UMBERTO of SILVA CANDIDA. — Having entered around 1015 the Benedictine monastery of Moyenmoutier in the Vosges, he distinguished himself there by a perfect knowledge of Latin and Greek. He was also a staunch advocate of the reforms to be introduced into the Church, so that in October 1049 Leo IX called him to Rome and wanted him close at hand among his most intimate counsellors; in the spring of 1050 he appointed him archbishop of all Sicily and the same year created him cardinal bishop of Silva Candida. He died in Rome on 5 May 1061.
Umberto played a leading role in the breach between the Greek Church and the Roman Church. Fearing, in fact, the union of the two Churches, which was desired by the Emperor Michael Cerularius, patriarch of Constantinople, he made every effort to prevent it and in a letter written under the name of Leo of Ohrid, he violently attacked Latin rites (1053). Umberto translated the letter, drafted Leo IX’s reply (PL 143, cols. 744-69) and wrote the treatise Adversus Graecorum calumnias (ibid., cols. 929-74).
Emperor Constantine Monomachus entertained sentiments quite different from those of Michael Cerularius, and these favourable dispositions induced Leo IX to send Umberto and Cardinal Frederick of Lorraine as legates to Constantinople (1054). But the Pope’s death (19 April) was immediately exploited so as to cast doubt on the authority of their mission. Umberto himself had to reply to a libellus by the monk Nicetas Stethatus (ibid., cols. 985-1000). The theological discussion held in the Emperor’s presence (24 June) turned in his favour. On 16 July, the legates, feeling themselves mocked, launched the excommunication against Cerularius (the document was Umberto’s work: ibid., cols. 1001-1004) and departed (18 July). Reaching Chalcedon under escort by the Emperor’s men, they returned; but an uprising fomented by Cerularius forced them to disappear as quickly as possible, and the excommunication they had launched ended by effecting the breach between the Roman and Greek Churches (PG 120, cols. 735-48). Having returned to the West, Umberto wrote (1057-58) the treatise Adversus simoniacos (PL 143, cols. 1004-1212; better in MGH, Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum saeculis XI et XII conscripti, I, Hanover 1891, pp. 95-253), in which he upholds the opinion that ordinations performed by simoniacal prelates are null and extols the election of bishops by the clergy and people in order to put an end to the abuses of lay investiture, the principal cause of the evils afflicting the Church.
Later Umberto became librarian of the Roman Church and was involved in the controversy over Berengar of Tours (cf. the letter he addressed to him, in Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere Geschichtskunde, 7 [1882], pp. 614). The Vita S. Leonis IX papae, hitherto attributed to Guibert (Wibertus), archdeacon of Tours, is now assigned to Umberto (cf. H. Tritz, Die hagiographischen Quellen zur Geschichte Papst Leos IX., in G. B. Borino, Studi Gregoriani, IV, Rome 1952, pp. 191-364; see the observations of B. de Gaiffier, in Anal. Boll., 70 [1952], pp. 423-424).