Beato, Saint

BEATO, saint. – Apostle of Switzerland; nothing is known about him. The sixteenth-century legend made him a disciple of the Apostles. Some regard him as a saint who never existed; others, in view of traces of a cult attested as early as the twelfth century, consider him a monk of Anglo-Saxon origin who went to Switzerland around the sixth century. Some even identify him with St B. of Vendôme of the ninth century. On the state of the question, see H. Moretus, La légende de s. Béat, apôtre de Suisse (in Analecta Bollandiana, 26 [1907], pp. 423–53). Mario Scaduto