Saint Fulbert of Chartres

Almost nothing is certain about his beginnings. Michael Ott, writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia, gives his birth as between 952 and 962 and reports two views of where: Mabillon and others thought Italy, probably Rome, while Fulbert's most recent biographer, Pfister, placed it in the diocese of Laudun, in what is now the department of Gard in France. ¹ The Norwegian bishops' database says about 960, in Italy, perhaps at Rome. ² Both agree that his family was humble. ¹²

He was sent to study at Reims under Gerbert of Aurillac, the most famous teacher of the age, who became Pope Sylvester II in 999. ¹² katolsk.no calls him Gerbert's favorite pupil. ² One of his fellow students was the future King Robert II of France, and the friendship mattered later. ¹²

The two sources tell the next part differently. Ott says Fulbert opened a school at Chartres in 990. ¹ katolsk.no says Gerbert took him to Rome as an adviser when he became pope, and that only after Gerbert's death did Bishop Odo of Chartres make him a canon and chancellor and give him charge of the cathedral school. ²

The result is not in dispute. The school "soon became the most famous seat of learning in France," Ott writes, "and drew scholars not only from the remotest parts of France, but also from Italy, Germany, and England." ¹ Fulbert was also chancellor of the church of Chartres and treasurer of Saint Hilary's at Poitiers. ¹ His students "were wont to style him 'venerable Socrates'"; katolsk.no says he was spoken of as Socrates and Plato come again. ¹²

He taught logic, and warned against it. Ott describes him as "a strong opponent of the rationalistic tendencies which had infected some dialecticians of his times," who often told his pupils to beware of those who put their dialectics above the teaching of the Church and the witness of the Bible. ¹ Ott adds the irony: it was one of Fulbert's own students, Berengarius of Tours, "who went farthest in subjecting faith to reason." ¹

When the bishop died, Fulbert was chosen in his place in 1007, against his own wishes, katolsk.no says, and with the support of King Robert. ¹² Ott names the predecessor as Rudolph; katolsk.no gives Roger, with Rudolf as a query. ¹² He was consecrated by his metropolitan, Archbishop Leutheric of Sens. ¹² According to katolsk.no he liked to call himself a very small bishop of a very great church. ²

He kept teaching in the school as bishop, and kept the treasurership of Saint Hilary's. ¹ katolsk.no says he preached regularly in the cathedral and traveled his diocese to see that the people were properly taught, and that kings and dukes, the king of France and the duke of Aquitaine among them, sought his advice. ² He called for a reform of the clergy, "severely rebuked those bishops who spent much of their time in warlike expeditions," and attacked the practice of giving church benefices to laymen. ¹ katolsk.no adds his opposition to simony. ²

He was neither abbot nor monk, "as has been wrongly asserted by some historians," Ott says, but he was on friendly terms with Odilo of Cluny, Richard of Saint-Vanne, Abbo of Fleury and other monastic leaders of his day. ¹²

The cathedral of Chartres burned. Ott and Goyau, in the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on the diocese, put the fire about 1020; katolsk.no says it came shortly after Fulbert was consecrated. ¹²³ He began to rebuild at once, "in greater splendour," with help from King Canute of England, Duke William of Aquitaine and other sovereigns. ¹ Goyau writes that Fulbert "invited all the sovereigns of Europe to contribute," and that three more fires, in 1030, 1134 and 1194, interrupted the work. ³ katolsk.no says people of every class gave, and that the crypt beneath today's cathedral comes from Fulbert's building. ² The Martyrology remembers him for it: he began the building of the cathedral church with generosity and hard work. ⁴

Ott counts 140 letters, two treatises, twenty-seven hymns and parts of the Church's Office among his works. ¹ The letters, he says, "are of great historical value, especially on account of the light they throw on the liturgy and discipline of the Church in the eleventh century." ¹ One treatise argues against the Jews that Jacob's prophecy of the scepter of Judah was fulfilled in Christ. ¹ The Life of Saint Aubert of Cambrai, sometimes given to him, is probably not his. ¹²

His devotion to Mary runs through all of it. "Five of his nine extant sermons are on the Blessed Virgin Mary towards whom he had a great devotion," Ott writes. ¹ katolsk.no names among his hymns the Easter hymn Chorus novae Hierusalem, and says that when the new cathedral was opened he had the recently introduced feast of Mary's Nativity, on September 8, celebrated there with great solemnity and ordered it kept throughout the diocese. ² The Martyrology says he promoted devotion to the Virgin Mary, Queen of Mercy. ⁴

He died on April 10, in 1028 or 1029, after almost twenty-two years as bishop. ¹² He was never canonized by a formal process. katolsk.no says he was long venerated by the people, was called sanctus from the seventeenth century, and that his cult was confirmed by a proper office for Poitiers in 1855 and for Chartres in 1861. ² Artists, it adds, usually show him preaching, and sometimes lying sick while the Virgin gives him her milk. ²

None of the sources consulted for this page names Saint Fulbert of Chartres as the patron saint of anything, and the page does not supply a patronage. ¹²

Saint Fulbert's feast day is April 10, the day he died. The current Roman Martyrology, as the Italian bishops publish it, enters him on that day at Chartres, as a bishop who fed many with his teaching, began the building of the cathedral and promoted devotion to the Virgin Mary, Queen of Mercy. ⁴ The Norwegian bishops' database also keeps him on April 10. ²

Fulbert was a teacher before he was anything else, and stayed one as bishop. ¹ He believed in the tools he taught and warned his students not to set them above faith, and one of the ablest of those students did exactly that. ¹

He began a cathedral he would never see finished, and the sources record that it burned three more times after him. ³ The work was taken up again each time. ³

And he gave much of his writing to the Mother of God: sermons, hymns, and a feast of her birthday kept with great solemnity in the church he had begun. ¹²