Saint Wendelin of Trier

Saint Wendelin of Trier (Latin: Vendelinus; c. 554 - c. 617 AD) was a hermit and abbot. His cultus is wide-spread in German-speaking areas. He is a patron of country folk and herdsmen. He is honored on October 22. Because no information about him was available, a biography was written in the Middle Ages, which is based purely on legendary data and tells not so much the life of Saint Wendelinus, but rather how the medieval man of that time imagined the life of a holy hermit from earlier times. There is very little definite information about this saint; his earliest biographies (two in Latin and two in German), did not appear until after 1417. The name "Wendelin" means "wanderer" or "pilgrim" in Old High German. The biographies state that Wendelin was the son of a Scottish king who led a pious life as a youth before leaving his home in secret to make a pilgrimage to Rome. On his way back he settled as a hermit at Westrich in the Diocese of Trier. One day when he went to Treves to perform his devotions, and begged his bread from house to house, a nobleman who saw him, and reproved him with great vehemence, saying that begging was the result of laziness and a disorderly life. Wendelin entered his service as a herdsman, but a miracle led the landowner to allow him to return to his solitude. Wendelin then established a company of hermits from which sprang the Benedictine Abbey of Tholey in Saarland. It is not clear whether Tholey arose from his hermitage, or whether he left his hermitage to become abbot in Tholey. He was consecrated abbot in approximately 597, according to the later legends, while Tholey was apparently founded as a collegiate body about 630. It is difficult to say how far the later biographers are trustworthy. The story is told that when Wendelin was working as a herdsman he often took his flock to a mountain to pray there in silence.