Géraud d\' Aurillac

Holy Géraud (born in 855 with the Castle Saint-Etienne of Aurillac - died in 909 with Poutsoumy in the Rouergue), was the son of Géraud, of origin mérovingienne, lords of Aurillac, and Adeltrude, of Carolingian origin, which was also canonized. Saint Arède was one of its ancestors.

Life

Géraud, which carried as his/her father the title of count (although Aurillac was not a county), was intended to lead a life of lord in conformity to his row. One thus taught him soldiering, overlapped and the art of the Chasse for the falcon. Large, nimble and of beautiful appearance, it was of fragile health and one taught also the song, grammar and the to him Holy Scriptures. It astonished the clerks who appeared with the table of his/her parents by the importance of his knowledge. He knew also the Roman law.

With died of his parents, it was found with the head of a considerable field which extended in Rouergue, and exerted all the functions of a lord: it held its plaid, refused to completely delegate its justice to officers, having informed all that one pourvait to directly address complaints and requests to him; It ensured its protections the inhabitants by taking itself the heads of equipped the military destinies to repress the armed bands come from the adjoining countries. Applying to living according to the Gospels, it freed the serfs in their giving the property from their ground, accommodated the poor with his table and endeavoured to limit the violence of the wars while relying on the judgment of God. Thus one saw it before a combat, to tell his men to charge as by holding their weapons to him the handle ahead, and all the enemies being taken of panic in front of such an insurance.

He wanted to never marry, and dissimulated his tonsure under a hairstyle which indicated its quality and which he never left; Indeed the lords had kept the use to carry the long hair and the mowed hair was a mark of constraint. One evening of ride in the Chestnut grove, it had received the hospitality of a modest peasant and was seized by the beauty of his daughter whom it saw sitted in the light of the chimney. The chronicler of its life says that it was tried and did not succumb, but reports that it returned several months afterwards be sorry his father and to equip his daughter.

Foundations

Géraud founded towards 885 the Abbaye of Aurillac to which it gave, by a will and a codicil in 898, all its field. It had chosen the to him Règle of saint Benoît, reformed at that time by Saint Benoit d' Aniane.

Having pushed back the offers of his/her relative the duke of Aquitaine Guillaume I {{er}} '' the Piles '' which proposed to him to place its foundation under its protection, and which will base Cluny on the same model that Aurillac, Géraud had made a point of making its foundation autonomous of the hierarchies feudal and ecclesiastics by putting it under the direct protection of the pope and the king who granted each one to him diplomas of immunity. For this reason the abbot of Aurillac was miter and stick, and carried the title of count.

At the end of its life, Géraud d' Aurillac became blind. He suffered from even that the construction of the building did not go rather quickly (the new church had been badly built and had had to be rebuilt) and that the zeal of the monks who he had made come from Vabres weakened.

Veneration

Géraud was declared holy by the popular voice. It is one of the first examples of saint has to be canonized without to have undergone martyrdom or to be entered the orders.

Its life was written at the request of the bishop of Dismisses Turpin by holy Odon, which was initially abbot of Aurillac. It makes of Géraud the portrait of the rich and powerful man which, without giving up its functions, puts the force and the richness at the service of weak and of the poor. It is undoubtedly the first model of the Christian knight.

It is in the abbey founded by Géraud that the young person Gerbert d' Aurillac, will be informed and will initiate itself with the monastic life. Extremely erudite, he will become pope at the time of the Year Millet under the name of Sylvestre II

Indeed, the abbey of Aurillac was equipped with a Scriptorium, where one taught the disciplines of the trivium, (especially the grammar and the rhetoric) and the Quadrivium. It had constantly remained in contact with Catalonia, hearth intellectual of foreground where were preserved many copies of ancient works like those of Isidore of Seville or of Boèce.

Sources

National library of France, ms. lat. 5301: Life of Géraud d' Aurillac by Odon, abbot of Cluny; translation of the Father G. of Venzac, Re-examined of High-Auvergne , T. 43,74e year, July-December 1972, p. 220-322 or

Library of Clermont-Ferrand, ms. 149, f° 48-162, Lives of saints (Martial, Gall, Martin, Sidoine, Ursin, Benoit, Turian, Germain of Auxerre, Taurin, Avit, Gilles, Wolf, Augustin, Nicolas, Nectary, Woodland, Géraud, Mayeul), XIIe or XIIIe S.

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