RADBERTUS head of the Benedictine abbey of Corbie, near Amiens, from 844 to 851, and one of the most prominent theological writers of his age, was born at or near Soissons towards the close of the 8th century, and became a monk of Corbie in 814, when he assumed the cloister name of Paschasius. He soon gained recognition as a learned and successful teacher, and Adalhard, St Anskar the apostle of Sweden, Odo bishop of Beauvais, and Warinus abbot of Corvey in Saxony may be mentioned among the more distinguished of his pupils. In 844 he was chosen abbot, but as a disciplinarian he was more energetic than successful, and in 867 he resigned the office. In his official capacity he took part in the synod of Chiersy which condemned Gottschalk. Of the closing period of his life nothing is known, except that it was one of great literary activity.

His works include an Expositio in Matthseum, in twelve books, a favourable specimen of the exegesis of that period, and the Liber dc Corpore et Sanguine Christi , a pious and popularly written treatise, designed to prove that the elements in the sacrament are completely changed. The latter work, originally composed in 831, elicited a reply by Ratramnus, a brother monk of Corbie, who maintained that the body and blood of Christ were present in the Eucharist only “spiritualiter et secundum potentiam.” The Dc Partic Virginis of Radbertus (845) was also taken exception to by Ratramnus for its Docetic teaching as to the manner of Christ’s birth “utero clauso.”