ODO
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O'DONOVAN
Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Count of Kent, b. in
Normandy previous to 1037; d. at Palermo, February,
1097. The son of Herluin dc Conteville and Herlcva
de Falaise, previously by Duke Kobert the mother
of William the Bastard, from whom Odo about 7
October, 1049, received the Diocese of Bayeux. He
was present at the assembly of Lillebonne in 1066 at
which William's expedition to England was decided
upon; he built, at his expense at Port-en-Bassin, fifty
or a lumdred vessels, accompanied the soldiers, ex-
horted them on the evo of the battle of Hastings, in
which he himself fought. William gave him the castle
of Dover and the Earldom of Kent, and three months
later when he returned to Normandy he left as his
viceroys Odo and William FitzOsbern. Both were
merciless in stifling the insurrection of the Saxons. On
his return to England in December, 1067, William
made Odo a sort of viceroy; he gave him domains in
the county of Kent, and several churches and abbeys.
Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, protested suc-
cessfully at the sj-nod of 1072 against the spoliation of
which he was the object; but Odo retained what he
had taken from the Abbeys of Ramsey and Evesham.
In 1080 he traversed Northumberland with an army,
avenging the murder of Bishop Walcher of Durham;
he multiplied his cruelties and was called the Great
Tamer of the English.
He had the ambition to became pope. A soothsayer had foretold that the successor of Gregory VII should be called Odo. The latter first tried to seduce by his munificence the notables of Rome, where he built a palace; then with Hugh, Count of Chester, and a num- ber of knights he set out for Rome. William met him at Wight, brought him before his barons, and re- proached him with his exactions; as the barons re- fused to arrest the bishop, he declared that as count he would arrest him himself, and he brought him prisoner to Rouen. He refused to release him, despite the pro- tests of Gregory VII. On his death-bed he granted this request reluctantly; for he feared that after his death this "wicked man would make trouble every- where". Odo, according to Ordericus Vitalis, imme- diately plotted against the new king, William Rufus, his nephew; but in 1088, being besieged in Rochester, he was forced to accept as a grace the right to leave the town and depart from England. He established his credit in Normandy by the manner in which he as- sured to his nephew, Robert Courte Heuse, the pos- session of the city of Le Mans and defended his power against the house of Talvas. According to Ordericus Vitalis, in 1093 he blessed the incestuous union of Philip I of France, with Bertrada, Countess of Anjou, and obtained as a reward the revenues of the Church of Mantes. Urban II, at Dijon, absolved Odo. In 1095 he was present at the Council of Clermont at which the first Crusade was preached; he set out in September, 1096, but died at Palermo. Gilbert, Bishop of Evereux, and Count Roger of Sicily erected a tomb to him in the cathedral.
Despite the eulogies of William of Poitiers it may be said, without approving the severe judgmentof Orderi- cus Vitalis, that the life of this prelate was scarcely that of a churchman. He even had a son, called John. Nevertheless his presence at the synods of Rouen of 1055, 1061, and 1063 is proved; on 14 July, 1077 he consecrated the cathedral of Bayeux; on 13 Septem- ber, 1077, he as.sisted at the dedication of the Church of St. Stephen in Caen, and on 23 October, at that of Notre Dame du Bee. He was zealous in obtaining relics. He educated, at his expense, a number of young men who became distinguished prelates, and was liberal in his gifts to the Abbey of St. Augustine at Canterbury. It has been asserted that he placed in the cathedral the famous Bayeux tapestry, but a de- tailed study of this tapestry has led Marignan to con- clude that it was composed according to the descrip- tion and information contained in the "Roman du
Rou" of Robert Wace, and that it was executed in the
last thirty years of the twelfth century.
Wharton, Anglia Sarra, I (London, 16;)1), 334-39; GoiKo Chrialiana nova, XI (1759), 353-00; Obdehiccb Vitalis, Hist. eccles., ed. Lepr^vost (5 vols., Paris, 1838-55); Freeman, Hia- tory of the Norman Conquest (6 vols., Oxford. 1878-79); Idem, Reign of William Rufus (2 vols., ().iford, 1882); p-QWKE, The Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1898); Mariqnan, La Tapisserie de Bayeux (Paris, 1902); Kinosford in Did. Nat. Biog., e. v.; see also Bibliography of William the Conqueror, ibid.
Georges Goyau.
O'Donaghue, Denis. See Indianapolis, Dio- cese OF.
O'Donnell, Edmund, the first Jesuit executed by the English government; b. at Limerick in 1542, ex- ecuted at Cork, 16 March, 1575. His family had held the highest civic offices in Limerick since the thir- teenth century, and he was closely related to Father David Woulfe, Pope Pius IV's legate in Ireland. He entered the Society of Jesus at Rome, 1 1 September, 1561, but, developing symptoms of phthisis, was re- moved to Flanders. In 1.5()4 he returned to Limerick and taught, with a secular priest and a layman, in the school which Woulfe established with connivance of the civic authorities. The school was dispersed in October, 1565, by soldiers sent by Sir Thomas Cusack, and, for a short time, they taught at Kilmallock. In a few months they returned to Limerick, and were not molested again until I'iGS, when Brady, Protes- tant Bishop of Mcath, visited the city as royal commis- sioner and made diligent search for them. O'Donnell was ordered to qviit the country under pain of death and withdrew to Lisbon, where he was again a student in 1572. Venturing back to Limerick in 1574 he was apprehended soon after landing, and thrown into pri.son. Rejecting all inducements to embrace Prot- estantism he was removed to Cork, tried for return- ing after banishment, denjing the roj'al supremacy, and carrying letters for James Fitzmaurice. He was found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
He has been called McDonnell, MacDonald, Donnelly, and MacDonough and Donagh. Father Edmund Hogan, S.J., Historiographer of the Irish province, found him recorded as Edmundus Daniell in the Society's archives, and so the name usually ap- pears in Limerick records, though also Dannel and O'Dannel. Copingcr and Bruodin give the name as O'Donell (O'Donellus). The archives and a con- temporary letter from Fitzmaurice confirm Bruodin's positive assertion that he suffered in 1575, not in 1580 as generally stated.
Murphy. Our Martyrs (Dublin, 1896) ; Hooan, Distinguished Irishmen of the Sixteenth Century (London. 1895); Rothe. Ana- lecta Nova et Mira, ed. Moran (Dublin, 1884) ; Houan, Ibernia Ignatiana (Dublin, 1880).
O'Donnell, Patrick. See Raphoe, Diocese of.
O'Donovan, John, Irish historian and antiquarian, b. at Atateemore, County Kilkenny, Ireland, 1806; d. at DubHn, 9 Dec, 1861. Coming to Dublin in 1823, he was sent to a "Latin School" to prepare for entrance to Maynooth, but later, finding he had no vocation for the priesthood, turned his attention to the study of Irish. O' Donovan himself states that, at the age of nine years, he commenced the study of Irish and Latin, and that in 1819 he could "transcribe Irish pretty well". In Dublin he was soon employed by James Hardiman, antiquarian and historian, to trans- cribe Irish manuscripts, and through him he was intro- duced to the Royal Irish Academy circle. Here he met Petrie, and the foundation of a lasting friendship was laid. Petrie's accurate antiquarian sense was supplemented by O'Donovan's knowledge of the native tongue and his ever-growing store of oral and written tradition. Aided by Sir Samuel Ferguson, they helped to destroy the influence of the fanciful theories which then held the field, championed by
