The Lives of the Saints, Volume 01 (of 16): JanuaryBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
The Lives of the Saints, Volume 01 (of 16): January
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Christian saints
At last, unable to endure longer the envy of his fellow pupils,
Kentigern ran away. And when S. Servan discovered it, he pursued him,
and reached the bank of a river, but Kentigern had escaped to the other
side. Then the old man cried to him, "Alas! my dearest son, the light
of my eyes, and the staff of my age, wherefore hast thou deserted me?
Remember that I took thee from thy mother's womb, nursed thee, and
taught thee to this day. Do not desert my white hairs."
Then Kentigern, bursting into tears, answered, "My father, it is the
will of the Most High that I should go."
Servan cried out, "Return, return, dear son, and I, from being a father,
will be to thee as a son, from being a master I will become a disciple."
But Kentigern, suffused with tears, replied, "It cannot be, my father;
return and admonish thy disciples, and instruct them by thine example. I
must go where the Lord God calls me."
Then Servan blessed him across the river, lifting up his holy hands, and
sorrowfully they parted the one from the other, to see each other's face
no more in this life.
Kentigern settled near Glasgow, where he inhabited a cave in the face of
a rock, where the people looked at him with respectful curiosity, while
he studied the direction of the storms at sea, and drank in with
pleasure the first breezes of the spring. Having converted many of the
people, together with the King of Strathclyde, he was consecrated Bishop
by an Irish prelate, the Keltic Church being ignorant of the Nicene
canon requiring three to consecrate, "with unction of holy oil,
invocation of the Holy Spirit, and imposition of hands."
The district of Strathclyde, or Cumbria, on the west coast of Britain,
from the mouth of the Clyde to that of the Mersey, that is to say, from
Glasgow to Liverpool, was occupied by a mingled race of Britons and
Scots, whose capital was Al-Cluid, now Dumbarton. It was in this region
that S. Kentigern was called to labour.
As bishop, he still dwelt in his rocky cell, where he used a stone for
a pillow, and to inure his body to hardships, he stood in the Clyde to
recite his psalter. He wore a dress of goat-skin bound about his loins,
and a hood, and over all, his white linen alb, which he never left off;
and carried in his hand his pastoral staff of wood without ornament, and
in his other hand his office book. Thus he was ever prepared to execute
his ministry; and thus attired, he went through the kingdom from the
Clyde to the Firth of Forth. In his cell he lived on bread and cheese
and milk, but when he was with the King, he relaxed the severity of his
fasting, so as not to appear ungracious when offered more abundant and
better food; however, on his return to his cell, he curtailed his
allowance, so as to make up for his relaxation of rule at court.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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