Top row (from left to right): Saints Comgall of Bangor and Pachomius the Great of Egypt.
Bottom row (from left to right): Saints Augustine of Canterbury, Apostle of the English; Brendan the Voyager; Timothy and Maura of Egypt; and Germanus of Paris.
By Walt Garlington
♱ Sts. Timothy and Maura of Egypt, 3/16 May
These holy martyrs were husband and wife. During the persecutions of Diocletian, the governor Arian demanded that Timothy hand over his sacred books (these were rare at that time, and as a Reader he was entrusted with their care). Timothy refused, saying that he would no more do so than a father would hand over his own children to death. He was brutally tortured and, when he refused to yield, the governor summoned Timothy’s wife Maura, thinking that she would urge her husband to bow to the idols, but instead she confessed herself to be a Christian too. She in turn was subjected to many tortures, and finally the couple were crucified facing one another, where they hung for nine days, encouraging one another in the Faith, before they met their blessed end. They had been married for less than a month when they received their crowns.
Source
A fuller account of their life
♱ St. John of Beverley, 7/20 May
St. John of Beverley (+721) is a great saint of the golden age of saints in England. St. John was born about 640 at Harpham in Yorkshire of a noble Saxon family. Harpham is a small village near the north-east coast of England, being 55 kilometres east of the City of York and 30 kilometres north of the town of Beverley. His pious parents must have been Christian since they ensured that he was educated in the Christian faith. St. Bede tells us that St. John undertook further studies with St Hilda at the great monastery she founded at Whitby on England’s northeast coast.
St. John left Whitby and retired to a place of retreat near the River Tyne, spending his time in prayer and meditation. However, his love and compassion for the people led him to leave his solitude and go to preach and minister to the people of the area. It was from this time that miracles were worked by God through St. John.
In his monastery, in 721, St. John ended his life in this world. God knows the help the faithful need in our times, and in 1997, an English convert to Holy Orthodoxy and his wife, finding the place where the saint’s relics were buried, went there to pray. As they did so, a beautiful fragrance arose from the spot where the sacred relics are buried. The couple’s spiritual father blessed them to tell what happened so that the faithful might take courage, knowing that the saints of Orthodox England acknowledge the veneration given to them.
A fuller account of this great wonderworker is here and here
♱ St. Arsenius the Great of Egypt, 8/21 May
Saint Arsenius the Great was born in the year 354 at Rome into a pious Christian family, which provided him a fine education and upbringing. He studied rhetoric and philosophy, and mastered the Latin and Greek languages. Saint Arsenius gave up philosophy and the vanity of worldly life, seeking instead the true wisdom praised by Saint James “pure, peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits” (Jas. 3:17).
Saint Arsenius entreated the Lord to show him the way to salvation. The Lord heard his prayer and one time he heard a voice telling him, “Arsenius, flee from men, and you shall be saved.” And then, removing his rich clothing and replacing it with old and tattered garments, he secretly left the palace, boarded a ship for Alexandria, and he made his way to Sketis, a monastery in the midst of the desert.
Arriving at the church, he asked the priests to accept him into the monastic brotherhood, calling himself a wretched wanderer, though his very manner betrayed him as a cultivated man. The brethren led him to Abba John the Dwarf (November 9), famed for his holiness of life. He, wishing to test the newcomer’s humility, did not seat Arsenius with the monks for the trapeza meal. He threw him a piece of dry bread saying, “Eat if you wish.” Saint Arsenius got down on his hands and knees, and picked up the bread with his mouth. Then he crawled off into a corner and ate it. Seeing this, Elder John said, “He will be a great ascetic!” Then accepting Arsenius with love, he tonsured him into monasticism.
Read the rest of his life
♱ St. Comgall of Bangor, 10/23 May
Born in Ulster in Ireland, he became a monk with St Fintan and founded the monastery of Bangor (Ben-Chor), where he was the spiritual father of St Columbanus and many other monks who later enlightened Central Europe. It seems that he lived for some time in Wales, Cornwall and Scotland.
Source
A fuller account of this important monastic founder: Longer version; shorter version
♱ St. Pachomius the Great of Egypt, 15/28 May
Saint Pachomius the Great was both a model of desert dwelling, and with Saints Anthony the Great (January 17), Macarius the Great (January 19), and Euthymius the Great (January 20), a founder of the cenobitic monastic life in Egypt. Saint Pachomius was born in the third century in the Thebaid (Upper Egypt). His parents were pagans who gave him an excellent secular education. From his youth he had a good character, and he was prudent and sensible.
Once, after ten years of asceticism, Saint Pachomius made his way through the desert, and halted at the ruins of the former village of Tabennisi. Here he heard a Voice ordering him to start a monastery at this place. Pachomius told the Elder Palamon of this, and they both regarded the words as a command from God. They went to Tabennisi and built a small monastic cell. The holy Elder Palamon blessed the foundations of the monastery and predicted its future glory. But soon Palamon departed to the Lord. An angel of God then appeared to Saint Pachomius in the form of a schemamonk and gave him a Rule of monastic life.
A fuller account of his life
♱ St. Brendan the Voyager, 16/29 May
One of the three most famous ascetics of Ireland. He was born in Kerry, becoming a disciple of St Finian at Clonard and of St Gildas at Llancarfan in Wales. He was a great founder of monasteries, especially of Clonfert. He is best known in history for his voyages and may have reached North America. St Brendan is venerated as the patron saint of sailors.
Source
Another great source for St. Brendan and his legacy (which shows up in some unexpected places, from Russia to South America!) is here. And for more: here, here, and here.
♱ St. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 19 May/1 June
Born near Glastonbury, he became a monk and abbot there. He was called to court as a counsellor but was forced into exile. He then spent a year in Ghent, a centre of monastic revival, but then he was recalled to England by King Edgar and became his main advisor. He was consecrated Bishop of Worcester in 957 and Archbishop of Canterbury in 961. Together with Sts Ethelwold of Winchester and Oswald of York, he restored monastic life in England. He reposed peacefully at Canterbury.
In King Edgar’s reign, England reached the peak of her glory as an Orthodox kingdom, founded on a strong monastic revival supported by a powerful king and a sainted archbishop. The relationship between them was truly symphonic, but with a particularly strong role assigned to the king: “I have in my hand the sword of Constantine; you hold that of Peter,” wrote King Edgar to Dunstan in 967. “Let us join our right hands sword to sword, so that the sanctuary of God may be cleansed.”
The truly “symphonic” cooperation of King Edgar and Archbishop Dunstan laid the foundation of a golden age in the history of the Anglo-Saxon Church. This age had been prophesied by a heavenly voice which St. Dunstan had heard in 943, at the birth of Edgar: “Peace to England as long as this child reigns, and our Dunstan survives.” William of Malmesbury wrote, “The succession of events was in unison with the heavenly oracle; to such an extent did ecclesiastical glory flourish and martial clamour decay while he was alive.“
Source 1
Source 2
More resources here, here, and here
Hymns to the Saint
The Christian history of Glastonbury recounted here
♱ St. Aldhelm of Sherborne, 25 May/7 June
Born in Wessex in England, he became a monk at Malmesbury and taught there. In 675 he became abbot and in 705 first Bishop of Sherborne. Aldhelm was the first Englishman to attain distinction as a scholar.
Source
A very talented man by nature, under the influence of other fathers among his contemporaries, Aldhelm became a prominent scholar, writer, poet, musician, singer, pastor, archpastor, teacher and builder of churches. Many historians have regarded Aldhelm as the greatest scholar in medieval Western Europe before Bede. Besides this, the saint always combined education with prayer and a strict ascetic life; that is why the Lord bestowed on him the ability to work miracles. The saint was very tall, cheerful, friendly and good-natured by character; though a learned man, he used to speak simply with illiterate people, which is why all came to love him in the following years.
The saint took care of the ordinary people of Malmesbury and neighboring settlements, many of whom were uneducated. A very talented man, Aldhelm composed numerous songs, poems and hymns in his native Old English, and he mastered the Anglo-Saxon harp as well as other instruments (some state that he could play all the instruments available for that period). From time to time he would go to public places and sing secular songs in the vernacular. Crowds would gather around him and he would start singing spiritual songs in order to attract as many unchurched people to Christ as possible. Most often on Sundays after the church service he would often walk amid people or stand on the bridge in Malmesbury, playing the harp and performing his own hymns and songs in the manner of minstrels, and people would gather around him and listen, glorifying God.
For a fuller account of his life
♱ St. Bede the Venerable, 25 May/7 June
Born in Wearmouth in the north of England, as a child he entered the monastery of Sts Peter and Paul at Wearmouth-Jarrow and spent his whole life there, “always praying, always writing, always reading, always teaching.” He wrote many commentaries on the Scriptures. His work The History of the English Church and People earned him the title of the Father of English History. He reposed on Ascension Eve and his dying words were Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
Source
A fuller account of his life: here, here, and here
♱ St. Augustine of Canterbury, the Apostle of the English, 27 May/9 June
Our father among the saints Augustine of Canterbury was a missionary to Kent in England, and the first Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a monk at St. Andrew’s on the Coelian Hill in Rome, when Pope St. Gregory the Dialogist (3rd September), with whom St. Augustine shares the title of “Apostle of the English,” selected him to lead a mission of forty monks to enlighten England and re-establish the Church there, which had all but died out following the fall of the Roman Empire. The missionaries landed near Ebbsfleet in the Isle of Thanet in eastern Kent and were welcomed by King St. Æthelberht (24th February) who, though married to the Christian Bertha of France, was still a pagan.
St. Augustine and his monks based their mission at the ancient church of St. Martin in Canterbury, which had been built during the Roman occupation of Britain, and where Bertha frequently went to pray. Although the King St. Æthelberht was initially reluctant to embrace Christ, he promised not to interfere in the work of St. Augustine and his monks, and gave them free rein the preach to his subjects. In time King St. Æthelberht was baptised, led a holy life and, since his repose, he has been venerated by the Church as the holy right-believing King St. Æthelberht.
St. Augustine was known during his lifetime as a wonderworker, and reposed on 26th May, 604. He was initially buried at the entrance to the unfinished church at SS. Peter and Paul monastery. Upon its completion, his relics were entombed inside with an epitaph which reads in part: “Here lies the Lord Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, sent here by blessed Gregory, bishop of the city of Rome, who with the help of God, and aided by miracles, guided King Ethelbert and his people from the worship of idols to the Faith of Christ.”
A fuller account of his life: longer version; shorter version
“Kontakion of St. Augustine of Canterbury — Tone IV“
O august Apostle of the English land,
adornment of the holy city of Canterbury,
Enlightener and Archpastor Augustine,
confirm anew the Orthodox Faith within this land and among all thy people,
and intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.
Source
♱ St. Germanus of Paris, 28 May/10 June
“The glory of the church of France in the sixth age.” Born near Autun in France, he became an abbot and later Bishop of Paris. He healed King Childebert I and converted him from an evil life. The King built the monastery of St. Vincent for him, which is now known as Saint-Germain-des-Prés. St Germanus was given the title of “father of the poor.”
Source
For much more about this great preacher and wonderworker
For complete lists of Orthodox Saints of our Southern forefathers of Africa and Western Europe for May, 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.
