Wandelbert of Farfa

Wandelbert was the Abbot of Farfa sometime between 757 and 761, one of a series of abbots from Aquitaine. His abbacy coincided with a troubled period in the abbey's history and the stormy reign of Duke Gisulf of Spoleto, who seems to have brought some stability to the abbey by the time of his death.[1]

The previous abbot, Fulcoald, a relative of Wandelbert's, is last mentioned in a charter of October 757, although two later sources taken together place the end of his abbacy in 759.[2] His abbacy is said to have last one year and seven months before he retired to become abbot of the quieter monastery of Saint Hippolytus in Fermo, perhaps because of illness. Saint Hippolytus was recent acquisition of Farfa's, confirmed by King Desiderius only a year after Wandelbert's arrival.[3]

If the date of the inception of Wandelbert's leadership at Farfa and its duration are correct, then he must have been incapable of exercising his authority in April 760, when a monk named Raginfred was acting on behalf of the abbey. It is more probable that Wandelbert had retired—or been forced into retirement—by this point.[4] Wandelbert's successor at Farfa, the former hermit and fellow Aquitainian Alan, began his abbacy in January 761.[5]

Notes
  1. Marios Costambeys, Power and Patronage in the Early Medieval Italy: Local Society, Italian Politics, and the Abbey of Farfa, c.700–900 (Cambridge: 2007), 266.
  2. These are the catalogue of bishops contained the Chronicon Farfense of Gregory of Catino, which begins Fulcoald's abbacy in 740 and Wandelbert's in 759, and the Constructio monasterii Farfensis, which gives the former a reign of nineteen years. There is no other source for the beginning of Fulcoald's abbacy, and his predecessor, Lucerius, is last recorded in a charter of June 739. Cf. Costambeys, 151 n84.
  3. Costambeys, 151–52.
  4. This period, the middle of the thirteenth indiction, is the most likely for the assault made by a certain Eudo on the abbey's estate at Mallianus, which may bear some relation to the confused state of the leadership at Farfa. Costambeys, 177. The Constructio monasterii Farfensis present Wandelbert as requesting retirement, but his position as a relative of the former abbot may mean that he was unwanted, a candidate forced on the monks by the dominating Fulcoald.
  5. The beginning of the fourteenth indiction, cf. Costambeys, 151 n84.
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