weighed, in that violent Europe, more than armies: his word carried weight because it sought no power for itself.

Charity in the famines

Odilo's holiness had a favoured face: the poor. As early as the famine of 1006, to buy grain he sold the golden crown offered to the abbey by Emperor Henry II^[57]. And when famine again ravaged France — particularly between 1028 and 1033 — he displayed a heroic charity and, according to his biographers, "saved thousands of men from death"^[58], not hesitating to sell and melt down the abbey's treasures: sacred vessels, precious ornaments^[59][60].

"Ever concerned with helping the poor, he sold the monastery's treasures during the famine." — New Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "Odilo of Cluny"^[61]

For Odilo, the gold of the altar had meaning only when returned to Christ present in the poor. His rigour toward himself never separated asceticism from mercy toward the little ones.

Refusal of the archbishopric of Lyon

This humility was proven in another episode: twice, Popes John XIX and Benedict IX offered him the archbishopric of Lyon, one of the greatest sees of Gaul. Twice, Odilo refused, preferring to remain a simple abbot to his monks^[62][63]. Where others ran after honours, he wanted only the last place — that of the servant.

His moral stature made him a confidant of the great. Odilo was linked with Emperors Otto III, Henry II and Conrad II, and attended the imperial coronation of Henry III at Rome in 1046^[64][65]. On several occasions he intervened to obtain clemency during the revolts of Pavia (1004, 1026)^[66].

He was above all the friend and kinsman of Empress Adelaide, widow of Otto I, whose funeral eulogy he would write^[67]. From his stays in Italy he brought back pontifical privileges (998, 1024) guaranteeing Cluny's autonomy from the diocesan bishops^[68][69] — the legal weapon which, since Odo, had been the reform's strength.

Trained in letters at Brioude, Odilo left a body of work in which classical culture is placed at the service of spiritual doctrine. Four groups above all deserve attention.

The Epitaph of Adelaide is especially precious: in it Odilo paints the portrait of a holy empress, showing — as Odo had done for the layman Gerald of Aurillac — that one can reach holiness in the world, at the summit of power, through justice and almsgiving.

Mercy toward the dead

The heart of his spirituality is charity that crosses death. In fixing 2 November, Odilo inscribed in the Christian year a simple truth: the living can help the departed through prayer, almsgiving and the Mass. His devotion to the souls in purgatory earned him the place, in Catholic piety, of their patron par excellence^[75][76].

Gentleness: "the archangel of the monks"

Like Odo, Odilo reformed through kindness more than coercion. His gentleness was so great that Fulbert of Chartres, one of the greatest bishops of his time, nicknamed him "the archangel of the monks"^[77][78]. The word says it all: a man of government whose influence weighed upon all Europe, and who yet remained of angelic meekness.

"He was called the archangel of the monks, so greatly did his gentleness and charity shine upon all who came near him." — after Fulbert of Chartres, as cited by Cluniac tradition^[79]

Devotion to Mary

Lastly, faithful to the memory of his childhood healing, Odilo nourished a tender devotion to the Virgin. He developed the Marian cult at Cluny and composed liturgical pieces for Mary^[80]. In him, monastic austerity did not extinguish tenderness: it purified it.

The last journey

Old and worn out by travel, Odilo visited his monasteries one last time. He stopped at the priory of Souvigny, in the Bourbonnais, the very place where his master Saint Majolus rested. There he died, in the night of New Year 1049 — 1 January according to the most received tradition, 31 December 1048 according to other sources — aged about eighty-seven^[81][82][83].

Relics, canonization, feast

At once venerated as a saint, Odilo was buried at Souvigny, which became the necropolis of the great abbots of Cluny. In 1063, Peter Damian wrote his life to advance his cause, his cult being already recognized — the Catholic Encyclopedia speaks of the "process of his canonization" undertaken that year, in the medieval sense of recognition of the cult^[84][85]. His relics were long honoured at Souvigny; they were destroyed in 1793, during the French Revolution^[86][87]. His feast is kept on 1 January among French Benedictines, 29 April in several calendars, sometimes 11 May^[88][89].

A thousand years on, Saint Odilo remains, in Catholic prayer, the advocate of the dead. Each 2 November, when the whole Church prays for her departed, she prolongs the gesture of this monk of Auvergne. He recalls a truth the modern world forgets: death does not sever charity. We can still love, help and relieve those who went before us — through prayer, almsgiving and the Mass.

He also teaches freedom of heart. Able to weigh upon emperors, he refused the archbishopric of Lyon to remain abbot; able to amass treasures, he melted them to feed the poor. His greatness lay not in power, but in dispossession.

He teaches lastly effective gentleness. "Archangel of the monks," he showed that one reforms and governs better through kindness than harshness — a lesson every authority, in the Church as in the family, can still ponder.

"I found an abbey of wood; I leave it of marble." — These words tradition lends to Saint Odilo hold for souls too: he found a Christendom forgetful of her dead; he left her All Souls' Day.

• Saint Majolus of Cluny (906-994) — the fourth abbot, Odilo's master and predecessor, whose Life he wrote.
• Saint Odo of Cluny (878-942) — the second abbot, spiritual architect of the Cluniac reform.
• The Cluniac Reform — the institutional history of the abbey and of the Cluniac "order" Odilo brought to its peak.
• Benedictine monasticism — the great tradition of the Rule of Saint Benedict, of which Cluny was the home.
• What does the Church say about purgatory? — the Catholic doctrine of the souls in purgatory which the feast of 2 November puts into practice.
• Saint Romuald (951-1027) — another great contemporary monastic reformer, on the eremitical side.