AMANDO, saint. — Born in Aquitania to Serenus and Amanzia, and educated in a Benedictine monastery on the island of Yeu off the coast of Vandea, he received the tonsure at Tours. Having gone to Bourges, he obtained permission from the bishop to have a cell built for him on the bastion of the city walls, and spent 15 years there in solitude. Around 620, having come to Rome, he had a vision during which s. Peter is said to have ordered him to devote himself to preaching in Gaul. Of ardent nature and rich in zeal, his life was a continuous wandering—partly legendary as regards Carinthia and the Basque country—as a missionary bishop—he seems to have been consecrated before 630—without a fixed diocese. He was the great apostle of Belgium and the true initiator of the monastic movement that flourished powerfully during the 7th century in the northern regions. He preached the Gospel tirelessly in Gaul, where among other foundations he established the monastery of Barisis, and in Belgium, from Ghent to the mouths of the Scheldt. At Elnone he founded the monastery that later took his name and became a center from which monastic life radiated; the monasteries of Mont-Blanchin (shortly before 630) and Saint-Bavon, near Ghent, all placed under the rule of s. Benedict according to the form of Luxeuil; and the church of SS. Peter and Paul in Antwerp.
Appointed bishop of Tongres (with his see at Maastricht), he carried out intense activity in this diocese. Because of difficulties created for him by the clergy of Tongres, he considered returning to the eremitical life, but Pope Martin dissuaded him, sending him, in 649, a famous letter in which, after treating at length of the Monothelite heresy, he ordered him to convene the synod of the bishops of Austrasia.
He died on 17 April 674 or 675; however, his feast had been joined to that of s. Vedastus on 6 February since the first half of the 8th century. This date subsequently passed into the Martirologio Romano and was erroneously regarded as the day of his death by his second biographer, Milone.