SILVESTER II., pope from 999 till 1003, and previously famous, under his Christian name of Gerbert, first as a teacher and afterwards as archbishop successively of Reims and Ravenna, was an Aquitanian by birth, and was educated at the abbey of St Gerold in Aurillac. Here he seems to have had Gerald for his abbot and Raymond for his instructor, both of whom were among the most trusted correspondents of his later life.
He adapted in his own interest the theory (constantly recurrent among mystics and innovators, from the time of Abbot Joachim to the present day) of three dispensations, the old, with its revelation of the Father, 'the newer with its revelation of the Son, and the final or era of the Spirit.
Quasi jocando, he cited Bede to prove that Dionysius the Areopagite had been bishop of Corinth, while they relied upon the statement of the abbot Hilduin that he had been bishop of Athens.
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There is reason to believe that in England a relatively good level was maintained throughout, thanks in great measure to the fact that the kings resolutely refused to allow the introduction of commendation - Wolsey was the first and last commendatory abbot in England.
In 1520 Luther's De Captivitate Babylonica converted him into a zealous supporter of the Reformer's views, to which he won over the abbot among others.
Among the friends of Alcuin and the advisers of Charles was Theodulfus, bishop of Orleans and abbot of Fleury (d.
We cannot regard the appearance at Rome of the personage who related these marvels in presence of the pope as a mere popular fiction: it rests on two authorities apparently independent (one of them a letter from Odo of Reims, abbot of St Remy from 1118 to 1151), for their discrepancies show that one was not copied from the other, though in the principal facts they agree.
Patrick Hamilton became titular abbot in 1517, and after his martyrdom the abbey was added to the bishopric of Ross.
There are several portraits of Lord Hood by Abbot in the Guildhall and in the National Portrait Gallery.
In the 9th century it spread to the other countries that adopted the Roman use: it is mentioned in an inventory of vestments given by Abbot Angilbert (d.