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V. Louise Katainen
JACQUES DE VITRY
ca. 1160/70–1240)
The son of a wealthy bourgeois family in Vitry-en-
Perthios near Reims, Jacques studied in Paris at a time
when Peter the Chanter, one of the most celebrated
preachers of his day, was master of the cathedral school.
In 1211, he entered the monastery of Augustinian regu-
lar canons dedicated to St. Nicolas in Oignies, not far
from Cambrai. Over the next fi ve years, he was close to
the lay religious group known as the béguines, whose
leader was Marie d’Oignies. During this same period,
he became a preacher of crusades, fi rst against the Al-
bigensians in 1213 and then against the infi dels in the
Holy Land in 1214. His preaching won him the see of
Acre on the coast of Palestine. Jacques arrived in Pal-
estine in 1216 and accompanied the armies of the Fifth
Crusade at Damietta, 1218–21. Weary of constant strife,
Jacques left Acre in 1225 and served Pope Gregory IX
in Italy and in the Low Countries over the next three
years. In 1228, Gregory appointed him cardinal bishop
of Tusculum, and he remained in Rome until his death.
Jacques was buried at the monastery in Oignies, where
he had begun his ecclesiastical vocation.
Jacques’s most signifi cant contribution to the history
of the church comprised his collections of sermons in-
tended to serve as models for preachers. One collection,
Sermones dominicales (de tempore), gives three sermons
for each of the Sundays of the ecclesiastical calendar;
Sermones de sanctis gives 115 sermons for saints’ days
and special feasts; Sermones communes et feriales gives
twenty-seven sermons for daily use; Sermones vulgares
(or ad status) gives seventy-four sermons addressing
social classes and religious groups. The fi rst small col-
lection of such model sermons was compiled only the
generation before by Alain de Lille, and Jacques went
far beyond them with his collections, particularly in
their homiletic illustrations, or exempla, which provide
a wealth of amusing and instructive anecdotes.
Jacques also composed a biography of Marie
d’Oignies (1213) that helped gain papal approval for
the béguine movement and has since become a valu-
able historical source for the early days of that con-
troversial movement. Several of his letters date from
his sojourn in Palestine (up to 1221), and his Historia
Hierosolymitana abbreviata in three books recounts not
only the history of Jerusalem during the Crusades but
also, and perhaps more importantly, the new and often
controversial religious movements of the day, such as
the béguines, the Humiliati, and even the Franciscans
(at least in their more colorful manifestations), as they
relate to the renewal of the church and to the success
of its mission.
Although Jacques’s religious vocation took the more
traditional form of an Augustinian canon, both his sym-
pathies for the spiritual revival of his day and his talents
as an extraordinary preacher place him fi rmly in the
mainstream of the life of the church in the 13th century.
See also Alain de Lille; Marie d’OigniesFurther Reading
Jacques de Vitry. The Historia occidentalis of Jacques de Vitry,
ed. John F. Hinnebusch. Fribourg: University Press, 1972.
——. Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, 1160/70–1240, évêque de
Saint-Jean d’Acre, ed. R.B.C. Huygens. Leiden: Brill, 1960.
——. Sermones vulgares. In Analecta nouissima spicilegii
Solesmensis, altera continuatio, ed. Jean Baptiste Pitra. 2
vols. Paris: Typis Tusculanis, 1885–88, Vol. 2.
Funk, Philipp. Jakob von Vitry: Leben und Werke. Leipzig:
Teubner, 1909.
Mark ZierJACQUES DE VITRY