Burchard of Worms

BURCHARD OF WORMS. - Born in 965 to 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 Albert of Labbese and Walter of Speyer, he composed between 1008 and 1012 a canonical collection, called the Decretum. The work is divided into 20 books and consists of 1785 fragments. The XIX is called Corrector and deals with penance; the XX Speculator and concerns the dogmas most closely connected with morality. The sources of the Decretum are principally the Collectio Anselmo dedicata, and the De Synodalibus causis of Regino of Prüm. The texts are often reworked and some of them are attributed to others, although B. himself is their author. The work spread rapidly throughout the West, reasserting, in an age of decadence, the authority of the Roman Pontificate, and facilitating for the Church liberation from imperial tutelage. B. combats, besides simony, the concubinage and avarice of the clergy, and is hostile to the exemption of monks from episcopal authority. He does not hesitate to affirm that not only ecclesiastical society, but also the civil society of that time, rested upon the bishops.

Dino Staffa