Born in 962, he became a monk and later abbot of the famous monastery of Cluny, near Lyons. Cluny had been founded in 909 as a house of the ‘Benedictine reform’, stressing silence, abstinence, and the wisdom of traditional interpretations of the Rule of St. Benedict. It had grown to prominence under the abbots St. Odo (+942) and St. Maiolus (+994) and under the 55 years of Odilo’s abbacy it became the most important monastery of Western Europe, inspiring many others through France, Spain and Italy. Its imposing buildings, to which Odilo added many, were matched by a tenacity to the pure Benedictine rule.

It was not then possible to be such an important ecclesiastical figure without having political influence. Odilo secured the systems known as the Pactum Dei (protection of church buildings from attack in war) and Treuga Dei (=‘God’s Truce’) which limited warfare to weekdays outside the seasons of Advent and Lent. This may strike us as quaint, but in an age of constant petty feuds, it represented an advance.