Rumbold of Mechelen

Saint Rumbold the Martyr was an Irish or Scottish Christian missionary, though his nationality is not known for certain, who received the crown of martyrdom near Mechelen, in present-⁠day Belgium. He is the patron of that city. The Roman Catholic Church and the Western Rite Orthodox Churches keep his feast on 24 June, and in Ireland he is commemorated on 3 July.

There are no historical records from his own time, and everything told of his life is legendary. According to tradition he was consecrated a regionary bishop at Rome. An Irish chronicler of the seventeenth century argued that he was born in Ireland. Other traditions call him a bishop of Dublin, the son of a Scottish king and the brother of Saint Himelin. He is said to have laboured under Saint Willibrord in the Netherlands and Brabant and to have been close to the hermit Gummarus and the preaching monk Fredegand of Deurne. He was killed by two men whom he had rebuked for their evil ways.

His life was written around 1100 by Theodoric, prior of the abbey of Sint-⁠Truiden, who places his death in 775. But the surroundings of Mechelen had been Christianized much earlier, and a 2004 examination of the relics attributed to the saint showed a death between 580 and 655. For this reason Rumbold was more likely an Irish or Scottish missionary than an Anglo-⁠Saxon one. His relics are venerated in a golden shrine on the high altar of Saint Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen, where according to local tradition his remains are also buried, and in the choir twenty-⁠five paintings illustrate his life. He should not be confused with the infant Saint Rumwold of Buckingham, who died in 662 at three days old.