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Hugh of Farfa

abbot

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionOct 20, 2023
Entity authorityQ5933229 ↗
Source-derived summary

Hugh (died 1039) was the Abbot of Farfa from 998. He founded the abbatial school and wrote its history from the late ninth through the early eleventh century under the title Destructio monasterii Farfensis ("The Destruction of the Monastery of Farfa"). A later student of his school, Gregory of Catino, wrote a fuller history of the monastery partly based on Hugh's earlier account.

The Destructio Hugh wrote begins where an earlier, and not completely preserved work, the Libellus constructionis Farfensis, left off, with the death of Abbot Hilderic in 857. His purpose in chronicling the history of the abbey in this period, which includes the Saracen assault on the monastery and the dispersal of the monks under Abbot Peter in 897/8, was to introduce the Cluniac reform there. Hugh castigates the monks for their decadence and corruption following their return to the abbey after the Saracen occupation, but by the time he had taken up the post of abbot, he wrote, "there was not found in all the Kingdom of Italy a similar monastery in any respect, save the monastery called Nonantola." By this time the monastery was under the control of the Ottonian emperors.

Ildefonso Schuster researched Hugh extensively and published a book about him.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hugh of Farfa” as abbot. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1039—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 0973-01-01. The account is most persuasive where Hugh, Farfa and abbot can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as abbot. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 20, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q5933229. VIAF identifies the subject as 88847096. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1039.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Hugh of Farfa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.