SAINT OF THE WEEK

St Gilbert of Sempringham (February 4)
Gilbert of Sempringham (c1083-1189) founded the • only distinctively English medieval religious Order. Gilbert's father, a Norman knight, held land at Sempringham, 13 miles east of Grantham. Gilbert, despised for his physical frailty, was sent to study in Paris; on his return he started a village school. After eight years in the household of the Bishop of Lincoln, who ordained him, Gilbert succeeded in 1131 as lord of the manor and priest at Sempringham. He organised seven women into a community; soon men, too, were admitted.
Lay sisters and brothers followed, while noble patronage fostered further houses. But despite a visit in 1148 to Citeaux, where he met St Bernard and Pope Eugenius III, Gilbert was disappointed in his hope of putting his religious under Cistercian authority.
St Bernard, however, helped him frame rules for a new Order. When the founder died aged over 100, the Gilbertines numbered 700 men and 1,500 nuns in 13 houses, in Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire, Yorkshire and Scotland, as well as in Lincolnshire. Inevitably, the contiguous accommodation of nuns and monks set tongues wagging.
The order was suppressed by Henry VIII. Today grass grows over the sites of Gilbert's monasteries.