MILLONE, CRISPINO (Milo Crispinus). — A singer at the abbey of Bec in Normandy and a member of the illustrious family of the Crispins, whose genealogy he left. He would have been born in the last years of the 11th century, since he says he heard St Anselm (d. 1109) speak of Blessed Lanfranc (d. 1089). Nothing is known of M.’s life; he died about the middle of the 12th century.
He wrote the biography of Blessed Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, which was published by Luc d’Achery among the works of Lanfranc (Paris 1646), then by J. Mabillon (Acta Sanctorum O. S. B., sec. VI, IX, 11, Venice 1720, pp. 628-56), and by the Bollandists (Acta SS. Mai, VI, Paris 1866) and by Migne (PL 150, 822-30). In the prologue M. asserts that he drew all the details from Anselm, or from trustworthy witnesses, or from the biography of Herluin compiled by his kinsman Gilbert (Gislebertus) Crispino. M. also wrote, though very briefly, the lives of the abbots William of Beaumont and Boso, his superiors, published in the same collection by Luc d’Achery, who subsequently gives, without naming the author, the biographies of the abbots Theobald and Letard, successors of the first two (PL 150, 713). If M. was the author, which is likely, of the prologue added to the life of Herluin after Gilbert’s death (1114), in which prologue Letard is mentioned, he would have lived beyond 1149, the year of Letard’s death.