BALDRICO (BAUDRI) of BOURGUEIL. - Monk, b. in 1046, d. in 1130. Abbot of the monastery of St. Peter at 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 versatile writer. In verse he left a fair number of funeral eulogies, several hymns, some epigrams, and numerous letters, of considerable interest for their easy fluency and moral content. His greatest work, likewise in verse, is the epistle to Countess Adele of Blois, a kind of poetic encyclopedia, which sheds vivid light upon the sources and forms of the culture of his time. In prose he was the author of a Historia Hierosolymitana, in four books, which is among the earliest chronicles of the First Crusade.
BIBL.: The edition of the prose works is given in PL 166, 1037 ff.; that of the verses, by W. Abrahams, in Les oeuvres poétiques de Baudri de B., Parigi 1926. Cf. also: A. Thurot, Etudes 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, Parigi 1879. Pier Fausto Palumbo