settled and was made chancellor of the cathedral. After perhaps twenty years of this life he removed to Paris, and gave lectures in dialectics and theology. He did not, however, stay long in the capital, for in 1142 he was raised to the bishoprick of Poitiers.[1] Possibly he was not sorry then to obtain an honourable office in the country, for we are told that d Abailard, when approaching condemnation at the council of Sens, turned to Gilbert with the line of Horace,
e Tune tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet.
Gilbert must therefore have already been pointed at as a fellow-heretic with the victim of Sens. The presage, as the sequel shews, proved true; but it was four years after his preferment that the crisis of his life came. A charge of heresy which was brought against him occupied and perplexed the deliberations of two successive councils; and to this day it is debated whether he was condemned or acquitted [a.d. 1148.]. It will suffice for the present to observe that the visible result of the second council was that the bishop returned untouched to his diocese, where for the few years remaining of his long life he ruled in peace. f He died in 1154. The fact that his alleged offence related to the detail of theological metaphysics takes it out of the atmosphere of that school of which we have attempted to discern the peculiar elements. His theology is a legacy not from the teaching of Bernard of Chartres, but from Anselm of Laon, who, g we know, had suggested, though he did not countenance, at least one of the theses which brought Gilbert into trouble.[2] It is also necessary to bear in mind that the
- ↑ Compare my article in the English Historical Review, 35. 325 sq., 332 sq.
- ↑ A special point of connexion between Anselm and Gilbert lies in the fact that the latter wrote a series of glosses in continuation and extension of his master's Glossa interlinearis et marginalis, itself a supplement to the standard Glossa ordinaria of Walafrid Strabo. 'Considerate quippe magistri Anselmi Laudunensis glossandi modo, quod videlicet nimia brevitate non nisi ab exercitatis in expositionibus patrum posset intelligi, glossam prolixiorem eoque evidentiorem fecit:' Appendix to Henry of Ghent, De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, cap. viii., A. Miraeus, Biblioth. eccles. 174, Antwerp 1639 folio. Gilbert thus became a joint author of what was practically the authorised body of notes on the Bible current in the middle ages. The 'glosatura magistri Giliberti Porretani super Psalterium quam ipse recitavit coram suo magistro Anselmo,' Psalms (cod. coll. Ball. Oxon. xxxvi. f. 144 d), appears to have been held in particular esteem: cf. Alberic, a. 1149, Bouquet 13. 702 b; Robert de Monte, a. 1154; William of Nangy, who also refers to Gilbert's comments on the Pauline epistles, ibid., vol. 20. 736 b. See too du Boulay 2. 734 (who accidentally writes Petri for Giliberti), and the Histoire littéraire de la France 10. 181, 12. 474. [That Gilbert was the author of the commentary on the Pauline epistles, which has also been attributed to Gilbert of St. Amand, is proved by Denifle, Luther und Luthertum, 1. (2), Quellenbelege, 334–346, Mentz, 1905.]
