ABSTRACT
Abbot Odo of Cluny’s Collationum libri tres was written in the early tenth century, probably just after his monastic profession and likely tied to a request from Bishop Turpio of Limoges. Yet the particular way in which Odo was framing his call was distinct. In Odo’s text, the past – via biblical citation referring back to the Israelites – intruded directly into the present. Odo of Cluny was born to a Frankish noble family in the service of the dukes of Aquitaine and was tonsured at St Martin of Tours at about the age of twenty. Odo’s position, perhaps unsurprisingly given his intellectual formation, fell closest to the Auxerrois tradition. As a product of a monastic education deriving from a Carolingian model, Adso was once again similar to Odo of Cluny in being comfortable with ‘bending’ existing exegetical tradition in order to understand the phenomenon he was studying.
