DURANDUS OF TROARN

Benedictine abbot; b. Neubourg, in Normandy, between 1005 and 1020; d. Troarn, near Caen, France, Feb. 11, 1088 or 1089. He was probably a monk at fontenel le (Saint-Wandrille) under his uncle, Abbot Gerard, and later studied at Sainte-Catherine-du-Mont at Rouen and at fÉcamp. He is best remembered for his treatise De corpore et sanguine Christi (Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, 149:1375–1424), written shortly before william i (the Conqueror) made him abbot of the new foundation of Saint-Martin, troarn, in 1059. This work, strongly influenced by paschasius radbertus (d. 859) and primarily intended for the edification of souls, is one of the earliest replies to the Eucharistic teaching of berengari us, with whom the last of the nine sections is wholly concerned. Through the analysis of scriptural and patristic texts, many newly selected, Durandus propounded the Ambrosian doctrine of the conversion of the bread and wine into the identical Body and Blood of Christ and attempted to explain away, with an argument already used by Guitmond, the Augustinian praesentia spiritualis. Only parts of his later Eucharistic poem of 800 verses survive.

Bibliography: j. mabillon, Annales ordinis S. Benedicti, 6v. (2d ed. Lucca 1739–45) 5:97. r. f. n. sauvage, L'Abbaye de Saint-Martin de Troarn au diocèse de Bayeux (Caen 191). r. heurtevent, Durand de Troarn et les origines de l'hérésie bérengarienne (Paris 1912). a. wilmart, "Distiques d'Hincmar sur l'eucharistie? Un Sermon oublié de S. Augustin sur le même sujet," Revue Bénédictine 40 (1928) 87–98. g. poras, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. a. baudrillart et al. (Paris 1912–) 14:1159–60.

[w. e. wilkie]