HE was born near Nantes, of pious parents, lords of that territory. At
twenty years of age, he retired into a small monastery in the little
isle of Oye, near that of Rhe. He had not been there above a year, when
his father found him out, and made use of every persuasive argument in
his power to prevail with him to quit that state of life. To his threats
of disinheriting him, the saint cheerfully answered: " Christ is my only
inheritance." The saint went to Tours, and a year after to Bourges,
where he lived near fifteen years under the direction of St.
Austregisilus, the bishop, in a cell near the cathedral. His clothing
was a single sackcloth, and his sustenance barley-bread and water. After
a pilgrimage to Rome, he was ordained in France a missionary bishop,
without any fixed see, in 628, and commissioned to preach the faith to
infidels. He preached the gospel in Flanders, and among the Sclavi in
Carinthia and other provinces near the Danube:[1] but being banished by
king Dagobert, whom he had boldly reproved for his scandalous crimes, he
preached to the pagans of Gascony and Navarre. Dagobert soon recalled
him, threw himself at his feet to beg his pardon, and caused him to
baptize his new-born sort, St. Sigebert, afterwards king. The idolatrous
people about Ghent were so savage, that no preacher durst venture
himself among them. This moved the saint to choose that mission; during
the course of which he was often beaten, and sometimes thrown into the
river: he continued preaching, though for a long time he saw no fruit,
and supported himself by his labor. The miracle of his raising a dead
man to life, at last opened the eyes of the barbarians, and the country
came in crowds to receive baptism, destroying the temples of their idols
with their own hands. In 633 the saint having built them several
churches, founded two great monasteries in Ghent, both under the
patronage of St. Peter; one was named Blandinberg, from the hill Blandin
on which it stands, now the rich abbey of St. Peter's; the other took
the name of St. Bavo, from him who gave his estate for its foundation;
this became the cathedral in 1559, when the city was created a bishop's
see. Besides many pious foundations, both in France and Flanders, in
639, he built the great abbey three leagues from Tourney, called Elnon,
from the river on which it stands; but it has long since taken the name
of St. Amand, with its town and warm mineral baths. In 649 he was chosen
bishop of Maestricht; but three years after he resigned that see to St.
Remaclus, and returned to his missions, to which his compassion for the
blindness of infidels always inclined {370} his heart. He continued his
labors among them till the age of eighty-six, when, broken with
infirmities, he retired to Orion, which house he governed as abbot four
years more, spending that time in preparing his soul for his passage to
eternity, which happened in 675. His body is honorably kept in that
abbey. The Sarum Breviary honored St. Amandus and St. Vedast with an
office of nine lessons. See Buzelin, Gallo-Flandria, and Henschenius, 6
Feb. p. 815, who has published five different lives of this saint.
Footnotes:
1. See Henschenius. p. 828.