Ampelius of Bordighera

Venerable Ampelius was a hermit of the Thebaid, whose relics are venerated at Bordighera in Italy, and he died around the year 410. He is commemorated on 14 May and on 5 October. He is regarded as the patron of blacksmiths and of the town of Bordighera.

He lived in the time of the emperors Theodosius the Great and Honorius. At first he struggled in a monastery of the Thebaid, where he worked as a blacksmith. According to tradition, one day the devil appeared to him there in the form of a lewd woman. Ampelius drove him off with a piece of iron red-⁠hot from the fire, which he seized with his bare hands. It is held that from that moment the Lord made him insensible to any fire.

Later he passed into Italy, where he dug himself a cave near Bordighera in Liguria. After his death his body was carried to a church, where miracles began to take place. In 1140, when the Genoese besieged Ventimiglia, some citizens could not pay the ransom for their release. For freedom, they showed the place where the saint's relics rested, which were seized and carried to San Remo. In 1258 the archbishop of Genoa, Gualtieri, moved the relics to the monastery of Saint Stephen in Genoa.

Sometimes Ampelius is identified with Apellius, the Egyptian ascetic mentioned in the Lausiac History of Palladius and in the History of the Monks of Rufinus.