GIOVANNI da FÉCAMP. — Benedictine abbot and theologian, b. in Ravenna at the end of the 10th century, d. at Fécamp (Normandy) on 22 February 1078. Nephew of the celebrated abbot Bl. Guglielmo da Volpiano, he soon became his favorite disciple at the abbey of S. Benigno di Fruttuaria. He followed his uncle when the latter went to France to found the monastery of S. Benigno di Digione, and in 1017 was appointed by him prior of the abbey of the Most Holy Trinity of Fécamp, of which he became abbot in 1028. From 1052 to 1054 he also governed the abbey of Digione. It was precisely at that moment that Fécamp became the center of a Benedictine Congregation, to which the monasteries of Blangy, Saint-Taurin, and Bernay subsequently joined. Although in that fervent period of monastic reforms, led by Cluny, St-Vanne, and S. Benigno di Digione, there were no rivalries, the leaders nevertheless had to participate in all the political and religious movement of the age and submit to its clashes and upheavals. G., a friend of the English king Edoardo III, was also welcomed by Guglielmo il Conquistatore, who willingly went to Fécamp; in contact with Fruttuaria, he did not lose touch with Italy and the Empire; with the empress Agnese, mother of Enrico IV, he maintained an epistolary relationship.
Endowed with great sensitivity, in contact with the great he suffered much from the incomprehension and harshness of men. Small in stature (for this reason he was called Jeannelin, a diminutive, which G. did not disdain), gentle in spirit, he governed with that moderation which is the characteristic of the Rule of St. Benedict. Burning with divine love, he desired to transfuse his inner fervor into his monks. An eremite in desire, he was a forerunner of the tendency which during that same period was to spread widely through the work of St. Romualdo and St. Brunone. Eager for contemplation, he passed through the great offices while carrying in his heart the anguished longing for solitude and nostalgia for the « homeland ». Under this religious pressure, his pen does not linger over human subjects, but is like an arrow aimed toward heaven.
He wrote: Confessio theologica (PL 40, 909-36; new ed. by J. Leclercq - I. P. Bonnes, pp. 109-83 in three parts, Trinity, Redemption, redeemed soul); Libellus et Scripturis et verbis Patrum, in four parts (Incarnation and divine perfections, love of Christ, contemplation, prayers); Confessio fidei (PL 101, 1027-98), in four parts (One and Triune God, Incarnation of the Word, explanation of the Symbol, Eucharist). Manuscript 245 of the Municipal Library of Metz contains a compendium of the Confessio fidei, once attributed to Alcuino. These three writings are merely different recensions of a single work, which may be regarded as a «prayed theology», from which the Meditationes, the Soliloquia, and the Manuale, attributed to St. Agostino and widely disseminated down to our own times, were derived. I. Leclercq and I. P. Bonnes have published new short works: Deploratio quietis et solitudinis derelictae (op. cit., pp. 184-97): a work of maturity, perhaps the most personal; Lessus paenitentiae (ibid., pp. 221-228) and Pater mi (ibid., pp. 229-30): two spiritual poems; four letters of spiritual direction (ibid., pp. 198-220), revealing the author’s spirit and method; the third is addressed to the empress Agnese. Migne (PL 147, 463-73) had already published other letters concerning governance, in which G. reveals himself to be calm but energetic. Wilmart attributed various Meditationes and Preces—especially the prayers considered to be by St. Ambrogio, which the Roman Breviary prints at the end as proparatio ad Missam—to G., but Leclercq raises serious doubts about their authenticity.
These works, despite the simplicity of their style, the repetition of their ideas, and the redundancy of their stock phrases borrowed from Scripture and the Fathers, possess a special virtus suasiva and, after a millennium, still have the freshness of a mountain spring. Wilmart rightly considered them the finest ascetic production of the Middle Ages before St. Bernardo, and it may be added that the Eucharistic chapters of the Confessio fidei are among the most beautiful of the period. These writings, under the name of St. Agostino, have passed through the centuries because they reflect the irrepressible longing of the Christian soul for Paradise.