18th November - Odon is born around 882. He comes from a noble Frankish family. He was sent to the court of the Count of Anjou, then to that of the Duke of Aquitaine William I the Pious to receive an education as a knight. He learned music and dialectics in Paris, where he was a pupil of Rémi, Bishop of Auxerre.
He entered as a canon at the Abbey of Saint-Martin de Tours in 899 and began studying grammar and pious practices in Tours. Not finding the life of a canon severe enough, having read the rule of Saint Benedict at Saint-Martin, he entered the orders in 912 and went to the Abbey of Baume. He received the monastic habit from the hands of the first abbot of Cluny Bernon. He succeeded as third abbot of Aurillac to Jean, who was related to its founder, Saint Géraud, whose life he wrote at the request of Turpin d'Aubusson, bishop of Limoges, who ordained him a priest in 925.
Chosen in his will by Bernon to succeed him as second abbot of Cluny, he took up his duties on his death in 927. In 931 he obtained from Pope John XI, that the Abbey of Cluny should have the same immunity as the Abbey of Aurillac, as head of order directly dependent on the Holy See. He had a church dedicated to Saint-Pierre built there, known as the church of Saint-Pierre-le-Vieux. He saw to it that the abbey was provided with a good library and a school and obtained the right to mint coins. His reputation for sanctity attracted many monks to the abbey, and many hermits around. He is called to reform other monasteries, including those of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome and St. Augustine in Pavia. Odon died in Tours on 18 November 942.
It was Odon who collected the first manuscripts from the library of Cluny by bringing back books from Saint-Martin de Tours. Endowed with a musical education, he wrote several works, in which he was the first to name notes with letters A for " la", B for "si", a use preserved in Germanic and Anglo-Saxon countries, classifies melodies and sounds, and evokes the organistrum, ancestor of the Vielle.
