The Divine spirit and the past history of Christianity made it certain that a revival of life must come. The dry bones would feel the breath and would live {173} again. [Sidenote: S. Odo.] On the borders of the lands of Maine and Anjou was born in 879, of a line of feudal barons, Odo, the regenerator of monasticism, the ultimate reviver of the papacy, the spiritual progenitor of Hildebrand himself. Promised to God at his birth, he was long held back by his father for knighthood and the life of a warrior such as he himself had led; a grievous sickness gave him, on his recovery, to the monastic life. The disciple alike of S. Martin and S. Benedict, he took inspiration from them to revive the strict monastic rule. From a canon he became a monk, after a noviciate at Baume, the foundation of Columban in the wild and beautiful valley between the Seille and the Dard, in the diocese of Besancon. For a time he tasted the life of the anchorite and the coenobite. Then he passed to the abbey of Cluny, founded in 910 by William of Aquitaine in the mountains above the valley of the Grosne, and ruled till 927 by Berno, who came himself from Baume. On his death Odo became abbat; and to him the great development of the revival of strict monasticism is due. [Sidenote: Cluny.] Cluny became the type of the exempted abbeys, and the highest representative of the monastic privileges. It embodied in itself the best expression of the resistance to feudalism; it became the most powerful support of the papacy and of the much-needed movement for the reform of the Church. The first necessity of the new monasticism was an absolute independence of the lay power. Thus the founder attached it from the first to the Roman Church, and gave up all his own rights of property. Its situation, in the heart of Burgundy, {174} removed it from the power of the king. Charles the Simple permitted its foundation, Louis d'Outremer confirmed its privileges. When Urban II., a militant Cluniac, became pope the interests of Cluny and Rome were more than ever identified. The monks elected their abbat without exterior interference. To prevent this becoming an abuse, the first abbats always proposed their coadjutors as their successors. Thus it was with Berno(910-27), Odo (927-48), Maieul (948-94), Odilo (990-1049). After that there arose the custom of appointing the grand prior as successor--as in the case of S. Hugh (1049-1109). From the confirmation of its foundation in 931 by John XI. Cluny received the greatest favours at the hands of the papacy, its abbats being created archabbots with episcopal insignia; and it was made entirely independent of the bishops. [Sidenote: The rule of Cluny.]