Geoffroy du Breuil

Geoffroy du Breuil of Vigeois was a 12th-century French chronicler, trained at the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Martial of Limoges, the site of a great early library. Geoffroy became abbot at Vigeois (1170–1184) where he composed his Chroniques which trace in detail some great local families (often Geoffroy's forebears and kin) while relating events happening from 994 to 1184: the fiery convulsive sickness, actually Ergotism from a fungus or ergot of wheat, the preparations for the First Crusade, reports of combats in the Holy Land, the spread of Cathar beliefs (writing in 1181, he was the first to use the term "Albigensians"), all the while unconsciously revealing the preoccupations and manners of the times.