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Gerard (Girard) La Pucelle (c. 1115/20 – 1184) was an Anglo-French scholar, possibly born in England, who taught canon law^[1] at the University of Paris in the 1150s, when the study of the discipline of the Church was first differentiated from theology, spurred by the collections of church decretals that began with the Decretum Gratiani assembled by a monk at the University of Bologna. Among his surviving texts are glosses on the Decretum Manuscripts, among the manuscripts of Durham Cathedral^[2] and, in the Summa Lipsiensis^[3] marked with the siglum 'Magister G. Coventris Episcopus' ("Doctor G. Bishop of Coventry"), and occasionally in the Summa Parisiensis^[4], and elsewhere (See Pennington). Gerard La Pucelle added to the standard collection from which he taught. Among his pupils were Lucas of Hungary, Ralph Niger, master Richard, a certain Gervase who retired to Durham, and the English scholar Walter Map (Pennington).

Gerard was a member of Thomas Beckett's entourage, his extended familia, and a close friend of John of Salisbury. He undertook a mission to the Empire in 1165/66 even though Frederick Barbarossa was under a ban of excommunication. In 1168 Gérard returned to England and took the oath of fealty to Henry II which Becket had rejected. With papal permission and that of Louis VII of France he was permitted to reside—and doubtless teach— in Cologne, which was one of the most important centers of canon law scholarship in the 1160s and 1170s.

From about 1174 he was once again in England, serving as a principal clerk to Becket's successor as Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Richard of Dover.

Perhaps already a canon, in January 1183, he was appointed Bishop of Coventry (later known as Coventry and Lichfield)^[5], which made him the vassal of Henry II of England^[6], but he died the following year.

1. ^ leges et decreta according to John of Salisbury.
2. ^ MS C.III.1 marked with the siglum `Ger.' (Pennington)
3. ^ The collection of decretals with commentary, as used in Leipzig
4. ^ The decretals and commentaries collected at the Univerrsity of Paris.
5. ^ The two dioceses were combined, 1121-1188.
6. ^ Throughout the latter part of the twelfth and early part of the thirteenth century, the bishop owed the service of fifteen knights, according to Victoria County History: Warwick, vol 2 (1908) {http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=36487 (on-line])

• Catholic Encyclopedia:] "Paris, University of"
• of Benedictine monks: Priory of Coventry', A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 2 (1908), pp. 52-9 Date accessed: 13 May 2006.
• 'Dignitaries & canons whose prebends are unidentified: Canons for whom no prebend assigned', Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066-1300: volume 4: Salisbury (1991), pp. 118-38. Date accessed: 13 May 2006. Apparently already a canon, though his prebendary, whether of Canterbury or Coventry, is unidentified.
• Dr. Ken Pennington, "d.-glosses, appear in a strata of Bolognese glosses composed during the 1180s" Bibliography.
• Dr. Bjorn Weiler, review of Joseph P. Huffman, Family, Commerce and Religion in London and Cologne: Anglo-German Immigrants, c.1000-c.1300 (Cambridge University Press, 1998) (on-line)

• Mathieu d'Angers
• Anselm of Paris