BURCHARD of WORMS. — Born in 965 from 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.
To ensure that his experience might benefit others, with the help of Albert of Labbese and Walter of Speyer, between 1008 and 1012 he compiled a canonical collection, called the Decretum. The work is divided into 20 books and consists of 1,785 fragments. Book 19 is called Corrector and deals with penance; Book 20, Speculator, 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 Burchard himself is the 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. Burchard opposed, besides simony, clerical concubinage and avarice, and was hostile to the exemption of monks from episcopal authority. He did not hesitate to affirm that not only the ecclesiastical society but also civil society of his time rested upon the bishops.