44 seemed to penetrate the heavens by means of contemplation and prayer.130
In this brief passage certainly the author’s intention is to illustrate the bishop’s intimacy with God, and not to show him as an exemplar of Christian of virtue.
6. Conclusion
The aretalogy in the lives of the bishops who lived during Ottonian-Salian period is drawn from a large pool of Christian virtues described in the New Testament, the Rule of St. Benedict and Pope Gregory’s Liber regulae pastoralis. These form a traditional division in hagiographic narrative emphasizing charitable works on the one hand and a broad variety of ascetic, devotional and penitential practices on the other. As we have seen in the lives of Bruno of Cologne, Burchard of Worms, and Bernward of Hildesheim, a substantial effort is made in the vitae from the late tenth and early eleventh centuries to describe the bishop as an exemplary model and practitioner of the Christian virtues. But this narrative technique dissipates in the second half of the eleventh century, corresponding in time to the gradual inauguration of the Gregorian church reforms, as we have In sacris mysteriis altaris plus quam homo videbatur, ad quae numquam sine lacrimis et maxima conpuctione accedebat. Pontificalibus enim ornamentis indutus, angelus Domini videbatur; angelico enim vultu relucebat, et tanta devotione celestia illa tractabat sacramenta, quod cum in secretis moraretur, contemplatione et oratione caelos penetrare videretur. ( Vita Alberonis, MGH SS 8, 26, page 257, lines 6-10.) 130