Gilbert Foliot - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

Foliot died on 18 February 1187. The medieval chronicler Walter Map praised him as "a man most accomplished in the three languages, Latin, French and English, and eloquent and clear in each of them". The modern historian Frank Barlow says of him that "It was probably because he was so self-righteous that it could be suggested that his behaviour was sometimes devious." He went blind some time during the 1180s, but continued to work on his biblical writings.

Foliot sent his nephew, Richard Foliot, and another clerk of his household to Bologna to study law in the 1160s, exemplifying the growing emphasis laid on Roman law among his countrymen. Another nephew was Ralph Foliot, Archdeacon of Hereford and a royal justice during the reign of Richard I. During his time at both dioceses he did much to promote his relatives, and all of the archdeacons he appointed while at London were either nephews or other relatives. A member of his household at Hereford was the scholar Roger of Hereford, who dedicated his computus, or treatise on calculating dates, to Foliot. Another work, the Ysagoge in Theologiam, was dedicated to him by a writer named Odo while Foliot was still a prior in France.