French poet, born at Valenciennes, of good parentage. His father and mother, Robert and Hérembourg, belonged to Hainault, and gave him for godparents Count Baldwin and Countess Yolanddoubtless Baldwin IV. of Hainault and his mother Yoland. Herman was a priest and the author of a verse Histoire de la Bible, which includes a separate poem on the Assumption of the Virgin. The work is generally known as Le Roman de sapience, the name arising from a copyists error in the first line of the poem:
Comens de sapiense, ce est la cremors de Deu |
See Notices et extraits des manuscrits (Paris, vol. 34), and Jean Bonnard, Les Traductions de la Bible en vers français au moyen âge (1884).