Saint Gerald of Aurillac

A lay saint from the origins of the year 1000

Gerald belongs to that generation of saints whom the Church venerated without a canonical process, by the immediate recognition of the Christian people. He is neither martyr nor religious: he never received holy orders, and he pronounced no monastic vows of his own person^[7]. His holiness showed itself in the very exercise of his charge as lord: to render justice, to protect the weak, to serve the poor, to found a house of prayer.

This figure is typical of late Carolingian Christendom, where the holiness of the layman in authority is conceived in the image of the biblical king: a man who commands as a father, who fasts before he judges, who sets free rather than enslaves. Odo of Cluny, who met at Aurillac witnesses still living, fixed this type for the whole Middle Ages^[8][9].

What tradition attributes to him

Three traits sum up the memory the Church kept of him. First the foundation: around 885 he built the Abbey of Aurillac, under the Rule of Saint Benedict as reformed by Saint Benedict of Aniane^[10]. Next justice: he rendered justice while fasting, so that wine would not influence his judgements, and he knew how to pardon^[11]. Finally charity: he freed many serfs by giving them full ownership of their lands, and he himself served the poor at his table^[12].

To these three traits is added a poverty of sight accepted: having become blind several years before his death, he continued to govern his estate and to pray until his last breath^[13].

Between the Church and arms

Born around 855 at the castle of Saint-Étienne d'Aurillac, son of Gerald, lord of Aurillac, and of Saint Adeltrude, he is at first destined by his family for the Church: he learns grammar and plainchant^[14][15]. The frailty of his health then turns him towards the career of arms, according to the usual lot of lords' sons. On the death of his parents, he finds himself at the head of a considerable estate, stretching from Belmont-sur-Rance (Aveyron) to the Puy Griou (Cantal)^[16].

Several matches are offered to him. Duke William the Pious proposes to give him his sister in marriage; other unions are considered. None succeeds^[17]. It is the turning point of his life.

The resolution to follow the Gospel

Tradition, as recorded by Nominis, relates that after this failed attempt at marriage, Gerald "resolved to follow the Gospel in all things"^[18]. He wishes to remain constantly in the presence of God. He does not leave the world for the monastery: he remains a lord, but he now lives as a man who has chosen the service of God in the first rank of his duties.

This choice is no flight. Gerald continues to hold his court, to receive complaints directly, to protect the inhabitants against armed bands^[19]. He even hides his tonsure under a head covering that he never removes: the mark of a consecration that he assumes without making a show of it^[20]. His holiness is that of a man engaged in the world who rules all his conduct by the Gospel.

« He resolved to follow the Gospel in all things after a failed attempt at marriage. » : Nominis, « Saint Géraud d'Aurillac »^[21]

A foundation at the service of prayer

Around 885, Gerald founds the Abbey of Aurillac on his lands, under the Rule of Saint Benedict reformed by Saint Benedict of Aniane^[22]. Monks come from Vabres to people it. In 898, a will and a codicil give the abbey the whole estate of the founder^[23]. The house is placed under the direct protection of the pope and the king by charters of immunity: Gerald refuses the protection of Duke William I the Pious, which would have subjected it to a lay power^[24].

The abbey becomes one of the great religious and intellectual centers of Aquitaine. The future pope Gerbert of Aurillac is educated there; the scriptorium maintains contacts with Catalonia^[25]. Later, the Abbey of Aurillac will serve as a model for the organization of Cluny itself^[26], in that line of monastic reform whose history the article The Cluniac Reform recounts.

The lord who sets free

The most striking act of Gerald, in popular memory as in Odo's Life, is the emancipation of the serfs. Not content to free them, he gives them full ownership of their lands^[27]. In a society where serfdom chains a great part of the cultivators to the soil, this gesture has the scope of a restoration of the Christian dignity of the worker.

He also welcomes the poor to his table, and he serves them himself^[28]. Tradition knows him for other acts of justice: before a battle, he orders a charge holding the weapons "haft foremost", and the enemies are seized with panic^[29].

Rendering justice while fasting

The most famous trait of Gerald's conscience is related by Nominis: he rendered justice while fasting so that wine would not influence his judgements^[30]. The detail seems small; it is eloquent. Gerald knows that the judge's authority is fragile, that one glass too many can tip the scales, and he prefers to fast rather than risk injustice. It is an asceticism of power, exercised in the very act of governing.

The episode of the osier

Another scene, more dramatic, shows how far his clemency goes. Two wrongdoers had been condemned; Gerald has them fed first, then gives them his own knife and tells them to go and fetch themselves the osier that would be needed to hang them, in a nearby wood where the undergrowth was thick. The condemned never return: the lord was letting them flee. The stratagem was a disguised pardon, which spared the guilty without formally denying the sentence^[31][32]. Nominis tells the same scene with the popular formula of the vines that Gerald knew to be nowhere to be found^[33]: tradition kept the sense of the gesture more than the detail of the plant.

One finds here the same spirit as in Scripture: mercy does not destroy justice, it fulfills it by refusing the death of the guilty when salvation is still possible.

« Go and fetch yourselves the osier we need to hang you, and bring it. » : Saint Odo of Cluny, Life of Saint Gerald, I, 20^[34]

Blind and faithful

Gerald becomes blind about seven years before his death, although his gaze remains lively^[35]. He accepts this blindness without revolt, and continues to govern his estate and to pray^[36]. The diocesan tradition of Cahors holds that he accepted his final blindness as a trial offered to God.

He dies on 13 October 909, a Friday, at Cézerniac, a place identified by some with Cézernac or Cézens, by others with Saint-Cirgues, where tradition places his death beside a "rock shaped like a prie-dieu"^[37][38]. His body is brought back to Aurillac and buried on the following Sunday, near the altar of Saint Peter, in the church of the monastery he had founded^[39].

Popular acclaim

Gerald is declared a saint by popular acclaim. Nominis presents him as "one of the first recognized by the Church without having been a martyr" nor entered holy orders^[47]. There was no canonical process in the medieval sense of the term: the Christian people of Aurillac and of Auvergne recognized a saint in him, and the Church validated this cult by inscribing him in the Roman Martyrology^[48][49].

Odo of Cluny's Life

The principal testimony on Gerald is the Life of Saint Gerald (Vita sancti Geraldi) composed by Saint Odo of Cluny around 930-942, at the request of the bishop of Limoges, Turpin^[50][51]. Odo, who was connected to the Abbey of Aurillac and who could question direct witnesses, makes Gerald therein the chivalrous model of the Christian lord^[52]. The work is preserved under the shelfmark BHL 3411; the modern critical edition is due to Anne-Marie Bultot-Verleysen (Bollandists, Brussels, 2009)^[53]. A French translation by Fr. Géraud Venzac appeared in the Revue de la Haute-Auvergne in 1972^[54].

A lasting heritage

Gerald's silver shrine, melted down by the Calvinists, was only partially recovered^[55]. But the Abbey of Aurillac, the memory of the lord who rendered justice, and the feast of 13 October have come down through the centuries. In Auvergne, tradition keeps a popular saying: "Saint Gerald's summer lasts only three days", associated with the weather hazards of mid-October^[56]. The given name Géraud (with its variants Giraud and Guérande) is still borne in his honor^[57].

Saint Gerald is depicted in the guise of a lord of the early Middle Ages, often bearded, sometimes in arms but with no drawn sword, or in prayer garments. The stained glass of Auvergne and of the Quercy shows him at times as abbey founder holding a model of a church, at times as a seated judge, at times as a pilgrim or a man of prayer. The icon of the diocese of Saint-Flour shows him half-length, in the Byzantine manner adapted to western saints; the stained glass of Comiac (Sousceyrac-en-Quercy) shows him standing, with Saint Nicholas; the gilded wooden statue of the abbey church of Aurillac (eighteenth century) is one of the most venerated images of the place^[58].

The most constant attribute is perhaps the book of the Gospel or the model of a church, sign of his double vocation: to follow the Word of God and to found a house of prayer. The tonsure he hid under his head covering recalls, for those who know of it, the discreet consecration of the lord who lived as a monk in the world^[59].

The feast of Saint Gerald of Aurillac is fixed on 13 October, the day of his death. Nominis calls it a "local feast", and links it to the Roman Martyrology^[60][61]. It is the date kept by the Ignispedia calendar (saints of 13 October), where Gerald is celebrated alongside Saint Edward the Confessor and Saint Theophilus of Antioch.

An upright inner judge

The first lesson of Gerald is a lesson of conscience. To fast before judging, to refuse to let the body disturb discernment, to pardon when salvation is still possible: so many acts that every Christian can take up in his own life, even without a charge of justice. To ask Saint Gerald is to ask for a lucid heart, able to hold together the firmness of truth and the gentleness of mercy.

Serving in one's state of life

Gerald did not leave the world: he remained in it as lord, refused bridegroom, administrator of lands, judge, founder. His holiness is that of the duty of state lived to the end, in the state that Providence gave him. To those who think that holiness is reserved for cloisters, his life answers that it can be born at the heart of a charge, of a family, of an estate.

« He is declared a saint by popular acclaim, one of the first recognized by the Church without having been a martyr » : Nominis, « Saint Géraud d'Aurillac »^[62]

The intercessor of the just and of the poor

Finally, Gerald remains the intercessor of those who render justice, of those who set free, and of those who serve the poor. His feast on 13 October, in the very heart of autumn, recalls that the harvest of good works is not counted in accumulated riches, but in lives set free.

• Saint Odo of Cluny: the abbot who wrote the Life of Saint Gerald, and who made him the model of the Christian lord.
• Saint Benedict of Aniane: the reformer of the Benedictine Rule followed by the Abbey of Aurillac.
• The Cluniac Reform: the great monastic movement of which the Abbey of Aurillac was one of the models.
• Saint Edward the Confessor: the other saint of 13 October, royal confessor of England.
• Saint Theophilus of Antioch: bishop and apologist of the second century, also celebrated on 13 October.