riage ceremony between Philip of France and the infamous Bertrada of Montfort, receiving as his reward certain churches at Mantes; but it seems probable that he did no more than countenance the union by his presence (ib. iii. 387, and M. Le Prevost's note ad loc.) Odo was present at the council of Clermont in November 1095, when Pope Urban II proclaimed the first crusade, and at the synod of the Norman bishops at Rouen in the following February, when the acts of the council were considered. When Robert of Normandy took the cross, Odo elected to accompany him rather than remain at home under the rule of his enemy William; so in September 1096 he left Normandy. With his nephew Robert he visited Rome, and received the papal blessing. Duke Robert wintered in Apulia; but Odo crossed over to Sicily, where in February 1097 he died at Palermo. He was buried in the cathedral, where Count Roger of Sicily built him a splendid tomb.
In history Odo figures, not unnaturally, as a turbulent noble, who had nothing of the ecclesiastic but the name. Ordericus makes the Conqueror describe him as fickle and ambitious, the slave of fleshly lust and monstrous cruelty, who would never abandon his vain and wanton wickedness; the scorner of religion, the artful author of sedition, the oppressor of the people, the plunderer of churches, whose release meant certain mischief to many. But Ordericus himself is perhaps more just when he says that Odo's character was a mixture of vices and virtues, in which affection for secular affairs prevailed over the good deeds of the spiritual life. William of Poitiers (209 A.B.), writing perhaps before Odo's fall, eulogises him for his eloquence and wisdom in council and debate, for his liberality, justice, and loyalty to his brother; ‘he had no wish to use arms, but rejoiced in necessary war so far as religion permitted him. Normans and Bretons served under him gladly, and even the English were not so barbarous that they could not recognise in the bishop and earl a man who was to be feared, respected, and loved.’ While Odo was thus devoted to secular affairs, and so far forgetful of his sacred calling that he had a son (named John), he was nevertheless a liberal patron of religion and learning. He endowed his own church at Bayeux with much wealth, and rebuilt the cathedral: the lower part of the western towers and the crypt are relics of his work. He established monks in the church of St. Vigor at Bayeux, but afterwards in 1096 bestowed his foundation, as a cell, on the abbey of Dijon (Charter ap. Migne, clv. 475–6). Guibert describes a curious instance of Odo's zeal for sacred relics (De Sanctorum Pignoribus, i. 3). Odo also had instructed, at his own expense, a number of scholars, among whom were Thomas, archbishop of York, and his brother Samson, bishop of Worcester; and Thurstan, abbot of Glastonbury. Another dependent of Odo's was Arnulf, the first Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, who accompanied the Bishop of Bayeux on his departure from Normandy in 1096, and owed his subsequent promotion to the wealth bequeathed him by his patron (Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, viii. 1). It is possible that, among Odo's benefactions to his cathedral, we must include the famous Bayeux tapestry, which was perhaps executed for him by English artists (Freeman, Norman Conquest, iii. 562–572).
When Ordericus wrote, Odo's son John was living at the court of Henry I. John was perhaps the father of Robert ‘nepos episcopi,’ who married the heiress of William du Hommet, and by her left a son, Richard de Humez, who became hereditary constable of Normandy (Stapleton, Rot. Scacc. Norm. ii. pp. clxxxii–clxxxiv).
[Ordericus Vitalis (Soc. de l'Hist. de France); Will. of Poitiers and Will. of Jumièges in Duchesne's Historiæ Normannorum Scriptores; English Chronicle; William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum and Gesta Pontificum, Symeon Dunelmensis, Liber de Hyda, Henry of Huntingdon, pp. 207, 211, 214–15, Memorials of St. Dunstan, pp. 144, 153, 238 (these six in the Rolls Ser.); Flor. Wig. (English Hist. Soc.); Guibert of Nogent's Gesta Dei per Francos, vii. 15, and viii. 1, and De Sanctorum Pignoribus, i. 3, ap. Migne's Patrologia, p. clvi; Wace's Roman de Rou, ed. Andresen, and transl. Taylor; Wilkins's Concilia, i. 323–4; Wharton's Anglia Sacra, i. 334–9; Gallia Christiana, xi. 353–60; Freeman's Norman Conquest, and William Rufus.]
ODO of Canterbury (d. 1200), abbot of Battle, also called Odo Cantianus, was probably a native of Kent, and became a monk at Christchurch, Canterbury. His brother Adam was a Cistercian monk at Igny; among his kinsmen were Ralph, another Cistercian of Igny, and John, chaplain of Harietsham, Sussex (Mat. Hist. Becket, ii. p. xlix; Chron. de Bello, pp. 167, 173). The first notices of him occur in the ‘Entheticus’ of John of Salisbury, which was composed some time before 1159. John was resident at the court of Canterbury from 1150 to 1164, and so may naturally have made Odo's acquaintance; in the ‘Entheticus’ he has several lines referring to Odo:
