Vedast (Latin Vedastus, Walloon Vaast) was — per the Vita Vedasti composed in the 7th century by Jonas of Bobbio — a Gallo-Roman Christian priest of southern Gaul who, on the long journey of the future King Clovis from northern Gaul to Reims for his baptism in 496, was met by Clovis at a Frankish river-crossing of the Aisne. The encounter — preserved in the Frankish-Catholic hagiographic tradition — established Vedast as the principal personal catechist of Clovis in the weeks immediately preceding the Catholic baptism that began Frankish Catholic-Christian identity (see Clovis's entry already in the catalogue and Remigius of Reims's entry already in the catalogue for the 496 baptism).
After Clovis's baptism at Reims by Remigius on December 25, 496 (the Christmas baptism that has been called by French Catholic historians the event of French national-Catholic identity), Vedast was consecrated by Remigius as the first Bishop of the small north-Belgic-Gallic diocese of Arras around 499 — establishing the Catholic episcopal organization in the previously-pagan northern Frankish territories of what is now French Flanders, the Pas-de-Calais, and northwestern Belgium.
Vedast governed the Arras see for over forty years until his death on February 6, 540 — the continuous Catholic episcopal presence of the northern Frankish territory. He is the father of Flemish-French Catholicism north of Reims. The medieval cathedral of Saint-Vaast at Arras was one of the great Romanesque-Gothic Flemish-French cathedrals; the present cathedral (rebuilt after the destruction of the original during the French Revolution) preserves his cult.