Enciclopedia Cattolica

RODOLFO IL GLABRO

Rodolfo the Bald

Volume X · p. 631 · 1953

English translation · Testo originale italiano

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

RODOLFO IL GLABRO. - Benedictine, born in Burgundy around 985. He entered the monastery of St-Germain d'Auxerre at a very young age.

Restless and intolerant of discipline, he began to wander from one abbey to another. Thus, around 1029, he left the monastery of St-Bénigne in Dijon, where he had moved in 1015, and came to Italy for the consecration of the monastery of Susa, accompanied by Abbot Guglielmo of Volpiano, of whom he later wrote the life—his best and most complete work (Acta SS. Ianuarii, I, Paris 1863, pp. 57-64; MGH, Scriptores, IV, pp. 655-58; PL 142, 697-720). In 1030 he went to Cluny; in 1035 he was back at St-Germain, where he remained until his death (1046-47).

Article illustration
Rodolfo I d'Abburgo, king of Gerolshia - Bronze history (16th century) by R. I., part of the cenotaph of Maximilian I. Innsbruck, Hofkirche.

During his stay at Cluny, he wrote in rather rough Latin his work *Historiarum libri quinque*, begun already at St-Germain at the suggestion of Abbot Guglielmo and continued under the impulse of Odilo. This work, which covers the period from 900 to 1044, despite its prolixity, confusion, and frequent inaccuracies, is nonetheless highly valuable for the knowledge of early 11th-century European history, serving as the sole source for many events in Italy, Germany, and especially France.

BIBL.: ed. of Hist. lit. V in MGH, Scriptores, VII, pp. 48-72, incomplete but with critical introduction by G. Waitz; the best critical ed. is by M. Prou, in Collection de textes, XV, Paris 1886; E. Sackur, Studien über R. G., in Neues Archiv d. Gesellschaft alt. deut. Geschichte, 14 (1889), pp. 377-418; E. Gebhar, L'état d'âme d'un moine de l'an 1000, le chroniqueur R. G., in Revue des deux mondes, 107 (1891), pp. 600-28; E. Petit, R., Revue historique, 48 (1892), pp. 283-99; K. Grund, Die Anschauungen des R. G., Greifswald 1910. Stanislao Majarelli.