Saint Kevin of Glendalough

Kevin (Modern Irish: Caoimhín; Old Irish: Cóemgen, Caemgen; Latinized Coemgenus; 498 (reputedly)–3 June 618) is an Irish saint, known as the founder and first abbot of Glendalough in County Wicklow, Ireland. His feast day is 3 June. Kevin's life is not well documented because no contemporaneous material survives. There is a late-medieval Latin Vita, preserved among the records of the Franciscan Convent in Dublin, edited by John Colgan as part of the Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae. According to that account, Kevin (like Columba) was of noble birth, the son of Coemlog and Coemell of Leinster. It says he was born in 498 AD at the Fort of the White Fountain and baptized by Cronan of Roscrea. His given name Coemgen (anglicized Kevin) means "fair-begotten", or "of noble birth". A tradition cited in the 17th century makes Kevin the pupil of Petroc of Cornwall, who had come to Leinster about 492. That claim is not found in the extant late-medieval and early-modern hagiography of the saint, and appears to be based in a Vita breviora which the Bollandist editors obtained from Henry Fitzsimon, but which is no longer extant. The Vita also contains a number of legends which, according to Colgan's co-editor Francis Baert, are of "doubtful veracity", but were kept in the 17th-century edition because they were assumed to date to the medieval period. For example, the text includes an infancy legend involving a white cow, said to have come to his parents' house every morning and evening, which supplied the milk for the baby. Glendalough, or the Glen of Two Lakes, is one of the most important sites of monastic ruins in Ireland. Before the arrival of Kevin, this glen would have been lonely and remote and would have been ideal for a secluded retreat. Bishop Lugidus ordained Kevin who, following his ordination, moved on to Glendalough in order to avoid the company of his followers.