Gabriel Gerberon

Gabriel Gerberon (August 12, 1628 in St. Calais, Sarthe, France – March 29, 1711 at the abbey of St. Denis) was a Jansenist monk.

Biography

At the age of twenty he took the vows of the Benedictine order at the abbey of Sainte Melaine, Rennes, and afterwards taught rhetoric and philosophy in several monasteries. His open advocacy of Jansenist opinions, however, caused his superiors to relegate him to the most obscure houses of the order, and finally to keep him under surveillance at the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés at Paris.

Here he wrote a defence of the doctrine of the Real Presence against the Calvinists in the form of an apology for Rupert, abbot of Deutz (Apologia pro Ruperto abbate Tuitensi, Paris, 1669). In 1676 he published at Brussels, under the name of Sieur Flore de Ste Foi his Miroir de la piété chrétienne, an enlarged edition of which appeared at Liège in the following year. This was condemned by certain archbishops and theologians as the repetition of the five condemned propositions of Jansen, and Gerberon defended it, under the name of Abbé Valentin in Le Miroir sans tache (Paris, 1680). He had by this time aroused against him the full fury of the Jesuits, and at their instigation a royal provost was sent to Corbie to arrest him. He had, however, just time to escape, and fled to the Low Countries, where he lived in various towns.

Apologia pro Ruperto Abbate Tuitiensi (Paris, 1669), in which he proves against Salmasius and other Protestants that Abbot Rupert of Deutz held the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence Histoire générale du Jansénisme (Amsterdam, 1700), 3 vols. Acta Marii Mercatoris (Brussels, 1673) Histoire de la robe sans couture de N. S. Jésus-Christ, qui est révérée dans l'église des Bénédictins d'Argenteuil (Paris, 1676)

His chief Jansenistic work is Le Miroir de la Piété chrétienne (Brussels, 1676). He also edited the works of St. Anselm: S. Anselmi opera omnia, necnon Eadmeri monachi Cantuar. Historia Novorum et alia opuscula (Paris, 1675).