Gezzelinus, Bl.
GEZZELINUS, BL.
Hermit; d. Aug. 6, 1138. He was a hermit in Grünenwald near Luxembourg and for almost 14 years lived without shelter or clothing in the mountains and forests. With incredible patience and endurance he bore the summer heat and winter cold with herbs and roots as his only food. The monk achard of Clairvaux is supposed to
have met Gezzelinus while staying at the Abbey of himmerod as a master builder and to have given him the habit of bernard of clairvaux. On the basis of this the cistercians number him as one of their own, but in fact he never assumed the habit. He was buried in the Benedictine abbey church of Maria–Münster in the city of Luxembourg, but his relics have disappeared since the destruction of the abbey church in 1544.
Feast: Aug. 6.
Bibliography: a. m. zimmermann, Kalendarium Benedictinum: Die Heiligen und Seligen des Benediktinerorderns und seiner Zweige 2:544; 4:88. b. griesser, ed., Exordium magnum Cisterciense (Series scriptorum sancti ordinis cisterciensis 2; Rome 1961) 202. Patrologia Latina 185.1:455–459.
[c. spahr]