Hadelin

Saint Hadelin (Adelin, Hadelinus) was born in Guyenne around 617 and died around 690 near Dinant, in present-⁠day Belgium. He was one of the scholarly monks who preached Christianity and began the work of conversion in what is now Belgium, along with Saint Remaclus. He is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, with commemoration on 3 February. Our sources give no Orthodox act of canonization, so we call him a saint of the undivided Church in the West.

He was of noble parentage and lived at the court of Sigebert of Austrasia. He became a pupil of Remaclus, first at Solignac Abbey, then at Cougnon abbey in the duchy of Luxembourg. Later he moved to Stavelot Abbey, founded by Remaclus in 650 (according to another source, in 648). One source says he was a monk at the monastery of Saint Peter at Solignac, whose abbot was Remaclus; around 647 Remaclus left Solignac and settled in the Ardennes. Around 651 Remaclus became bishop of Maastricht and took Hadelin with him. After that the ways of the two parted. Hadelin withdrew into a hermitage, where disciples joined him, who carried out the work of evangelization of the region. Thanks to a gift from Pepin of Herstal, Hadelin was able to found a monastery there, from which the village of Celles began. In 669, with the help of Remaclus and Pepin of Herstal, he founded the monastery of Celles in the surroundings of Dinant. Later he founded a monastery at Visé. At last he retired to live as a hermit near Dinant, where he died.

In the Middle Ages a number of miracles were connected with his name: the healing of a deaf-⁠mute woman, the raising of a woman named Gisa, and the springing of a spring near Philippeville. In 1046 Bishop Wazo of Liège ordered a shrine to be made for the relics of Saint Hadelin. Because of disagreements of the monks with the lord of Celles, in 1338 the relics were moved to the church of Saint Martin at Visé, where they remain today, in a silver shrine in the Mosan style. Hadelin is especially venerated in the Walloon diocese of Namur, as founder of the monastery of Celles. He is the patron of Celles, where he is celebrated on the Sunday following the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin (8 September). He is invoked against children's ailments, and in iconography his attribute is a dove.