Saint Gérard, bishop of Toul

Authority level: Authoritative doctrine
Disciplinary status: Church discipline
Evidence type: Historical account
GuideThe Church's official commemoration and the communion of saints are authoritatively received; the assigned date is liturgical or martyrological discipline, while biographical particulars depend on historical evidence.
Contents

Saint Gérard, bishop of Toul is a saint commemorated in the Church's calendar on April 23.

Commemoration

The calendar source records “Saint Gérard, bishop of Toul” on April 23. The recorded liturgical or martyrological designation is Commemorated in the Roman Martyrology. The saint is commemorated under this calendar name and date.[1][2]

This holy person lives with Christ in the communion of saints and intercedes for the Church.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Born at Cologne, 935; died at Toul, 23 April, 994. Belonging to a wealthy and noble family, he received an excellent education in the school for clerics at Cologne, and throughout his youth was a model of obedience and piety. He was eventually ordained to the priesthood, in which office his virtues were a source of edification to the city of Cologne. At the death of Gauzelin, Bishop of Toul (963), he was appointed to succeed him by the Archbishop of Cologne, was well received by the clergy and people of Toul, and bore the burdens of his episcopal office without any of its comforts. Although he avoided paying long visits to the court of the Emperor Otto II, who was desirous of keeping Gerard near him, he nevertheless obtained from the emperor the confirmation of the privilege in virtue of which Toul, although united to the empire about 925, formed an independent state of which the Emperor Henry the Fowler reserved to himself only the protectorate, abandoning to Gerard's predecessor, Gauzelin, the therefore rightly considered as the true founder of the temporal power of the bishops of Toul. He was energetic in his opposition to powerful personages who were inimical to his authority, and governed his county wisely, promulgating administrative measures, traces of which subsisted to the time of the French Revolution. He died at the age of fifty-nine, and was buried with pomp in the choir of his cathedral. Leo IX, one of his successors in the See of Toul, canonized him in 1050.[3]

LÉON CLUGNET

References

  1. 1.Mysterii Paschalis — The General Roman Calendar and the ordering of the liturgical year
  2. 2.Roman Martyrology 2004 name-and-date index — Unofficial English index used only for names and assigned dates; Martyrology eulogies are not reproduced
  3. 3.1913 Catholic Encyclopedia: St. Gerard, Bishop of Toul