Saint Vaast of Arras

Also known as

• Foster
• Gaston
• Vaat
• Vedast
• Vedastus

Memorial

• 6 February
• 15 July on some calendars
• 1 October on some calendars

Profile

Hermit. Worked with Saint Remigius to convert the Franks. Priest. Instructed King Clovis in the faith. His miraculous healing of the blind helped convince some of Clovis’s pagan court of the power of God (and led to Vaast’s patronage against eye trouble). First bishop of Arras, France in 499. Bishop of Cambrai, France c.510. On the night he died, the locals saw a luminous cloud ascend from his house, apparently carrying away Vaast’s soul.

Born

• c.453 at Limoges, France

Died

• 539-540 at Arras, France of natural causes

Canonized

• Pre-Congregation

Patronage

• against eye diseases
• Arras, Boulogne and Saint-Omer, France, diocese of
• children
• children late learning to walk
• disabled people

Representation

• bishop raising to life a goose which a wolf has brought to him
• wolf bringing a goose to a bishop; Vaast will use it to feed the poor
• with a child or children at his feet (represents the people brought to the faith in his area)
• chasing a bear out of a church (represents replacing a rough paganism with Christianity)

Additional Information

• Book of Saints, by the Monks of Ramsgate
• Catholic Encyclopedia
• Golden Legend, by Blessed Jacobus de Voragine
• Lives of the Saints, by Father Alban Butler
• Our Sunday Visitor’s Encyclopedia of Saints

MLA Citation

• “Saint Vaast of Arras“. Saints.SQPN.com. 5 February 2013. Web. 18 June 2013. <>