ADALBERTO (ALDEBERTO). - Frankish heretical bishop, who lived in the eighth century. Although he had himself ordained by ignorant bishops, he boasted of dispensing with the hierarchy as well as with the sacraments, and of being able to guarantee the salvation of his faithful by means of relics which an angel had brought him from the ends of the earth, but above all by virtue of a letter of Jesus Christ fallen from heaven at Jerusalem. His activity was directed especially toward the countryside, where everywhere he had crosses erected around which he gathered the poor people, whom he stirred up chiefly with the prayer he had composed in order to introduce the cult of the angels, to whom he had given new names. His doctrine was condemned at the Council of Neustria, held at Soissons on 2 March 744. S. Bonifacio pronounced against him the sentence of deposition, which was confirmed at the general Frankish Council in the spring of 745, where the doctrine was again condemned. The Council of Rome of 25 Oct. of the same year and the new general Frankish Council of 747 again condemned A., whom his fanatical followers regarded as a martyr (v. s. Bonifacio, Epist. 57, 59, 60, 77). At the Council of Rome of
745, together with the letter attributed by A. to Jesus Christ and the heretical prayer of the impostor, an apologetic autobiography by him is also mentioned. Yet nothing has survived of these three writings, through which the doctrine and activity of A. were especially assessed and condemned.