Feastday: October 3
Patron: of Saint-G
Benedictine monastic reformer. Born in Namur, Belgium, and trained at the French court, Gerard joined the Benedictines at Saint-Denis, France. Ordained, Gerard founded a monastery on his own estate in Brogne, Belgium. He reformed monasteries in Lorraine and Champagne, France, and Flanders, Belgium, and died in Brogne on October 3.
Saint Gérard (in Walloon Sint-Djuråd) (c. 895 – October 3, 959) was an abbot of Brogne Abbey. A native of Staves (Namur), he was a member of the family of dukes of Lower Austrasia. Originally a soldier, he rebuilt a family chapel into a large church and later became a monk at Saint-Denis. He was then ordained priest. He returned to Brogne, where he fought the laxity of clerics there and replaced them with monks. He retired to a cell near the monastery for mortification.
The Archbishop of Cambrai asked him to reform the community of Saint-Ghislain in Hainault. He replaced the canons with monks. He eventually became head of 18 other abbeys in the region of present-day Belgium. When he reformed the Abbey of Saint Bertin in 944, dissident monks fled to King Edmund I of England. At the end of his life, he retired again to Brogne.
He also traveled to Rome to obtain a papal bull to confirm the privileges of Brogne Abbey.
Veneration
The saint's feast day is celebrated in the dioceses of Namur, Ghent, and Liege on October 3, for which he is listed in the Roman Martyrology.
Relics, considered authentic, are preserved at Saint-Gérard, the abbey of Maredsous, Aubange, and Ghent (in the church of Notre-Dame).
