Rotger (Ruotger, Rutger)

Rotger (Ruotger, Rutger)

Rotger (Ruotger, Rutger),

archbishop of Treves from 918 to 928. He was chosen, without intervention of the king, by the clergy and people of the Church of Treves, and by the wisdom and energy of his administration justified their choice. He induced Giselbert, the duke of Lorraine, to restore the abbey of St. Servetius at Maestricht, which he had seized, to the archbishopric of Treves, and was the leading agent in overcoming the faction of nobles who sought to transfer Lorraine to the usurper Rudolph of Burgundy after that province had been forever ceded (923) to Henry, king of Germany. He also sustained a literary intercourse with Flodoard of Rheims, the learned author of the Hist. Rhemens., and induced him to write a large poetical work on the triumphs of Christ and various Palestinian and Italian saints, the manuscript of which was still preserved in the library of the cathedral at Treves in the 17th century. His principal ambition, however, was to regulate the affairs of the Church in the province of Treves, and to administer the canons in the spirit of the councils. He accordingly instituted a collection of canons from the fathers and the popes, and submitted it to a provincial synod of the suffragans of Metz, Verdun, and Tull at Treves in 927. See Wetzer u. Welte, Kirchen-Lex. s.v.; and comp. Hist. de la France, 7, 201-203; Brower, Annal. Trev. lib. 9, n. 64-79.