ABSTRACT
Odo Arpinus of Bourges is known to scholars in three different roles: to institutional historians, as a viscount who sold his viscounty to the king of France; to historians of the crusades and of medieval French literature, as a crusader and the only historical figure among the captives in the Old French crusade cycle; and to monastic historians, as a monk of Cluny and prior of La Charité-sur-Loire. These activities were chronologically distinct, and so different that scholars have tended to study each episode, according to their interests, apart from the others. It is the purpose of this chapter to look at his entire career, which was not uncharacteristic of the age in which he lived, though many aspects of his life, including the dates of his birth and death, are unknown.
