Gilbert of Hoyland

Who was Gilbert of Hoyland?

Gilbert of Hoyland was a twelfth-century abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Swineshead, Lincolnshire, between about 1147 and his death in 1172. Swineshead had been a member of the monastic order of Savigny, which joined the Cistercian Order in 1147. Gilbert apparently went to Swineshead to help the community adopt Cistercian usages.

Gilbert's surviving works are formed of seven brief spiritual treatises, some letters, and 48 sermons commenting on Song of Songs 3.1-5.10.

Sometime after Bernard of Clairvaux died in 1153, Gilbert was asked to continue Bernard's incomplete series of 86 sermons on the biblical Song of Songs. Gilbert wrote 47 sermons before he died in 1172, probably at the French Cistercian monastery of Larrivour. Gilbert's 47 sermons ended in Chapter 5 of the Song of Songs; another English Cistercian abbot, John of Ford, wrote another 120 sermons on the Song of Songs, so completing the Cistercian sermon-commentary on the book. The sermons were fairly well-known, surviving in about fifty manuscripts.