LAMBERTO of SANT-BERTIN. — Benedictine, born c. 1061, died 22 June 1125 at St-Bertin.
He entered (1070–72) the monastery of St-Bertin, where he later taught grammar, music, philosophy and theology. First prior, then (1095) abbot, he worked to reform the monastery’s finances and discipline, an effort later extended with considerable difficulty to other convents (MGH, Script., XIII, pp. 648 ff.).
A few letters survive from L., among them notable ones to St Anselm, his friend (PL 158, 1083). Of his writings only fragments remain. The Tractatus de moribus Lamberti abbatis (MGH, Script., XV, pp. 946–53), written by a pupil, records: Sermons on the Old Testament; Disputations on free will, on foreknowledge and predestination, on grace, on original sin; Questions on natural science (“he would propose questions about nature and the qualities of nature”). While the naturalistic questions reflect the knowledge and errors of the age (“… intellectus in fronte, memoria in cerebro, ira in felle, avaritia in iecore, timor in corde, anhela in pulmone, laetitia in splene, cogitatio in renibus, sanguis in corpore, anima in sanguine…” (MGH, Script., XV, p. 948)), his treatment of philosophical and theological principles is more discerning.
Although Duchesne, Delisle and Manitius deny it, many scholars—among them Taillard (PL 163, 1005, n. 7), Tessier and Celler—hold that L. of St-B. and Lamberto of St-Omer are the same person, and therefore the Liber Floridus, compiled between 1090 and 1120 (Ghent University Library, ms. 92), a kind of encyclopedia covering theological, philosophical, biblical chronography, natural science, astronomy and geography, should be attributed to L.