Kevin of Glendalough

Venerable Kevin of Glendalough was an Irish saint, the founder and first abbot of the monastery of Glendalough in County Wicklow. He is said to have been born in 498 and to have died on 3 June 618, but little is known with certainty of his life, since no writing from his own time survives. The Church commemorates him on 3 June, and on the third Sunday after Pentecost, together with the Synaxis of the Saints of Britain and Ireland. He is one of the patrons of the diocese of Dublin.

Beginnings

His Life, preserved in a late Latin text published by John Colgan in the Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae, says that he was of noble birth, the son of Coemlog and Coemell of Leinster, born at the Fort of the White Fountain and baptised by Cronan of Roscrea. His Irish name, Coemgen, which became Kevin, means fair-⁠begotten or of noble birth. A legend of his infancy says that every morning and evening a white cow came to his parents' house and brought the milk for the child. The editors of the Life recognised that some legends are of doubtful veracity, but kept them in the edition. A later tradition makes him a disciple of Saint Petroc, but it does not appear in the earliest surviving sources.

Glendalough

Bishop Lugidus ordained him, and then Kevin went to Glendalough, the Glen of Two Lakes, a wild and remote place, to escape the crowd of his followers. The Life says that an angel guided him to a cave partly dug by human hands, now called Saint Kevin's Bed, high in the rock above the upper lake. It is a place hard to reach and too cramped for a man to stand upright, so Kevin probably used it as a bed or place of prayer. In one legend Saint Laurence O'Toole used it in Lent.

Kevin lived as a hermit close to nature, with the animals and birds around him as companions. For seven years he went barefoot, clothed only in animal skins, sleeping on stones and eating very little, and he spent his time in prayer. Disciples soon began to come, and nearer the lakeshore a settlement enclosed by a wall was founded, called Kevin's Cell. By about 540 his fame as a teacher and holy man had spread far, and many came to him for help and counsel.

The monastery

Glendalough grew into a renowned seminary of saints and scholars and gave birth to other monasteries. In 544 Kevin went to the Hill of Uisneach in County Westmeath to visit the venerable abbots Columba, Comgall and Cannich. He then went on to Clonmacnoise, where Ciarán had died three days before. With his community firmly established, he withdrew four years into solitude and returned to Glendalough only at the earnest request of his monks. Until his death he presided over the monastery, living in fasting, prayer and teaching. From the scriptorium of his church came in the twelfth century the Book of Glendalough, now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

Veneration

Kevin belongs to the second order of Irish saints. Glendalough, with its seven churches, became one of the chief pilgrimage places of Ireland. His memory lives on in literature, among other works in the poem St Kevin and the Blackbird by the poet Seamus Heaney.