Gilbert of Sempringham
4 February -- Commemoration
If celebrated as a Lesser Festival,
Common of Religious, page 494
Born in 1083 in Sempringham, the son of the squire, Gilbert
became the parish priest in 1131. He encouraged the
vocation of seven women of the town and formed them into a
company of lay sisters. A group of lay brothers also came
into being and they all kept the
Benedictine Rule. Gilbert
was unsuccessful in his bid to obtain pastoral guidance from
Cîteaux for the incipient communities and they came under
the ambit of Augustinian canons, Gilbert himself becoming
the Master. At Gilbert's death in 1189, aged 106, there
were nine double monasteries in England and four of male
canons only. It was the only purely English monastic
foundation before the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the
sixteenth century.