DURANDUS OF TROARN. - Benedictine abbot and theologian, b. at the beginning of the 11th century, probably at Nantes, d. 11 February 1088 at Troarn (Normandy). A monk from 1031 at St-Vandrille, then at Fécamp, by his qualities he won the goodwill of William, Duke of Normandy and King of England, who in 1059 made him abbot of St. Martin of Troarn (of recent foundation), where he governed wisely for 29 years, leaving a reputation as "ecclesiastici cantus et divini dogmatis doctor peritissimus, sibi durus carnifex aliisque mitis opifex" (Orderic Vitalis [d. 1143], Hist. eccl., part 3, bk. 8: PL 188, 577).
Between 1050 and 1058 he wrote the treatise De corpore et sanguine Domini (first published by d'Achery at Paris in 1688, as an appendix to the works of Lanfranc, reproduced by Migne: PL 148, 1375-1424); it consists of 9 parts, which develop the whole Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, with parenetic touches and polemical sallies against Berengar of Tours. Although occasioned by the latter's heresy, the work preserves, on the whole, an irenic tone: the author, avoiding particulars and subtle speculations (credendum potius quam discutiendum), prefers broad and synthetic visions of the truth, thus illuminating the idea of the panis vitae, he shows its importance in the economy of salvation (Christus illocalis est vitae locus, in quo vivat Christianus). The work, steeped in biblical and patristic texts, was an indirect but effective confutation of the nascent Eucharistic rationalism of Berengar, of whom it also provides us the first doctrinal accounts.