MANIACORIA, NICOLA. — Deacon of the church of S. Lorenzo in Damaso in Rome at the time of Lucius II (1144–45). Later he became a Cistercian monk at the monastery of S. Anastasio alle Tre Fontane under the abbot Bernardo (later Eugenius III).
M. composed an excellent treatise entitled Suffragones bibliothecae, published by J. P. P. Martin (Introduction à la critique générale de l'Ancien Testament. De l'origine du Pentateuque, Paris 1886–87, pp. cv–cviii) and by H. Denifle in 1888 (Archiv für Literatur und Kirchengeschichte, 4 [1888], pp. 270–76). In it M., who knew Hebrew, offers excellent advice for correcting biblical manuscripts and for transcribing them faithfully. He also wrote a Vita of St. Jerome (Beati Hieronymi vita; PL 22, 183–202), perhaps around 1150, making use of the genuine or spurious writings of the Saint, St. Augustine, St. Damasus, St. Gelasius, and St. Gregory; it represents an advance over earlier biographies of the kind, even though it simply accepts many legendary and anachronistic details. M. revised the entire Bible, devoting special attention to the Psalter, on the basis of the Hebrew text. He composed a Libellus de corruption et corruption Psalmorum et aliarum quarundam Scripturum; this work (still unpublished), like the Suffragones, expresses M.’s critical spirit, which always kept vigilant watch over the accurate transmission of biblical or patristic texts by the monk-copyists. A work known and cited by the liturgist Odo, but so far not located, was liturgical in character: De ecclesiasticis officiis secundum ordinem ecclesiae Romanum.