EUDO DE STELLA (ÉON, EUON, DE L'ÉTOILE): Founder of a heretical sect in France; d. after 1148. He came from a noble family of Brittany and rose into prominence there about 1146 as a vehement opposer of the hierarchy and an exponent of apocalyptic views. He appears to have applied to himself the liturgical formula [Otto of Freising De Gestis Friderici, I, chap. 54] "by him (Lat. eum, which he connected with his own name Êon) who is to come to judge the quick and the dead," gave himself out to be the Son of God, and by prophecies and feigned miracles gathered some following. Though a layman and unable to read, he celebrated mass, elected "angels" and "apostles" from among his adherents, and bestowed on them high-sounding names like "Judgment" and "Wisdom," together with the rank of bishops and archbishops. They undertook devastating raids for the plunder of churches and cloisters, and spent their pillaged treasures, so the narrative runs, in riotous orgies.. In 1148 Eudo was captured, with a number of his followers. When led for trial before the Synod of Reims, he vaingloriously appealed to his "divine mission." He died not long afterward in the prison of Archbishop Samson of Reims. Some of his adherents, who would seem to have spread as far as Languedoc, were burned at the stake. Hereafter the sect disappears from history. About the same period as Eudo's time certain heresies of a Manichean character were prevalent in Brittany, but it is an erroneous deduction from this fact to suppose that Eudo should be included among the Cathari. In reality he was a mystic fanatic, who went his own way.

HERMAN HAUPT.