The Medieval Elbe
Slavs and Germans on the Frontier

The Deeds of Wiprecht

Negligent Bero


Once, Wiprecht gave Bero thirty marks for the use of the brothers and the expenses of the buildings. Bero lost them when going into the bathhouse, fastening the key to his belt. There was a certain man, a conversus from the laity, corrupt in character and in cunning. His abbot had not at all noticed his deceitfulness, because he was of an exceedingly simple nature—and because good men sometimes disguise what they are, while in every endeavour bad men pretend to be what they are not. Thus Bero had taken him into his employ ahead of other men. This man, like Judas, having wickedly taken advantage of benefits of this kind, finally, after a long time, stumbled (I think) upon the opportunity he had premeditated. With his abbot entering the bath, he stealthily stole the key and fled with the donated money. Wiprecht learned this, having experienced the abbot’s negligence not for the first time now. Although he considered it to have happened out of simplicity and not an evil desire, he nevertheless thought to remove the abbot from himself, because he realized that his place [i.e., Pegau] could not readily be advanced through such a man. The abbot promised to restore every loss that had occurred and returned to his monastery [Münsterschwarzach], having obtained a reprieve from Wiprecht, so that he might not incur the ill fame of such a great loss. Within a short time, he recovered from acquaintances and relatives the full amount of silver negligently lost. Then, having returned [to Pegau], for his whole life he laboured as much as he was able and yet increased the number of brothers not at all. He departed to the Lord without pastoral consecration, quite old, on the tenth Kalends of January [23 December], and was buried there.

Analysis

These two paragraphs offer an encapsulation of Bero's abbacy quite different than the core text of the annals, which praises his rule.  It also offers a separate record--different by three days--of Bero's death, which does not fit chronologically where it has been inserted, in 1092; the Deeds later notes the year of his death as 1100.   Some compiler must have found these paragraphs on a scrap of parchment or in another codex, and inserted them into the extant manuscript or some earlier version of the text.  They must postdate 1100, if Bero indeed died in that year.  One might hypothesize that they antedate the core narrative, if only on the logic that this negative description of Pegau's early days is less likely to be exaggerated than the alternate, more positive one.   Another possiblity is that it simply reflects a faction of monks at Pegau who remembered Bero specifically and the days of his abbacy differently than their brothers.