Wall shelf

Wandregisel (* before 600 near Verdun ; † probably 668 in the Abbey of Saint-Wandrille , in Normandy ) was a monastery founder and missionary in the 7th century and is a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. It is best known under the French form of the name Saint-Wandrille .

biography

Wandregisel came from a noble family and was possibly related to the progenitor of the Carolingian Arnulf von Metz . As a young man he was married, but shortly after the marriage the spouses decided to enter a monastery and dissolved the marriage by mutual agreement. At first he worked in a high position at the court of the Merovingian king Dagobert I , who wanted to win him back to his court even after he entered a monastery. Around the year 630 he became a monk, first in Montfaucon (near Verdun), then in the Abbey of Bobbio and later in Romainmôtier . On the way from Montfaucon to Bobbio (Italy) he founded the monastery of Saint-Ursanne at the grave of Ursicinus on the banks of the Doubs . A stay in the city of Rome is only mentioned in the second biography (9th century).

Around 645 he met Bishop Audoin in Rouen and was ordained a priest from him. Then Wandregisel stayed in northern France. The foundation of Fontenelle Abbey by Wandregisel (today Saint-Wandrille) (around 649) goes back to this time. The Neustrian caretaker Erchinoald gave him a piece of land there. After that he was the first abbot of the monastery. He mainly took care of the expansion of the monastery and was able to secure many donations for the abbey.

Adoration

His feast day is July 22nd, in the diocese of Lausanne-Geneva-Friborg on July 14th. In the Abbey of Saint Wandrille, January 31st is also celebrated as the day when his bones were raised.

His relics were reburied within the abbey as early as 704. Because of the threat from the Normans , many reliquary movements then took place. In 886 they came to Ghent (Belgium), in 1047 and 1062 parts of the bones were brought back to the Abbey of Saint-Wandrille. The skull fragment was however brought to Namur , where it was rediscovered in 1877. This was brought to Maredsous Abbey near Brogne in 1883 . Since 1969 the skull fragment has been resting again in the church of the newly founded Benedictine abbey of Saint Wandrille, whose patron saint Wandregisel is also.

literature

• Thomas Bauer:  Wall shelf. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 13, Bautz, Herzberg 1998, ISBN 3-88309-072-7 , Sp. 321-328.