Saint Kevin
| Saint Kevin of Glendalough | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 498 Ireland |
| Died | 3 June 618 |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church (cultus confirmation) |
| Canonized | 1903 (cultus confirmed) |
| Feast | 3 June |
| Attributes | blackbird |
| Patronage | blackbirds, Archdiocese of Dublin, Glendalough, Kilnamanagh |
Saint Kevin (modern Irish Caoimhín; Old Irish Cóemgen, Caemgen; latinized Coemgenus; 498 – 3 June 618) is an Irish saint, known as the founder and first abbot of Glendalough in County Wicklow, Ireland.) His feast day is 3 June.
His life is not well documented, as no contemporaneous material survives. There is a late medieval Latin Vita, preserved among the records of the Franciscan Convent in Dublin, edited by John Colgan as part of the Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae. According to this account, Kevin (like St. Columba) was of noble birth, the son of Coemlog and Coemell of Leinster. He was born in 498 at the Fort of the White Fountain and baptized by Cronan of Roscrea. His given name Coemgen (anglicized Kevin) means "fair-begotten", or "of noble birth", A tradition cited in the 17th century makes Kevin the pupil of Saint Petroc of Cornwall, who had come to Leinster about 492. This tradition is not found in the extant late medieval and early modern hagiography of the saint and appears to be based in a Vita breviora which the Bollandist editors obtained from Henry Fitzsimon, but which is no longer extant.
The Vita also contains a number of legends, which according to Colgan's co-editor Francis Baert are of "doubtful veracity" but were kept in the 17th-century edition for as they were assumed to date still to the medieval period. For example, the text includes an infancy legend involving a white cow said to have come to his parents' house every morning and evening and supplied the milk for the baby.
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