ALBERIC, Monk of Monte Cassino. - Born at Settefrati in Campania in 1101 (?), died around 1140. At the age of 10, during an illness that for 9 days seemed to have deprived him of life, he had a vision in which St. Peter and two angels (Emmanuel and Eloy) led him through hell, purgatory and paradise, the latter divided into 7 heavens. Around 1115 he was received by Abbot Gerard (1111-23) at Montecassino, where, ordained a priest (1124), he lived so holily that no one dared to question the reality of his vision.
The first redaction of this vision, written by order of Abbot Senioretto (1127-37), must be attributed, according to the explicit testimony of Peter the Deacon (Chronicon Casinense, IV, 66; PL 173, 888 ff.), to the monk Guido, who was also the author of some verses "de fortuna eiusdem (visionis)" (Liber de viris illustr. Casinensibus, ch. 41; PL 173, 1044 ff.). A. then composed a new redaction of it together with Peter the Deacon (1127), in 50 chapters of good Latin prose (Cod. membr. no. 239, archive of Montecassino). Prefixed to it are a prologue by the aforementioned Guido and an epistle by A. himself deploring the spread in Italy of accounts of the vision not conforming to the original. Commonly the critics (Ozanam, Rajna, D'Ancona, D'Ovidio, Zingarelli) regard A.'s vision, which is not without a certain artistic elaboration, as one of the most notable sources from which Dante drew inspiration, as he did from other legends then widely current, in deriving the matter of his poem.
Our A. is not to be confused with the deacon Alberico, also a monk of Montecassino, who died in 1088. The confusion among the Bollandists and other authors is due to the fact that the deacon Alberico wrote, among other things, two rhythmical compositions: De poenis inferni and De gaudio paradisi, and would have had, according to Peter the Deacon (De ortu et obitu iustorum Casinensium, ch. 49; PL 173, 1105), an apparition of the deceased monk Guaiferio. That this deacon Alberico was also born at Settefrati and is identical with the cardinal of the title of the SS. Quattro Coronati, as is commonly held, is more than problematic according to F. Novati, Storia letter. d'Italia, Le origini, Milan 1926, p. 414 ff.
A.'s Vision was published for the first time by F. Cancellieri (Rome 1814, text and vernacular translation), who transcribed it from a manuscript of the Alessandrina library in Rome, collated with codex 257, of the 13th century, of the archive of Montecassino. This codex, the only original, was published for the first time by A. Amelli in Bibliotheca Casinensis, Florilegium, V, 1 (1894), pp. 191-206, and it was reproduced by C. De Vivo and A. Mirra.
Bibliography4 works
Francesco Tinello