He was born c.1060 in France and entered the Benedictine monastery of St-Bertin in France as a youth, studying the "basics" of theology, grammar, and music, before visiting other schools in France. In 1095 the monks of St.-Bertin and the canons of St.-Omer voted him abbot.
He wrote, and an admirer wrote a list of Lambert's writings, most of which are lost. They included sermons, studies on free will, original sin, the origin of the soul, and science questions.
One of his works that dos survive is the Liber Floridus, or "Book of Flowers," an encyclopedic work on Biblical, chronological, astronomical, geographical, theological, philosophical and natural history subjects. He included a list of popes, family trees, descriptions of real and imaginary animals (some of his descriptions of animals are still not identified), maps, constellations, and more. Nine manuscripts survive, most of them with illustrations. (Shown above is Lambert writing the Liber.)
His epithet of Saint-Omer is because the town that sprang up around the twin monasteries of St.-Bertin and St.-Omer became known as Saint-Omer. It had a long history that we will look at next time.
