LAMBERTO of SAINT-BERTIN. — Benedictine, born around 1061, died on 22 June 1125 at St-Bertin.
He entered the monastery of St-Bertin (1070–72), where he later taught grammar, music, philosophy, and theology. First prior, then (1095) abbot, he worked on the financial and disciplinary reform of the monastery, subsequently extending it, amid numerous difficulties, to other convents (MGH, Script., XIII, p. 648 ff.).
Several letters of L. are extant; noteworthy are those to s. Anselmo, his friend (PL 158, 1083). Of his works, only fragments remain. The Tractatus de moribus Lamberti abbatis (MGH, Script., XV, pp. 946–53), written by a student, mentions: Sermones de Vet. Testamento; Disputaciones on free will, foreknowledge and predestination, Grace, and original sin; Quaestiones on the natural sciences (“proposed questions on nature and the qualities of nature”). If the natural-science questions reflect the knowledge and errors of the period (“... intellectus in fronte, memoria in cerebro, ira in felle, avaritia in iecore, timor in corde, anhela in pulmone, laeticia in splene, cogitatio in renibus, sanguia in corpore, anima in sanguine... ” (MGH, Script., XV, p. 948), the treatment of the philosophical and theological principles is, by contrast, perceptive.
Although Duchesne, Delisle, and Manitius deny it, many, including Taillar (PL 163, 1005, note 7), Tessier, and Celler, hold that L. of S. B. and Lamberto of St-Omer were the same person; consequently, the Liber Floridus, written between 1090 and 1120 (Genter Univ. Bibl., ms. 92), should be attributed to L. This is a kind of encyclopedia comprising theological and philosophical questions, as well as matters of biblical chronography, the natural sciences, astronomy, and geography.