Guy (bishop of Amiens)

Template:Short description Template:No footnotes Template:Use dmy dates Guy (died 1075) was the bishop of Amiens in the north-east of France and a Latin poet. He composed the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, a celebration of the Norman victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Life

Born in 1014, Guy was the son of Enguerrand I, Count of Ponthieu.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn He was educated for a career in the church at the abbey of Saint-Riquier and was one of its most brilliant students.Template:Sfn His teacher was abbot Enguerrand, called "the wise".Template:Sfn Guy was an archdeacon by 1045.Template:Sfn As the trusted representative of Bishop Fulk II, he was sent in 1049 to the papal curia to place charges against the abbot of Corbie.Template:Sfn In 1056, Guy was witness to a charter by Count Baldwin V, Count of Flanders, for St. Peter's at Ghent, also in attendance were Guy's nephew Guy I, Count of Ponthieu, and Roger, Count of Saint-Pol.Template:Sfn

Guy succeeded Fulk II as bishop of Amiens in 1058.Template:Sfn On May 23, 1059, Bishop Guy went to Reims to witness the crowning of Philip I of France alongside his nephew, Guy I, Count of Ponthieu.Template:Sfn When Guy became bishop of Amiens he inherited the ecclesisatical struggles of his predecessor with the abbey of Corbie; this eventually resulted in Guy being suspended by Pope Alexander II from his duties as bishop.Template:Sfn

He was in this state of papal disfavour at the time of the Norman Conquest. This may have been the (contributing) reason why bishop Guy composed the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio ("Song of the Battle of Hastings"), as an effort to flatter the new Norman king of England, William I, who was then in very high favor with the pope. But if so, bishop Guy's poem failed in its purpose. In 1067, he gave an endowment to the abbey of Saint-Riquier in Ponthieu, which was witnessed by Count Baldwin VI of Flanders.Template:Sfn He was highly enough thought of at the Norman court to be assigned as Matilda of Flanders's chaplain when she went over to England for her coronation in 1068.Template:EfnTemplate:Sfn When Guy died in 1075, he still had not regained his bishopric.Template:Sfn

Sources

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• The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Bishop Guy of Amiens, edited by Catherine Morton and Hope Muntz, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1972.

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