Amandus

St., bishop of Maestricht, called "the apostle of Belgium," was born in 589 in Nantes, of a Roman family, and at twenty-one entered a monastery near Rochelle. After visiting Rome, he was in 626 ordained a missionary bishop without any fixed see, and he labored first in Brabant and Flanders, then in Sclavonia near the Danube. After this he passed into Austrasia, but was driven away by Dagobert, whom he had reproved for his vices; afterward, however, the penitent prince recalled him, and made him the spiritual instructor of his son Sigebert. In the territory of Ghent, to which he went next, he was cruelly used, and, after being appointed bishop of Maestricht in 649, he resigned it at the end of three years, in order that he might resume his former mode of life. He was a great itinerant preacher, founded many monasteries, and died in 679, on the 6th of February., — Baillet, February 6; Butler, Lives of Saints, 1, 369; Neander, Ch. Hist. 3, 41.