Ernulphus

Ernulphus, or ARNULF (1040-1124), a French Benedictine, appointed prior of Canterbury by Anselm, was subsequently abbot of Peterborough (1107) and bishop of Rochester (1114). He was equally remarkable for skill in canon law and personal saintliness; and compiled a great collection of documents about his own church, laws, papal decrees, &c., which from the old name of the see (Hrofe-ceaster) was known as the Textus Roffensis; and it is to an extract from this that he owes the invincible distinction given him in Tristram Shandy. Sterne makes the pious bishop the supreme authority on cursing on the strength of the excerpt called The Pope's Dreadful Curse: being the Form of Excommunication of the Church of Rome: taken out of the leger-book of the Church of Rochester, now in the custody of the Dean and Chapter there: writ by Ernulphus the bishop (1681, in the Harleian Miscellany, vol. vi.).