BALDRIC (BAUDRIC) of BOURGUEIL. – A monk, born in 1046, died in 1130. Abbot of the monastery of St Peter in Bourgueil from 1089, archbishop of Dol from 1107 until his death, he was a man of pure and simple life and an elegant, fluent, and varied writer. In verse he left a fair number of funeral eulogies, some hymns, a few epigrams, and numerous letters of considerable interest for their easy flow and moral content. His major work, also in verse, is the epistle to Countess Adela of Blois, a kind of poetic encyclopedia that sheds vivid light on the sources and methods of contemporary culture. In prose he wrote a Historia Hierosolymitana in four books, one of the oldest chronicles of the First Crusade.
BIBL.: The edition of the prose works is given in PL 166, 1037 ff.; of the verse, by W. Abrahams, in Les oeuvres poétiques de Baudri de B., Paris 1926. Cf. also: A. Thurot, Études critiques sur les historiens de la première croisade, Baudri de B., in Revue historique, pp. 372-86; H. Pasquier, Un poète latin du XIe siècle, Baudri abbé de B., archevêque de Dol, d'après des documents inédits, Paris 1879.