St. Amand

Who they were

Amand was an Aquitanian monk and bishop who took the hardest mission territory Merovingian Gaul had on offer, the lands around Ghent and the Scheldt, where the reception ranged from indifference to the documented occasion when locals threw him in the river.

He kept coming back. He preached, founded the monasteries at Ghent and Elnone that anchored Christian Flanders, ransomed captives and trained them as clergy, served briefly and reluctantly as bishop of Maastricht, and was still evangelizing in his nineties. The trade patronage is geography's gift: the monasteries he planted sat in Europe's beer country and brewed from the start, and the vintners' and brewers' guilds of the Low Countries took the persistent missionary as their own. Seven centuries of custom have made him the patron of brewers, winemakers, innkeepers and bartenders, which is to say of the hospitality trade entire.

Why people turn to St. Amand

Everyone in hospitality: brewers, bar and restaurant staff, hotel workers, the people who are still standing when the rest of us go home. And the serially rejected, since the river could not make him quit, with St. Ansgar.

How to ask their intercession

Over the shift, the opening, the licence, the harvest, plainly. And if the pour is the problem rather than the trade, Ven. Matt Talbot is one click away and there is no sermon attached to either page.