Lambert of Hersfeld

Probably a Franconian by birth, of good family, he prepared for an ecclesiastical career at the cathedral school in Bamberg, where he received tuition by Anno of Steusslingen, the later Archbishop of Cologne.

In 1077, during the rising conflict with Pope Gregory VII, he moved from Hersfeld to the canon monastery of Hasungen at the instigation of Henry's enemy Archbishop Siegfried I of Mainz.

They were edited in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, along with Lampert's other known works, by Oswald Holder-Egger (MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usu scholarum, vol.

[3] Holder-Egger, in his edition of Lampert's work, also demonstrated that Lampert was the likely author of at least two other significant works: the Vita Lulli archiepiscopi Mogontiacensis, a hagiography of the founder of Hersfeld Abbey, Saint Lullus, Archbishop of Mainz (c. 710–786), and a shorter, polemic history of the Hersfeld monastery (Libellus de institutione Herveldensis ecclesiae), which survives only fragmentarily in excerpts made by later medieval German writers.

From about the date of 1042 onwards, however, the account is Lampert's own and he carries the history from there up to the year 1077, when the Swabian duke Rudolf of Rheinfelden was crowned anti-king by the dissident princes.

Lampert was superbly educated for his day and wrote in a fine, classicizing Latin peppered with references and allusions to Roman authors, particularly Livy, Sallust, and the playwright Terence.

On the other hand, German historians trained in the positivistic methods of comparative source criticism taught that Lampert was a strongly biased, partisan writer who could not be trusted for an objective account of the reign of Henry IV.

Modern scholars recognize Lambert as an important voice representing the conservative views of the regional aristocracy and elite monasticism in a turbulent period in the kingdom's history.