HE was an Irish or Scotch abbot, who, leaving his own country, founded several monasteries in Austria, Burgundy, and Switzerland: the last was that of Sekingen, in an isle in the Rhine, now one of the four forest towns belonging to the house of Austria. In this monastery he died, in 538. He is the tutelar patron of the Swiss canton of Glaris, who carry in their coat of arms his picture in the Benedictin habit, though he was not of that order. See Molanus, Addit. ad Usuard; Pantaleon, Prosopographiæ Vir. Illustr. German. ad an. 502; King in Calend Wion, Lignum Vitæ, l. 3.
ST. BALDREDE, BISHOP OF GLASGOW, C.
HE was immediate successor of St. Mungo, in that see, established many nunneries in Scotland, and died in the province of Laudon, about the year 608. His relics were very famous in many churches in Scotland. See Adam King, in Calend., and the historians Boetius, Major, Leslie, &c.
SS. KYNEBURGE, KYNESWIDE, AND TIBBA.
THE two first were daughters of Penda, the cruel pagan king of Mercia, and sisters to three successive Christian kings, Peada, Wulfere, and Ethelred, and to the pious prince Merowald. Kyneburge, as Bede informs us,[1] was married to Alefrid, eldest sort of Oswi, and in his father's life-time king of Bernicia. They are said to have lived in perpetual continency. By his death she was left a widow in the bloom of life, and, renouncing the world, governed a nunnery which she built; or, according to others, found built by her brother Wulfere, in a moist fenny place, on the confines of the counties of Huntingdon and Northampton, then called Dormundcaster, afterwards, from her, Kyneburgecaster, now Caster. The author of her life in Capgrave says, that she lived here a mirror of all sanctity, and that no words can express the bowels of charity with which she cherished the souls which served God under her care; and how watchful she was over their comportment, and how zealous in instructing and exhorting them; and with what floods of tears she implored for them the divine grace and mercy. She had a wonderful compassion for the poor, and strongly exhorted her royal brothers {523} to alms-giving and works of mercy. Kyneswide and Kynedride (though many confounded the latter with St. Kyneburge) were also daughters of Penda, left very young at his death. By an early consecration of their virginity to God, they devoted themselves to his service, and both embraced a religious state. Kyneswide took the holy veil in the monastery of Dormundcaster.
The bodies of these saints were translated to Peterborough, where their festival was kept on the 6th of March, together with that of Saint Tibba, a holy virgin, their kinswoman, who, having spent many years in solitude and devotion, passed to glory on the 13th of December. Camden informs us, that she was honored with particular devotion at Rihal, a town near the river Wash, in Rutlandshire. See Ingulphus, Hist. p. 850; Will. of Malmesbury l. 4, de Pontif. p. 29; Capgrave and Harpsfield, sæc. 7, c. 23.
Footnotes: 1. Bede Hist. l. 3, c. 21. 2. Camdem in Rutlandshire.
ST. CADROE, C.
HE was a noble Scotsman, son of count (or rather laird) Fokerstrach, and travelling into France, he took the monastic habit at Saint Bennet's on the Loire. He afterwards reformed the monastery of St. Clement, at Metz, in 960, and died in a visit which he made to Adelaide, mother of the emperor Otho I., at Neristein, about the year 975. His relics are kept at St. Clement's, at Metz, and he is honored on the 6th of March. See Mabillon, sec. 5, Ben. p. 480, and sec. 6, p. 28; Henschenius; and Calmet, Hist. de Lor. l. 19, n. 67, p. 1011.