Wendelin

Holy Venerable Wendelin was, according to tradition, a shepherd, hermit and abbot in the region of Trier in western Germany, and he reposed around 617. He is a patron of country folk and herdsmen, venerated above all in the German-⁠speaking world. He is a saint of the undivided Church.

Very little is certain about him; his oldest Lives appear only after 1417 and rest on legend. They say he was the son of a Scottish king, that he left home in secret on pilgrimage to Rome and, on the way back, settled as a hermit in Westrich in the diocese of Trier. One day, as he begged his bread from house to house, a nobleman rebuked him as lazy, and Wendelin took service with him as a shepherd. The story says he took the flock up a mountain to pray in silence, and that although the master thought the sheep would be worn out by the distance, he found them already in the fold before him; seeing the miracle, the master built him a hermit's cell.

Wendelin was buried in his cell; a chapel rose over the grave, and the small town of Sankt Wendel on the Nahe grew up around it. His intercession was thought powerful in times of plague and of cattle disease. A company of hermits is said to have gathered around him, from which the Benedictine abbey of Tholey in Saarland grew, but it is not clear whether Tholey sprang from his hermitage or whether he became abbot there.

He is commemorated on 21 October, the liturgical date in the Orthodox calendar (the same day number on the old and new calendars).