Engelmondo di Velsen

Who they were

Engelmund was an Englishman who became a monk very young, was ordained priest and was ruling as abbot when he offered himself for the mission in the Netherlands in the time of St Willibrord. His family had come from Friesland, and he worked in North Holland from a base at Velsen, north of Haarlem, converting many of the people.

He died of fever about 720 and was buried at Velsen; his remains were later taken to Utrecht cathedral, scattered in the sixteenth-century troubles, and what could be saved is kept at Haarlem. Butler notes that information about him is very scanty.

The miracles

There was never a formal cause: he has been honoured as a saint since before the Church's formal processes began.

Why that counted as sanctity

An English abbot and missionary to North Holland.