BERLIÈRE, URSMER. — Benedictine, born on 3 September 1861 at Gosselies, died on 28 August 1932 in the abbey of Maredsous. After attending the Collège du Sacré-Cœur at Charleroi and the seminary of Bonne-Espérance, he entered Maredsous and, on 15 August 1882, took his monastic vows.
In 1890 he began publishing the Monastico belge, completed in 1928–29. In this monumental work, divided into four parts, in which the historical sources of every abbey and priory are indicated, along with the names of the abbots and priors accompanied by biographical data, B. proves himself a worthy continuator of the Maurists for the Belgian provinces, and completes and corrects the Gallia Christiana. He was a regular contributor to the Revue bénédictine, which he directed for a long time and for which he compiled the Bulletin d'histoire bénédictine. Founder and first director of the Belgian Historical Institute in Rome, he worked with passionate dedication on the documents of the Vatican archives. Among the works based on Vatican documents, the most important is certainly that on the petitions to Pope Clement VI, with a valuable introduction on the organization of the papal Curia. Particularly well received, because of the importance of its synthesis and the clarity of its exposition, was the volume: L'ordre monastique des origines au XIIe siècle (Maredsous 1912), reprinted and translated into Italian, presented as Conférences, but in fact much more than a group of conferences. The other volume, L'ascèse bénédictine des origines à la fin du XIIe siècle (Paris 1927), sheds considerable light on the spirit that animated monastic life.