BURCARDO di WORMS. — Born in 965 into the family of the counts of Reichenbach-Ziegenhain, around the year 1000 he was elected bishop of Worms by Otto III, where he carried out a notable work of reform and where he died in 1025.
So that his experience might benefit others, with the help of Alberto di Labbese and Gualtiero di Spira, between 1008 and 1012 he composed a canonical collection called the Decreto. The work is divided into 20 books and consists of 1,785 fragments. Book XIX is called Corrector and deals with penance; XX, Speculator, concerns dogmas more closely connected with morality. The sources of the Decreto are chiefly the Collectio Anselmo dedicata and the De Synodalibus causis of Regimone di Prüm. The texts are often reworked, and some of them are attributed to others, although B. himself was their author. The work spread rapidly throughout the West, reaffirming, in an age of decline, the authority of the Roman Pontificate and facilitating the Church’s liberation from imperial tutelage. B. fought simony, as well as the concubinage and avarice of the clergy, and was opposed to the exemption of monks from episcopal authority. He did not hesitate to affirm that not only ecclesiastical society but also the civil society of his time rested upon the bishops.