RODOLFO il GLABRO. — Benedictine, born in Burgundy around 985. He entered the cloister of St-Germain d’Auzerre at a very young age.
Restless and impatient with discipline, he began to wander from one abbey to another. Thus, around 1029, he came to Italy from the monastery of S. Benigno of Dijon, where he had moved in 1015, for the consecration of the monastery of Susa, together with the abbot Guglielmo di Volpiano, whose life he later wrote; this is his finest 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 moved to Cluny; in 1035 he was once again at St-Germain, where he remained until his death (1046–47).
During his stay at Cluny he wrote, in a very rough Latin, his work Historiarum libri quinque, begun already at St-Germain on the advice of the abbot Guglielmo and continued at the urging of Odilone. This work, which covers the period from 900 to 1044, despite its prolixity and confusion and its frequent inaccuracies, is nevertheless extremely valuable for knowledge of European history at the beginning of the 11th century, constituting, for many events in Italy, Germany, and especially France, the only source.