GERHOH of REICHERSBERG. – German theologian, b. at Polling (Bavaria) in 1093, d. at Reichersberg on 27 June 1169. He studied at Freising, Moosburg and Hildesheim. In 1119 he was at Augsburg as master of the cathedral school. In 1121, having abandoned the simoniac bishop, he became a regular canon at Rottenbuch (diocese of Regensburg). After the bishop of Augsburg was reconciled with Pope Callistus II, G. returned to Augsburg in 1123 and the same year accompanied the bishop to the Lateran Council. Ordained priest in 1126, he was for a time parish priest at Cham (Bavaria).
In 1132 Bishop Conrad I of Salzburg appointed him provost of the regular collegiate church of Reichersberg. In 1143 he accompanied Arnold of Brescia with the papal legate to Bohemia and Moravia; the following year he disputed in Rome over the Donatio Constantini. A supporter of Pope Alexander III, he was placed under the ban by Frederick Barbarossa. Notable above all is his politico-religious action in defence of the rights of the Holy See against emperors and antipopes. He worked indefatigably alongside St Bernard for the reform of simoniacal and Nicolaitan clergy. His numerous works largely aim at this. In his moral writings he seeks to restore the spirit of the Gospel to public and private life, appealing to tradition, which he knew deeply, with a strong conservative concern. Also noteworthy is his tendency to allegorize, for moral purposes, the historical part of the Bible. In his dogmatic works, adhering to the purest orthodoxy, he condemns the errors of Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers and Everard of Bamberg; indeed, he even considers Peter Lombard not orthodox, seeing him as the heir of Abelard’s Christological nihilism, and adheres to the theory of the *assumptus homo*.