Albert of Vercelli

Albert of Vercelli, known also as Albert of Jerusalem and often identified in later sources as Albert Avogadro, was a northern Italian churchman of the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries who served as bishop of Vercelli and, in the last years of his life, as Latin patriarch of Jerusalem. He was born in the mid-twelfth century at Castro di Gualtieri in Emilia. After an education in theology and in law he entered the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross of Mortara, a congregation of Augustinian canons in Lombardy, and in time became prior of that community. In 1184 he was named bishop of Bobbio, but he was translated almost at once to the see of Vercelli, which he occupied for about two decades. Contemporary notices present him as an active diocesan bishop and as a trusted intermediary among the Lombard communes.

During the Vercelli years Albert was repeatedly employed by the papacy in the political and ecclesiastical affairs of northern Italy. He acted as a peacemaker between rival cities, including disputes that involved Parma, Piacenza, and other Lombard towns, and he served as a papal representative in negotiations touching the relationship between the Holy See and imperial authority in Italy. Popes of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, above all Innocent III, made use of his legal training and his reputation for prudence. That Italian career established the standing that led to his later appointment in the Crusader East.

In 1205 Innocent III named Albert Latin patriarch of Jerusalem. Because Jerusalem had been lost to Saladin in 1187, the patriarchate was then exercised from Acre, the principal remaining stronghold of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Albert was also commissioned as papal legate in the Holy Land. In that dual office he sought to restrain the factions that divided the Frankish barons, the military orders, and the clergy, and to uphold ecclesiastical discipline in a politically fragile kingdom. At the request of the Latin hermits living on Mount Carmel he drew up a short formula of life that placed them under a prior, prescribed poverty, silence, fasting, and oratories for the celebration of Mass, and set the community under the patriarch’s protection. That text, commonly dated to the first decade of the thirteenth century and later called the Rule of Saint Albert, was approved by the papacy after his death and became the primitive rule of the Carmelite Order.

Albert’s patriarchate ended with his murder. On 14 September 1214, during a procession in Acre on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, he was attacked and killed by the former master of the Hospital of the Holy Spirit, a man he had removed from office for a scandalous life. He was buried in the cathedral of the Holy Cross in Acre. No securely documented later translation of his relics is known, and the tomb was lost after the Mamluk conquest of the city in 1291. Albert was venerated as a saint, especially by the Carmelites, who honor him as their lawgiver; his liturgical feast is kept on 17 September. He did not receive a formal canonization of the later papal type, but his cult has long been accepted in the Catholic Church, particularly within the Carmelite family.