Gilbert of Sempringham

Gilbert was born into the generation after the Norman Conquest, at Sempringham, Lincolnshire. England.
His father, Gocelin, is clamed as one of the Conqueror's knights in the Domesday Book in 1086.
Gocelin held about 160 acres in Sempringham in return for undertaking some military service
required of his master their lord and king.
It is believed that Gilbert was born at Sempringham in 1083,
and baptised in an earlier forerunner of the present late Norman church.
Gilbert grew up in a world which was undergoing rapid changes but was also a time of religious renewal.
He was born with a severely deformed spine and because of this
it was obvious from the beginning that he would never be able to follow in his father's footsteps
as he was unable to carry arms.
The young Gilbert was sent to Paris, at this time the intellectual centre of Western Christendom,
He was to study under some of the greatest minds in Europe. Gilbert embraced the life of a scholar.
On his return to Sempringham, he first taught the local children on the manorial estate to read and write.
At the age of thirty nine years, whilst rector of Sempringham and Torrington he became a member of the household of
Robert Bloet, Bishop of Lincoln.

A year later at the age of forty years he was ordained. Bloet's successor Alexander the Magnificent kept Gilbert on
as a member of his household and made him diocesan confessor.
Gilbert refused a promotion to become an archdeacon. 1131 aged forty eight years,
he returned to Sempringham after his father's death to become both parish priest and lord of the manor.
Gilbert was increasingly drawn by the teachings of Stephen Harding and Robert Molesmes whose idea it was to set up
new monasteries based on the principle of poverty, a movement away from the lavish larger monasteries,
but nearer to the true simplicity of St Benedict's rule. These new monasteries sprang up in Europe but none in England so
Gilbert established his own. He, provided a house and cloister on the north side of the parish church at Sempringham for
seven local girls educated and guided by himself to follow the Benedictine rule.
Later they were joined by lay brothers who undertook the heavy manual work.
By 1139 a new larger priory was built on land given to them by Gilbert of Ghent and shortly afterwards
Gilbert's nuns took over buildings at Haverholme, which the Cistercians had abandoned.
As the Cistercians had now ‘colonised’ England Gilbert tried to get their General Chapter to take over the direction of his community,
but largely because Gilbert's ‘houses’ accepted both men and women they refused. However,
the Pope made Gilbert Master of the Order of Sempringham, which meant that it was officially recognised by the
Church as a religious order, and had a constitution written at least in part by no less a person than St Bernard himself.
In the next six years nine new houses were set up, mainly in Lincolnshire, but with others in Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire,
Yorkshire and Scotland. Some of the 'houses' were originally large, like Haverholme which could house 150,
but some were very small communities, Newstead-on-Ancholme had only thirteen inhabitants.
Most of the Gilbertine houses were dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and took their living from their estates;
however St. Catherine's Lincoln was different.
Lincoln St. Catherine's looked after sick people who were cared for by the lay sisters.

Gilbert lived until 1189, being a staggering 106 years old.
He fell ill at Newstead-on-Ancholme, one of the smallest priories,
on Christmas Eve 1188 but insisted on being carried 40 miles or so,
cross country to Sempringham where he died on February 4th 1189,
blind and worn out by the service to the order he had founded to do God's will.
The Gilbertines remained a purely English Order, with just the one house in Scotland.
The houses survived until the reign of Henry VIII when they were dissolved by the King's Commissioners in 1538.
It must have taken little more than a month for the royal officials to undo the work of Gilbert's lifetime,
but undo it they did as the Gilbertine Order disappeared without trace.

 Above left are the arms of the Gilbertines priory of St Catherine,
in the centre are the arms of Alvingham, on the right are the arms of Sempringham.
(Thanks to Derrick Walkden and Joe Barrett of Lancashire Family History and Heraldry Society for their help)

Today if you visit the sites where the priories stood, little can be seen apart from grass grown mounds,
nearly always on a slope just above a stream.
Even the Mother house of the Order at Sempringham which covered a 360 acre site has almost vanished.
But, if the buildings no longer survive, the memory of that indomitable old man,
Gilbert, does not fade.
He was canonised in 1202, and the church keeps his feast day each year on February 4th.

The above details are from a Lincolnshire County Council Publication found in the Church at Sempringham entitled
'The Gilbertine Trail’
it covers sites at Sempringham, Haverholme, Lincoln, Bullington, Alvingham, Sixhills, North Ormsby,
Catley, Tunstall and Newstead-on-Ancholme.

Should you wish further details Lincolnshire County Council Recreational services

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