BERNO

BERNO, abbot of Richenou, in the diocese of Constance, who flourished about the year 1008, is celebrated as a poet, rhetor, musician, philosopher, and divine. He was the author of several treatises on music, particularly of one De Instrumentis Musicalibus, beginning with the words Musica non esse contenta; which he dedicated to Arrabon, Archbishop of Mentz. He also wrote De Mensura Monachorum. But the most celebrated of his works is a treatise De Musica seu Tonis, which he wrote and dedicated to Pellegrines archbishop of Cologne, beginning Vero mundi isti advena et peregrini. This latter tract is part of the Basil manuscript, and follows the Enchiridion of Odo: it contains a summary of the doctrines delivered by Boetius, an explanation of the ecclesiastical tones, intermixed with frequent exhortations to piety, and the application of music to religious purposes. He was highly favoured by the emperor Henry II. for his great learning and piety; and succeeded so well in his endeavours to promote learning, that his abbey of Richenou was as famous in his time as those of St Gaul and Cluni, then the most celebrated in France. He died in 1048; and was interred in the church of his monastery, which but a short time before he had dedicated to St Mark.