Donatus was a priest of the monastery of Antrum (Indre) on the lower Loire, who presents himself as a companion of Saint Ermenland, the first abbot of that house. At the brothers’ request he wrote the saint’s Life, and though the text as we have it was probably composed in the later eighth century, it preserves the traditions of the Merovingian abbey and of Ermenland’s mission around Nantes.