Reginard
Reginard was bishop of Liège in the Low Countries from 1025 to 1037, and had the city's first stone bridge over the Meuse built, the Pont des Arches. Life The earliest sources are contradictory on Reginard's background, but it seems likely that he was originally from Liège itself or the area of the County of Loon. His ecclesiastical career, however, began in Bonn, where he was appointed to a canonry by Heribert of Cologne, with whom he had studied at Gorze Abbey in the Duchy of Lorraine. In 1025 Emperor Conrad II nominated him as bishop of Liège in succession to Durandus. According to the chroniclers of St Laurence's Abbey, Liège, he acquired the appointment through simony but repented and tendered his resignation to the Pope, who insisted that he retain the nomination. In the first year of his episcopacy, he was criticised by Gerard, bishop of Cambrai, for his laxity in simply releasing suspected heretics after they had made an orthodox profession of faith, and for allowing someone excommunicated in Cambrai to be buried in consecrated ground in Liège. According to the chronicler Anselm of Liège, in 1026 refugees from famine-stricken lands to the west of Liège sought succor