medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
According to his closely posthumous Vita by Robert, archdeacon of Ostrevant (BHL 180), Aibert (d. 1140; also Aybert) was born near Tournai; his father was knight. After a childhood marked with indications of his great holiness and an early youth in which he began to live ascetically, Aibert became a disciple of an hermit who when on a journey had been a guest in his father's house. This hermit was also a priest and a monk of the nearby Benedictine abbey of Crespin in Hainaut whose abbot had permitted him to live apart. The abbot chose the two of them to be his companions on a pilgrimage to Rome. When that worthy had to journey on to Benevento to take care of some business with the pope (Urban III) the companions were given permission to return sooner. Not long afterward and prompted by a vision, Aibert made his monastic profession at Crespin.
For twenty-five years Aibert took part in the ordinary life of the monastery and served in several important offices. Then, with abbatial permission, he withdrew to an hermitage he had prepared in the wild and lived there for another twenty-five years, for twenty-two of which he did without bread and for twenty of which he did without drink. Aibert had always devoted himself to repeated prayer but now, having been ordained priest by the bishop of Cambrai, he celebrated two masses daily, one for the living and one for the dead. In his hermitage Aibert would also sing the entire psalter, fifty psalms at a time, with each group of fifty followed by three lessons. He would say one hundred fifty Ave Marias daily, one hundred from a kneeling position and fifty while prostrate. On top of all this he heard confessions and imposed penances and was visited not only by common folk but also by all manner of religious, even including abbots and bishops, and also by lay lords.
After his death on this day Aibert was buried before the entire monastic community of Crespin at the place where he had maintained his cell. Lifetime miracles were recorded and others took place at his grave. Thus far Aibert's Vita. His withdrawal from Crespin to his hermitage is thought to have occurred in ca. 1115, two years before Paschal II granted him permission to hear confessions. His application in 1131 to Innocent II for renewal of his privileges included a request for a papal safeguard, under threat of excommunication, for those traveling to see him. His cult probably was immediate.
In the division of Hainaut in 1830, Crespin fell on the French side of border; it's situated in the département du Nord. Views of the remains of its abbey of Saint-Pierre (later, Saint-Landelin) are here:
http://tinyurl.com/6ewm3j
For more on the abbey, see Anne-Marie Helvétius, _L’abbaye de Crespin des origines au milieu du XIIIe siècle_ (Mémoire, Université libre de Bruxelles, 1986).
There are modern churches dedicated to Aibert in former territories of the abbey both in French and in Belgian Hainaut. The village of Saint-Aybert (Nord), not far from Crespin, is said to owe its name to the belief that this was the site of Aibert's hermitage.
For a contextual analysis of the Vita see Charles Dereine, "La critique de la 'Vita' de saint Aibert, reclus en Hainaut (m. 1140)", _Analecta Bollandiana_ 106 (1988), 121-143.
Best,
John Dillon
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