Rupert was most likely born in or around
Liège in the years 1075-1080, and there, as was the custom, was brought by his family as an oblate to the
Benedictine abbey of Saint-Laurent in Liège, which already a generation earlier had become a notable centre of learning, including mathematics, hagiography, and poetry. There Rupert eventually made monastic profession and was educated under the capable Abbot, Berengar. In
1092, in the context of the conflict between the papacy and the Empire, known as the
Investiture Controversy, which in Germany encompassed nearly 50 years of civil war (1076-1122), Rupert joined other monks in following their abbot, Berengar, into exile in northern France, from where he returned in 1095. According to differing sources, around 1106 or 1109 he was ordained a priest by the
Bishop of Liège,
Otbert, a powerful figure, and a close supporter of
Emperor Henry IV. While the minor works of Rupert's youth seem to have largely perished, it was from shortly after his priestly ordination, about the year 1110, that he began producing an immense volume of surviving writings, which were widely known to his contemporaries, and though in some quarters they were not without influence, they also won him strong opposition. It was apparently because of this theological opposition that around
1116 Rupert underwent another exile (1116-1117), to the Abbey of
Michaelsberg, Siegburg, where the Abbot was Cuno. In 1119, partly for the same reasons, there came a third exile, first to Siegburg and then to
Cologne, and lastly in 1120
Frederick I,
Archbishop of Cologne, appointed him abbot of the monastery of
St Heribert in Deutz, founded in 1003 but later named for
Saint Heribert,
Archbishop of Cologne, who had died in
1021 and been buried in the abbey church. Deutz is now a suburb of
Cologne. ==Theologian and Musician==