Baldric of Dol

Breton bishop
Baldric of Dol ( 10507 January 1130) was prior and then abbot of Bourgueil from 1077 to 1106, then made bishop of Dol en Bretagne in 1107 and archbishop in 1108 until his death. He fulfilled his monastic duties by travelling to attend Church councils and writing of poetry and history, his most influential piece being a historical account of the First Crusade.

He was born in Meung sur Loire, most likely in 1046, where he passed his early days. He was of a modest background, not coming from nobility and belonging to a rural farming class. While living in Meung sur Loire, Baldric may have attended the Benedictine house of Saint Liphard, which had recently been established, for his early education. This would only have been the beginning of Baldric’s education in monastic schools as, despite not coming from a particularly wealthy area, there were many schools established by the Church with talented instructors around the Loire Valley to educate students in Latin due to the increasing demand for those who could work with text. In addition to his various official duties, he was an active participant in the loose association of regional Latin literary writers known today as the Loire School. Baldric would become a prevalent figure within the Church in Loire Valley, even developing rivalries for high ranking Church positions. Bishop Ivo of Chartres accused Baldric to Hugh of Die of attempting to become bishop of Orléans through means of bribery. However, because of Ivo’s ill will toward Baldric, it is unknown if this claim is well founded. its forest. Two years later he returned to Bourgueil to witness an agreement between it and the abbey of Montierneuf. Baldric also traveled to Rome multiple times, first in 1108, then in 1116, and finally in 1123 when we went to counter a charge that saw a papal legate suspend him and successfully clear his name.

Baldric's poetic oeuvre was written almost entirely while abbot at Bourgueil. The 256 extant poems are found almost exclusively in a single contemporary manuscript which is most likely an authorized copy. They consist of a wide range of poetic forms ranging from epitaphs, riddles and epistolary poems to longer pieces such as an interpretative defense of Greek mythology and a praise poem for Adela of Normandy that describes something very like the Bayeux Tapestry within its 1,368 lines. His thematics are dominated by two great topics: desire/friendship (amor) and game/poetry (iocus). His constant citations and interpretations reveal a deep knowledge and appreciation of Ovid that was rare for the age, and many biblical allusions and references to classic texts throughout his works reflects the vast amount of literature available to Baldric during his time at the Abbey of Bourgueil. In only one of his poems, titled De sufficientia votorum suorum, inspiration from Roman poets Horace, Virgil, and Tibullus can be found. He was one of the chief rewriters of this text, the other two being Robert the Monk and Guibert of Nogent. This work has 24 known surviving manuscripts, and was composed in 1105 before Baldric finished composing another version with added details and revisions two years later. Because, up until recently, only seven manuscripts were known to exist, it was thought that the text held little historical significance in comparison to other, more commonly found works. In the account, Baldric covers the time period from November of 1095 to August of 1099, beginning at the Council of Clermont, which Baldric was able to cover in greater detail compared to other authors who wrote on the event due to having been in attendance, where Pope Urban II delivered his sermon and ending with the conquest of Jerusalem

Among his other works are poems on the conquest of England and on the reign of Philip I; lives, in Latin, of his friend Robertus de Arbrissello, of St. Valerian, and of St. Hugh of Rouen; finally a letter to the monks of Fécamp Abbey which contains some valuable material relating to Breton manners, and to English and Norman monasteries.