HILDEBERT OF LAVARDIN°

HILDEBERT OF LAVARDIN°, poet and writer, bishop of Le Mans from 1096 and archbishop of Tours from 1125. Nothing in his writings indicates that Hildebert had any personal contact with the Jews. Although one of his sermons is entitled "Against the Jews," the polemic – also aimed at the heretical Christian followers of Helvidius – is confined to the problem of the virginity of Mary; Hildebert takes issue with the Jewish claim that Joseph was in fact the father of Jesus. In a sermon composed for St. James's day Hildebert interprets Isaiah 11:6, "the calf, the young lion, and the lamb will lie down together," as an eschatological vision of the time when the Jew (the calf) and the young lion (the gentile) will be reunited by Jesus (the lamb). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J.P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus… series Latina…, 171 (1893), col. 811–4 and 645; P. v. Moos, Hildebert von Lavardin (1965), incl. bibl. (Bernhard Blumenkranz)