ODO OF CAMBRAI, Blessed. - Benedictine theologian and bishop, b. at Orléans around the middle of the 11th century, d. in the monastery of Anchin, near Douai, on 19 June 1113. Scholasticus of Toul and then of Tournai (1087), he attracted a multitude of disciples, to whom he taught exaggerated realism while combating nominalism as heretical. Having withdrawn with some disciples to the surroundings of Tournai (1092), he raised from its ruins the ancient monastery of St. Martin, where he lived as a regular cleric: in 1095 he accepted the Rule of St. Benedict with Cluniac observances and became abbot. Elected in 1105 bishop of Cambrai, in place of Gauchero, deposed at the Council of Clermont (1095), he was unable to dislodge the intruder until 1106. Having fallen out with Henry V, he settled at Anchin, from where he governed the diocese.
His philosophical writings: Sophistes, Liber complexionum; De re et ente are lost. Theological works: the Expositio in canonem Missae is important for eucharistic theology (real presence, etc.); in the De peccato originali, after affirming that this sin is more a privatio iustitiae debitae than a reality, he illustrates its transmission by relying on his exaggerated realism (which he calls doctrina orthodoxorum): the universal is a reality that exists whole in individual beings; in Adam was the whole human nature which expands into individual particularities in individual creatures (PL 140, 1091). This treatise is an essay of the first applications of philosophy to dogma, immediately after the ill-fated attempt of Berengar of Tours (v.).
With the Disputatio contra Iudacum de adventu Christi Filii Dei, G. seeks to convince his opponent by logic alone, setting out a theory of the Redemption centered on sacrifice. In the short treatise De blasphemia in Spiritum Sanctum he demonstrates that this sin consists in final impenitence. In the De canonis Evangeliorum he applies the principles of Eusebius of Caesarea to find the mutual relationship of the Gospels.
These works had various editions, the last in PL 140, 1053-1160, where a homily on the Villicus iniquitatis is also published, concerning whose authenticity doubts have been raised. Other homilies are lost.