Clockwise from top left: Saints Brigid of Kildare; Caedmon, the first Orthodox English hymnwriter; Ethelbert of Kent, First Christian King of the English; Teilo of Wales; and Leander of Seville, Apostle of Spain.
By Walt Garlington
♱ St. Brigid of Kildare, 1/14 February
The “Mary of Ireland”; our venerable Mother Brigid of Kildare, or Brigid of Ireland (Bridget, Bride; Gaelic: Naomh Bhríd), was an Irish nun, abbess, and founder of several convents. Along with St. Patrick of Ireland (17th March) and St. Columba of Iona (9th June), she is one of the three patron saints of Ireland. According to tradition, St. Brigid was born at Faughart near Dundalk, Co. Louth, Ireland to Dubhthach, a pagan chieftain of Leinster, and Brocca, a Christian Pictish slave who had been baptized by St. Patrick. Known for her compassion for the poor even as a youth — giving away her family’s food and even valuable possessions to those in need — and despite family objections, she was drawn to the monastic life. After her family saw there was no possibility to convince her to pursue a life in the world, a young St. Brigid received monastic tonsure at the hands of St. Mel of Ardagh (6th February).
Soon after, she established a monastery on land called Cill Dara (Kildare), or “the church of the oak” which had been given to her by the King of Leinster, thus founding women’s coenobitic monasticism in Ireland. Under St. Brigid’s leadership this monastery grew to become one of the most prestigious in Ireland, and famous throughout Christian Europe. Renowned for her common-sense and most of all for her holiness, even in her lifetime she was regarded as a saint. St. Brigid reposed circa 525 and was buried in a tomb before the high altar of her monastery. During the Danish invasions, her relics were translated to Downpatrick where they were buried with those of St. Patrick of Ireland and St. Columba of Iona. Late in the thirteenth century, her head was extracted and brought to Portugal by three Irish knights on their way to fight in the Holy Land. They left this holy relic in the parish church of Lumiar in northern Lisbon. Portions of the relic were brought back to Ireland in 1929 and placed in a new church of St. Brigid in Dublin.
Source
O holy Brigid, you became sublime through your humility, / and flew on the wings of your longing for God. / When you arrived in the eternal City and appeared before your Heavenly Bridegroom, / wearing the crown of virginity, / you kept your promise / to remember those who have recourse to you. / You shower grace upon the world, and multiply miracles. / Intercede with Christ our God that He may save our souls.
Source
A fuller account of her life is here and here. Poems ancient and modern in her honor: here and here.
♱ Sts. Perpetua and Felicity and those martyred with them at Carthage, 1/14 February
Vivia Perpetua was a young married woman of good social position. Felicity, also married, was a slave. The others were catechumens and Saturus perhaps their instructor. All were imprisoned together in Carthage in North Africa as a law of Septimus Severus forbade conversions to the faith. Secundulus died in prison: the others were thrown to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre on March 7. Their Acts were written by Saturus, one of the martyrs, and completed by an eyewitness.
Source
A fuller account is here and here. In print, here.
♱ St. Teilo of Wales, 9/22 February
It is fairly certain that he was a disciple of St. Dubritius (14th November), friend of SS. Samson (28th July) and David (1st March). Having learned from the great fathers of Welsh monasticism and gained spiritual experience, Teilo resolved to follow in the footsteps of these heroes of the spirit. Teilo is the founder of the Monastery of Llandeilo Fawr (“large church of Teilo”) in Dyfed (now in the small town of Llandeilo in the county of Carmarthenshire) which became one of the main centers of monasticism and learning in Wales for many centuries. Teilo left many disciples and spiritual followers after him in this monastery who were venerated as saints as well. Records exist of his pilgrimages to Rome and Brittany, where churches bear his name. Legends exist of him having been consecrated bishop at Jerusalem while on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He is also said to have succeeded St. Dubricius in the See of Llandaff. St. Teilo reposed at Llandeilo Fawr in 560.
Source
A fuller account of his life
♱ St. Caedmon, the first Orthodox English hymnwriter, 11/24 February
The only source of original information about St. Cædmon is from St. Bede the Venerable’s (25th May) Historia ecclesiastica, in which he relates that St. Cædmon was a lay brother who worked and cared for the animals at Whitby Abbey. One evening, while the monks were feasting, singing, and playing a harp, St. Cædmon left early to sleep with the animals because he knew no songs. St. Bede the Venerable implies that St. Cædmon felt he lacked the knowledge needed to compose the words to songs. While sleeping, St. Cædmon had a dream in which “someone” (quidam) approached him and asked him to sing principium creaturarum (the beginning of created things). After first refusing to sing, Cædmon subsequently produced a short eulogistic poem praising God, the Creator of heaven and earth.
Upon awakening the next morning, Cædmon not only remembered everything he had sung in his dream but added additional lines to his poem. After telling his foreman about this dream, he was taken immediately to see the abbess, believed to be St. Hilda (17th November), who closely questioned St. Cædmon about his dream. Satisfied that it was a gift from God, the abbess gave him a new commission as a test; this time for a poem based on “a passage of sacred history or doctrine”. Upon returning the next morning with the requested poem, St. Cædmon was ordered to take monastic vows. The abbess then ordered her scholars to teach St. Cædmon sacred history and doctrine, which after a night of reflection; St. Cædmon would turn into the most beautiful poetry. According to St. Bede the Venerable, St. Cædmon was responsible for a considerable number of splendid vernacular poetic texts on a variety of Christian topics. After a long and zealously pious life, St. Cædmon, having received a premonition of death, asked to be moved to the abbey’s hospice where, having gathered his friends around him, he expired, after receiving the Holy Eucharist circa 680.
“Cædmon’s Hymn of Creation”
Now we should praise the heaven-kingdom’s guardian,
the measurer’s might and his mind-conception,
work of the glorious father, as we each wonder,
eternal Lord, instilled at the origin.
He first created for men’s sons
heaven as a roof, holy creator;
then, middle-earth, mankind’s guardian,
eternal Lord, afterward made
the earth for men, father almighty.
Source
♱ St. Modomnoc, the Patron Saint of Bees, 13/26 February
St. Modomnoc descended from the royal family (or, to be more exact the clan) of O’Neil in Ulster, Northern Ireland. With all his heart young Modomnoc wished to serve God as priest, so he went to Wales to receive a good education and training in the great monastery of Mynyw, or Menevia (now St. Davids) under St. David, the patron-saint of Wales. Unlike other disciples of the great Abbot David who practiced manual labor, church singing and grew vegetables, the young ascetic Modomnoc had beekeeping as his obedience. Modomnoc loved this obedience very much and took great care of the little creatures that were in his charge. He looked after them, kept them in specially-made straw beehives in a sheltered corner of the large monastery garden where he grew the most beautiful flowers that were loved and appreciated by his bees.
The account of his life continues here.
♱ St. Ethelbert of Kent, First Christian King of the English, 25 Feb./10 March
His conversion is a momentous event in Southern history. In 597, a party of forty missionary monks, led by St. Augustine of Canterbury (May 28), was sent to Britain by the holy Pope Gregory the Great, to bring the blessed Gospel of Jesus Christ to the English people. Ethelbert, who had been King of Kent for thirty-six years, received the monks favorably, allowed them to preach in his kingdom, and invited them to establish their headquarters in Canterbury, his capital city, which already contained a small, ruined church dedicated to St. Martin of Tours in Roman times. The king himself was converted and received holy Baptism at the hands of St. Augustine; a crowd of his subjects followed his example. When St. Augustine was consecrated bishop, Ethelbert allowed him to be made Archbishop of Canterbury and gave his own palace to serve as a monastery. The king worked steadily for the conversion of the neighboring kingdoms, and in 604 established an episcopal see in London. Unlike some Christian rulers, he refused to see anyone converted forcibly. Saint Ethelbert reposed in peace in 616, after reigning for fifty-six years. He was buried in the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, which he had established. Many miracles were worked at his tomb, where a lamp was kept lit perpetually until the monastery was disbanded by the Protestants in 1538.
Source
More information here and here.
♱ St. Leander of Seville, Apostle of Spain, 27 Feb./12 March
He was born to an aristocratic Roman family living in Spain: his father Severian was Duke of Cartagena. Saint Leander embraced monastic life as a young man in Seville, capital of the Visigoths, who had embraced Arianism and caused the Arian heresy to dominate throughout Spain. Leander became a leading figure in the struggle to restore his land to Orthodoxy, founding a school in Seville to promote the Orthodox faith. In 583 he travelled to Constantinople to seek the Emperor’s support for the Spanish Orthodox; while there he met St Gregory the Great (the future Pope of Rome), with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. On his return to Spain, Leander was made Bishop of Seville. One of the holy bishop’s converts was Hermengild, one of the sons of the Arian king Leovigild. When Hermengild rose up against his father in the name of Orthodoxy, Leovigild launched a violent persecution of the Orthodox throughout his kingdom. (Leovigild had his son imprisoned, then executed on Pascha Day of 586.)
By God’s grace, at the very height of the persecution Leovigild fell mortally ill, repented, and embraced the true Faith; at his urging his son and successor Recared converted to Orthodoxy and convened the Third Council of Toledo in 589, at which he proclaimed that the Gothic and Suevic peoples were returning to the unity of the One Church. Saint Leander presided at the Council, and devoted the rest of his life to educating the (mostly) newly-Orthodox people of Spain in the Faith. It was he who established the early form of the Mozarabic Liturgy. He reposed in peace on March 13, 600. (He is venerated on this day because his name was incorrectly placed on February 27 in the Roman Martyrology.)
Source
♱ St. John Cassian the Roman, 29 Feb./13 March
He is an important bridge who brought the depth of the spiritual riches of the African Desert Fathers to Western Europe. Early in life he lived for years with the African Fathers. Later in life, he settled in France and founded the monastery of St. Victor in Marseilles, and then, at the request of his bishop, wrote the Cenobitic Institutions, in which he adapted the austere practices of the Egyptian Fathers to the conditions of life in Gaul. He went on to write his famous Conferences, which became the main channel by which the wisdom of the desert East was passed to the monastics of the West. Saint Benedict developed much of his Rule (which at one time governed most monasteries in the Latin world) from St John’s Institutions and ordered that the Conferences be read in all monasteries. Saint John reposed in peace in 435, and has been venerated by the monks of the West as their Father and one of their wisest teachers. His relics are still venerated at the Abbey of St. Victor in Marseilles. His name ought to be much loved at the South.
Source, along with more information
Another account of his life
For complete lists of Orthodox Saints of our Southern forefathers of Africa and Western Europe for February, visit Dr. John Hutchison-Hall and Fr. Andrew Phillips’ Orthodox England.
Walt Garlington is a chemical engineer turned writer and editor of the website Confiteri: A Southern Perspective. This longtime Southern Baptist, then Anglican, was united to the Orthodox Church in 2012 and makes his home in Louisiana where he attends a GOA parish.
