BURCHARD OF WORMS: Bishop of Worms; d. Aug. 20, 1025. He was a Hessian by birth, and was educated at Coblenz and under the famous Olbert in the Flemish monastery of Laubach. Willigis of Mainz ordained him, and employed him in a number of important affairs. Otto III. gave him the bishopric of Worms (1000), which had fallen into a bad condition. He improved the city in many ways; established the episcopal power more firmly and even increased it; demolished the fortress of Duke Otto and built a monastery with the stones from it, placing over the door the inscription Ob libertatem civitatis. In 1014 Henry II. gave him secular jurisdiction over the inhabitants, which he used to promote uniformity and security of law. He rebuilt the cathedral, consecrating it in 1016; but his fame rests chiefly on his collection of canon law, which had a very wide circulation not only in Germany but in Italy.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY: The Decretorum libri viginti are in MPL, cxl. Materials for a life are in Lex. familiæ Wormatiensis ecclesiæ, MGH, Legum, section iv., Constitutiones et acta, ed. L. Weiland, i. (1893) 639, no. 438; and the anonymous Vita ed. G. H. Pertz in MGH, Script iv. (1841) 829-846, and MPL, cxl. 507-536. Consult: Hauck, KD, iii, 435; H. G. Gengler. Das Hofrecht des Burchard von Worms, Erlangen, 1859; A. M. Königer, Burchard I. von Worms, Munich, 1903.
BURCHARD OF WÜRZBURG: Bishop of Würzburg 741-754. He was an Anglo-Saxon who left England after the death of his kinsfolk and joined Boniface in his missionary labors, some time after 732. When Boniface organized bishoprics in Middle Germany, he placed Burchard over that of Würzburg; his consecration can not have occurred later than the summer of 741, since in the autumn of that year, we find him officiating as a bishop at the consecration of Willibald of Eichstädt. Pope Zacharias confirmed the new bishopric in 743. Burchard appears again as a member of the first German council in 742, and as an envoy to Rome from Boniface in 748. With Fulrad of Saint-Denis, he brought to Zacharias the famous question of Pepin, whose answer was supposed to justify the assumption of regal power by the Merovingians.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Two anonymous lives, one of the ninth or tenth, the other of the twelfth century, ed. Holder-Egger, are in MHG, Script., xv, (1887) 47-62. Consult: A. Nürnberger, Aus der litterarischen Hinterlassenschaft des . . . Burchardus, Neisse, 1888; Rettberg, KD, ii, 313; Hauck, KD, i, 487 and passim; Neander, Christian Church, iv, 203.
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