Tuesday 7 April 2009

St. Amand, patron saint of booze

Today I discovered a new Saint, St Amand. St Amand was born in what-is-now-France in the sixth century and spent most of his life as a missionary in what-is-now-Belgium. There was a famous monastery dedicated to him at St-Amand-les-Eaux near Tournai in Belgium. This monastery was attacked by vikings in 883, which is how I came to be reading about St. Amand this morning.

The reason I decided to write about him is that St. Amand turns out to be the patron saint of all those involved in the production and trade of wine and beer, which I thought made him an appropriate saint for all those of a self-sufficient bent, much like Saint Perpetua. Rather amusingly, St. Amand is also the patron saint of Boy Scouts, although I confess that I am not entirely sure what the link is here. In case anyone is interested in honouring his feast day with the copious consumption of his favourite beverages, it falls on the 6th February, conveniently just before Lent (I imagine the Boy Scouts are optional).

The other reasons I decided to write about St. Amand is that firstly, I am a bit too busy with vikings today to write a proper blog post, and secondly, it gives me an excuse to post another picture of a medieval manuscript. Not that I need a great deal of excuse.


3 comments:

silverpebble said...

St Anand seems to be chatting with a griffin, or perhaps there's so much of ye meade been consumed that that's actually his Mum and he's having a hallucination.

x

Julian said...

Hah! I had forgotten where exactly the monastery of St. Amand was located, dump some search terms into Google and discover how handy it is that Sally maintains a blog. Very timely & thank you!

Amanda said...

"St Anand seems to be chatting with a griffin"
Actually he is slaying a demon, not chatting with a griffin. He was quite famous back then, him being a king and all.Yes i know this because i hold his name.