Biography
Bantus of Trier
About Bantus of Trier
Bantus, also called Banthus, was a priest of Trier in the seventh century. The diocese remembers him for serving sick and needy people and directing the hospice associated with its cathedral.
A brief provision in the will of the deacon Adalgisel-Grimo offers an early glimpse of him. It names Banto as a Trier priest and directs that he receive wheat, pigs and cheeses for as long as he lives. The clause establishes his place among the will’s beneficiaries, although it does not itself call him a hospital director.
The will dates from 634, but its original is lost. Wilhelm Levison’s critical edition rests on a later surviving copy, whose damaged passages require careful reconstruction.
Later devotion linked him with Beatus. Eberwin, an eleventh-century abbot, described people suffering from fever seeking help at their graves and reported his own healing there. These are accounts of medieval devotion and claimed miracles, not independently verified medical events.
Bantus’s name remained part of Trier’s religious landscape. The buildings associated with his chapel passed to the cathedral hospital in 1464, after which it was known as the Banthus hospital. A surviving gateway inscription names the Seminary of Saint Bantus. The chapel itself was rebuilt after wartime damage and now serves the episcopal general vicariate.
Bantus was honored as patron of the seminary established there in the late sixteenth century.
The Diocese of Trier commemorates Bantus and Beatus together on July 28.
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