Saint John of Gorze (, also called John of Lorraine) ( — March 7, 974) was a Lorraine-born monk, diplomat, administrator, and monastic reformer. Life John of Gorze was born at Vandières near Pont-à-Mousson to parents who were wealthy and well known in the area. His father had married late in his life to a woman much younger than he. They had three children together. John's parents were able to provide for his education, and he studied at the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Mihiel in Metz. The tradition of scholarship was strong here; John's instructor was Hildebold, who had studied at Paris under Remi d'Auxerre (Parisse, La vie de Jean, 7-8). At the age of twenty, he had already formed relationships with powerful figures of the region, including Count Ricuin of Verdun, and Dado, bishop of Verdun. He became a Benedictine monk at the Gorze Abbey in 933 after renouncing his wealth as an administrator of landed estates and making a pilgrimage to Rome and Monte Cassino. At the Abbey of Gorze Having found no monastery with a strict enough discipline, John had formed relationships with like-minded men, such as Einald, formerly archdeacon of Toul. In 933, Bishop (929-962) had asked John and Einald to restore and reform the decayed monastery of Gorze. Einald became abbot and John became his principal assistant. The number of monks at Gorze increased, and the Gorze reform movement spread to other monasteries. In 950 Pope Agapetus II asked monks from Gorze to restore discipline in the monastery of St. Paul in Rome. Character He is reputed to have had a photographic memory, and also developed a bookkeeping system and capital investment policies (Dennis K. McDaniel, John of Gorze: A Figure in Tenth-Century Management). It was claimed that the murmur of his lips reading the Psalms resembled the buzzing of a bee. Mission to Al-Andalus In 953, he was sent as ambassador for Emperor Otto I to the Caliph Abd-ar-Rahman III of Córdoba for three years. John had travelled by way of Langres, Dijon, Lyon, Avignon, and Barcelona (Parisse, La vie de Jean, 17). From Barcelona, he had proceeded to Tortosa, then Zaragoza, and finally Córdoba. The purpose of this mission was to stop the attacks made by Andalusian adventurers from their base at Fraxinet. John of Gorze arrived in 953-954 with his companions at Córdoba with a letter from Otto as well as valuable gifts.