St. Gilbert of Sempringham

St. Gilbert of Sempringham was born around 1083 in Lincolnshire, England, and died in 1189, having reached the remarkable age of about one hundred and six. The son of a Norman knight, he became a priest and served as parish priest of his native Sempringham, where his holiness and pastoral care drew others to seek his guidance in living a life dedicated to God.

From a small group of devout women whom he enclosed beside his church there grew, under his direction, the Gilbertine Order — the only distinctively English religious order of the Middle Ages — which united communities of nuns and canons living under a common oversight. Gilbert governed his growing order with wisdom and humility through a long life that included trials and false accusations, which he bore with patience, and he continued to labor and to practice great austerity until his death. He was canonized in 1202, and his memory is kept on 16 February.