Raymond Diocrès? Fake News in History, I'd Say

Fame Can Lead to Hell: Message from a Dead Man
The Catholic Men's Podcast | 10 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UJ9bUjUQgw

I'm sorry, but I think Monsignor de Ségur was in error.

1) If Raymond Diocrès (supposing he existed) died in 1080, he died 70 years before the University of Paris was even founded.
2) St. Bruno himself died, blessedly, 49 years before the University of Paris was founded.
3) Prior to leaving the world*, St. Bruno was a canon of the archdiocese of Rheims. He went well along with one bishop, couldn't stand his successor, and when the successor was removed, avoided to get elected himself. By becoming the first Carthusian. So, the story is a) set in the wrong city for St. Bruno and b) apt to hide the kind of scandal about clergy that his real story involves.
4) Just as Italy's "Cheka" is known exclusively from Amerigo Dumini's activity as a criminal, which he got sentenced for, so Raymond Diocrès is known exclusively for this miracle after he died. If he had been a famous professor at the University of Paris or simply just a famous teacher under the Cathedral of Paris (which obviously existed before the university) what was he famed for?

I conclude for these reasons, Raymond Diocrès never existed.

The fame that St. Bruno wanted to avoid for the sake of his soul was the fame as archbishop of Rheims, not as a teacher under the bishop of Paris.

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I'm not sure whether you or Monsignor de Ségur is in error on this one.

But, Fame Can Lead to Hell is definitely not included in the story as you read it, rather it is fame does not protect from Hell or more broadly respectability doesn't.

I'll suppose you were the ones in error, since no single word of what you read from Monsignor de Ségur mentioned that the supposed Raymond Diocrès was condemned for being famous or for sth even in connection with his fame.

Some people can, because of their fame, come to be negligent of Christian virtue, if everyone else counts on them going to Heaven why shouldn't they? Well, some find out when it's too late that presumption is both a sin and a gateway to other sins.

Others can be lured via fame to vanity and via vanity to actual arrogance, the mortal degree of pride.

Still others would abuse their fame, a late Protestant pastor was revealed as a manipulative seducer after he died, and obviously, fame can propose that to anyone .... who's likely to fall for it.

But fame in itself does NOT lead to Hell.

The idea that it does is based on a Protestant view which views Satan as being still the prince of this world, in control of who gets power and fame and riches, and this is not the Catholic faith.

* For non-Catholic readers, this is not a synonym for physically dying, it is a technical term for entering religion.