St. Odilo

Odilo was born among the nobles of Auvergne near the end of the tenth century, yet his lasting greatness lay not in rank but in the way he governed Cluny. Chosen abbot in 994, he inherited one of the most influential monasteries in western Christendom and helped make it still more so. Under him the Cluniac reform spread widely, daughter houses multiplied, and kings, bishops, and princes sought advice from a man whose authority came from prayer and judgment rather than from force.

He lived in a violent age, and his support of the Peace and Truce of God was one of the Church's real efforts to restrain feuding and private war. He is also linked permanently with the observance of All Souls' Day, for under his rule Cluny gave that remembrance a fixed and influential form on November 2. Yet for all the scale of his influence, Odilo remains memorable above all as a father of souls: firm when needed, gentle where he could be, and determined that prayer, charity, and order should radiate outward from the cloister.