Gamelbert of Michaelsbuch

Saint Gamelbert of Michaelsbuch was a priest in Bavaria in the eighth century and reposed around 800. He was born in 720 at Michaelsbuch to wealthy aristocrats.

His parents prepared him for a military career, but he preferred to herd his father's flocks, since in the stillness of the fields and forests he could turn his mind to prayer. A priest of the region taught him, and he was ordained. He made a pilgrimage to Rome. On the way back he was received in a house where a child had just been born, and the mother asked him to baptize it; the child was named Utto and later became a saint. After his parents died, Gamelbert used his inheritance to found a parish on his own land at Michaelsbuch, where he served as parish priest for more than fifty years. Gentle by nature, he was unfailingly generous to the poor. From Duke Tassilo III he received a piece of woodland on the opposite bank of the Danube, from which the monastery of Metten grew, with Utto as its first abbot.

Many pilgrims and needy people came to his tomb. His life was written around the year 1000 by a monk of the monastery of Saint Emmeram. He is a saint of the undivided Church, commemorated on 27 January (new style); the Catholic Church commemorates him on 17 January.