From Champagne to Cluny
Odo of Châtillon, later Urban II, was born around 1035 into a knightly family of Champagne, in northeastern France, probably at Lagery near Châtillon-sur-Marne. He studied at the cathedral school of Reims, where one of his teachers was Bruno of Cologne, later founder of the Carthusian order, and he rose to be archdeacon of Reims. Around 1068 he gave up that office to become a monk at Cluny, the great Burgundian abbey whose hundreds of daughter houses formed the backbone of monastic reform. Abbot Hugh made him prior.
Around 1080 Gregory VII called him to Rome and made him cardinal bishop of Ostia. Odo served the embattled pope as legate in Germany in 1084–85, when Henry IV and his rival pope held Rome, and he became one of the leaders of the reform party. After the brief reign of Gregory's successor, Victor III, the reforming cardinals met at Terracina, south of Rome, and on 12 March 1088 elected Odo pope. He took the name Urban II.
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