Bertram

Bertram, born Berthold (died 6 April 1212), was a Saxon nobleman, jurist and prelate of the Holy Roman Empire. Praised by contemporaries for his education, his expertise was in Roman law. He was the elected archbishop of Bremen from 1178 until 1179 and the bishop of Metz from 1180 until his death. He was in general a strong supporter of the Staufer emperors, although he was forced into internal exile and temporarily dispossessed of his diocese in 1187–1189. He supported the Staufer in the German throne dispute after 1198.

In 1199, Bertram suppressed a heretical movement in Metz, probably Waldensian, through book burning. His several efforts to strengthen his control of the city government brought him into conflict with the citizens from 1203 onward. In 1206, he joined a war against the County of Bar and lost. In 1209, he put down riots and won a decisive victory over the citizenry. His health declined in the last two years of his life. In the late medieval and early modern periods, he was regarded as one of the architects of the .

Life Education Berthold was born into a minor noble Saxon family. He took minor orders and became an acolyte of the canons of St Gereon's in Cologne. He received an education in secular and canon law, the liberal arts and the Bible.

In October 1178,

Suppression of Waldensians In 1199, Bertram complained to the pope about the presence in his diocese of lay men and women who preached without a licence and had produced a translation of the Bible into French. They held secret meetings, criticized the clergy and lived in poverty. He may also have written an encomium of Justinian and a glossary of legal terms that appear with his accessus in one manuscript. That he was the author of the summa called Antiquitate et tempore has been speculated.

John of Alta Silva dedicated his Dolopathos, a Latin version of the Persian tale of the Seven Wise Masters, to Bertram.

Reputation In the later Middle Ages and the early modern period, Bertram was regarded as a great legislator and the chief architect of Metz's unique republican constitution, a view espoused by Philippe de Vigneulles in the 16th century and Bishop Martin Meurisse in the 17th. This view has been modified by later historians, who recognize Bertram's resistance to the established families as paving the way for the republican constitution but stress his non-republican motives and the larger social forces at work in the Empire at the time.

Bertram was not held in such high esteem by his immediate successors as bishop. In 1260, when Bishop Jacques de Lorraine brought the Gesta episcoporum Mettensium down to his time, he did not add to the entry for Bertram's episcopate, leaving the final 23 years of it uncovered. In the 1370s, a revision of the Gesta finally added a notice of Bertram's death, but neither it nor the French translations, the Chronique des Evesques de Mets, added any information on the years 1190–1212.