Saint Gerard of Brogne

Gerard was born in Mettet, in Wallonia, around 890, into a noble family. He was a courtier in the service of the count of Namur when he decided to change his life. On his own lands, at Brogne, he founded a Benedictine abbey and was its first abbot. Then he spent the years that followed walking through the Belgian lands and Lorraine, reforming monasteries: he would go into communities where the rule had grown slack, set things right, and move on. He reformed or refounded about twenty. It was a time when, all over Europe, monasticism was being reborn: in Burgundy Cluny had just been founded, and what Cluny was doing in the south, Gerard was doing in Flanders and Lorraine. The two movements were born separately and were very much alike. He died at Brogne on October 3, 959, and was considered a saint almost immediately. The village where he founded the abbey is no longer called Brogne: it’s called Saint-Gérard. It’s one of the things that happen to founders of monasteries — the place takes their name and keeps it for a thousand years. If your name is Gerard, today is your name day.