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Icons of St. Kevin, Abbot of
Glendalough in Ireland.
Feast: June 3
St. Kevin the founder of Glendalough in County
Wicklow. Tradition has his family were Leinster nobility. Kevin or
Coemgen (which means “the Fair Begotten”) was baptized by St. Cronan
(April 28) and educated in a monastery at Cell na Manach (now
Kilmanach) near Dublin. It is said that one of his teachers was St.
Petroc (June 15). After his ordination he withdrew as a hermit in the
upper reaches of Glendalough to a cave called “St. Kevin’s Bed” There
he used a Bronze-Age tomb as an altar. He lived there for seven years
clad in skins and sleeping on stones and eating nettles and wild
sorrel. He was discovered in his cave by a farmer named Dima who
induced him to leave his solitude. His health was so poor that he was
brought down in a litter to Disert-Coemgen. There he gathered some
disciples and made a settlement. Later he moved his community to the
upper lake and made a permanent settlement there. According to one of
the “Irish Lives” he made a pilgrimage to Rome and because of the
relics he brought back, no single saint in Ireland ever obtained more
from God than he except Patrick. Abbott Kevin went to visit St. Kieran,
abbot of Clonmacnoise (Sept. 9) when Kieran was dying. Kieran was able
to talk with him and gave him a bell. In his extreme old age he desired
to make another pilgrimage to Rome, but a wise old man told him that
“birds do not hatch their eggs on the wing”. He lived to be 120.
Glendalough came to be one of the four main pilgrimages in Ireland.
Seven visits to Glendalough being reckoned as the same as one
pilgrimage to Rome. St. Kevin is one of the principal patrons of Dublin
and his feast is kept all over Ireland.
Top icon: by Australian
iconographer Peter Stefanovic. His website is at www.orthodox-icons.com. Peter
trained as an iconographer for 7 years on Mt. Athos and is currently
frescoing Greek churches in Australia. He also does private
commissions. (Thanks to Fr. Joachim of St. John Baptist Skete, Kentyln,
for providing the above information.)
Next icon: by the hand of
Nicholas Papas, Come And See Icons, relic from monastery of St. Kevin
is embedded in the original.
Last icon: from Holy
Transfiguration Monastery, Boston.
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