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St Berardus of Marsica (d. 1130) ‘Model Gregorian Bishop’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2007

JOHN HOWE
JOHN HOWE
Affiliation:
Department of History, Texas Tech University, P O Box 41013, Lubbock, TX 79409-1013, USA; e-mail: John.Howe@ttu.edu
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Abstract

The ‘Gregorian Reform’ or ‘Gregorian Revolution’ is a model of top–down ecclesiastical change that assumes that local bishops suddenly became, to some extent, agents of Rome. One striking illustration of this is the portrayal of the ‘new Gregorian bishop’, based largely on Berardus of Marsica (d. 1130), presented by Pierre Toubert in his classic Structures du Latium médiéval (1973), and now reprised by Jacques Dalarun (2003). This article, employing an unedited collection of miracles, re-examines Toubert's treatment of Berardus and reveals a reforming saint who belongs less to Rome and more to his idiosyncratic cathedral of Santa Sabina.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , July 2007 , pp. 400 - 416
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007
Acta SS

Acta Sanctorum

BHL

Bibliotheca hagiographica latina, Brussels 1898–1901

CHR

Catholic Historical Review

MGH

Monumenta Germaniae Historica

The ‘Gregorian Reform’, sometimes termed the ‘Gregorian Revolution’, is a historical model implying top–down ecclesiastical change.Footnote 1 Yet battles between popes and emperors cannot fully explain what happened in local churches. Although high politics certainly contributed to and affected the general revival of canon law and the increased prestige of Rome, change still had to occur at the diocesan level. The model of ‘Gregorian Reform’ assumes that somehow local bishops implemented and even embodied Roman-style ecclesiastical programmes.

This assumption is increasingly tested as research on pre-Gregorian and Gregorian bishops accelerates. Back in 1988, when Steven Fanning published his dissertation on Bishop Hubert of Angers (1006–47), he could claim that there was ‘very little historiography on French bishops’, but now volumes of the Fasti ecclesiae gallicanae are multiplying and specialised studies are appearing.Footnote 2 Spanish bishops have received attention.Footnote 3 In Germany scholars have long studied imperial bishops for their political importance,Footnote 4 but recent work also includes multiple volumes of Germania sacra and broader studies on the vitae and gesta of German bishops, stressing their roles in culture, patronage and even in the origin of ‘chivalry’.Footnote 5 Reform in England had its own precocious path, including an unparalleled link to a local Benedictine revival movement, but the wealthy ‘unreformed’, Saxon bishops are now recognised as liturgical and artistic impresarios.Footnote 6 The new Norman hierarchy is also receiving unparalleled attention.Footnote 7 In Italy, the histories of individual dioceses have become increasingly sophisticated, and broader work has appeared such as Maureen Miller's survey of the development of the episcopal palace.Footnote 8 Detailed studies of bishops and dioceses naturally tend to emphasise exceptional people and places. Nevertheless, what is striking about recent work is that much of it highlights continuities and gradual developments, revealing, on the one hand, a massive rebuilding of ecclesiastical infrastructure and sporadic local attempts at reform occuring well before the ‘Gregorian Reform’, and, on the other hand, fewer clear breaks and changes during the ‘reform era’ than a model of drastic reform or revolution might have led us to anticipate.

A conspicuous exception to the above generalisation is Pierre Toubert's Les Structures du Latium médiéval (1973), perhaps the greatest triumph of the Annales tradition of histoire totale, which, although most famous for its description of the revolutionary changes occurring in Lazio from the ninth through the twelfth centuries associated with ‘encastellation’, the shift from dispersed farmsteads to concentrated fortified settlements, also discusses many related changes, including a shift in power toward Rome, where popes promoted the Gregorian Reform by fostering a new type of rural bishop in Lazio, developing structures of power that would later extend to the whole of Europe.Footnote 9 Toubert described an ‘ideal’ activist bishop, a composite model he based upon the Lives of bishops Peter of Anagni (d. 1105), Bruno of Segni (d. 1123) and Berardus of Marsica (d. 1130); of these three, he especially privileged Berardus, who, unlike the other two, was known through the text of a contemporary Life, and who presented ‘an archaic episcopal model of a style purely “Gregorian”’.Footnote 10

Toubert placed his ‘collective portrait … of a holy bishop from Lazio’ against the background of a world where bishops had been marginalised by a process of encastellation of which they were ‘only exceptionally the promoters and beneficiaries’.Footnote 11 Into this world came the new ‘ideal bishop’. He was portrayed as nobly born, a commonplace used by hagiographers even in cases where it was probably not true. He was trained as a monk, but then drafted into curial service. Sent by Rome into one of its provincial dioceses, he successfully imposed new reforming standards and overcame the hostility of the local aristocracy. He regularised the clergy, restored and rebuilt episcopal properties and reestablished order. He served at times as a Roman legate. He taught, preached and practised works of charity. He was more distinguished by pastoral action than by wonderworking. Upon his death, Rome and his admiring episcopal colleagues and successors fostered his cult as a saint. Toubert illustrates this image with many details, frequently drawn from the Life of Berardus. His reform model is important methodologically because he uses it to portray a Roman mentality the influence of which can be demonstrated by comparing it to the evidence of actual events.Footnote 12 Thus the model serves both to reveal and explain Rome's increasing hegemony over its local churches.

Now, thirty years later, in a Festschrift dedicated to Toubert, Jacques Dalarun has returned to ‘Bérard des Marses: un modèle épiscopal grégorien’. He supplements Toubert by analysing an unpublished collection of miracula Berardi. This additional material enables him to reexamine the role of miracles as ‘signs of sanctity’ in the dossier of Berardus and to offer some nuances on Roman canonisation.Footnote 13 Dalarun ultimately concludes, however, that the unedited posthumous miracles add nothing to Toubert's ‘luminous and dynamic analysis’, except for perhaps a bit of shadow insofar as they reveal some of the resistances and inertia faced by reformers.Footnote 14 More could have been said here. Dalarun, perhaps in part because he was writing an homage, does not indicate how much Toubert's episcopal model is undermined by the complete dossier. In order to better appreciate Rome's impact (or lack thereof) on its local dioceses at the start of the high Middle Ages, it may be useful to revisit, one more time, Berardus, the ‘model Gregorian bishop’.

It should first be noted, however, that some of the problems this paper will signal in Toubert's model were products of their time. A long generation ago, Italian medieval historiography in general and ecclesiastical historiography in particular was much less sophisticated. The late Robert Brentano, commenting on changes to which his own books on central Italian history contributed, observed that up until the 1950s the best Italian medieval ecclesiastical history came out of the German Institute in Rome.Footnote 15 In that context, Toubert was a revolutionary. Inspired by the Annales tradition, he was eager to bring historiographical precision to all sorts of previously neglected materials. Back in the 1960s, when he was conducting research for the dissertation that became Structures, he was innovative in some of the ways he used hagiography historically. Yet close study of his citations reveals that, compared to how he exploited other types of sources, his use of hagiography followed an implicit double standard: whereas with charters he often worked from the original manuscripts – creating microfilm collections that are still a glory of the Ecole Française in Rome – with hagiographical texts he was content with the best existing published editions. Thus, for example, his treatment of the career of the abbot and hermit Dominic of Sora (d. 1032) exploited texts published by the Bollandists and by the Benedictines of Monte Cassino, but neglected the unpublished versions listed in the Bollandist hagiographical catalogues (especially Bibliotheca hagiographica latina [BHL], 2245, 2245b); his ‘Dominic’ would soon be eclipsed by later work based upon this neglected evidence.Footnote 16 His treatment of episcopal hagiography has similar limitations which make it increasingly problematic today. Even eight years after Toubert published Structures, André Vauchez set a higher standard in La Sainteté en occident (1981), a dissertation in which he attempted to examine all surviving records of medieval papal canonisation proceedings, even those that were unpublished.Footnote 17 A renewed emphasis upon the hagiographical manuscripts themselves was one of the major shifts highlighted by Patrick Geary in his 1996 survey of changes in hagiographical scholarship.Footnote 18

The vita of Berardus (BHL, 1176), as an opening dedicatory letter informs us, was written by Bishop John of Segni (1138/1153–77).Footnote 19 Toubert was content to use a transcription originally published in the seventeenth century in Italia sacra, even though he knew that the 1912 supplement to the Bibliotheca hagiographica latina listed additional unedited miracles (BHL, 1176b-h) found in an early modern libellus in the Vatican's Barberini collection.Footnote 20 Another early modern copy containing these same miracula had also been signalled by Albert Poncelet when he inventoried hagiographical works in libraries in Naples.Footnote 21 These, and traces of the Vita et miracula Berardi found in several early modern printed editions, have now been analysed by Dalarun, who concludes that all the surviving manuscripts stem from a lost libellus associated with the tomb of Berardus (first at his cathedral of Santa Sabina, then, after 1580, at the new cathedral at Pescina whence the body was transferred).Footnote 22 The first section of these miracles appears to have been written as part of the original vita, composed in its present form after John had become bishop of Segni in the late 1130s or 1140s, and prior to 1153, the date when Conrad of Suburra, who is mentioned in the miracles as a cardinal, became pope as Anastasius iv (1153–4).Footnote 23 Subsequent authors continued to add stories, one of which reports a miracle dated to 1167.Footnote 24 Dalarun, who promises an editio princeps, convincingly argues that the surviving early modern copies were produced by antiquarians who worked in the circle of Cardinal Francesco Barbarini (d. 1679).Footnote 25

How does Berardus appear when examined in the light of the complete hagiographical dossier? First of all, the importance of his nobility becomes clearer. Toubert asserted that hagiographers, at least up until the thirteenth century, emphasise the aristocratic origins of their heroes, even when they lack concrete evidence.Footnote 26 While he recognised that the Life of Berardus creditably identifies him as born ‘from the seed of the great Berardian counts’, he balances this against other possible options, such as Peter of Anagni's more dubious ‘princely origin’ and the humble ancestry of Bruno of Segni (which Peter the Deacon had attempted to conceal).Footnote 27 For Toubert high birth was a hagiographical ideal which might or might not correspond to objective historical reality. Yet the details of John's Life indicate clearly that Berardus was noble and that his nobility was essential to his career. John names the father of ‘Berardus’ as another ‘Berardus’ and his family home the castello ‘cui Colli nomen’, thus linking Berardus to Count Berardus of Collimento, the son of the first count of Collimento, Count Oderisius ii of Marsica (d. post 1077).Footnote 28 Moreover, the vita states that Berardus had been made an acolyte by Bishop Pandulfus of Marsica (1056–94),Footnote 29 a fact that makes genealogical sense in that Pandulfus was a brother of Count Oderisius ii, and thus would have been a great-uncle of Berardus.Footnote 30 No wonder Berardus had to ‘put aside all the pride of his nobility’, a humility topos found in the full Barberini copy but somewhat obscured by a misreading in the printed version.Footnote 31 Berardus was no papally created ‘new man’. He belonged to the same powerful lineage of the counts of Marsica that had dominated the southern part of the duchy of Spoleto ever since the founder of the line, ‘Berardus the Frank’, had arrived there in the mid-tenth century.Footnote 32

The nobility of Berardus is exactly what made him useful to Roman reformers. After he had been educated in the household of his great-uncle and mentor Bishop Pandulfus, he had been sent to Monte Cassino to study grammar for six more years.Footnote 33 Then Paschal ii summoned Berardus to Rome and appointed him ‘count of Campania’.Footnote 34 Why would Paschal have bestowed this extraordinarily difficult office on a young clerk, still in his twenties? The pope must have assumed that his family connections would sustain him. They certainly proved useful. The new count was soon captured by Peter Colonna, ‘consul of the Romans’, the first attested member of the Colonna family.Footnote 35 News of this misfortune caused ‘great sorrow … both in the Roman curia and in the houses of his parents and relatives’. But his relatives were the ones who could act: John of Petrella, a Marsican knight ‘consanguineus’ to Berardus, entered Peter's stronghold in disguise and secretly extricated the captured count.Footnote 36 All Rome could do was to award ecclesiastical honours, making the rescued Berardus cardinal deacon of Sant'Angelo in Pescheria and later cardinal priest of San Crisogono.Footnote 37

The ‘noble blood of the Marsican counts’ also explains why Rome wanted Berardus as bishop of the Marsi. Bishop Pandulfus had been succeeded by another member of the family, Bishop Siginolfus (1094/96–1110), whom the Vita Berardi acknowledges was a religious man distinguished for his wonderful abstinence and widely respected during his seventeen-year tenure (not least by his powerful relatives).Footnote 38 Unfortunately, he had been installed by the antipope Clement iii (d. 1100). Officials in Rome needed to replace Siginolfus without alienating his supporters. They found an ideal alternative in Berardus, a distant relative from the same dominant lineage. Pope Paschal ii (1099–1118) must have been quite eager to make this appointment because he ordained Berardus bishop of the Marsi just as soon as possible, consecrating him in 1110 on his thirtieth birthday, the earliest age permitted by strict canonists.Footnote 39 Berardus would have been much less effective without his nobility and local connections. Note the fate of one of Toubert's representative bishops who was clearly not aristocratic, Bruno of Segni, who lost the abbacy of Monte Cassino as the result of a confrontation with the dominant aristocratic faction there – a faction headed by members of the same Marsican comital lineage that had produced Bishop Berardus.Footnote 40

Although Berardus does conform to Toubert's model of a Gregorian bishop in many ways, these parallels are circular when the aspects in question originate in the Vita Berardi itself. John of Segni does include a remarkably detailed description of the reformed canonical life at Berardus' cathedral, Santa Sabina. He emphasises episcopal charity and concern for the poor. He explains that Berardus had inherited a situation where clerics lived irregular lives in irregular costumes, where clerical marriage was common, where marriage restrictions were not observed and ‘where laymen sold churches as if they were their own hereditary property and, what is worse, clerics who held them did too and hardly believed this to be sinful’.Footnote 41 Toubert effectively summarises Berardus' programme, which he presents as typical.

Nevertheless, the specific actions that Berardus took were prompted by Santa Sabina's unique local situation. Toubert notes that of his three Gregorian bishops, only the vita of Berardus emphasises the reform of the cathedral chapter (he concludes that in other places it may already have been achieved).Footnote 42 Likewise, Dalarun, looking at the aftermath of the reign of Berardus, suggests that the cathedral chapter must have been unusually divided between reformers and the ‘unreformed’.Footnote 43 Toubert states that he found his ‘most colourful’ details concerning fights between bishops and local dynasts in the Vita Berardi.Footnote 44 Here he found clerical concubinage a prominent issue, but not in his other episcopal sources.Footnote 45 Problems involving the buying and selling of churches, which to a large extent had been resolved in the rest of Europe by donation or by turning the ‘owner’ into a ‘patron’, remained contentious in areas of the Abruzzi well into the twelfth century, as their persistence in the Vita Berardi indicates.Footnote 46 John of Segni was writing about a very specific local situation, and the episcopal deeds he recounts cannot necessarily be extrapolated to all of Lazio, let alone all of western Europe.

Toubert was certainly correct in postulating the influence of Rome on the Vita Berardi. True, the actual evidence that the Gregorian papacy required a vita in canonisation proceedings is not consistent and has never been fully tabulated, nor has it been demonstrated that Roman proceedings in the mid-twelfth century required any sort of precise biographical format.Footnote 47 Yet the Vita Berardi clearly had Rome in mind in as much as it begins with an opening letter of dedication claiming that a certain ‘Johannes Furatus’, apparently the prior of Santa Sabina, had asked John of Segni to write the vita in order to help secure Roman recognition.Footnote 48 The prologue that follows is a document more bureaucratic than devotional, nothing more than an ‘executive summary’.Footnote 49 When John of Segni details Berardus' early career as a papal functionary, he presents the imprisonment by the Colonnas as martyrdom ‘for Rome’. His Berardus, freed from prison, exhorts the curial officials, ‘Don't weep, brothers, don't weep. Rather rejoice with me because I have been allowed to suffer for our mother, the Holy Roman Church, the lady who rules the whole world [i.e. the domina totius mundi].’Footnote 50

Nevertheless, John of Segni could have made Rome even more central if he had chosen to do so. Rome supported Berardus, as papal documents independently demonstrate, by condemning Marsican monks who were usurping pastoral functions and by confirming his diocesan boundaries.Footnote 51 John does relate that Paschal ii once employed Berardus as an administrator in the dioceses of Veroli and Alatri and another time as a legate to Sardinia, but he could have gone on to enumerate other commissions, such as Berardus' successful effort, sponsored by the papacy, to reconcile the monastery of Carpineto with the bishop of Penne, which is known to us only through the Carpineto chronicle.Footnote 52 John explains that on occasions when local magnates made things too difficult for Berardus, he could retreat to Rome, specifically to the Lateran Palace.Footnote 53 But the claim that a curialist bishop had returned to Rome only because his unruly subjects forced him to (allegedly eight times) brings to mind similar passages in the Lives of contemporary hermit saints where hagiographers insist that their heroes went out from their ‘deserts’ only because they were compelled to leave by the pressure of crowds. John of Segni is apparently more interested in portraying Berardus as a conscientious local bishop than as a papal functionary.

Although the Vita et miracula Berardi are influenced by Rome, it does not follow that they present an unproblematic Roman model of sanctity. The authors clearly have local interests. The dedicatory letter reveals that John of Segni's proximate audience was his ‘brother and fellow priest Johannes Furatus’ who had requested the vita ‘with all our other most holy canons concurring’. John identifies himself as the bishop of the neighbouring diocese of Segni, but he makes it clear there that the vita had originally been requested ‘long ago’, when he was still a canon of Santa Sabina, and that he intends to testify about what he himself saw when he was a canon there.Footnote 54 John's personal roots in the Santa Sabina chapter might not necessarily undercut Toubert's vision of a community of activist reforming bishops transcending diocesan boundaries insofar as John was willing to return to Santa Sabina, visit his old colleagues and busy himself with their concerns even after he had become bishop of Segni. But his returns were not necessarily prompted by reform ideology. John's family home must have been near the ancient Civitas Marsicana since he himself had become a canon at Santa Sabina and since one of the unpublished miracles mentions that his brother was a deacon there.Footnote 55

Local concerns are also revealed by the miracles. Toubert claimed that new Roman canonisation proceedings had inspired a search for quality, not quantity in wondrous deeds, so that the new episcopal Lives are therefore characterised by a ‘restrained number of miracles’ and they ‘refuse to encumber themselves with a baroque profusion of miracles’.Footnote 56 However, as Dalarun recognised and demonstrated, such statements now require qualification. True, the miracles found in the published Life of Berardus are few and unspectacular: his liberation from prison; a multiplying of his episcopal stores for almsgiving; a young girl saved from a plum pit stuck in her throat; the death of an excommunicated count; and the saint's prediction of his own impending death.Footnote 57 However, in the miracula post mortem which Toubert did not employ, John of Segni continues after the published vita's final ‘Amen’: ‘Behold …, I have briefly written the Life of the holy confessor Berardus, not so well as I ought to have but as well as I could. The miracles now remain, both what we saw and what we were able to prove true with indisputable and appropriate evidence. So let us place them in order on parchment pages for eternal memory.’Footnote 58 John then adds thirty-three post-mortem miracles, nearly doubling the length of his work. More were contributed by later writers, making a total of forty-nine posthumous miracles. Dalarun itemised and analysed these wonders, noting the status of their recipients, their association with the tomb, etc. He concludes that John of Segni was probably rewriting a preexisting book of miracles.Footnote 59 Thus, the miracles in the vita Berardi do not so much demonstrate the influence of new increasingly rigorous Roman canonisation procedures as they do the continuation of the traditional practice of collecting all miracles of all types into a libellus, a practice attested since the early fifth century when Augustine of Hippo had advocated it.Footnote 60

Not only does John of Segni's hagiography not look as ‘papal’ as Toubert thought, but also it does not even look ‘episcopal’. True, its hero is a bishop and its miracles define a catchment area for the power of the relics that neatly fits the diocese of the Marsi.Footnote 61 The cult does centre on the cathedral, specifically on the bishop's tomb.Footnote 62 This certainly conforms to the Italian pattern for episcopal saints in the early twelfth century.Footnote 63 But if this is an episcopal cult, where are the bishops? After Berardus, no bishop of the Marsi is named. Other church officials fare much better: eight canons and various other ecclesiastics are named, and even praised for their honesty and discretion. But where are the bishops? Dalarun suggests that perhaps there were none, that perhaps after the death of Berardus the diocese fell into chaos and the episcopal seat sat vacant. This hypothesis would explain why the vita was requested by the head of the chapter, ‘Johannes Furatus’, instead of by the bishop. However, such as argumentum ex silentio rests ultimately on the dubious assumption that in a poorly documented region there would have been no undocumented bishops.Footnote 64 And even a long episcopal vacancy would not explain why, in a miracle added after 1167, a bishop of the Marsi who finally does appear remains unnamed and presented in a less than flattering light.Footnote 65 Moreover, if we do choose to argue that the absence of the bishops of the Marsi in the Vita Berardi results from a lengthy chaotic interregnum, then that interregnum undercuts Toubert's thesis that new model bishops such as Berardus demonstrate Rome's increasing control over its countryside.

To understand why bishops are not found in this narrative, it may be useful to look at the peculiar circumstances of Santa Sabina, an isolated cathedral left standing amidst the decayed ruins of the former Civitas Marsicana. It seems to have been increasingly marginal to the diocese.Footnote 66 In the mid-twelfth century the canons of the collegiate church of San Giovanni at Celano attempted to break away from Santa Sabina and claim independent jurisdiction.Footnote 67 Even when the bishops of the Marsi were present in the diocese (they may have been absent curialists, as occasionally Berardus seems to have been), they might have found Celano more amenable. In developing the cult of Berardus, the canons of Santa Sabina may have been seeking to preserve and enhance the prestige of their ancient cathedral.

The canons certainly played a major role in promoting Berardus. They commissioned John's work and preserved and supplemented it. They built and maintained the elaborate tomb with columns that is mentioned in the miracula.Footnote 68 They were the beneficiaries and instigators of several of the early miracles.Footnote 69 And, of course, John himself was the saint's major publicist, not only writing the vita and the miracula but also publicly ‘preaching St Berardus and the wonderful things he said and did’.Footnote 70

The canons were especially interested in their local community, out of which, according to John of Segni, the post mortem cult of Berardus had spontaneously sprung forth: ‘Nobody preaching, nobody admonishing, nobody persuading, men and women, young boys and old men, the small and the great, suddenly began to say, prompted by divine inspiration, “Bishop Berardus is a saint”; … soon they evoked this saint himself to gain his help, crying out, “Sancte Berarde, Adjuva me!”’Footnote 71 To stand in the way of this enthusiasm was dangerous. One miracle story describes a failed attempt to discourage it: after a crowd, rejoicing that Berardus had just healed a blind man, had interrupted the community's meal and lectiones, the irate prior attempted to lock some celebrating younger clerics in the dormitory, which led to protests that the canons were dishonouring and concealing the miracles of their saint, and then to the throwing of stones.Footnote 72 In another story, a priest was paralysed for his scepticism.Footnote 73

Toubert's vision of a top–down clerical reform directed by Rome does not do complete justice to the community orientation of the dossier of Berardus. John of Segni was less concerned with the power of Rome over the diocese of the Marsi, or with the power of clergy over the laity, than with the defence of the whole community against the ‘tyrants’, the ‘tyranni’. Far from attacking the local power structure, the reformers present themselves as the voice of the sounder part of the community, rallying the Marsican church against its oppressors. John of Segni's Berardus ‘loved everyone, for he never had an enemy’; as count of Campania, ‘he was unbelievably loved’ and ruled ‘as if he were a pious king and a perfect emperor’.Footnote 74 So why was he imprisoned? Peter Colonna was a ‘tyrant’, seeking every opportunity to injure the Roman Church.Footnote 75 In fact, in virtually every one of Berardus' conflicts, John of Segni marginalises the saint's opponents as ‘tyranni’.Footnote 76 If bad customs require correction, the bishop, the fountain of charity, does so only in the Pauline spirit of necessary exhortation, never wielding the ‘sword of excommunication’ unless forced to do so by the incorrigibility of tyrants. This is true even in that most dramatic incident, cited several times by Toubert, in which Berardus and his neighbouring bishops jointly excommunicated the count of Marsica (presumably Count Crescentius, although he is tactfully left unnamed).Footnote 77 Berardus' ideal was concord, not discord. He did not attack comital authority, only its abuses. A count and countess were among the pious witnesses to his miracles.Footnote 78 Even the excommunicated Count Crescentius is said to have saved his soul thanks to Berardus.Footnote 79 The ideal was social reconciliation, not clerical triumphalism.

Those who celebrated this cult certainly had very local concerns. One of the miracles appended to John's work reports at length a vision of three bishops, in which SS Nicholas and Cataldus defer to St Berardus. Although this makes no sense in terms of the Church's hierarchy of universal saints (such as Nicholas) and local saints (such as Berardus and Cataldus), it is comprehensible in the light of the competition between the three local churches which had these saints as their patrons.Footnote 80 Berardus worked local wonders: just as St Nicholas could save sailors in peril on the sea, so also St Berardus could help people in danger on the Lago Fucino.Footnote 81

If the cult of Berardus really represented Roman interests, it ought to have received Rome's blessing. Yet the first known papal approbation came from Pius vii at the start of the nineteenth century. Thus there appears to have been considerable distance between Rome and Santa Sabina. Dalarun attempts to explain this by arguing that a failed attempt to create a more universal saint gave way to a self-consciously local cult.Footnote 82 Yet that postulated universal perspective is exactly what is called into question by the local miracles newly introduced into the debate.

The overall effect of a closer study of the hagiographical evidence on Berardus and his cult tends to nudge this particular ‘model bishop’ further from the orbit of Rome and into a more defined local context. Toubert believed that episcopal hagiography offered a chance to isolate an ‘episcopal model’ which could then be used to study ‘the relation between models and reality’ and to illuminate Rome's mentality and increasing hegemony.Footnote 83 The dossier of Berardus, however, examined more closely, suggests that, at least in the Marsican region, early twelfth-century reforms may not have been so unprecedented. The episcopate remained in the hands of the comital family. Berardus supported and participated in papal initiatives, but so had his great-uncle Pandulfus a half century earlier.Footnote 84 Reforms had their own local pace, which was not particularly swift in the Abruzzo. The Church continued to receive aristocratic support, despite occasional sharp disputes between bishops and counts. The cathedral canons and the people also had their own local agenda. Factions could look to Rome, and could blithely invoke Roman reforming themes any time they found them useful, but altogether the Santa Sabina local church looks less like an outpost of Roman hegemony and more like its own idiosyncratic community. Berardus was Marsica's patron, not Rome's. John of Segni's theme is clear: ‘So let the Marsican fatherland rejoice that it has merited so great and powerful a patron.’Footnote 85

This article deconstructs to some extent Toubert's top–down model of a Roman papacy revolutionising the episcopate in Lazio (‘developing in Lazio the apprentice form of many things, of temporal power in particular … formulas whose general application would only be possible in the thirteenth century’).Footnote 86 It has not specifically presented an alternative model of a reforming bishop. To some extent that is the task of work in progress, such as the researches on bishops at the start of the high Middle Ages cited at the beginning of this study. The arguments presented above, however, suggest that an adequate alternative model would recognise that eleventh- and twelfth-century bishops may exhibit major continuities with their pre-Gregorian predecessors and that their local contexts must be taken into account. Yet, although one may wish to be more cautious about Toubert's model of a ‘Gregorian bishop’, this analysis does not undercut the wisdom of his insight, a more pioneering one thirty years ago, that analysis of hagiographical materials can illuminate ecclesiastical history.

References

1 The term ‘Gregorian Reform’ was popularised by Augustin Fliche, Ėtudes sur la polémique religieuse à l'époque de Grégoire VII: les prégrégoriens, Paris 1916, and, more influentially, in La Formation des idées grégoriennes, Paris 1924, pp. vi, viii, 6, 17, 39–148. In England a shift to ‘Gregorian Revolution’ owes much to Karl Leyser, ‘The polemics of the papal revolution’, in his Medieval Germany and its neighbors, London 1982, 138–60, followed by, among others, Kathleen G. Cushing, Papacy and law in the Gregorian Revolution: the canonistic work of Anselm of Lucca, Oxford 1998, and R. I. Moore, The first European revolution, ca. 970–1215, Oxford 2000. For a more sceptical perspective on exactly how revolutionary high medieval Church reform actually was see John Howe, ‘Gaudium et spes: ecclesiastical reformers at the start of a “new age”’, in Christopher M. Bellitto and Louis I. Hamilton (eds), Reforming the Church before modernity: patterns, problems, and approaches, Aldershot 2005, 21–35. A basic survey of these ecclesiastical reform movements can be found in Maureen C. Miller, Power and the holy in the age of the investiture conflict: a brief history with documents, Boston 2005, with bibliography at pp. 176–8.

2 Steven Fanning, A bishop and his world before the Gregorian reform: Hubert of Angers, 1006–1047, Philadelphia 1988, 11. Specialised studies of note include Constance Brittain Bouchard, Spirituality and administration: the role of the bishop in twelfth-century Auxerre, Cambridge, Ma 1979; Bernard de Vrégille, Hugues de Salins, archevêque de Besançon, 1031–1066, Besançon 1981; and Thomas Head, Hagiography and the cult of saints: the diocese of Orleans, 800–1200, Cambridge 1990. Now, however, Brill is producing a volume a year of Fasti ecclesiae gallicanae. Note also specialised studies such as Wilfried Hartmann, ‘L'Évêque comme juge: la pratique du tribunal épiscopal en France du xe au xie siècle’, in Claude Carozzi and Hugutte Taviani-Carozzi (eds), Hiérarchies et services au moyen âge: séminaire sociétés, idéologies et croyances au moyen âge, Aix-en-Provence 2001, 71–92, esp. p. 92.

3 Paul H. Freedman, The diocese of Vic: tradition and regeneration in medieval Catalonia, New Brunswick 1983; Jeffrey Bowman, ‘The bishop builds a bridge: sanctity and power in the medieval Pyrenees’, CHR lxxxviii (2002), 1–16.

4 Timothy Reuter, ‘The “imperial church system” of the Ottonian and Salian rulers: a reconsideration’, this Journal xxxiii (1982), 347–74, presents the bibliographical tradition. Now note also Herbert Zielinski, Der Reichsepiskopat in spätottonischer und salischer Zeit, 1002–1125, Wiesbaden 1984; Odilo Engels, ‘Der Reichsbischof in ottonischer und frühsalischer Zeit’, in Irene Crusius (ed.), Beiträge zur Geschichte und Struktur der mittelalterlichen Germania Sacra, Göttingen 1989, 135–75; Albrecht Graf Finck von Finckenstein, Bischof und Reich: Untersuchungen zum Integrationsprozess des ottonisch-frühsalischen Reiches, 919–1056, Sigmaringen 1990; Marlene Meyer-Gebel, Bischofsabsetzungen in der deutschen Reichskirche vom Wormser Konkordat (1122) bis zum Ausbruch des Alexandrinischen Schismas (1159), Siegburg 1992; and Geneviève Bührer-Thierry, Evêque et pouvoir dans le royaume de Germanie: les ėglises de Bavière et ed souabe, 876–973, Paris 1997. Some idea of the immense bibliography on German bishops can be gained from a new reference book of nearly a thousand pages, Erwin Gatz (ed.), Die Bistümer des Heiligen Römischen Reiches: von ihren Anfängen bis zur Säkularisation, Freiburg-im-Breisgau 2003.

5 General studies include Hatto Kallfelz (ed.), Lebensbeschreibungen einiger Bischöfe des 10.–12. Jahrhunderts, Darmstadt 1973; Stephanie Coué, Hagiographie im Kontext: Schreibanlass und Funktion von Bischofsviten aus dem 11. und vom Anfang des 12. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1997; and Stephanie Haarländer, Vitae episcoporum: eine Quellengattung zwischen Hagiographie und Historiographie, Untersucht an Lebensbeschreibungen von Bischöfen des Regnum Teutonicum im Zeitalter der Ottonen und Salier, Stuttgart 2000. On patronage see Thomas, Head, ‘Art and artifice in Ottonian Trier’, Gesta xxxvi (1997), 65–82Google Scholar; on bishops as agents in courtly culture see C., Stephen Jaeger, ‘The courtier bishop in vitae from the tenth through the twelfth century’, Speculum lviii (1983), 291–325Google Scholar, or, more fully, in The origins of courtliness: civilizing trends and the formation of courtly ideals, 939–1210, Philadelphia 1985.

6 Dorothy Bethurum Loomis, ‘Regnum and sacerdotium in the early eleventh century’, in Peter Clemoes and Kathleen Hughes (eds), England before the Conquest: studies in primary sources presented to Dorothy Whitelock, Cambridge 1971, 129–45; Patrick Wormald, ‘Aethelwold and his continental counterparts: contact, comparison, contrast’, in Barbara Yorke (ed.), Bishop Aethelwold: his career and influence, Woodbridge 1988, 13–42; and Catherine Cubitt, ‘The tenth-century Benedictine reform in England’, Early Medieval Europe vi (1997), 77–94. On liturgical innovation see David N. Dumville, ‘Liturgical books for the Anglo-Saxon episcopate: a reconsideration’, in Liturgy and the ecclesiastical history of Anglo-Saxon England: four studies, Woodbridge 1992, 66–95, and Richard, W. Pfaff, ‘The Anglo-Saxon bishop and his book’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester lxxxi (1999), 3–24Google Scholar; on episcopal patronage see Mary, Francis Smith, Robin, Fleming and Patricia, Halpin, ‘Court and piety in Anglo-Saxon England’, CHR lxxxvii (2001), 569–602Google Scholar.

7 Archbishops Lanfranc and Anselm continue to inspire studies too numerous to mention here. What is impressive, however, is the attention now given to bishoprics outside of Canterbury, for example Emma Mason, St Wulfstan of Worcester, c. 1008–1095, Oxford 1990, and William M. Aird, St Cuthbert and Normans: the church of Durham, 1071–1153, Woodbridge 1998. The mechanics of diocesan rule are treated in Everett U. Crosby, Bishop and chapter in twelfth-century England: a study of the ‘mensa episcopalis’, Cambridge 1994.

8 Noteworthy diocesan studies include Maureen C. Miller, The formation of a medieval Church: ecclesiastical change in Verona, 950-1150, Ithaca 1993; Robert Brentano, A new world in a small place: church and religion in the diocese of Rieti, 1188–1378, Berkeley 1994; Norbert Kamp, ‘The bishops of southern Italy in the Norman and Stauffen periods’, in Graham Loud (ed.), The society of Norman Italy, Leiden 2002, 185–209; and David Foote, Lordship, reform, and the development of civil society in medieval Italy: the bishopric of Orvieto, 1100–1250, Notre Dame 2004. Broader perspectives are offered in Convegno di storia della chiesa in Italia, Vescovi et diocesi in Italia nel medioevo (sec. IX–XIII): atti del II convegno di storia della chiesa in Italia, 2nd edn, Padua 1964, and in Maureen C. Miller, The bishop's palace: architecture and authority in medieval Italy, Ithaca 2000.

9 Pierre Toubert, Les Structures du Latium médiéval: le Latium méridional et la Sabine du IXe siècle à la fin du XIIe siècle, Rome 1973, 75, 789–933, esp. pp. 807, 828–9. On Toubert's impact see Robert, Brentano's review in Speculum lii (1977), 1056–8.Google Scholar

10 Toubert, Structures, 43–6, 808, describes the episcopal vitae he uses. On the reworking of the Life of Peter of Anagni in the mid-twelfth century or later see G. A. Loud, Church and society in the Norman principality of Capua, 1058–119, Oxford 1985, 99–100. Of the two Lives of Bruno of Segni, one is by the forger Peter the Deacon (d. c. 1159/64), written around 1140; the other, although Toubert does not note this, appears to have been rewritten in its present form in association with Bruno's canonisation in 1183, as detailed in Reginald Grégoire, Bruno of Segni: exégete médiéval et théologien monastique, Spoleto 1965, 12–13. For the full development of Toubert's ‘modèle épiscopale’ see Structures, 807–29.

11 Toubert, Structures, 74, 791, 809.

12 Toubert's use of models (ibid. 807–29), is explained in Jacques Dalarun, ‘Bérard des Marses: un modèle épiscopal grégorien’, in Dominique Barthélemy and Jean-Marie Martin (eds), Liber largitorius: études d'histoire médiévale offertes à Pierre Toubert par ses élèves, Geneva 2003, 59–85 at pp. 63–64.

13 Dalarun, ‘Bérard’, 59–85, with the study's parameters delineated on p. 73.

14 Ibid. 85.

15 Robert, Brentano, ‘Italian ecclesiastical history: the Sambin Revolution’, Medievalia et Humanistica n.s. xiv (1986), 189–97.Google Scholar

16 BHL i. 338–9; BHL supplementi, Brussels 1911, 95. For the rewriting of Dominic's story see François Dolbeau, ‘Le Dossier de saint Dominique de Sora d'Albéric du Mont-Cassin à Jacques de Voragine’, Mélanges de l'Ėcole Française de Rome: Moyen Âge – Temps Modernes cii (1990), 7–78; Carmela Vircillo Franklin, ‘The restored Life and miracles of St Dominic of Sora by Alberic of Monte Cassino’, Mediaeval Studies lv (1993), 285–345; and John Howe, Church reform and social change in eleventh-century central Italy: Dominic of Sora and his patrons, Philadelphia 1997.

17 André Vauchez, La Sainteté en occident aux derniers siècles du moyen âge: d’après les procès de canonization et les documents hagiographiques, Rome 1981.

18 Patrick Geary, ‘Saints, scholars, and society: the elusive goal’, in Sandro Sticca (ed.), Saints: studies in hagiography, Binghamton 1996, 1–22, esp. pp. 10–14, 21.

19 On John of Segni see Dalarun, ‘Bérard’, 80. His Vita Berardi has been published twice: once by Ferdinand Ughelli, most accessible in Italia sacra sive de episcopis Italia, 2nd edn, ed. Nicolas Colet, Venice 1717–22, i. 893–901; and again, although in a version based largely on Ughelli, in a Bollandist edition in Acta SS, Nov. ii/1 (1894), 128–34.

20 Toubert, Structures, 43–4, notes the entries for the miracula found in BHL supplementi, 51. Those entries were based upon Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barberini latinus ms 2368, a libellus of thirty-nine folios which is described in Albert Poncelet, Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum Bibliothecae Vaticanae, Brussels 1910, 479–80. Toubert does not appear to have actually consulted this manuscript. Although he cites the Acta SS edition in the source discussion above, his footnote citations are actually taken from Ughelli (Italia sacra, 2nd edn, i. 893–901).

21 Biblioteca nazionale Emmanuele iii (Naples), Brancacciana III.F.9 (once 2.H.13), fos 203–25, described in Albert, Poncelet, ‘Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum bibliothecarum Neapolitanarum’, Analecta Bollandiana xxx (1911), 137–251Google Scholar, esp. pp. 232–3. Dalarun, ‘Bérard,’ 72, finds it a more careless copy than the Barberini libellus, but useful not only as an independent witness but also as the transmitter of the unique manuscript copy of the opening dedicatory letter. This witness seems to have been inadvertently omitted in Henri Fros, BHL: novum supplementum, Brussels 1986, 139.

22 Dalarun, ‘Bérard,’ 72. On the cult of Berardus at Pescina today see Ernesto Di Renzo and Rita Salvatore, ‘Repertorio dei culta pellegrinali in epoca contemporanea’, in Gabriella Marucci (ed.), Il viaggio sacro: culti pellegrinali e santuari in Abruzzo, Colledara (Teramo) 2000, 183–317 at p. 252.

23 Dalarun, ‘Bérard’, 81; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 28r. In this article the miracula will be cited from what appears to be the better surviving copy, the Barberini libellus.

24 Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 32r. In this anecdote the elements of dating contradict, but an early modern scribe would probably have found it easier to err by reading the anno domini as 1161 instead of 1167, than to err by mistaking the papal year, which is specified as the eighth year of the reign of Pope Alexander iii (1159–81).

25 Dalarun, ‘Bérard’, 67n., 68–72.

26 Toubert, Structures, 811–12, 839–40.

27 Ibid. 811–12. For the claim in the vita that Berardus was of noble birth see Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 129; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fos 1r, 3r.

28 John, Howe, ‘Monasteria semper libera: Cluniac-type monastic liberties in eleventh-century central Italian monasteries’, CHR lxxviii (1992), 19–34Google Scholar, esp. pp. 26–7, and Church reform, 137. Because the family of St Berardus is identified with Collimento, which a 1077 monastic foundation charter associates with Oderisius ii and his sons, the reconstruction presented here is preferable to the alternative offered in Antonio Sennis, ‘Potere centrale e forze locali in un territorio di frontiera: la Marsica tra i secoli viii e xii’, Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratori xcix (1994), 1–77, esp. pp. 57, 77, by which Berardus and his father Berardus would be descendants of Berardus iii of Marsica (the brother of Oderisius ii).

29 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 129A, 130AB; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fos 1r, 4r–v.

30 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 129A; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fos 1r, 4r. On the ancestry of Pandulfus see Howe, ‘Monasteria semper libera’, 19–34, esp. pp. 26–7, and Church reform, 133–5.

31 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 129F (‘omni nobilitatis electione postposita’); more comprehensibly in Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 3v (‘omni nobilitatis elatione postposita’).

32 Sennis, ‘Potere centrale e forze locali’, 36; Howe, Church reform, 14.

33 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 129A, 130B; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fos 1v, 4v. Here the vita identifies Berardus' teacher at Monte Cassino as the blind grammarian Paul, who is also known from Peter the Deacon, Chronica Monasterii Casinensis iii. 48, in Die Chronik von Montecassino, ed. Hartmutt Hoffmann, MGH, Scriptores xxxiv, Hanover 1980, 426, and De viris illustribus xxxvi, PL clxxiii.1042. See also R. H. Rodgers, ‘Commentary’, in Petri Diaconi: ortus et vita iustorum cenobii casinensis, Berkeley 1972, 159, 167.

34 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 129A, 130C; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fos 1v, 5v. On the difficulties of this office see Giorgio, Falco, ‘L'amministrazione papale nella campagna e nella marittima dalla caduta della dominazione bisantina al sorgere dei comuni’, Archivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria xxxviii (1915), 677–707Google Scholar, esp. pp. 688–94.

35 Carlo Servatius, Paschalis II. (1099–1118), Stuttgart 1979, 73–7.

36 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 129B, 130D; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fos 1v, 6v. Sennis, ‘Potere centrale e forze locale’, 52, conjectures that this John of Petrella (perhaps Petrella Liri, near Tagliacozzo) was the John who was the son of Siginolfus who was the son of Berardus ii, a brother of Oderisius ii. Thus he and St Berardus would have been second cousins.

37 Paul Kehr, Italia pontificia, repr. Berlin 1961–86, iv. 240; Rudolf Hüls, Kardinäle, Klerus und Kirchen Roms, 1049–1130, Tübingen 1977, 174; Servatius, Paschalis II., 48–53, 55.

38 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 129AB, 131DE; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fos 1v, 8r.

39 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 131E; Vat Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 8r. Although the ancient canons specifying the minimum ages for ordinands were not always observed, reform circles seem to have presumed that no one ought to be admitted to the priesthood before he was thirty. See, for example, Peter Damian, ep. xl (written c. 1052), in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. Kurt Reindel, MGH Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit iv/1–4, Munich 1983–93, i. 399.

40 Howe, Church reform, 139–40.

41 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 132A; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 9v.

42 Toubert, Structures, 846.

43 Dalarun, ‘Bérard’, 81–3.

44 Toubert, Structures, 820.

45 Ibid. 779.

46 Howe, Church reform, 143–4; Laurent Feller, Les Abruzzes médiévales: territoire, économie et société en Italie centrale du IXe au XIIe siècle, Rome 1998, 805–6, 814, 852. For the overly optimistic claim by John of Segni that Berardus ‘extirpated simony’ see Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 132C; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 10r.

47 That official recognition of a saint ought to have been associated with the production of a vita is claimed even for the Carolingian era: Eric Waldram Kemp, Canonization and authority in the western Church, London 1948, 38–9. However, when one looks at each of the saint cults treated in Cyriakus, Heinrich Brakel, ‘Die vom Reformpapsttum geförderten Heiligenkulte’, Studi Gregoriani ix (1972), 241–311Google Scholar, the surviving evidence suggesting that vitae were required as a condition of papal recognition seems spotty and inconsistent. It has even been claimed that vitae may not have been expected for martyrs: James Ryan, ‘Missionary saints of the high Middle Ages: martyrdom, popular veneration, and canonization’, CHR xc (2004), 1–28, esp. pp. 3–4. More systematic study is needed here, but, meanwhile, one should hesitate to presume that the relatively consistent procedures documented in the canonisation inquisitions of the thirteenth century existed in earlier centuries.

48 Acta SS, Nov. ii/2, 128CD, an opening letter omitted in the Barberini libellus. The status of ‘Johannes Furatus’ is not completely clear. Although Bishop John of Segni most frequently addresses him as ‘consacerdos’, which might seem to indicate a fellow bishop, Dalarun, ‘Bérard’, 76–7, 79–80, notes a variety of terms also used, including ‘dominus’ and ‘prior’. John of Segni even calls him ‘spiritualis pater’ (Vat Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 19r, cf. fo. 26r) and ‘nostrae ecclesiae prior’ (fo. 19r), which are unusual forms of address for a bishop from another diocese to use to a cleric of lesser rank. These anomalies suggest that some form of the vita was originally written when John of Segni was still a canon of Santa Sabina, and was then revised, inconsistently, after he had become a bishop.

49 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 129AB; Vat Barb. lat. ms 2368, fos 1r–2r.

50 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 131A; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 7v.

51 Kehr, Italia pontificia, iv. 241; Paschal ii, ep. ccclxxvii, PL clxiii.338–40.

52 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 132D; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fos 10v–11r. For Carpineto see Feller, Les Abruzzes médiévales, 761.

53 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 129B, 132CD; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fos 1v, 10v–11r.

54 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 128F (dedicatory letter omitted in Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368).

55 Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 27v.

56 Toubert, Structures, 824–5.

57 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 130F–131A, 132F–133A, 133F, 133CDE, 133F; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fos 6r–7v, 12v–13v, 13v–14r, 14r–15r, 15r–16r.

58 Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 18v.

59 Dalarun, ‘Bérard’, 74–7.

60 On the importance of Augustine's advocacy of churches maintaining books of miracles see Hyppolyte, Delehaye, ‘Les Recueils antiques de miracles des saints’, Analecta Bollandiana xliii (1925), 5–85, 305–25Google Scholar. For miracle collections at the start of the high Middle Ages see Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the medieval mind: theory, record, and event, 1000–1215, Philadelphia 1982 (rev. edn 1987).

61 Dalarun, ‘Bérard’, 73, observes that Sofia Boesch Gajano is preparing an analysis of the geography of the miracles.

62 Ibid. 73–6.

63 Compare Diana Webb, Patrons and defenders: the saints in the Italian city states, London 1996, 79–82.

64 Bishops in the mountainous regions of Lazio and the Abruzzo are not well recorded. In the neighbouring diocese of Rieti, even after more than a quarter century of archival work, Robert Brentano, in Church and religion, 142, wound up lamenting in regard to its bishops the absence of ‘a correct list of their names and the order of their succession’.

65 Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 32r.

66 Kehr, Italia pontificia, iv. 239–40; Sennis, ‘Potere centrale e forze locali’, 59.

67 Kehr, Regesta, iv. 244–5.

68 Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 21v.

69 Dalarun, ‘Bérard’, 77–8.

70 Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 27r.

71 Ibid. fos 18v–19r.

72 Ibid. fos 20v–21v, discussed in Dalarun, ‘Bérard’, 78.

73 Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 25r–v.

74 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 130A, 130D; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fos 4r, 6r.

75 This is less clear in Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 130E (‘Quidam Petrus nomine comes Columna, et, ut fertur, consul’) than in Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 6r (‘Tyrannus quidam Petrus nomine comes de Columna, et, ut fertur, Romanorum consul’).

76 Among other instances note Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 130D, 132C, 132D(4x), 133C(2x); Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fos 5v, 10v, 11r (4x), 14r(2x).

77 Feb. Terra-Abrami, ‘Cronistoria dei conti de'Marsi poi detti di Celano, con documenti inediti’, Bollettino della Società di Storia Patria Anton Ludovico Antinori negli Abruzzi, 2nd ser. xvi (1904), 144–5, sets forth what is known about Crescentius, which is basically the hagiographical testimony cited here and a derogatory anecdote in Peter the Deacon, Chronica Monasterii Casinensis iv. 129, MGH Scriptores xxxiv. 606. His signature on a charter of 1120, confirming a donation made by his father, Berardus vi, in 1096, is described in Kehr, Italia pontificia, iv. 245, and in Alessandro Clementi and others, I fondi pergamenaceo e cartaceo dell'Archivio della Collegiata di S. Cesidio a Trasacco, L'Aquila 1984, pp. xxvi–xxvii.

78 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 133C; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fos 13v, 23r.

79 Acta SS, Nov. ii/1, 133DE; Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fos 14r–15r. However, not everyone agreed that that the nefarious count was saved: Peter the Deacon, Chronica Monasterii Casinensis iv.129, MGH Scriptores xxxiv.606, relates the vision of a Monte Cassino monk who saw Count Crescentius tortured by demons because he had failed to return to the monastery a thurible he held in pawn.

80 Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 31r–v.

81 Ibid.

82 Dalarun, ‘Bérard’, 80–1.

83 Toubert, Structures, 807.

84 On Pandulfus as reformer see ibid. 841, 844, 895, 924.

85 Vat. Barb. lat. ms 2368, fo. 35r.

86 Toubert, Structures, 828–9.