An empress’s chaplain turned monk of Cluny, he wrote down what is known of Cluniac usage.
Born at Regensburg in 1029, godson of the emperor Henry III and raised at court, he was chaplain to the empress Agnes and provost of the chapter of Freising — a settled career he broke off at thirty-two to enter Cluny under Abbot Hugh. There he did the service for which he is most valued: at the request of William of Hirsau he wrote the *Consuetudines Cluniacenses*, a minute description of Cluniac daily life — offices, meals, silence, care of the sick. Without that text we would not know how the greatest monastic order of the West actually worked. Sent to found in the Black Forest, he established the priory of Zell, went blind towards the end of his life and died there in 1093. The place bears his name today: St. Ulrich.
A Benedictine monk writing, sometimes blind with his hand guided; a spring at his feet, as at the priory of Zell.