Sigebert from Gembloux

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Sigebert von Gembloux OSB , latinized Sigebertus Gemblacensis (* around 1030; † October 5, 1112 in Gembloux ), was a historiographer , hagiographer , theologian , liturgist , computist and publicist .

Sigebert came to the Gembloux monastery in the diocese of Liège as a boy at the time of Abbot Olbert (1012-1048) . From there he was sent between 1048 and 1072 by Olbert's successor Mysach († November 10, 1071) as a scholaster to Metz to the St. Vincentius Monastery, led by Mysach's brother Folkuin from 1051, where Sigebert wrote the life of Bishop Dietrich I of Metz , des Founder of his monastery. After Mysach's death, he returned to Gembloux between 1071 and 1075, where he taught at the local monastery school. In the 1060s he had written the metrical Passio Sanctae Luciae virginis in 370 alkaic stanzas and in the 1070s a metrical Passio Sanctorum Thebeorum in three books totaling 1077 hexameters , in which he also wrote Victor von Xanten , Victor and Ursus von Solothurn , Tyrsus von Trier, Gereon von Köln and his companions, who mentioned 50 Bonn martyrs as well as Alexander von Bergamo and Secundus from Ventimiglia and presented extensive exegeses based on numerical symbols . In pamphlets he defended Liège claims against the Gregorian reform and supported the king with a memorandum for royal investiture law . He added a catalog of his own writings to his Liber de viris illustribus based on the example of Augustine and other late antique and early medieval authors.

The Chronicle

Sigebert's main work is a world chronicle that he wrote in the last decades of his life and presented in 1106. It begins with the year 381, thus following on from the chronicle of Prosper Tiro , and ends with the year 1111, i.e. shortly before his death, and was therefore continued for a few years after completion. In large parts, however, Sigebert merely compiles already known facts and legends in strict chronological order without criticism, whereby an achievement of his own in terms of content is only recognizable for the time that he himself experienced, i.e. from the second third of the 11th century.

Sigebert's Chronicle was widespread in the centuries that followed. It was considered reliable, was often quoted, given as a source and supplemented. The critical examination carried out in the 19th century, however, has shown that Sigebert did not work as carefully in compiling his chronicle as was previously assumed. In addition, his information comes almost entirely from sources that still exist today, so that the additional information content of his work is actually low.

The historian Ludwig Konrad Bethmann (1812–1867) managed to locate Sigebert's manuscript .

Work edition

  • Sigeberti Gemblacensis chronica cum continuationibus. In: Georg Heinrich Pertz u. a. (Ed.): Scriptores (in Folio) 6: Chronica et annales aevi Salici. Hanover 1844, pp. 268-535 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )
  • Tino Licht (Ed.): Sigebert von Gembloux († 1112): Acta Sanctae Luciae , Heidelberg 2008 (Editiones Heidelbergenses 34).
  • Ernst Dümmler: Sigeberts von Gembloux Passio sanctae Luciae virginis and Passio sanctorum Thebeorum (From the treatises of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin 1893), Publishing House of the Royal Academy of Science, Berlin 1893.

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Sigebert from Gembloux
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sigebertus Gemblacensis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chronicler
DATE OF BIRTH around 1030
DATE OF DEATH October 5, 1112
Place of death Gembloux