Gerard of Clairvaux (died 1177)

Gerard was a native of Lombardy[1] and as a young man entered the then-Benedictine Fossanova Abbey, to the south of Rome.

He was known as a strict disciplinarian and during a visitation of Igny Abbey, a daughter house of Clairvaux, was murdered by a monk named Hugh of Bazoches [fr], whom he had threatened with disciplinary punishment.

[3] The most important source for Gerard's life and death is the Exordium magnum Ordinis Cisterciensis by Konrad of Eberbach, written some decades after the events in Clairvaux.

It already portrays Gerard as a martyr, recounting that Petrus Monoculus, who was the abbot of Igny at the time of the murder and from 1179 Gerard's next successor but one at Clairvaux, had a vision of him during the funeral mass together with Saint Bernard in the light of heaven.

[4] His liturgical veneration in the Cistercian Order was first permitted however by Pope Clement XI in 1702.