BAILARDO (BARLARIO), PIETRO. — In popular tradition the legend of this strange figure, a Salernitan astronomer and necromancer who died at the stake in 1149 after confessing his errors, has remained alive to this day. Particularly vivid is the memory of a miracle said to have been performed by a crucifix at the moment of his death; this story appears already in the XXVIIth Evangelical Sermon of Franco Sacchetti and has inspired two popular octave “stories” repeatedly printed in the last two centuries. Some scholars, though mistakenly, have sought to identify him with Peter Abelard.
BIBL.: A. D’Ancona, Un filosofo e un mago: Pietro Abelardo e P. B., in Varietà storiche e letterarie, Milano 1883; G. Pansa, La leggenda di P. B. in Salerno, in Miti, leggende e superstizioni dell’Abruzzo, II, Sulmona 1927. Paolo Toschi