ADRALDO (ARRALDO, AYRALDO). — Bishop, originally from Vendôme, died at Chartres on 1 February 1075. In 1033 he became a monk of the Trinity of Vendôme and subsequently of Cluny, where he was held in high esteem by Abbot Ugo. He was present when Odilone died at Souvigny while returning from Rome. He was then prior of Payerne in Switzerland, and finally became abbot of Breme, near Pavia. He was chosen as a traveling companion by s. Pier Damiani when, in 1063, the latter was sent to Cluny as an apostolic legate. Around the middle of 1070 he was made bishop of Chartres, succeeding Roberto of Tours, who had died the previous year. He devoted much attention to the schools of Chartres, introducing innovations suggested by the experience he had acquired at Cluny and during his travels. He was highly esteemed, especially for his eloquence, and was called upon several times to settle disputes that had arisen among the monks. In 1072 he had to resolve a dispute between the monks of Vendôme and those of S. Albino of Angers. The former accepted the settlement he proposed, but the monks of S. Albino were dissatisfied with it and protested.
Pope Alessandro II sent him a letter ordering him, under pain of excommunication, not to oppose the monks of Vendôme’s repossession of seven churches in his diocese belonging to them. He received two other letters from Gregorio VII: the first, from Argentea, on 27 November 1073, instructing him to restore Isamberto to the abbatial seat of St-Laumer of Blois, whose position had been usurped by an intruder named Guido while the legitimate abbot was making his pilgrimage to Jerusalem; the second, from Tivoli, on 10 September 1074, addressed jointly to several archbishops and all the other bishops of France, encouraging them to resist the king’s abuses. A. is commemorated in the necrology of the monks of the Trinity of Vendôme, where an anniversary is also dedicated to him, and in that of Notre-Dame of Chartres.