Sigebert OF Gembloux
Sigebert of Gembloux
Benedictine historian, b. near Gembloux which is now in the Province of Namur, Belgium, about 1035; d. at the same place, 5 November, 1112. He was apparently not a German, but seems to have been of Latin descent. He received his education at the Abbey of Gembloux and at an early age became a monk in this abbey; after this he taught for a long time at the Abbey of St. Vincent at Metz. About 1070 he returned to Gembloux, where he was universally admired and venerated, and had charge there of the abbey school until his death. While at Metz he wrote the biographies of Bishop Theodoric I of Metz (964-85), of King Sigebert III, founder of the monastery of St. Martin at Metz, and also a long poem on the martyrdom of St. Lucia, whose relics were venerated at the Abbey of St. Vincent. After his return to Gembloux he also wrote similar works for this abbey, namely: a long poem on the martyrdom of the Theban Legion, as Gembloux had relics of its reputed leader Exuperius; a biography of the founder of the abbey, Wicbert (d. 962); a history of the abbots of Gembloux, and revisions of the biographies of St. Maclovius and the two early bishops of Liege, Theodard and Lambert.
Later he became a violent imperial partisan in the great struggle between the empire and the papacy. Of the three treatises which he contributed to the contest, one is lost; this was an answer to the letter of Gregory VII, written in 1081 to Bishop Hermann of Metz, in which Gregory asserted that the popes have the right to excommunicate kings and to release subjects from the oath of loyalty. In the second treatise Sigebert defended the masses of married priests, the hearing of which had been forbidden by the pope in 1074. When Paschal II in 1103 ordered the Count of Flanders to punish the citizens of Liege for their adherence to the emperor and to take up arms against him, Sigebert attacked the proceeding of the pope as unchristian and contrary to the Scriptures. His most celebrated work, “Chronicon sive Chronographia”, is a chronicle of the world; it must be confessed that in this work he has not written history; he desired probably merely to give a chronological survey, consequently there is only a bare list of events even for the era in which he lived, though the last years, including 1105-11, are treated more in detail. The chronicle gained a very high reputation, was circulated in numberless copies, and was the basis of many later works of history. Notwithstanding various oversights and mistakes the industry and wide reading of Sigebert deserve honorable mention. He also made a catalogue of one hundred and seventy-one ecclesiastical writers and their works from Gennadius to his own time, “De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis”. In this list he mentions his own work.
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P.L., CLX; HIRSCH, De vita et scriptis Sigeberti monachi Gemblacensis (Berlin, 1841).
KLEMENS LOFFLER Transcribed by Joseph E. O’Connor
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIIICopyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, February 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, D.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Sigebert OF Gembloux
(Gemblac), a Belgian monk, was born about A.D. 1030, and educated in the convent of Gembloux, where he also became a monk. About A.D. 1048 he assumed charge of the school attached to the convent of St. Vincent at Metz, but returned to Gembloux, after a successful career, about 1070, ,and continued during forty additional years to labor in the work of teaching and authorship, being generally admired and revered. He was characterized by frankness and piety, gifted with a sound judgment, so that he. was fitted to administer in secular affairs, and was decidedly true to principle. It was because of his influence that the Church of Liege remained loyal to the emperor, despite the efforts. put forth by certain abbots to subject it to the pope alone. The celebrated letter written by Gregory VII to bishop Hermann of Metz, which asserted the right of the pope to place’ sovereign under the ban and dissolve the allegiance of his subjects, was answered by Sigebert, and so also was the demand of Paschal II, made in 1102 or 1103, that count Robert of Flanders should head a crusade to punish the Church of Liege for its fidelity to the sovereign. With like good judgment he resisted the imposing of the yoke of asceticism on the entire Church, though he himself was predisposed in favor of a monastic life. His fearless attitude with reference to such questions produced a strong impression on the minds of his contemporaries. He died Oct. 5,,1112.
The works of Sigebert are enumerated by himself in the work De Viris Illustribus (best ed. in Mirmei Biblioth. Eccl. ed. ii, cur. J. A. Fabricio), a book whose only value now consists in the preservation of a few interesting facts which it contains. The Vita Deoderici, an early work commemorating the founder of the abbey of St. Vincent at Metz, gives evidence of the author’s extensive reading. He also wrote a life of king Sigebert, the founder of the church and abbey of St. Martin, near Metz, and a number of saints’ legends in either prose or verse, particularly a life of Wiebert, the founder of Gembloux, and a history of the convent to 1048; and he gave attention to music and chronology. His last and most celebrated work is the Chronicon, extending from A.D. 381 to 1111, but being a mere compilation from other works down to 1023, after which date it possesses, to some degree, the character of an independent source. The selections from other books are judicious, the treatment of facts cautious, moderate, and impartial, and the whole is characterized by something of the historic- spirit. The work became in time, the principal source of information with reference to the churches and abbeys of Belgium and Northern France. The charge that Sigebert had invented the legend of pope Joan is now disbelieved, and Bethmann, in the Monumenta Germ. SS., omits it from his collection of Sigebert’s works. See the Monumenta Germ. SS. passim Hirsch,’ De Vita et Scriptis Sigeberti (Berol. 1841); Wattenbhach, Deutschland’s Geschichtsquellen (Berol. 1858), particularly p. 291-299; Pertz, Arc. 11:1-17; Herzog, Real-Encyklop. s.v.