CHAPTER VIII
ST. ODO, ARCHBISHOP AND CONFESSOR, JUNE 2
A.D. 942-959
Stemmate serenus jacet hic sacer Odo severus
Moribus excellens acriter Peccata refellens
Presul et indulgens omni pietate refulgens
Ecclesie et Christi Pugil invictissimus isti
O bone nunc Christe quia sic tibi serviit isti
Celi solamen sibi des te deprecor. Amen.
(From an ancient MS. in the Cottonian Library,
see Weever's Funeral Monuments.)
ST. ODO, who immediately preceded the great Dunstan in the See of Canterbury, was the 22nd Archbishop, and the 10th of those canonized saints who occupied the patriarchal chair of St. Austin.
He was not only a Confessor of the Faith and a reformer of morals, but a great builder and restorer of his cathedral church, and as worthy to be placed amongst the eminent administrators and builders who had occupied the See as Austin or Cuthbert.
St. Odo is one of the more interesting characters which emerge at this time and his memory was justly venerated as a great Churchman and Archbishop, and continued so to be throughout the history of the Cathedral of Canterbury down to the first half of the sixteenth century; inasmuch as though his remains were translated on many occasions and were like the rest of the relics within the Cathedral probably buried beneath its tomb, yet the tomb itself was not broken
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