GIACOMO di VITRY. - Cardinal, celebrated preacher and writer, born around 1170 in France, perhaps in Vitry-sur-Seine, died in Rome on 1 May 1240. He studied at the University of Paris, where he obtained the degree of master. According to the contemporary Vincent of Beauvais (Spec. hist., XXX, 10), he was also parish priest at Argenteuil near Paris.
Attracted by the mystical movement that had manifested itself in the diocese of Liège in Belgium, he entered the priory of the Augustinian Canons Regular at Oignies, made famous by the mystic Mary of Oignies, an oblate of that priory. Under the impulse of this ardent soul, G. devoted himself to popular preaching (c. 1211-13), then placed himself at the service of the Crusades, preaching first against the Albigensians and then in favor of the Holy Land (1213-15). Elected bishop of Acre in 1215, the following year he went to the papal curia then in Perugia, where he found Innocent III dead, and came into contact with the Franciscan movement. Consecrated bishop at the curia, he went to Genoa, where he embarked for Acre, which he reached in November 1216. He immediately devoted himself to apostolic work and assisted (1218-21) the Christian army at Damietta, where he also met St. Francis of Assisi. He then made two journeys to Italy (1222-23, 1225-26). He resigned the bishopric in 1228 and retired to Oignies. In 1229 Gregory IX created him cardinal bishop of Frascati, and as such he took part in the peace negotiations with Frederick II at Gaeta. The rest of his cardinalatial activity is little known. A year after his death, his mortal remains were transferred to Belgium and buried at Oignies. G. was one of the most distinguished figures of his time and an ardent promoter of the internal reform of ecclesiastical life, a role he also revealed in his writings. These are: Vita Mariae Oignensis (d. 1213), an important source for knowledge of the religious movements in Belgium at that time. Written in 1215, it was almost entirely inserted into the Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais, XXX, chaps. 10-51, and fully published by the Bollandists, Acta SS. Iunii, IV (Antwerp 1707, pp. 542-72); Historia occidentalis e orientalis (ed. D. Dubois, Douai 1597; the Historia orientalis alone also in Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos [I, Hanover 1611, pp. 1047-1172]); Sermones de tempore (Antwerp 1575, Venice 1578); Sermones vulgares, of which extracts are found in J. B. Pitra, Analecta novissima spicilegii Solemensis (II, Frascati 1888, pp. 344-442); Th. Fr. Crane, The «exempla» or illustrative stories from the «sermones vulgares» of Jacques de Vitry (London 1890); S. Frenken, Die Exempel des Jacob von Vitry (Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters, 15, 1, Munich 1914). The seven letters written from 1216 to 1221, some addressed to several persons, have been critically edited by R. Röhricht, Die Briefe des Jacobus de Vitriaco, in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichtliche (14 [1894], pp. 97-118; 15 [1895], pp. 568-87; 16 [1896], pp. 72-114). Some of them are also found in E. Martène et U. Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum (III, Paris 1717, cols. 287-306).