Geoffroy de Breuil
French chronicler
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Geoffroy de Breuil of Vigeois (French pronunciation: [ʒɔfʁwa də bʁœj]) was a 12th-century chronicler, trained at the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Martial of Limoges, the site of a great early library.
Life
Geoffrey was born around 1140.[1] He joined the abbey of St. Martial in Limoges as a monk in 1160, was ordained as a priest in 1168 after a brief period at La Souterraine, and became Prior (1178–1184) of the St. Martial dependency in Vigeois in 1178.[1] It was at Vigeois that Geoffrey composed his Chroniques which trace in detail some great local families, often Geoffroy's forebears and kin, while relating events happening from 994 to 1184: the fiery convulsive sickness, (actually ergotism from a fungus or ergot of wheat), the preparations for the First Crusade, reports of combats in the Holy Land, the spread of Cathar beliefs (writing in 1181, he was the first to use the term Albigensians),[a] while unconsciously revealing the preoccupations and mannerisms of the times. Geoffrey's chronicle is also a key source for historians of the crusades because it contains details about how the descendants of crusaders commemorated their ancestors, as well as the earliest known version of the so-called "Saladin Legend" in western Europe.[3][4]