Saints -- Scotland; Scotland -- Church history -- Biography
always wore his priestly stole, to be ready to perform the
functions of his sacred office.
Driven from Glasgow by the enmity of a wicked king, the saint took
refuge with St. David in South Wales. He subsequently founded the
monastery known afterwards, from the disciple who succeeded him in
its government, as St. Asaph's, and here more than nine hundred
monks are said to have lived under his rule. Later on he was
recalled to Glasgow, and after a life of apostolic zeal he received
through an angel, on the Octave of the Epiphany, his summons to
eternal life. Fortifying himself by the Sacraments, and exhorting
his disciples to charity and peace and constant obedience to the
Holy Catholic Church, their mother, he breathed his last, being at
least 85 years old. His saintly body was laid to rest where the
magnificent under-croft of St. Mungo's Cathedral, {6} Glasgow, was
raised to his honour in after ages.
Many old churches in Scotland bear the dedication of St. Mungo; the
chief of these is Lanark parish church. There is a parish bearing
his name in Dumfries-shire, and many holy wells are called after
him; one of these is in Glasgow Cathedral, others are in the
precincts of Glasgow, and at Huntly, Peebles, Ayr, Dumfries,
Glengairn (Aberdeenshire), also at Currie, Penicuik and Mid-Calder,
near Edinburgh. There is also St. Mungo's Isle in Loch Leven.
Besides these Scottish dedications, there are seven churches
in Cumberland which bear his name. It is noteworthy that all
of them bear the more popular title of Mungo. Within about six
miles of Carmarthen, in Wales, is the ancient parish church of
Llangendeirne--"Church of Kentigern"; this is one instance, at
least, of a dedication to the saint under his real name, and maybe
the only one. There were formerly two fairs of St. Mungo kept in
Alloa each year, where the church was dedicated to this saint. St.
Kentigern is said to have made no less than seven pilgrimages to
Rome in the course of his life. {7} His feast, which had long been
celebrated by the Benedictines of Fort-Augustus and the Passionists
of Glasgow, was extended to the whole of Scotland by Leo XIII in
1898. As he died on the Octave of the Epiphany, the feast is kept
on the following day, January 14.
19--St. Blaithmaic, Martyr, 8th or 9th century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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