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Biography

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Saint Aibert, also known as Aybert or Albert of Crespin, was a Benedictine monk and hermit of the County of Hainaut in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. He was born in 1060 in the village of Espain, in the diocese of Tournai, in territory that now forms part of Belgium. Of a modest farming family, he showed piety from youth and received enough instruction to be ordained a priest. Seeking a more rigorous religious life, he entered the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Pierre at Crespin (in what is now northern France) and there made his monastic profession, traditionally during the abbacy of Giselbert.

After a period of community life at Crespin, Aibert obtained permission to withdraw to a nearby hermitage, where he lived as a recluse for some twenty-five years. His eremitical observance was marked by severe austerity, including the wearing of a hair shirt and iron chains, rigorous fasting, and long vigils. Although he lived in solitude, he did not refuse those who sought him. People from the surrounding countryside came in large numbers to his cell, and he spent many hours each day hearing confessions.

Aibert was distinguished by Eucharistic devotion unusual for the period. He celebrated Mass daily, at a time when daily celebration was not the general custom among priests, and he received Communion frequently. A contemporary vita composed by a monk of Crespin presents him as combining penitential solitude with pastoral accessibility, prayer, and charity toward penitents.

Aibert died on 7 April 1140 at his hermitage adjoining Crespin Abbey and was buried at the abbey. Local veneration as a saint arose soon afterward and continued in Benedictine usage and in the dioceses of the region. His feast is kept on 7 April. Surviving knowledge of his life rests chiefly on the medieval vita and later liturgical notices; many personal particulars remain unknown or follow the conventional patterns of twelfth-century monastic hagiography.

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