MARBODO di RENNES (Rhedonensis). - Bishop and poet, who, together with Ildeberto di Lavardin and Baudri di Bourgueil (d. 1130), is regarded as one of the greatest Latin writers of the early 12th century. B. c. 1035 in Brittany, d. 1123.
Having become “scholasticus” of Angers, archdeacon, and bishop of Rennes (1096), he gained wide renown through his carmina, chiefly in “leonine” verses, in which he treated the most varied subjects: hagiographical (Passio s. Laurentii, b. Maurilii, Machabaeorum, s. Victoris, s. Mauritii et sociorum eius, Felicis et Adancti), literary (De ornamentis verborum), mineralogical (Liber lapidum, later called Lapidarius). In prose he wrote many lives of saints (Licinio di Angers, Roberto di Casa Dei, Magnobodo, Guattiero, Florenzo del Monte Glonna) and an interesting collection of letters (in ep. II he defends the thesis: «quod improbitas ministri non impedit veritatem Sacramenti»). All M.’s works were published, with little critical discernment, in PL 171, 1457-1782.