Gilbert Foliot - Writings

Writings

Foliot was well known as a letter writer, and his letters were later collected as a book. The main manuscript for this collection, now held at the Bodleian Library, is supposed to have originated in Foliot's own writing office. About 250 to 300 examples of Foliot's letters have survived, which together with his surviving charters gives a total of almost 500 items. The collection was printed in a modern edition edited by Adrian Morey and Christopher N. L. Brooke and published by the Cambridge University Press in 1967, under the title of The Letters and Charters of Gilbert Foliot. Some of the letters have appeared in volumes five through eight of Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, from the Rolls Series, published from 1875–1885. Older editions appeared in the Patres ecclesiae Anglicanae series from the 1840s, and in Migne's Patrologica from 1854. The letters cover most of the period of Foliot's public life, and are one of the main sources for the history of that period. The historian David Knowles said of the collection that "owing to its wealth of personal and local detail is of the greatest value for the church historian". According to Knowles, Foliot's letters paint a picture of an active bishop and ecclesiastical leader who supported the Gregorian church reforms but did not meddle in politics beyond those of the church. His letters are typical of the educated letter writer of his time, refined and polished to an art form.

Foliot also wrote a number of sermons and commentaries on the Bible. Of the commentaries, only those on the Song of Songs and the Lord's Prayer still survive. The commentary on the Song of Songs was first printed in 1638, by Patrick Young, and again in the Patrologia Latina volume 202. The commentary on the Lord's Prayer was first published by David Bell in 1989. The commentary on the Song of Songs has been printed three times, the last in the middle of the 20th century. About 60 of his acta, or decisions, as Bishop of Hereford still survive, and from his time at London a further 150 or so are extant. A contemporary, Peter, the prior of Holy Trinity Priory in Aldgate, London, heard Foliot preach a sermon at a synod, and praised the sermon as "adorned with flowers of words and sentences and supported by a copious array of authorities. It ran backwards and forwards on its path from its starting-point back to the same starting point." The sermon so inspired Peter that he wrote a work entitled Pantheologus, which dealt with the distinctio method of exegesis, which was developing around this time. All of Foliot's surviving theological works are based on exegesis, and may include nine sermons on the subject of Saints Peter and Paul, which were dedicated to Ailred of Rivaulx. These sermons are dedicated to a "Gilbert, Bishop of London", which could mean either Foliot or an earlier bishop, Gilbert Universalis. However, the historian Richard Sharpe feels that the fact that the sermons are paired with a group of Ailred's sermons dedicated to Foliot makes their authorship by Foliot slightly more likely. These sermons survive in manuscript, now in the British Library as Royal 2 D.xxxii, but have not yet been printed. A further group of sermons which were dedicated to Haimo, the abbot of Bordesley, did not survive, but is known from the surviving dedication letter.

The antiquarian John Bale in the 1550s listed six works of Foliot known to him, five of which were letters. The sixth work known to Bale was the commentary on the Song of Songs, which survived in a single manuscript, now in the Bodleian Library. Young also recorded a Lundinensis Ecclesiae as being by Foliot. The scholar John Pits gave much the same list in 1619, adding one work, a Vitas aliquot sanctorum Angliae, Librum unun, but this work never appears in a medieval book catalogue and has not survived under this name so it is unclear if Foliot wrote such a work. The antiquary Thomas Tanner, writing in the early 18th century, listed Foliot as the author of the seven works given by Bale and Pits, adding an eighth, the Tractatus Gilberti, episcopi London: Super Istud "Sunt diuae olivae", citing John Leland, the 16th-century antiquary, as his source. This apparently is the collection of nine sermons on Saints Peter and Paul that has yet to be published and is still in manuscript at the Bodleian Library. Leland also listed another work by Foliot, the Omeliae Gileberti, episcopi Herefordensis, which he stated was held at Forde Abbey. This work, since lost, might have been the sermons mentioned above, or could have been a known collection of homilies, also lost. It is also possible that another Gilbert was the author. Lastly, Walter Map recorded that Foliot had begun work on a "the Old and the New Law" shortly before his death.