Saint Gilbert of Sempringham

He was born at Sempringham, on the edge of the Lincolnshire fens, between 1083 and 1089, according to the 1909 Catholic Encyclopedia; Franciscan Media gives about 1083. ¹³ His father, Jocelin, was a wealthy Norman knight with lands in Lincolnshire, and his mother an Englishwoman of humble rank whose name has not come down. ¹

The encyclopedia is blunt about why the son of a knight did not become one: "Being ill-favoured and deformed, he was not destined for a military or knightly career, but was sent to France to study." ¹ He spent some time abroad and taught there, and then came home to Lincolnshire as a young man. ¹ Franciscan Media says he came back not yet a priest and inherited several estates from his father, and chose to live simply in a parish and share what he had with the poor. ³

His father presented him to the livings of Sempringham and Tirington, churches in his gift. ¹ Soon afterward he joined the household of Robert Bloet, Bishop of Lincoln, as a clerk. ¹ Bloet's successor, Alexander, kept him on from 1123 and ordained him deacon and priest, much against his will. ¹ He lived at the bishop's court on the revenues of Sempringham, and gave those of Tirington to the poor. ¹

When he was offered the archdeaconry of Lincoln he refused, the encyclopedia says, saying he knew no surer way to perdition. ¹ In 1131 he went back to Sempringham, and with his father dead he became lord of the manor. ¹

Among his parishioners were seven young women who wanted to live a religious life. ²³ The encyclopedia's article on the order says he had taught them as children, and that his first wish had been to found a monastery; finding that impossible, he gave the women a rule of life instead. ² With Bishop Alexander's help he built them a dwelling and a cloister on the north side of the parish church of Saint Andrew. ¹² The article on Gilbert dates the founding to 1131, the article on the order to about 1130. ¹²

He seems to have wanted to copy the Cistercians as closely as he could. ² On the advice of William, abbot of Rievaulx, he added lay sisters to see to the nuns' daily needs, and then lay brothers to do the heavy work on the farms, recruited from the poorest serfs of his parish and estates. ²³ For eight years Sempringham was the only house. ² Then, around 1139, Bishop Alexander gave the nuns the island of Haverholm, near Sleaford, the site of a castle destroyed in the war between King Stephen and his barons. ²

In 1147, by the article on Gilbert, or 1148, by the article on the order, he traveled to Cîteaux in Burgundy to ask the Cistercian abbots gathered in chapter to take his order over. ¹² They declined to govern women. ² While there he met Pope Eugene III, Saint Bernard and Saint Malachy, Archbishop of Armagh, and the encyclopedia says the pope regretted not having known of him earlier, when he was choosing a new Archbishop of York. ¹ The Martyrology records that the order was founded with Eugene III's approval. ⁴

So Gilbert went home and added to each convent a community of canons regular, to serve as chaplains and directors to the nuns, under the Rule of Saint Augustine. ²⁴ Each house now held four communities: nuns, canons, lay sisters and lay brothers. ² For the nuns, the order article says they had taken the Cistercian rule "as far as the weakness of their sex allowed"; the Martyrology says the Rule of Saint Benedict. ²⁴ A single church served each house, divided by a wall, with the larger part for the nuns. ²

The whole order was ruled by a master, called "Prior of All", chosen by a general chapter that met once a year at Sempringham. ² The houses he founded after his return from France lay in the low country of the Lincolnshire fens, except Watton and Malton in Yorkshire, and thirteen were founded in his lifetime, four of them for men only. ² It was, as Franciscan Media says, the only religious order of English origin founded in the Middle Ages. ³ Franciscan Media also records a custom of its houses, "the plate of the Lord Jesus": the best portions of the dinner set on a special plate and given to the poor. ³

In 1165 he was summoned before Henry II's justices at Westminster, charged with sending help to the exiled Archbishop Thomas Becket. ¹ He had not in fact sent any. ¹ But he refused the oath that would have cleared him, because swearing it might make him seem the archbishop's enemy, and he was ready to be exiled when letters came from the king in Normandy telling the judges to wait for his return. ¹

In 1170, when he was already very old, some of his lay brothers revolted and spread serious slanders about him. ¹² The order article says the lay brothers were mostly rough men who needed a firm hand, and it mentions as a second case of scandal an unpleasant story of a girl at Watton Priory, told by Saint Aelred. ² The controversy lasted some years. ¹ Henry II took Gilbert's side, and Pope Alexander III cleared him and confirmed the order's privileges. ¹

Franciscan Media says that all his life he ate little and spent much of many nights in prayer. ³ The encyclopedia says his austerity did not ease as he grew older, although the work of governing the order was heavy. ¹ In the end age made him give it up, and he named Roger, prior of Malton, to succeed him. ¹

Then, very infirm and almost blind, he made his religious profession. ¹ He had founded the order and ruled it for many years, the encyclopedia notes, without ever having become a religious in the strict sense. ¹ He died at Sempringham in 1189, on February 4 by Franciscan Media's date, well over a hundred years old. ¹³ He left his rule and a short treatise, "De constructione monasteriorum". ¹

Twelve years after his death, at the urging of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, Pope Innocent III canonized him, and his relics were moved to a place of honor in the church at Sempringham, where his shrine drew pilgrims. ¹ The order he founded lasted until Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, when it had twenty-six houses; the encyclopedia says its last master made no resistance at all. ²³

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for Saint Gilbert, so none is given here. ¹²³⁴

Saint Gilbert's feast is February 4, the day the Roman Martyrology enters him, at Sempringham, as a priest who founded a monastic order with a double discipline of life. ⁴ Franciscan Media gives February 4 as the day he died. ³ Two other dates are in print. The 1909 Catholic Encyclopedia says his feast is kept in the Roman calendar on February 11, and Franciscan Media keeps him as its saint of the day for February 16. ¹³

He was not what a Norman knight wanted in a son, and the encyclopedia says so in a phrase. ¹ What came of the boy sent off to study was a teacher, then a priest who gave away the income of one parish and turned down an archdeaconry as a danger to his soul. ¹

He did not set out to found an order. He wanted to hand the seven women of Sempringham to someone else, and asked the Cistercians to take them. ²³ When they would not, he built what was needed himself, piece by piece: lay sisters, lay brothers, canons. ²

For a man who ruled others for decades, his last years are the striking part. He handed the order on, and then, nearly blind, made the vows he had never taken. ¹ The "plate of the Lord Jesus" in his houses kept the habit of his youth going after him, the best of the meal set aside for the poor. ³