GABRIEL BIEL.
This excellent and learned man is generally supposed,
from his name Biel, the modern Bienne, to have been a
Swiss, though some assert that he was a native of Spire,
and the latter is prohably the real place of his nativity,
though his family may have been of Swiss extraction,
for he is called “Gabriel Biel ex Spira” in the beginning
of his “Sermones de tempore,” as published by Johan
Otmar, in Tubingen, 1510.
He went by the name of ”the Collector,” from the fact of his being a laborious compiler rather than an original composer.
He was undoubtedly one of the best scholastic divines of his age, and was a careful reader of the Fathers.
Gabriel Biel was a member of the Regular Canons, and was Doctor of Theology, which he taught as professor in the University of Tubingen, founded by Count Eberhardt of Wirtemberg, in 1477.
He soon became a favourite with this nobleman, who listened to his sermons with delight.
At one time he was vicar and ordinary preacher at the metropolitan church of St. Martin at Mainz, but the date of his appointment is uncertain. Gabriel Biel was
