Confessor Aime

Saint Amatus, known in French as Aimé or Amé and often styled Confessor in the martyrologies, was a monastic founder of the early seventh century. He was born of a noble family at Grenoble, in the region then belonging to the Burgundian kingdom, toward the end of the sixth century. The precise year of his birth is not recorded in the surviving sources. As a youth, about the age of fifteen, he entered the royal abbey of Agaunum (Saint-Maurice-en-Valais), a house famous for its laus perennis, the perpetual recitation of the psalms. There he lived under monastic discipline for a number of years before obtaining permission to withdraw into a nearby hermitage, where he practiced a life of marked austerity and abstinence.

While living as a recluse he encountered Romaric, a Frankish noble connected with the Austrasian court. Traditional accounts hold that Amatus’s example and counsel moved Romaric to abandon secular honours and embrace the monastic life. The two men eventually settled in the wilderness of Habendum in the Vosges, on land belonging to Romaric. There, around the early 620s, they established a double monastery that later became known as Remiremont (Romarici mons). The foundation stood in the Columbanian orbit associated with Luxeuil, though later tradition commonly classed Amatus among the Benedictines. Amatus served as the first abbot of the men’s community; a women’s monastery was organized alongside it, in keeping with several contemporary Frankish houses.

As abbot he was remembered for severity of fasting, the gift of miracles, and pastoral care of the mixed community. After some years he appears to have withdrawn again toward a more eremitical existence, while Romaric continued as abbot. Amatus died in 627, and the Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 13 September at Remiremont in the Vosges, naming him priest and abbot. His cult is ancient and belongs to the pre-congregation period; no papal act of canonization is recorded. Relics and local veneration remained centred on Remiremont. Beyond that local honour, later calendars do not attach a well-documented list of special patronages to his name. He is distinct from the later bishop Amatus of Sion, with whom he has sometimes been confused because of the shared feast date and similar Latin name.