Matthew of Albano

Matthew of Albano, known in French as Matthieu d'Albano, was a Benedictine monk of Cluniac profession, a cardinal-bishop of the Roman Church, and a papal legate active in the early twelfth century. He came from the Kingdom of France; later writers sometimes associate him with Reims, but the date and exact place of his birth are not established by contemporary evidence. He entered the monastic order that followed the Rule of Saint Benedict as observed in the congregation of Cluny, then at the height of its influence over Latin monasticism and over the reform papacy. Cluniac priors and abbots were frequently drawn into the service of the Holy See, and Matthew’s career followed that path from the cloister to the curia.

Before his elevation he was prior of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, the important Cluniac priory in Paris. The house had been reformed from Cluny in the eleventh century and served as a training ground for strict observance in northern France. As prior, Matthew was already a figure of more than local importance, in contact with the French episcopate and with Rome. In December 1126 Pope Honorius II appointed him cardinal-bishop of Albano, thereby placing him among the suburbicarian bishops who formed the highest rank of the college of cardinals. From 1127 he appears as a subscriber to papal privileges and other curial acts. Honorius used him as a legate, particularly in France, to promote canonical discipline, to intervene in disputed elections, and to bind monasteries and bishops more closely to papal authority. Contemporaries regarded him as a rigorous, even severe, reformer.

The death of Honorius II in February 1130 produced a double election. A group of cardinals, associated with the papal chancellor Haimeric, elected Cardinal Gregory of San Angelo, who took the name Innocent II; a larger group, aligned with the Roman family of the Pierleoni, elected Cardinal Peter Pierleoni as Anacletus II. Matthew of Albano adhered to Innocent II. Because Anacletus held the stronger position in Rome, Innocent and the cardinals who supported him left the city. Matthew accompanied the pope in exile and took a leading part in securing recognition for Innocent in France. Together with other prelates, and in concert with the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, he helped persuade King Louis VI and the French church to acknowledge Innocent. He was connected with the assembly at Étampes in 1130 and with the council that Innocent held at Reims in 1131, which published reform decrees and confirmed Innocent’s title in the eyes of much of northern Europe. England and, after some delay, the German king Lothair III likewise accepted Innocent, isolating Anacletus in Rome and in the south, where Roger II of Sicily became Anacletus’s most powerful protector.

During the mid-1130s Innocent II’s court was often established at Pisa, whose commune opposed Anacletus and the Sicilian king. Matthew of Albano remained a senior member of that itinerant curia until his death at Pisa on 25 December 1135. The schism itself lasted until 1138. Matthew was not pope, nor did he hold any Eastern patriarchal office. He was not formally canonized or beatified, and he has no established feast day or list of patronages in the liturgical tradition of the Latin Church. His significance for church history is that of a Cluniac monk who became a suburbicarian cardinal and a principal agent of the reform papacy in France, and who then stood with Innocent II throughout the first years of the Anacletan schism.