Saint Burchard of Worms

Burchard of Worms (c. 950/965 – 20 August 1025) was the bishop of the Imperial City of Worms, in the Holy Roman Empire. He was the author of a canon law collection of twenty books known as the Decretum, Decretum Burchardi, or Decretorum libri viginti. Burchard was born on c. 950–965 to a well-connected, wealthy family in the northern Hesse region of the Holy Roman Empire. He had two siblings: an older brother, Franco, who served as the Bishop of Worms from c. 998–999, and a sister, Mathilda, who became the abbess of an unknown monastery near Worms in c. 1010–1015. It is evident from the Vita Burchardi, written by Ebbo/Eberhard of Worms in c. 1025, that during the early life of Burchard his parents not only possessed "many properties and servants", but had local influence sufficient to directly position two of their sons to becoming confidants of the inner Imperial circle and Bishops of Worms. Burchard's family seems to have been of sufficient substance to exert a reasonable measure of political influence within the Diocese of Worms. As a young boy he was sent to the town of Koblenz where he entered the monastic school of either St. Florin or St. Kastor to be raised as a canon. Under the tutelage of Archbishop Willigis of Mainz, Burchard was diligently instructed in "noble behaviour" while swiftly being groomed "through each step of the clerical grade" until he became the provost of a "very poor place", i. e. the old collegiate church of St. Victor in Mainz. There, Burchard transformed its fortune by founding an "outstanding monastery along with a cloister of canons" which Willigis funded and eventually consecrated in c. 994–995. He was later ordained as a Catholic deacon by Willigis and eventually elevated as Primate of Mainz. Upon the death of Burchard's brother Franco in 999, Emperor Otto III appointed Burchard as Bishop of Worms in 1000. Willigis confirmed his elevation within days at Kirchberg in Saxony.