Odo was chosen king by the western Franks when the emperor Charles the Fat was deposed in 887, and was crowned at Compiegne in February 888. He continued to battle against the Normans, whom he defeated at Montfaucon and elsewhere, but was soon involved in a struggle with some powerful nobles, who supported the claim of Charles, afterwards King Charles III., to the Frankish kingdom. To gain prestige and support Odo owned himself a vassal of the German king, Arnulf, but in 894 Arnulf declared for Charles. Eventually, after a struggle which lasted for three years, Odo was compelled to come to terms with his rival, and to surrender to him a district north of the Seine. He died at La Fere on the 1st of January 898.
See E. Lavisse, Histoire de France, tome ii. (Paris, 1903); and E. Favre, Eudes, comte de Paris et roi de France (Paris, 1893).
ODO[1] OF BAYEUX (c. 1036–1097), Norman bishop and
English earl, was a uterine brother of William the Conqueror,
from whom he received, while still a youth, the see of Bayeux
(1049). But his active career was that of a warrior and statesman.
He found ships for the invasion of England and fought
in person at Senlac; in 1067 he became earl of Kent, and for
some years he was a trusted royal minister. At times he acted
as viceroy in William’s absence; at times he led the royal
forces to chastise rebellions. But in 1083 he was suddenly
disgraced and imprisoned for having planned a military expedition
to Italy. He was accused of desiring to make himself pope;
more probably he thought of serving as a papal condottiere
against the emperor Henry IV. The Conqueror, when on his
death-bed, reluctantly permitted Odo’s release (1087). The
bishop returned to his earldom and soon organized a rebellion
with the object of handing over England to his eldest nephew,
Duke Robert. William Rufus, to the disgust of his supporters,
permitted Odo to leave the kingdom after the collapse of this
design (1088), and thenceforward Odo was the right-hand man
of Robert in Normandy. He took part in the agitation for the
First Crusade, and started in the duke’s company for Palestine,
but died on the way, at Palermo (February 1097). Little
good is recorded of Odo. His vast wealth was gained by
extortion and robbery. His ambitions were boundless and his
morals lax. But he was a patron of learning and, like most
prelates of his age, a great architect. He rebuilt the cathedral
of his see, and may perhaps have commissioned the unknown
artist of the celebrated Bayeux tapestry.
See the authorities cited for William I. and William II., the biographical sketch in Gallia Christiana, xi. 353-360; H. Wharton Anglia Sacra, i. 334-339 (1691); and F. R. Fowke, The Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1898). (H. W. C. D.)
ODOACER, or Odovacar (c. 434–493), the first barbarian
ruler of Italy on the downfall of the Western empire, was born
in the district bordering on the middle Danube about the year
434. In this district the once rich and fertile provinces of
Noricum and Pannonia were being torn piecemeal from the
Roman empire by a crowd of German tribes, among whom we
discern four, who seem to have hovered over the Danube from
Passau to Pest, namely, the Rugii, Scyrri, Turcilingi and Heruli.
With all of these Odoacer was connected by his subsequent
career, and all seem, more or less, to have claimed him as belonging
to them by birth; the evidence slightly preponderates
in favour of his descent from the Scyrri.
His father was Aedico or Idico, a name which suggests Edeco the Hun, who was suborned by the Byzantine court to plot the assassination of his master Attila. There are, however, some strong arguments against this identification. A certain Edica, chief of the Scyrri, of whom Jordanes speaks as defeated by the Ostrogoths, may more probably have been the father of Odoacer, though even in this theory there are some difficulties, chiefly connected with the low estate in which he appears before us in the next scene of his life, when as a tall young recruit for the Roman armies, dressed in a sordid vesture of skins, on his way to Italy, he enters the cell of Severinus, a noted hermit-saint of Noricum, to ask his blessing. The saint had an inward premonition of his future greatness, and in blessing him said, “Fare onward into Italy. Thou who art now clothed in vile raiment wilt soon give precious gifts unto many.”
Odoacer was probably about thirty years of age when he thus left his country and entered the imperial service. By the year 472 he had risen to some eminence, since it is expressly recorded that he sided with the patrician Ricimer in his quarrel with the emperor Anthemius. In the year 475, by one of the endless revolutions which marked the close of the Western empire, the emperor Nepos was driven into exile, and the successful rebel Orestes was enabled to array in the purple his son, a handsome boy of fourteen or fifteen, who was named Romulus after his grandfather, and nicknamed Augustulus, from his inability to play the part of the great Augustus. Before this puppet emperor had been a year on the throne the barbarian mercenaries, who were chiefly drawn from the Danubian tribes before mentioned, rose in mutiny, demanding to be made proprietors of one-third of the soil of Italy. To this request Orestes returned a peremptory negative. Odoacer now offered his fellow-soldiers to obtain for them all that they desired if they would seat him on the throne. On the 23rd of August 476 he was proclaimed king; five days later Orestes was made prisoner at Placentia and beheaded; and on the 4th of September his brother Paulus was defeated and slain near Ravenna. Rome at once accepted the new ruler. Augustulus was compelled to descend from the throne, but his life was spared.
Odoacer was forty-two years of age when he thus became chief ruler of Italy, and he reigned thirteen years with undisputed sway. Our information as to this period is very slender, but we can perceive that the administration was conducted as much as possible on the lines of the old imperial government. The settlement of the barbarian soldiers on the lands of Italy probably affected the great landowners rather than the labouring class. To the herd of coloni and servi, by whom in their various degrees the land was actually cultivated, it probably made little difference, except as a matter of sentiment, whether the master whom they served called himself Roman or Rugian. We have one most interesting example, though in a small way, of such a transfer of land with its appurtenant slaves and cattle, in the donation made by Odoacer himself to his faithful follower Pierius.[2] Few things bring more vividly before the reader the continuity of legal and social life in the midst of the tremendous ethnical changes of the 5th century than the perusal of such a record.
The same fact, from a slightly different point of view, is illustrated by the curious history (recorded by Malchus) of the embassies to Constantinople. The dethroned emperor Nepos sent ambassadors (in 477 or 478) to Zeno, emperor of the East, begging his aid in the reconquest of Italy. These ambassadors met a deputation from the Roman senate, sent nominally by the command of Augustulus, really no doubt by that of Odoacer, the purport of whose commission was that they did not need a separate emperor. One was sufficient to defend the borders of either realm. The senate had chosen Odoacer, whose knowledge of military affairs and whose statesmanship admirably fitted him for preserving order in that part of the world, and they therefore prayed Zeno to confer upon him the dignity of patrician, and entrust the “diocese” of Italy to his care. Zeno returned a harsh answer to the senate, requiring them to return to their allegiance to Nepos. In fact, however, he did nothing for the fallen emperor, but accepted the new order of things, and even addressed Odoacer as patrician. On the other hand, the latter
- ↑ Odo must be distinguished from two English prelates of the same name and also from an English earl. Odo or Oda (d. 959), archbishop of Canterbury, was bishop of Ramsbury from 927 to 942, and went with King Æthelstan to the battle of Brunanburh in 937. In 942 he succeeded Wulfhelm as archbishop of Canterbury, and he appears to have been an able and conscientious ruler of the see. He had great influence with King Edwy, whom he had crowned in 956. Odo (d. 1200), abbot of Battle, was a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, and was prior of this house at the time when Thomas Racket was murdered. In 1175 he was chosen abbot of Battle, and on two occasions the efforts of Henry II. alone prevented him from being elected archbishop of Canterbury. Odo or Odda (d. 1056), a relative of Edward the Confessor, during whose reign he was an earl in the west of England, built the minster at Deerhurst in Gloucestershire.
- ↑ Published in Marini’s Papiri diplomatici (Rome, 1815, Nos. 82 and 83) and in Spangenberg’s Juris Romani Tabulae (Leipzig, 1822, pp. 164-173), and well worthy of careful study.
