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Agricola (Aregle) (A.D. 580) S. Agricola was the son of a noble Gallo-Roman family; he became bishop of Chalon-sur-Saone in 532. His friend Gregory of Tours reports that Agricola was deeply spiritual, cared for the spiritual well-being of his flock, and beautified a lot of churches. He also said Agricola never dined, and only broke his fast in the evening, when he ate (while standing) a small amount of food. Agricola died at the age of eighty-three, in the year 580.

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Gertrude of Nivelles (d659) Gertrude was a daughter of the Carolingian Pepin of Landen and St. Ida (Itta). When Pepin died in 639, Itta built the double monastery at Nivelles and entered it with her daughter. Elected at age 20, Gertrude served as abbess from 639 until 656, when she resigned her position to spend the last three years of her life in prayer, being penitential, and having visions. She became known both for her learning and her charity. Gertrude had books brought from Rome and patronized Irish wandering monks to help improve the new foundation. By the time she died, at about the age of 33, she had built Nivelles into a major religious center. Gertrude's cult was popular in the Netherlands.

For cat fanciers, Gertrude does not take second place to St Patrick... she is known for protection from mice, and by extension has become the patron saint of cats and cat lovers. Gertrude became a saint especially beloved by farmers; according to legend, her prayer ended a plague of rats and mice, thus saving the harvest. (Alternately, because popular Teutonic superstition regarded mice and rats as symbols of souls, the rat and mouse became characteristics of S. Gertrude, and she is represented in art accompanied by one of these animals. In order to explain the significance of the mouse in pictures of S. Gertrude it was related that she was wont to become so absorbed in prayer that a mouse would play about her, and run up her pastoral staff, without attracting her attention.) She is also a patron of travellers, due to her care for pilgrims and to a miraculous rescue at sea of some of her monks, who invoked her name in a moment of great danger. Fine weather on her feast day is supposed to be the sign to start garden work.

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Guðmundr Arason of Iceland (1237), never officially canonized but the one of the three Icelandic holy men to maintain his position in folklore through the nineteenth century. The wells and springs he is supposed to have consecrated were legion. No snakes or druids in Iceland, but he dealt with a number of rather nasty trolls and the like.

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Withburga (d. c. 743) Withburga was an East Anglian princess, a sister of St. Etheldreda. She became a solitary. Her fame seems really to have begun when she was exhumed 50 years after her death, and the body was found to be incorrupt. In 974 the monastery of Ely stole the body under rather exciting circumstances (pursuit by the men of Dereham, escape by boat).

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I'm not going to post about St. Patrick - to tell the truth, he is my least favorite Celtic saint. The crimes he committed against the Irish get my dander up.

(no subject)

Narcissus of Gerona (d. 307) Perhaps completely legendary, the story is that Bishop Narcissus of Gerona (Spain) came to Augsburg with his deacon Felix at the beginning of the fourth century. There they baptized St. Afra and consecrated her uncle Dionysius as first bishop of Augsburg. After their return to Gerona, both were martyred. A cult began to develop in the eleventh century. Narcissus is often depicted in art with a dragon (he's supposed to have killed one). When king Philip of France took Gerona, his soldiers pillaged the shrine of S. Narcissus, whereupon a swarm of hornets issued from it and stung them. Consequently in art he is also represented with hornets issuing from his tomb. [For this reason, he is also known as St Ung.]

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Fra Angelico (d. 1455) Fra Angelico (Guido da Vicchio) was born near Florence. When about 20 years old, he and his brother became Dominicans at Fiesole. "Brother John of the Angels" (or "Fra Angelico" as he became known outside of the convent) became one of the great artists of the quattrocento, especially noted for his fresco cycles in Rome and his frescos at San Marco in Florence, where he served as prior for several years.

Yes, that Fra Angelico!

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Edward the Martyr (d. 978) The older son of the Anglo-Saxon king Edgar the Peaceable and his first wife, Aethelfleda, Edward (Eadweard) succeeded to the throne in 975 at about the age of twelve. His stepmother arranged his assassination while he was on a visit to his half-brother and successor Æthelred at Corfe Castle in Dorset. Edward's murdered body was thrown into a swamp, but it was discovered by a miraculous light shining down on it and the archbishop of Canterbury, St. Dunstan, proclaimed his sanctity. On 13 February 979, his body (later said to have been incorrupt) was formally translated to Shaftesbury Abbey, where on 20 June 1001 it was ceremoniously enshrined. In 1008 a law of king Æthelred mandated today as Edward’s feast day for the entire kingdom.
The town of Shaftesbury came to be known as Edwardstowe (a designation it lost during the Reformation). In the late eleventh century E. received a Life and Miracles. Visitors to his initial burial site near Corfe Castle, Dorset reported miracle cures, and 15 years after his death, in 979 or 980, his remains were moved to Shaftesbury Abbey (a Benedictine nunnery). When the cover of his grave began levitating, King Ethelred ordered the erection of a shrine: "I, King Ethelred, King of the English, with humble prayer, offer the monastery ... my brother Edward, whom the Lord
himself deigns to exalt in our days by many signs of virtue, after his blood was shed." This shrine, on the north side of the altar, was consecrated in 1001 and Edward was formally canonized in 1008.
Excavations in 1931 revealed a lead casket with the remains of an Anglo-Saxon adolescent boy. The Brookwood Cemetery site explains what happened next: "The Director of the Excavations, John Wilson-Claridge (1905-1993), whose family then owned the site, began years of painstaking negotiations with all the major churches in order to find a suitable resting place for the relics. He imposed two conditions: (1) that they were recognised as the relics of a saint, and (2) that a shrine would be established for their reception. These conditions were met only by the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile, which entered into detailed negotiations with Mr Wilson-Claridge in the late 1970s.
"At the same time the Orthodox Church purchased the site now owned by the St Edward Brotherhood, with the intention of using the larger of the two mortuary chapels for the reception of St Edward's bones. The formal ceremony of enshrinement took place on 15/16 September 1984. Thus for the first time in nearly 450 years the remains of St Edward (arguably England's least important king) have a fitting resting place within a Church whose doctrine is closest to that which he knew in his lifetime." This second enshrinement was not without controversy, for Wilson-Claridge's brother objected to the transfer to theOrthodox Church, and it took a High Court decision in 1984 to allow it. However, extra security measures were ordered, and the relics then found a home in a bank vault until 1993 when, as the St. Edward Brotherhood reported, "on the feast of St. Aethelgifu, the first Abbess of Shaftesbury, we brought the relics back to the church where, glory be to God, they remain to this day." Brookwood Cemetery is 4 miles west of Woking, Surrey.