GILBERT DE LA PORRÉE, frequently known as Gilbertus Porretanus or Pictaviensis (1070-1154); scholastic logician and theologian, was born at Poitiers. He was educated under Bernard of Chartres and Anselm of Laon. After teaching for about twenty years in Chartres, he lectured on dialectics and theology in Paris (from 1137), and in 1141 returned to Poitiers, being elected bishop in the following year. His heterodox opinions regarding the doctrine of the Trinity drew upon his works the condemnation of the church. The synod of Reims in 1148 procured papal sanction for four propositions opposed to certain of Gilbert’s tenets, and his works were condemned until they should be corrected in accordance with the principles of the church. Gilbert seems to have submitted quietly to this judgment; he yielded assent to the four propositions, and remained on friendly terms with his antagonists till his death on the 4th of September 1154. Gilbert is almost the only logician of the 12th century who is quoted by the greater scholastics of the succeeding age. His chief logical work, the treatise De sex principiis, was regarded with a reverence almost equal to that paid to Aristotle, and furnished matter for numerous commentators, amongst them Albertus Magnus. Owing to the fame of this work, he is mentioned by Dante as the Magister sex principiorum. The treatise itself is a discussion of the Aristotelian categories, specially of the six subordinate modes. Gilbert distinguishes in the ten categories two classes, one essential, the other derivative. Essential or inhering (formae inhaerentes) in the objects themselves are only substance, quantity, quality and relation in the stricter sense of that term. The remaining six, when, where, action, passion, position and habit, are relative and subordinate (formae assistentes). This suggestion has some interest, but is of no great value, either in logic or in the theory of knowledge. More important in the history of scholasticism are the theological consequences to which Gilbert’s realism led him. In the commentary on the treatise De Trinitate (erroneously attributed to Boëtius) he proceeds from the metaphysical notion that pure or abstract being is prior in nature to that which is. This pure being is God, and must be distinguished from the triune God as known to us. God is incomprehensible, and the categories cannot be applied to determine his existence. In God there is no distinction or difference, whereas in all substances or things there is duality, arising from the element of matter. Between pure being and substances stand the ideas or forms, which subsist, though they are not substances. These forms, when materialized, are called formae substantiales or formae nativae; they are the essences of things, and in themselves have no relation to the accidents of things. Things are temporal, the ideas perpetual, God eternal. The pure form of existence, that by which God is God, must be distinguished from the three persons who are God by participation in this form. The form or essence is one, the persons or substances three. It was this distinction between Deitas or Divinitas and Deus that led to the condemnation of Gilbert’s doctrine.
De sex principiis and commentary on the De Trinitate in Migne, Patrologia Latina, lxiv. 1255 and clxxxviii. 1257; see also Abbé Berthaud, Gilbert de la Porrée (Poitiers, 1892); B. Hauréau, De la philosophie scolastique, pp. 294-318; R. Schmid’s article “Gilbert Porretanus” in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyk. f. protest. Theol. (vol. 6, 1899); Prantl, Geschichte d. Logik, ii. 215; Bach, Dogmengeschichte, ii. 133; article [Scholasticism].
GILBERT OF SEMPRINGHAM, ST, founder of the Gilbertines, the only religious order of English origin, was born at Sempringham in Lincolnshire, c. 1083-1089. He was educated in France, and ordained in 1123, being presented by his father to the living of Sempringham. About 1135 he established there a convent for nuns; and to perform the heavy work and cultivate the fields he formed a number of labourers into a society of lay brothers attached to the convent. Similar establishments were founded elsewhere, and in 1147 Gilbert tried to get them incorporated in the Cistercian order. Failing in this, he proceeded to form communities of priests and clerics to perform the spiritual ministrations needed by the nuns. The women lived according to the Benedictine rule as interpreted by the Cistercians; the men according to the rule of St Augustine, and were canons regular. The special constitutions of the order were largely taken from those of the Premonstratensian canons and of the Cistercians. Like Fontevrault (q.v.) it was a double order, the communities of men and women living side by side; but, though the property all belonged to the nuns, the superior of the canons was the head of the whole establishment, and the general superior was a canon, called “Master of Sempringham.” The general chapter was a mixed assembly composed of two canons and two nuns from each house; the nuns had to travel to the chapter in closed carts. The office was celebrated together in the church, a high stone screen separating the two choirs of canons and nuns. The order received papal approbation in 1148. By Gilbert’s death (1189) there were nine double monasteries and four of canons only, containing about 700 canons and 1000 nuns in all. At the dissolution there were some 25 monasteries, whereof 4 ranked among the greater monasteries (see list in F. A. Gasquet’s English Monastic Life). The order never spread beyond England. The habit of the Gilbertines was black, with a white cloak.
See Bollandists’ Acta Sanctorum (4th of Feb.); William Dugdale, Monasticon (1846); Helyot, Hist. des ordres religieux (1714); ii. c. 29. The best modern account is St Gilbert of Sempringham, and the Gilbertines, by Rose Graham (1901). The art. in Dictionary of National Biography gives abundant information on St Gilbert, but is unsatisfactory on the order, as it might easily convey the impression that the canons and nuns lived together, whereas they were most carefully separated; and altogether undue prominence is given to a single scandal. Miss Graham declares that the reputation of the order was good until the end.
(E. C. B.)
GILBERT FOLIOT (d. 1187), bishop of Hereford, and of London, is first mentioned as a monk of Cluny, whence he was called in 1136 to plead the cause of the empress Matilda against Stephen at the Roman court. Shortly afterwards he became prior of Cluny; then prior of Abbéville, a house dependent upon Cluny. In 1139 he was elected abbot of Gloucester. The appointment was confirmed by Stephen, and from the ecclesiastical point of view was unexceptionable. But the new abbot proved himself a valuable ally of the empress, and her ablest controversialist. Gilbert’s reputation grew rapidly. He was respected at Rome; and he acted as the representative of the primate, Theobald, in the supervision of the Welsh church. In 1148, on being nominated by the pope to the see of Hereford, Gilbert with characteristic wariness sought confirmation both from Henry of Anjou and from Stephen. But he was an Angevin at heart, and after 1154 was treated by Henry II. with every mark of consideration. He was Becket’s rival for the primacy, and the only bishop who protested against the king’s choice. Becket, with rare forbearance, endeavoured to win his friendship by procuring for him the see of London (1163). But Gilbert evaded the customary profession of obedience to the primate, and apparently aspired to make his see independent of Canterbury. On the questions raised by the Constitutions of Clarendon he sided with the king, whose confessor he had now become. He urged Becket to yield, and, when this advice was rejected, encouraged his fellow-bishops to repudiate the authority of the archbishop. In the years of controversy which followed Becket’s flight the king depended much upon the bishop’s skill as a disputant and diplomatist. Gilbert was twice excommunicated by Becket, but both on these and on other occasions he showed great dexterity in detaching the pope from the cause of the exile. To him it was chiefly due that Henry avoided an open conflict with Rome of the kind which John afterwards provoked. Gilbert was one of the bishops whose excommunication in 1170 provoked the king’s knights to murder Becket; but he cannot be reproached with any share in the crime. His later years were uneventful, though he enjoyed great influence with the king and among his fellow bishops. Scholarly, dignified, ascetic in his private life, devoted to the service of the Church, he was nevertheless more respected than loved. His nature was cold; he made few friends; and the taint of a calculating ambition runs through his whole career. He died in the spring of 1187.
See Gilbert’s Letters, ed. J. A. Giles (Oxford, 1845); Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. J. C. Robertson (Rolls series, 1875-1885); and Miss K. Norgate’s England under the Angevin Kings (1887).
(H. W. C. D.)