Gerard of Florennes
Gerard of Florennes (ca 975, bishop 1012
Gerard was apparently a member of the high nobility of the Low Countries. He was the second son of Arnold, seigneur of Florennes in the county of Namur, who was the son of a Count Godfrey, count of Hainaut, possibly Godfrey I, Duke of Lower Lorraine. His mother was Ermentrude, daughter of Count Godfrey "the captive".[citation needed]
He was a student of the great
At Florennes, on 12 September 1015,
In 1015, Gerard transferred the abbey of Florennes to the church of Liège.[6] drawing together a community of monks from Verdun. Texts from the scriptorium show the innovative separation of words with spaces.[7]
Gerard was the earliest known theorist to provide a justification of the division of European society into "three estates".[8] Writing between 1023 and 1025, he observed, in the words of Georges Duby, "that there were distinctions between men, an essential inequality which could be compensated only by charity, mercy and mutual service" within the framework of divinely ordained natural law.[9]
In addition to his role in the
During his episcopacy, the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Cambrai was reconsecrated on 18 October 1030.
In 1023–25, Gerard was working on his Vita Gaugerici, a life of
Notes
- ^ He was named by the Emperor, 10 February 1012, and consecrated at Reims 27 April (Erik van Mingroot, ed. Les chartes de Gérard Ier, Liébert et Gérard II, évêques de Cambrai 2005, p. 2.)
- Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium, ed. Bethmann in MGH Scriptores VII, 490.
- ^ Patrologia Latina 142, cols. 1269–1312.
- ^ Diane Reilly, Art of Reform in Eleventh-Century Flanders: Gerard of Cambrai, Richard of Saint-Vanne and the Saint-Vaast Bible, Studies in the history of Christian traditions 128 (Leiden) 2006.
- ^ Ursmer Berlière, Monasticon Belge, vol. 1 (Maredsous, 1897), pp. 5-6.
- ^ The abbey church was consecrated in 1026. The early history of the abbey is known via the Miracula S. Gengulfi, written in 1028/1045 by Abbot Gonzo. The abbey was completely destroyed during the French Revolution. (Florennes (Municipality)).
- ^ Paul Saenger, Space Between Words: the origins of silent reading 2000, p 192, and note 78.
- ^ Georges Duby, (Arthur Goldhammer, tr.) The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined (1980), part 1, chapter 2.
- ^ Quoted in Rodney Bruce Hall, "Moral Authority as a Power Resource" International Organization 51, 4 (1997): 591–622, at p. 598.
- ^ David C. Van Meter, "The Peace of Amiens-Corbie and Gerard of Cambrai's oration of the three functional orders: the date, the context, the rhetoric", Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 74 (1996:633-57), esp. pp 644-57.
- ^ Geoffrey G. Koziol (1987), "Monks, Feuds, and the Making of Peace in Eleventh-Century Flanders," Historical Reflections, 14(3):531. The traditional date is 1036, but Georges Duby has argued for a re-dating to 1024.
- ^ Godefroid Kurth, "Réginard", Biographie Nationale de Belgique, vol. 18 (Brussels, 1905), 855-861.
- ^ Steven Vanderputten and Diane J. Reilly, "Reconciliation and Record Keeping: Heresy, Secular Dissent and the Exercise of Episcopal Authority in Eleventh-Century Cambrai", Journal of Medieval History 37:4 (2011), 343–57.
Further reading
- "Gérard I" in Erik van Mingroot, ed., Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Géographie Ecclésiastiques 20 (Paris: 1984), 742–51.
- Arnold, Benjamin. "German Bishops and their Military Retinues in the Medieval Empire". German History 7, 2 (1989): 161–83.
Editions
- S. Vanderputten. D.J. Reilly (ed.), Gerardus Cameracensis. Acta Synodi Atrebatensis, Vita Autberti, Vita Gaugerici; Varia scripta ex officina Gerardi exstantia (= Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis 270), Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2014 (ISBN 978-2-503-55255-2)