TEODOLFO (TEODULFO), BISHOP OF ORLÉANS. — Theologian and poet, of Spanish origin, born in the first half of the 8th century, died, according to an obituary, on 18 September 821.
Particularly favored by Charlemagne, he was appointed by him bishop of Orléans (ca. 798) and abbot of Fleury. A zealous bishop, and above all concerned for the good of his diocese, he was swept up in the historical events that followed Charlemagne’s death. Implicated in the revolt of Bernardo, king of Italy (817), he was proscribed, like all the old counselors of the deceased Emperor, and in 818 was replaced in Giona (v.). He died before the amnesty of 831, according to some in exile, according to others poisoned after his return to Orléans.
As a theologian, he displays all his patristic erudition in the collection of texts on the question of the Filioque, in his De Spiritu Sancto; in De ordine Baptismi he offers a detailed explanation of the rites of Baptism. As a bishop, he left two collections, Capitula and Capitulare, of precepts and counsels, valuable for the history of ecclesiastical discipline in the Carolingian period. In addition to two brief Sermones, one must recall, for its felicitous theological formulations, the Interpretatio Missae edited by Cuissard (v. BIBLICA). He is the author of numerous poetic works (ed. by E. Dümmler, in MGH, Poëtae, I, pp. 437-581), among which the Gloria, laus, inserted into the liturgy of Palm Sunday, is famous. He emended, though not felicitously, the text of the Vulgate, using chiefly Spanish codices belonging to a certain Peregrinus. T.’s recension had little circulation; its original manuscript (Θ) is preserved in the Bibl. Naz. of Paris (cf. E. Power, Corrections from the Hebrew in the Theodulfian Mss. of the Vulgata in Biblica, 5 [1924], pp. 233-58).