DROGONE, called of REIMS (Drogo cardinalis). — Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, born in Champagne (second half of the 11th century), died on 19 December 1138. He embraced monastic life at S. Nicasio of Reims, where he was elected prior; but the desire for a more perfect life led him to choose the Cistercian Order, and, without his abbot’s knowledge, he chose Pontigny, the second daughter-house of Cîteaux.
The event provoked a lively correspondence between s. Bernard, the two abbots, and D. himself (s. Bernard, Epist., 32–34: PL 182, 136–40). s. Bernard’s attitude is surprising: writing to the abbot of S. Nicasio, who was demanding D.’s return, he expressed his sorrow to him; writing instead to the abbot of Pontigny, he urged him to retain D. and recommended that D. stand firm; perhaps the Saint had received confidences from D. that he could not reveal. In any case, D. returned to Reims. In 1128, after the monastery of S. John of Leon had been taken from nuns who had fallen into decline and, by the bishop, ceded to the Benedictines (cf. s. Bernard, Epist., 48: PL 182, 154), D. was appointed its first abbot. The fame of his learning and virtues reached Innocent II, then residing in France, who, at the Council of Pisa in 1136, created him cardinal bishop of Ostia. Four spiritual treatises by D. have come down to us (PL 166, 1513–64): De sacramento Dominicae Passionis, an allegorical explanation of the various circumstances of Jesus’ Passion; De creatione et redemptione primi hominis, in which the thought of s. Augustine is reflected; De septem donis Sancti Spiritus (ac de Beatitudinibus), a parallel between the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the evangelical Beatitudes; De divinis Officiis (seu horis canonicis), on the spiritual significance of the individual hours of the divine office: a work worthy of being disseminated even today.