BERLIÈRE, URSMER. - Benedictine, b. 3 Sept. 1861 at Gosselies, d. 28 Aug. 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 Aug. 1882 he took his monastic vows.
In 1890 he began the publication of the Monasticon belge, brought to completion in 1928-29. In this monumental work, divided into four parts, in which for each abbey and priory the historical sources are indicated, as well as 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 an assiduous contributor to the Revue bénédictine, which he directed for a long time, and for which he edited the Bulletin d'histoire bénédictine. Founder and first director of the Belgian Historical Institute in Rome, he labored with passionate zeal on the papers of the Vatican archive. Among the works based on Vatican documents the most important is certainly that on the supplications of Pope Clement VI, with a valuable introduction on the organization of the pontifical Curia. The volume L'ordre monastique des origines au XIIe siècle (Maredsous 1912) met with special favor for the importance of its synthesis and the clarity of its exposition; it was reprinted and translated into Italian, presented as Conférences, but it is much more than a group of conferences. The other volume, L'ascèse bénédictine des origines à la fin du XIIe siècle (Paris 1927), sheds much light on what was the animating spirit of monastic life.
Bibliography2 works
Silvio Furlani