Saint Kevin of Glendalough

CatholicIreland.net names the sources: three Latin Lives in the Codex Kilkenniensis in Marsh's Library, Dublin, probably written in the eleventh century, and three Irish Lives copied by Michael O'Clery in 1629 from old books that drew on oral tradition and pilgrims' tales. ⁴ It cites the historian Pádraig Ó Riain's observation that no critical edition and evaluation of the Lives has been attempted, and concludes, "so what we have about him are traditions." ⁴

Even his dates are uncertain. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia gives his birth as "about 498, the date being very obscure" and his death as June 3, 618. ¹ Its article on Glendalough says he was born near Rathdrum "towards the close of the fifth century" and "lived to the age of 120 years". ² CatholicIreland notes that 498 and 618 would make him 120, and thinks he was more likely born in the middle of the sixth century. ⁴

His name, Coemgen in Irish, means "fair-begotten". ¹² His parents are given as Coemlog and Coemell, or Caomhlugh and Caoimheall. ¹⁴ He was baptized by Saint Cronan, and a legend tells that a stranger at his baptism, whom Cronan took for an angel, blessed him and gave him his name. ¹⁴ The Archdiocese of Dublin says he was born in 498 into a noble family in what is now West Wicklow. ³

The sources agree that he was educated by monks from boyhood, but not on who taught him. ¹⁴ The encyclopedia's article on him names Saint Petroc, a Briton. ¹ Its article on Glendalough says Petroc, who had come from Cornwall, taught him the Scriptures, and that he then studied under his uncle, Saint Eugenius, later Bishop of Ardstraw, at Kilnamanagh in Wicklow. ² CatholicIreland names three teachers at Kilnamanagh: Eoghan, perhaps of Ardstraw, Lóchán and Éanna. ⁴

The Archdiocese of Dublin says he studied for the priesthood at Kilnamanagh and set out after his ordination to find his calling. ³ CatholicIreland tells it in a different order: as a young man he wandered off into the mountains, first to Hollywood near Blessington and then to Glendalough, until his teachers came and took him back to finish his studies; he was ordained afterward by a bishop named Lugidius. ⁴

Healy and CatholicIreland both tell a story from these years. A young woman fell in love with him and followed him; he threw himself into a bed of nettles and drove her off with them, and she repented and became a nun. ²⁴ Healy, writing on Glendalough, gives the biographer's verdict, that the fire without "extinguished the fire within", and adds that there is "no foundation for the story, which Moore has wedded to immortal verse, that Kevin flung the unhappy Kathleen from his cave" into the lake. ² CatholicIreland reads the nettles as a sign that "at the heart of Kevin's quest for holiness there was a real struggle." ⁴

He went back to Glendalough to live alone. ²³⁴ The Archdiocese of Dublin says he chose the shore of the upper lake and took for his hermitage an artificial cave on the south side, about thirty feet above the water, which had originally been a Bronze Age tomb; it is still known as Saint Kevin's Bed and can be seen from the north shore. ³ He lived there seven years, by Dublin's account, and "many years" by Healy's. ²³

The Lives remember a severe life. CatholicIreland says he wore animal skins, ate what he could gather, slept on a stone slab with a stone for a pillow, and sometimes stood in the cold water of the lake to recite the psalms, a penance common among Irish monks. ⁴ The Archdiocese of Dublin adds that the stories handed down stress his love of nature and his closeness to the animals and birds around him. ³

Two of those stories are the best known. In one, an otter brought back his psalter undamaged after he dropped it in the lake. ⁴ In the other, he was praying in Lent with his arm stretched out when a blackbird settled in his palm, built a nest and laid an egg, and he kept still until the chick had hatched and flown. ⁴ CatholicIreland tells them as stories from the Lives, and they should be read with Ó Riain's caution beside them. ⁴

People came to him for advice, for healing and to share his life, and in time he built a monastery lower down the valley, where the ruins still stand. ²³⁴ Healy says that his fame as a saint and scholar drew so many disciples that Glendalough became for the east of Ireland what the Aran Islands were for the west, "a great school of sacred learning". ² Edmonds says it became "a veritable city in the desert" and the parent of several other foundations. ¹

Edmonds also records journeys: a visit to Saints Columba, Comgall and Cannich at Usneach in Westmeath, and a visit to Clonmacnoise, where Saint Ciaran had died three days before, in 544. ¹ Once the community was established, he says, Kevin withdrew into solitude for four years and came back only when his monks begged him. ¹ He "probably was never a bishop", in Edmonds's words, and CatholicIreland says he chose to remain a priest. ¹⁴

CatholicIreland says that he also kept a hermitage near his cave, dividing his time between it and the community, and that before his death he went to live there for good, asking his monks not to visit. ⁴ The last story it tells is of a hunted boar that ran into his oratory; the huntsmen found him kneeling in prayer with birds on his shoulders and hands, the hounds lay down, and the boar went free. ⁴

The Archdiocese of Dublin says the settlement flourished for a thousand years after his death. ³ Healy names two of its pupils: Saint Moling, who founded St. Mullins in County Carlow, and Saint Laurence O'Toole, Archbishop of Dublin, who even as archbishop spent Lent in Kevin's cave above the lake. ² Glendalough became a diocese of its own and is now part of the Archdiocese of Dublin. ¹

Healy lists the ruins that remain: the great church, which he calls a cathedral, a round tower still 110 feet high, the Church of the Blessed Virgin, and the building called Saint Kevin's Kitchen, which he took to be the saint's oratory and sleeping room. ² Edmonds adds that Saint Kevin's house and his bed in the rock "are still to be seen", and that the Seven Churches of Glendalough "have for centuries been visited by pilgrims." ¹

The Archdiocese of Dublin calls him one of its patron saints. ³ No other patronage is named in the sources consulted, and no patronage tag is given here.

Saint Kevin's feast is June 3. ³⁵ The National Proper for Ireland keeps "Saint Kevin, abbot" as a memorial on that day, and the Archdiocese of Dublin gives the same date. ³⁵ It is the day the encyclopedia gives for his death in 618, and Edmonds noted in 1908 that "his festival is kept throughout Ireland." ¹

He went to Glendalough to be alone with God, and the sources keep returning to that wish: the Archdiocese of Dublin says his dream was "to find God in solitude and prayer." ³ The solitude did not last. People found him, and he spent most of his life running the community they made. ¹³⁴

He did not give up the wish either. By Edmonds's account he withdrew again once the monastery was established, and by CatholicIreland's he kept a hermitage near his cave and went back to it at the end. ¹⁴ Healy says Laurence O'Toole, centuries later, did the same thing, leaving Dublin for Lent to pray in the cave. ²

The stories that have lasted are about attention and patience: a man standing in a cold lake to pray, or holding still with a bird nesting in his hand. ⁴ Nobody needs to take the blackbird literally to see what the people who told it admired in him.

The nettles are harder. They come from the same Lives, and CatholicIreland is right that they show a struggle and not an easy victory. ⁴ The tradition kept that story too.