Saint Amadeus of Lausanne

Amadeus was born on January 21, 1110, at the castle of Chatte in the French Dauphiné, according to Fabio Arduino on santiebeati.it, of the noble family of Clermont. ² His father, Amadeus the Elder, lord of Hauterive, is himself venerated as Blessed; he left the world with sixteen knights who were his vassals and entered the monastery of Bonnevaux. ² Arduino calls him a Cluniac there, while the Cistercian abbey of Rougemont, in Quebec, says he took the Cistercian habit. ²⁶

The boy went with his father to Bonnevaux before he was ten. ²⁶ The two sources then tell his schooling differently. Arduino says he was educated at Cluny from 1121 and at the German royal court, received there by his kinsman Conrad, the future emperor. ² Rougemont says the monks of Bonnevaux were too busy to teach him properly, so his father took him to Cluny, was disappointed by its ways, went back to Bonnevaux, and put his son in the care of the court of Henry V. ⁶

Amadeus had no taste for the life of arms, Arduino says, and in 1125 he began his novitiate at Clairvaux under the guidance of Saint Bernard. ²⁶

In 1139 he was made abbot of Hautecombe, in Savoy. ²⁶ The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia says the community had moved about 1125 to a site on the northwestern shore of the Lake of Bourget, granted to it by Amadeus, Count of Savoy, and had soon afterward taken the Cistercian Rule from Clairvaux. ⁴ It calls him "the saintly and learned Amadeus de Haute-Rive," and the abbey's first abbot. ⁴

Arduino says the abbey had been founded by Count Amadeus III to be the first burial place of the house of Savoy, and the encyclopedia confirms that for centuries it was the burial place of the counts and dukes of Savoy. ²⁴ Even as abbot, Arduino says, Amadeus was known as the wise man of Savoy. ²

He was called to the see of Lausanne, in what is now the Swiss canton of Vaud. ¹² The encyclopedia's article on Lausanne and Geneva dates his episcopate from 1144 to 1159, as Rougemont and the santiebeati summary do; Arduino's life says he gave up Hautecombe in 1145 for Lausanne. ²⁵⁶ He was consecrated on his birthday, January 21, the feast of Saint Agnes. ²

He governed in the spirit of the Cistercian reform, but the office also drew him into politics. ² When Count Amadeus III of Savoy died on crusade, Amadeus became guardian of the young Humbert III, who is also venerated as Blessed. ² He attended several diets of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who named him grand chancellor of the kingdom of Burgundy. ² Arduino adds that he was caught up in quarrels with the nobility, above all with Count Amadeus of Geneva, was for a time forced into exile, and in the end reached a settlement with Duke Conrad of Zähringen. ²

Arduino warns against taking him for a politician first. ² He liked to sign himself, in Latin, "Amedeus peccator Lausannensis vocatus episcopus," Amadeus, a sinner, called to be bishop of Lausanne. ² He would withdraw to a castle near Chexbres to keep time for prayer, and he placed Lausanne under the particular protection of Mary. ² The Martyrology says that as bishop he carefully taught the young, formed a devout and pure clergy, and celebrated the Blessed Virgin in his preaching. ¹ Rougemont calls him a prudent administrator who worked for the education of the young and the formation of a fervent and enlightened clergy. ⁶

He left a letter to his spiritual sons in the church of Lausanne and eight homilies on the Virgin Mary, which Arduino calls true theological treatises on the greatness of the Mother of God. ² The encyclopedia notes that they are printed in Migne's Latin Patrology. ⁵ Their subjects, in Arduino's list, run from Mary's virtues and her inner grace, through the Incarnation, the birth of Christ, her strength at the cross and her joy at the Resurrection and Ascension, to her death and Assumption and the fullness of her glory. ²

Arduino says Amadeus sees Mary as the new Eve, and as the place where the two Testaments meet, like two golden baskets set on either side of her: the Old foretelling, the New praising the One who fulfilled it. ² He traces in her the work of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. ² Rougemont prints a line from the fourth homily, translated here from the French: "Mary grew more and more in love," and feared nothing, neither pains nor dangers, nor the flight into Egypt, "for love of the child." ⁶

The seventh homily is on her death and Assumption, and santiebeati prints a passage from it. ² In it Amadeus writes, in words translated here from the Italian, that "it was fitting, for the honor of her Son as well, that the Virgin Mother should first reign on earth and so at last receive glory in heaven." ²

In 1950, defining the dogma of the Assumption, Pius XII named him among the witnesses of the earliest period of scholastic theology, calling him "that most pious man" and saying that Amadeus held that Mary's flesh had remained incorrupt "because it was really united again to her soul and, together with it, crowned with great glory in the heavenly courts." ³ The pope quoted him: "For she was full of grace and blessed among women. She alone merited to conceive the true God of true God." ³ Arduino places him in the second generation of Cistercian spiritual writers, with Gilbert of Hoyland, Baldwin of Ford and Isaac of Stella. ²

He died at Lausanne on August 27, 1159, at the age of forty-nine. ¹² Arduino notes that the date was long disputed among historians. ² His relics, kept in the cathedral, were found again in 1911, and his cult was officially confirmed by Pope Clement XI in 1710. ² Passages of his homilies are still read in the Office of Readings of the Liturgy of the Hours. ²

No source used here names Saint Amadeus patron of anyone or anything. ¹²⁶ Arduino says that he placed the city of Lausanne under the particular protection of the Virgin Mary. ²

Saint Amadeus of Lausanne's feast is August 27, the day of his death, on which the Roman Martyrology enters him at Lausanne. ¹² The Cistercian abbey of Rougemont gives his liturgical feast as August 30. ⁶

He went into the cloister as a boy with his father, and chose Clairvaux for himself at fifteen. ²⁶ The rest of his life took him out of it, to an abbey, a see, a regency and the imperial diets, and he signed himself a sinner called to be bishop. ²

He kept a place to withdraw to for prayer. ² Most of what he left is about Mary, and he wrote of her growing in love through a hard life, the flight into Egypt included. ²⁶

A pope defining a dogma eight centuries later found his words worth quoting. ³ The Church still reads him in the Office. ²