, whose name we find disguised under Bercheure, Berchoire, Bercorius,
, whose name we find disguised
under Bercheure, Berchoire, Bercorius, Bercherius,
&c. was born in the beginning of the fourteenth century,
at St. Pierre-du-Chemin, near Mailiezais, in Poitou. He
entered the order of the Beredictines, and became celebrated for his learning, and attached hi n self to cardinal
Duprat, archbishop of Aix, whose advice was very useful
to him in his writings. Among his other accomplishments,
he is said to have been so well acquainted with his Bible,
as to be able to quote texts and authorities on all subjects
without any assistance but from memory. He died at Paris
in 1362, prior of the monastery of St. Eloy, since occupied by the Barnabites, which has induced some biographers to think him a member of that order, but the Barnabites were not an order until a century after this period.
Berchorius wrote several works which are lost those which
remain are in 3 vols. fol. under the title of “Reductorium,
Repertorium, et Dictionarium morale utriusque Testamenti, Strasburgh,” 1474; Nuremberg, 1499; and Cologne,
1631—1692. “Whoever,” says Warton, in his “History of Poetry,” “shall have the patience to turn over a few
pages of this immense treasure of multifarious erudition,
will be convinced beyond a doubt, from a general coincidence of the plan, manner, method, and execution, that
the author of these volumes, and of the
” Gesta Romanorum,“must be one and the same. The
” Reductorium“contains all the stories and incidents in the Bible, reduced
into allegories. The
” Repertorium“is a dictionary of
things, persons, and places all which are supposed to be
mystical, and which are therefore explained in their moral
or practical sense. The
” Dictionarium Morale“is in two
parts, and seems principally designed to be a moral repertory for students in theology.” Mr. Warton successfully
pursues this argument in his
” Dissertation on the Gesta
Romanorum,“to which we refer the reader. He mentions
also that Berchorius was author of a comment on a prosody
called
” Doctrinale metricum,“which was used as a schoolbook in France, till Despauter’s manual on that subject
appeared. Some biographers mention his
” Tropologia,“his
” Cosmographia,“and his
” Breviarium“but the
” Tropologia“is nothing more than his
” Reductorium“on the Bible, and probably the
” Breviarium“is the same.
The
” Cosmographia“seems to be the fourteenth book -of
his
” Repefforiom Moraie.“He is said by his biographers
to have written other smaller pieces, which they have not
named nor described. Among these, Mr. Warton thinks
his
” Gesta" is comprehended which we may conceive to
have been thus undistinguished, either as having been
neglected or proscribed by graver writers, or rather as
having been probably disclaimed by its author, who saw it
at length in the light of a juvenile performance, abounding
in fantastic and unedifying narrations, which he judged
unsuitable to his character, studies, and station. Besides
the works above-mentioned, Berchorius translated Livy,
by order of king John, of which there was a beautiful ms.
in the library of the oratory of Troyes, and other copies,
not less beautiful, are in the imperial library at Paris.
This translation was published in 1514 1515, at Paris,
3 vols. fol.