Kentigern (Conthigernus, Cyndeyrn, Kentegernus, Quentagern, Mongah, Munghu, Mungo, bp. of Glasgow and confessor). St. Kentigern shares, with St. Ninian and St. Columba, the highest honour among the early evangelizers of Scotland. The time, extent, and sphere of St. Kentigern's missionary enterprise are sufficiently recognized. Strictly speaking, there is only one Life of St. Kentigern known, that by Joceline of Furness, written probably c. 1180, for bp. Joceline of Glasgow (A.D. 1174–1199), from two earlier memoirs, but there is an older fragment which was probably one of the two used by him. From these all others are derived.
St. Kentigern, perhaps better and more
popularly known as St. Mungo, was a Strathclyde
Briton. His parentage is doubtful. He was born at Culross in Perthshire. From his master there he secretly departed, and travelling westward, crossing the Forth probably near Alloa, arrived at Carnock near Stirling, and thence was led by the oxen which carried the corpse of Fregus to Cathures, now Glasgow, where St. Ninian had already consecrated a cemetery. There he took up the unfinished work of St. Ninian. The picture presented of the time and field of his labour is a deplorable one. He was consecrated by a single bishop, called for the purpose from Ireland (c. 11). He was raised to the episcopate in his 25th year (c. 12), but all we know of the date is that it was before his departure to Wales. Ussher places it in 540, which is accepted by Stubbs (Reg. Sacr. Angl. 157). At Glasgow he formed a monastic school, and a beautiful account is given (cc. 12–18) of the man, his austere life and humble piety. He had a wide province, which he traversed mostly on foot, and his message was to the lapsed from the faith and to the morally degraded, as well as to the ignorant pagans. The disorders in the kingdom, and probably the increasing power of the pagan faction, induced the bishop to leave his see and find refuge in Wales a few years after his consecration (A.D. 543, Ussher). On his way he spent some time in Cumberland, where his work is marked by churches still dedicated to him (c. 23); thence he advanced as far as Menevia, where he visited St. David, and then appears to have returned northwards, settling for a time on the banks of the Clwyd and building his church at its confluence with the Elwy, at Llanelwy, now St. Asaph's, in Flintshire (cc. 23–25), c. 545 (Stubbs). The monastery which he erected at Llanelwy was soon filled. Old and young, rich and poor, prince and peasant, flocked to it, and we have a very graphic picture of how monasteries were raised in ancient days before stone was used for such erections, and how the laus perennis was carried out in large communities, such as this must have been with its 965 brethren in their "threefold division of religious observance" (cc. 24–25).