Geoffroy du Breuil

Geoffroy de Breuil of Vigeois was a 12th-century French chronicler, trained at the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Martial of Limoges, the site of a great early library.

Life

Geoffrey was born around 1140. He joined the abbey of St. Martial in Limoges as a monk in 1160, was ordained as a priest in 1168 after a brief period at La Souterraine, and became Prior (1178–1184) of the St. Martial dependency in Vigeois in 1178. It was at Vigeois that Geoffrey composed his Chroniques which trace in detail some great local families, often Geoffroy's forebears and kin, while relating events happening from 994 to 1184: the fiery convulsive sickness, (actually ergotism from a fungus or ergot of wheat), the preparations for the First Crusade, reports of combats in the Holy Land, the spread of Cathar beliefs (writing in 1181, he was the first to use the term Albigensians), all the while unconsciously revealing the preoccupations and manners of the times.

Sources

• France, John (2024). "Violence and Monasticism in Two Aquitanian Chronicles". In Kooper, Erik S.; Levelt, Sjoerd (eds.). The Medieval Chronicle. Vol. 16. Brill. pp. 61–88.

External links

• History of the Romanesque Abbey of Vigeois (French)
• His chronicle, in Latin, on Gallica