Amadeus IX, Third Duke of Savoy, Blessed

AMADEUS IX, Third Duke of Savoy, Blessed. - B. at Thonon on 1 February 1435, d. at Vercelli on 30 March 1472. He was the son of Duke Ludovico and of Anne of Lusignan. In 1452 he married Yolande of Valois, daughter of King Charles VII of France. On his father's behalf he dispatched difficult political business, and at the congress convened at Mantua by Pius II (1459) he offered with great ardor his arm, his resources, and his troops for the struggle against the infidels. In 1464, on the death of Duke Ludovico, he assumed the government of the duchy of Savoy. He gave the court a greater seriousness of life, surrounding himself with persons of merit; he alternated the cares of government with long hours of prayer and frequent visits to the poor and the sick, to whom he lavished the humblest care and distributed his wealth with unequaled generosity. Epilepsy accompanied him throughout his life, but he always bore his illness "as a grace of the Lord." In the struggle between Louis XI, king of France, and Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, he sided with the former
without obligating himself, however, to wage war against the
latter; he knew how to assert his own rights against the marquis William VIII of Montferrat and Gian Galeazzo
Visconti. As his illness grew more violent, in
1469 he entrusted the regency to his wife. He spent his last
days at Vercelli and died commending to all
the practice of those virtues that had been the principal aim
of his life: charity and justice. St. Francis de Sales gathered with great zeal the proofs of
his sanctity, and St. Robert Bellarmine pointed him out as
an example to sovereigns. On 3 March 1677 Innocent XI
confirmed his cult and fixed his feast on 30 March.

Claudia De Sanctis