Gerard de Brogne

Saint Gerard de Brogne was born at the end of the 9th century. It founded in 914 with Brogne, today Saint-Gerard (Belgium) a Abbaye bénédictine. He died in Brogne in 959. Festival the October 3rd.

The youth of Gerard

Saint Gerard must be born towards 890 with Stave, small village of the canton of Florennes, in the middle same of the old territory of Lome, including/understanding all the Between-Sambre-and-Meuse almost. By his Sancius father, Gerard was attached to the family of the duke of Austrasie, and by his mother, he was nephew of Etienne, bishop of Liege. Inter alia fields, the parents of Gerard had the ground of Brogne.

It was a great field wedged in a site of the drill of Marlagne, very wide at that time; farm or villa and, without any doubt also, pied-à-terre where the hunters met time with other.

A devoted very old vault says one by saint Lambert of Maastricht to Saint Michel and with holy Pierre, remained there of the time of Gerard. The tradition attaches to it the existence of a source and a well going up to a high antiquity; and the existence of the Saint-Pierre vault which one sees still today along large' the road. Early, the parents of Gerard chose for him the military career, according to the use of its time, and it was allowed consequently in the capacity as page at the court of Béranger, Count de Namur.

Its remarkable virtues and its gifts were worth soon confidence to him and friendship of the count, so much so that Gerard in little time a great influence in the administration of the county acquired, and he preferably saw himself entrusting by Béranger the most difficult businesses.

The vocation

Military career, Gerard takes the dress Benedictine after the death of his father, the lord of Brogne, and bases an abbey on the family field. Gerard on any occasion, gave to the spiritual things the step on the body things. Wouldn't this be during a shooting party, of a meeting in its field of Brogne, where it had invited his/her young friends, whom, deviating from the noisy group from the hunters, Gerard collected a few moments in the old vault? Absorbed in the prayer, it calms down there and, it received, in a touching dream, the indications and the orders of the holy apostle Pierre. The vision is clear. It is necessary for him to bring here the relics of Saint Eugene, martyr, and to set up at once a vaster temple with the glory of God and Eugene saint, in the form revealed by the vision.

A little later during a voyage in France, Gerard, from passage to the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Denis close to Paris, learns the presence there from the relics of Eugene saint and is enough happy to obtain of it a part for the restored sanctuary of Brogne.

The parish church of Saint-Gerard has this badge relic still today: the front armlever of the saint martyr. It is exposed to the veneration of faithful to the side furnace bridge of Saint-Pierre.

Answering the divine call, Gerard gives up the world then to embrace the religious life of the monks Benedictines of the abbey of Saint-Denis; and a few years later, it returns, monk and priest in his fatherland, with the head of twelve other monks to found a modest monastery near the sanctuary of Brogne.

Formed in Saint-Denis, close to Paris, it makes also work of reformer in the monasteries of his jurisdiction, at the request of the duke of Lotharingie and the count of Flanders.

Died in Brogne (today Saint-Gerard, on October 3rd, 959, Gerard is canonized by Innocent II, at the time of the Concile of Rheims, in 1131.

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