BERNARDO di LIPPE. — Cistercian, who lived in the 12th–13th centuries. He was a canon of the cathedral of Hildesheim when, upon the death of his brother, he was called into military service; and he served Henry the Lion with great loyalty and honour as a vassal. His intense longing for the religious life led him to become a monk at the Cistercian abbey of Marienfeld, whose foundation he had contributed generously to. He then went to Livonia, where we find him in 1211 as abbot of Dünamünde; in 1218 he became bishop of Selburg; he died in 1224. Of this singular monk and prelate, the master Giustino di Lippe composed a life around the middle of the thirteenth century, noteworthy for its knowledge of the man and of his age.
BIBL.: Magistri Instini, Lippiflorium..., ed. G. Laubmann and P. Scheffer-Boichorst, Detmold 1872; W. Wattenbach, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter, II, Berlino 1874, pp. 256–57. Pier Fausto Palumbo