Fulbert of Chartres

Of modest origin, and said by tradition to have passed through the cathedral school of Reims alongside the future king Robert the Pious, a link historians have set aside, he taught at Chartres from 1004 and made it one of the most sought-after schools in the West: men came from Italy, Germany and England, and his pupils called him “Socrates”. Bishop in 1006, he went on teaching. His surviving correspondence is a major source for the eleventh century: in it a bishop arbitrates feudal quarrels, refuses royal demands, and defines in a few lines the mutual duties of lord and vassal — a text historians of feudalism still quote. In 1020 a fire destroyed the cathedral; he undertook the rebuilding and drew gifts from all over Europe. The crypt he had built still carries the present church. He died in 1028.