GILBERT OF SEMPRINGHAM, ST.

Founder of the Gilbertines; b. Sempringham, Lincolnshire, England, c. 1083; d. Sempringham, Feb. 4,1189. The son of a Norman knight who had settled in Lincolnshire, Gilbert was destined for the Church from an early age, and to this end he was sent to study at Paris. On his return home he received the benefices of Sempringham and Tirington from his father and opened a school. He took service for a short while with the bishops of lincoln and was ordained a priest by Bishop Alexander in 1123. By 1131 he had returned to Sempringham as a parish priest and in that year organized seven young women who wished to dedicate themselves to a religious life into a community based on the Cistercian model. This convent was the beginning of the gilbertines, the only exclusively English religious order. Gilbert soon found it necessary to associate with the nuns a number of lay sisters and lay brothers to work the convent's estates. The community grew and a second foundation was made in 1139; it had reached such size by 1147 that Gilbert journeyed to cÎteaux to ask the cistercians, assembled in a general chapter, to assume its administration, but they were unwilling to undertake the responsibility for supervising communities of women. Gilbert then sought spiritual direction for his nuns from canons regular of st. augustine, who henceforth formed an integral part of the Gilbertine double monasteries. Pope eugene iii gave his approval to the order in 1148 and a short time later confirmed Gilbert as its master general. In 1165 Gilbert was charged by officials of King henry ii with giving aid to the exiled Thomas becket, Archbishop of canterbury; but he refused to clear himself of the groundless charge, as he insisted on his right to have given such support if opportunity had presented itself. Advancing age forced Gilbert to resign the office of master general to Roger of Malton; at the time of his death the order had grown to nine double monasteries and four distinct houses of canons. He was canonized by Pope innocent iii in 1202, and his relics were enshrined in the church at Sempringham.

Feast: Feb. 16.

Bibliography: Acta Sanctorum Feb. 1:576–578. w. dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum 6.2: *v-*xxix (between pages 946 and 947), with Eng. tr. in John Capgrave's Lives of St. Augustine and St. Gilbert of Sempringham, ed. j. j. munro (Early English Text Society 140; 1910) 61–142. Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis 3529–38. t. a. archer, The Dictionary of National Biography from Earliest Times to 1900 7:1194–96. r. graham, S. Gilbert of Sempringham and the Gilbertines (London 1901). r. foreville, ed., Un Procès de canonisation à l'aube du XIII ^e siècle, 1201–1202: Le Livre de saint Gilbert de Sempringham (Paris 1943). f. l. cross, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church 558. a. butler, The Lives of the Saints, ed. h. thurston and d. attwater 1:351–352. d. knowles, The Monastic Order in England, 943-1216. d. knowles, The Religious Orders in England.

[b. j. comaskey]