Pierre of Cambrai

Pierre of Cambrai, called Petrus in Latin, was a thirteenth-century priest who wrote the earliest known account of Saint Dymphna, the patron saint of people with mental illness. Almost all we know of him comes from that work. He was a canon of Saint-Aubert, a community of priests living under a religious rule in the city of Cambrai, in what is now northern France. Sometime between 1238 and 1248, Guy I, Bishop of Cambrai, asked him to write down the story of Dymphna and her companion, the priest Gerebernus, who were honored at Geel, in present-day Belgium. Pierre wrote in Latin, working from a legend already told in the region, perhaps in Dutch. A collection of miracles reported at the saints' tomb, written between about 1240 and 1247, is probably also his. His Life survives in several fifteenth-century manuscripts. Later historians, such as Johann Peter Kirsch in the Catholic Encyclopedia, judged that the legend has little historical foundation, but the care for the mentally ill that grew up around her shrine at Geel continues today.

Pierre of Cambrai is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Faith not well documented.