Baring-Gould’s sources: Belgian and Benedictine Martyrologies on April 7th and May 2nd. Authority A life written by a contemporary, Robert, Archdeacon of Oostrevand, dedicated to Alois, B. of Arras, d. 1148.] S. Aibert was the son of a knight Aldbald of Espen, April j.J •S’. Albert.
…near TournaL From early childhood he loved prayer above everything, and would rise at night and kneel on the floor. But the servants having detected him, and complained to his father, the child hid himself in the sheep-fold every day, and prayed there, till he was found one day fast asleep on his knees, with his head in the straw, as he had fallen, overcome with weariness. Wherever he was, in the fields or at home, if he heard the church bells beginning to tinkle, he at once ran to church. One day, when he was grown up, he heard a jongleur sing a ballad about S. Theobald the hermit, and his conversion from the world. Then Aibert went and placed himself under the direction of a hermit named John, who lived in a retired wood near Crespin. 1 After a pilgrimage to Rome, made in company with the abbot of Crespin, he entered the monastery of Crespin, in 1090.
After twenty-five years in the cloister, in 1115, he returned to a solitary life in the wilderness. A story is told of him when there, that one winter the waters were out, so that none could reach him, and he was unable to hear mass. This troubled him sorely, and he called on the Blessed Virgin to succour him. Then he fell asleep, and lo ! he saw a very beautiful woman enter his cell followed by a troop of maidens. At this Aibert exclaimed, “ Women in my cell ! It is not permitted. Go out instantly.” “ Pardon me, brother, I am the Virgin Mary, and thou hast summoned me,” answered she; “ And now why dost thou ask to hear masses, when thy whole life and acts are the solemnity of masses.” Then she put a piece of bread into his mouth and vanished. Such was his dream, and so implicitly did he believe in its reality, that he resolved not to eat bread any more, but only herbs.
To obviate the inconvenience from which he had suffered, 1 Between Valenciennes and S. Ghislaln. Burchardt, B. of Cambrai, ordained him priest; after which he was wont to say two masses every day, one for the living, and the other for the dead Every night he recited the whole psalter, or read nine lessons; and every day he bowed his knee a hundred times, saying at each genuflexion, “ Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee ! Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” Crowds came to him from all the country round, and he gave them good advice, heard their confessions, and had such power that he converted many sinners. He died in the fiftieth year of his monastic life, in 1140, on Easter Day, and was buried in his cell His body was enshrined in 1303, and again in 1464. It was saved in the Calvinist riots of 1566, parts are at Toumai, other portions at Espain and Mons.
