Gerard, Archbishop of York

Gerard (died 21 May 1108) was Archbishop of York, England (1100-1108), and Lord Chancellor of England (1085-1092). A Norman, he was a member of the cathedral clergy at Rouen before becoming a royal clerk under King William I of England and subsequently his son King William II Rufus. Gerard was appointed Lord Chancellor by William I, and he continued in that office under William II, who rewarded him with the Bishopric of Hereford in 1096. Gerard may have been with the king's hunting party when William II was killed, as he is known to have witnessed the first charter issued by the new king, Henry I of England, within days of William's death.

Soon after Henry's coronation Gerard was appointed to the recently vacant see of York, and became embroiled in the long-running dispute between York and the see of Canterbury concerning which archbishopric had primacy over England. Gerard managed to secure papal recognition of York's claim to jurisdiction over the church in Scotland, but he was forced to agree to a compromise with Anselm, his counterpart at Canterbury over Canterbury's claims to authority over York, although it was not binding on his successors. In the Investiture Controversy between the king and the papacy over the right to appoint bishops, Gerard worked on reconciling the claims of the two parties; the controversy was finally resolved in 1107.

Gerard was a patron of learning, to the extent that he urged at least one of his clergy to study Hebrew, a language not commonly studied at that time. He himself was a student of astrology, which led to suggestions that he was a magician and a sorcerer. Partly because of such rumours, and his unpopular attempts to reform his cathedral clergy, Gerard was denied a burial inside York Minster after his sudden death in 1108. His successor had Gerard's remains moved into the cathedral church from their initial resting place beside the cathedral porch.

Gerard in St. Oswald's Niche
The mystery of Archbishop Gerard's resting place was solved in 1991, when an ossuary bearing his name was unearthed in the Abbey of St. Oswald in York in 1991. However, it appeared that the nearly-nine-centuries-dead Gerard did not stay dead, as his disinterment was followed by numerous sightings of him in York and other parts of Britain. Most disturbingly, Gerard, in full regalia which included a miter, began to engage in nasty scuffles with members of the archaeology team which was excavating the Abbey.