(ABOUT A.D. 549.)
[S. Albinus seems to have enjoyed an amount of popularity as a saint which it is difficult to account for. Besides receiving great veneration at Angers, where his feast is a double, and in Brittany, where it is a semi-double, in Gnesen, in Poland, it was observed as a double. His name appears in most Martyrologies, as those of Usuardus, Hrabanus, Wandelbert, &c. Authority:—His life written by Fortunatus, a priest, his contemporary.]
S. Albinus, or S. Aubin, as he is called in France, belonged to an ancient family at Vannes, in Brittany. He embraced the religious life in the abbey of Cincillac, called afterwards Tintillant, near Angers. At the age of thirty-five, in the year 504, he was chosen abbot, and twenty-five years afterwards, bishop of Angers. In the 3rd Council of Orleans, in 538, he caused the thirtieth canon of the Epaone to be revived, which declared excommunication to those who contracted marriage within the first or second degree of consanguinity. His life is singularly devoid of incident which could mark it off from that of many another abbot and bishop, and it is therefore difficult to account for his undoubted popularity in France in ancient times.
S. SWIBERT, THE ELDER, B., AP. OF THE FRISIANS.
(A.D. 713.)
[Ado, Usuardus, Molanus, Belgian, and Cologne Martyrologies, Gallican and Roman Martyrologies. Authorities:—Bede, lib. V. C. 12; and the life of S. Willibrod. There exists a forged life of S. Swibert, under the name of Marcellinus, which was composed in the 15th century, and which is undeserving of attention. S. Swibert is called the Elder to distinguish him from S. Swibert, B. of Verden, in Westphalia, in 807. (April 30); there was also another Swibert about 750, abbot in Cumberland, mentioned by Bede. Many writers have confounded together S. Swibert the Elder, and S. Swibert the Younger.]
S. Swibert was a Northumbrian monk who had been trained under S. Egbert, whom he accompanied to Ireland. Egbert desired greatly the conversion of Friesland, but was unable himself to attempt it, and his zeal communicated itself to his disciple Swibert, and when S. Willibrord sailed in 690 for that country, Swibert, at Egbert's desire, accompanied him. They landed at the mouth of the Rhine, at Katwyck, and Willibrord established his head quarters at Utrecht. Two years before, Pepin l'Herstall had conquered Radbod, king of Frisia, and had obliged him to ask peace, and abandon to the mayor of the palace his most important possessions, amongst others the whole basin between the Meuse and the Rhine, where stand now the town of Leyden, Delft, Gouda, Brill, and Dortrecht, as well as the city of Utrecht.
Finding it difficult to make headway against the superstitions of paganism, Willibrord appealed to the authority of Pepin, who sent Willibrord to Rome to receive mission and benediction for his work from the Holy See. On his return, success declared for the apostles, and four years after, Pepin sent Willibrord again to Rome with letters praying the pope to ordain him bishop to the nation he had converted. Pope Sergius consecrated him in 696, and Willibrord fixed his see at Utrecht, of which he was the first bishop. In the meantime, Swibert had been labouring in Hither Friesland, or the southern part of Holland, the northern part of Brabant, and the counties of Guelders and Cleves, with great success. In 697, Swibert was in England, probably in quest of fellow-helpers for the harvest, for the fields were white thereto, and he received episcopal consecration from the hands of S. Wilfred of York, then in banishment from his see. Swibert, invested with this sacred character, returned to his flock, and committing them to the care of S. Willibrord, penetrated further up the Rhine, and preached to the Boructarii, a people living below Cologne, with success. But the Saxons invading the country, swept away his work, and he retired into the islet of Kaiserwerth in the Rhine, which Pepin had given him, where he founded a monastery, which flourished for many ages, till it was converted into a collegiate church of secular canons.
His relics were found in 1626, at Kaiserwerth, in a silver shrine, and there are preserved and venerated.