Mongoose (saint)

Coat of arms of the city of Glasgow , with St. Mungo as a helmet gem

The holy mongoose , also known as Kentigern (* 518 in Culross , Scotland , † January 13, 612 in Glasgow ) is considered the first bishop of Glasgow and is the patron saint of the city and Scotland. He is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches . His feast day is January 13th .

Accounts of the life of the saint come mainly from the Vita , which was written in the 12th century by the Cistercian Jocelyn from Furness Abbey . He was then a missionary at the Clyde when he was 25 . In 540 he was ordained bishop on the initiative of King Rhydderch Hael of Strathclyde . For 13 years he worked from a cell in what is now the city of Glasgow. In 553 the mood in the region changed, Christianity was no longer respected, and Mungo fled the kingdom to Menevia , the monastery of St. David of Menevia .

A few years later he founded a monastery in Llanelwy , where he installed St. Asaph as headmaster when he said goodbye . 573 Mungo returned to Scotland, benefiting from the outcome of the Battle of Arfderydd . First he preached the gospel in Dumfriesshire . In 581 he returned to Glasgow. There he met St. Columban of Iona .

Saint Mungo was buried on the spot where St Mungo's Cathedral , dedicated to him, stands today in Glasgow . Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland claimed in his work "The Art of Extending Human Life" in 1796 that Kentigern was 185 years old.

The iconographic sacred attributes of mongoose can be found in the city arms of Glasgow: a fish with a ring in its mouth; a bell ; a robin and an oak tree .

Today the holy mongoose is also considered a good luck charm. In dice games (such as Kniffel), repeating the name several times is intended to conjure up one's own luck with the dice.

literature

Adriaan Breukelaar: Kentigern (mongoose). In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 3, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-035-2 , Sp. 1354-1355. ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
Entry in the Dictionary of Christian Biography by Henry Wace (DCB): JG: [1]

Web links

Commons : St. Mungo - collection of images, videos and audio files

personal data
SURNAME	Mongoose
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Capsize
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Patron of the city of Glasgow and Scotland; is considered the first bishop of Glasgow
DATE OF BIRTH	518
PLACE OF BIRTH	Culross , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH	January 13, 612
Place of death	Glasgow