Gamelbert of Michaelsbuch was born in 720 in Michaelsbuch in Bavaria. He was the son of wealthy aristocrats, who planned for him a career in the military. However, he preferred to herd his father's flocks, because in the peaceful stillness of the fields and forests he could turn his mind to prayer and meditation. A local priest began to teach him, and he was ordained a priest. Once he made a pilgrimage to Rome. On the return journey he found hospitality in a house where a mother had just given birth. She asked Gamelbert to christen her newborn son. The child's name was
Utto. After the death of his parents, he used his inheritance to establish a parish on property he owned in Michaelsbuch. He worked there for over 50 years as a parish priest in Michaelsbuch. Gentle by nature, he was unfailingly generous to the poor. Gamelbert acquired from Duke
Tassilo III a piece of woodland on the opposite bank of the
Danube between
Mariaposching and Deggendorf, for which he had to pay a tax known as the
Medema. From this was derived the name of
Metten both for the place itself and for the monastery he founded there. In 766 he cleared the land and founded the Benedictine
Metten Abbey in Lower Bavaria, not far from Michaelsbuch. Gamelbert had prepared his godson Utto for the priesthood. He brought, Utto, now a monk at
Reichenau, to be its first abbot. (Other sources say that Utto himself founded the monastery in 766 on a piece of land he owned.) ==Veneration==