Portal:Catholicism/Patron Archive/February 6

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Saint Amand or Amandus (Amantius) (c. 584 – 675), was a French Roman Catholic saint, one of the great Christian apostles of Flanders.

Apparently of noble birth, Amand was born in Lower Poitou. He became a monk at the Island of Yeu (Île d'Yeu), near Tours, at about the age twenty, against the wishes and efforts of his family. From there he went to Bourges, where under the direction of the bishop, Saint Austregisilus, he lived in solitude on bread and water in a cell for fifteen years.

After a pilgrimage to Rome, he was consecrated in France as a missionary bishop in 628. He began first to evangelize the pagans of Ghent, later extending his field of operations across Flanders. Initially he had little success, until the miracle of bringing back to life a hanged criminal changed the feelings of the people, after which he had many converts.

Under his supervision monasteries were established. Returning to France, in 630, he angered Dagobert I by his efforts to turn the king from his sinful life. His next apostolate was among the Slavs of the Danube (the modern Slovakia), but it was unsuccessful, and he is next found in Rome, reporting the results to the Papal office. While returning to France he is said to have calmed a storm at sea.

In about 649 Amand served briefly as Bishop of Maastricht, Tongeren or Liège, the disordered conditions in which were such that he had to appeal to the Pope, Martin I, for instructions. The pope's reply set out a plan of action with regard to disobedient clerics, and also contained information about the Monothelite heresy, then extremely prevalent in the East. Amand was also commissioned to call councils in Neustria and Austrasia in order to pass on to the bishops of Gaul decrees enacted at Rome; the bishops in turn required Amand to pass back to Rome the acts of the councils. He took the opportunity to relinquish his bishopric, and to resume his work as a missionary.

Thirty years before he had gone into the Basque country to preach, with little success; the inhabitants now asked him to return, and although he was by this time seventy years old, he undertook the work of evangelizing them, in which he seems to have been successful.

He died in his monastery of Elnon (later Saint-Amand, near Tournai) at the age of ninety.
Attributes: chair, church, flag
Patronage: Wine makers, Beer brewers, merchants, innkeepers, bartenders, Boy Scouts
Prayer: