AMANDUS, Saint. - Born in Aquitaine, to Serenus and Amantia, educated in a Benedictine monastery on the island of Yeu off the coast of Vendée, he received the tonsure at Tours. Having gone to Bourges, he obtained from the bishop permission to have a cell built for himself on the bastion of the city walls, and there he spent 15 years in solitude. Around 620, having come to Rome, he had a vision during which St. Peter is said to have ordered him to devote himself to preaching in Gaul. A fiery nature, rich in zeal, his life was a continuous wandering (partly legendary as regards Carinthia and the Basque country) as a missionary bishop - he was consecrated, it seems, before 630 - without a fixed diocese. He is the great apostle of Belgium and the true initiator of the monastic movement that flourished powerfully during the 7th century in the regions of the North. He preached the Gospel incessantly in Gaul, where he founded among others the monastery of Barisis, and in Belgium, from Ghent to the mouth of the Scheldt. He founded at Elnone the monastery that later took his name and that was a hearth for the irradiation of monastic life, the monasteries of Mont-Blanchin (shortly before 630) and Saint-Bavon, near Ghent, all placed under the rule of St. Benedict, according to the form of Luxeuil, and the church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Antwerp.
Appointed bishop of Tongeren (with his see at Maastricht), he carried on intense activity in this diocese; because of difficulties created for him by the clergy of Tongeren he thought of returning to the eremitical life, but he was dissuaded from it by Pope Martin, who sent him, in 649, a famous letter in which, after expounding on the Monothelite heresy, he ordered him to convoke the synod of the bishops of Austrasia.
He died on 17 April 674 or 675, but his feast was joined to that of St. Vedast on 6 February from the first half of the 8th century; this date then passed into the Roman Martyrology, and was erroneously considered as the day of his death by the second biographer, Milo.
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Noemi Crostarosa Scipioni