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Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.

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February 27 · Hermit, Martyr

St. Alnoth

St. Alnoth

Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.

Traditional feast

February 27
1914 / pre-1969 calendar, per Baring-Gould (1897)

Current feast

Not verified yet

Represents

Hermit
Martyr

Early life

The book says little or nothing about early life. This is how the account begins.

Thin entry · the 1897 book gives only 39 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.

S. Alnoth was a hermit, who had been a cowherd of S Wereburga, but embracing the eremitical life, settled in a wood at Stowe, near Bugbrook, in Northamptonshire, but was murdered by robbers. His body was buried at Stowe.

What they represent

How they teach us to live

Drawn from themes in the original account

Make time for silence. Solitude and withdrawal to pray shape this life.

Learn from the kind of life it was. Faithfulness to Christ when it cost everything.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia

1913 · 114 words

​Alnoth, Saint, hermit and martyr; died c. 700. We know very little of St. Alnoth. Neither does he appear to possess any proper day. He is mentioned in Jocelyn's life of St. Werburg as a pious neatherd at Weedon who bore with great patience the ill-treatment of the bailiff placed over him, and who afterwards became a hermit in a very lonely spot, where he was eventually murdered by two robbers. On this ground he was honoured as a martyr; and there was some concourse of pilgrims to his tomb at Stowe near Bugbrook in Northamptonshire.

Acta SS., 27 February. III; Stanton, Menology (London, 1892), 505; Baring-Gould, Lives of Saints (London, 1804), II, 448.

Read more

The full original · 39 words

Read Baring-Gould’s full account

Baring-Gould’s sources: Anglican Martyrology of John Wilson, in the first edition; but in the second edition on Nov. 25th. Ferrarius and Bollandus on Feb. 27th. Authority:—Mention in the life of S. Wereburga, attributed to Joscelyn, c. 3.

S. Alnoth was a hermit, who had been a cowherd of S Wereburga, but embracing the eremitical life, settled in a wood at Stowe, near Bugbrook, in Northamptonshire, but was murdered by robbers. His body was buried at Stowe.

Feast days

Feast: February 27

Nine days · Free

Pray the novena
with us.

One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Alnoth's story, and a nudge to keep going.

Also on February 27
Sts. Julian, Chronion and Besas

Sts. Julian

February 27 · Martyrs
G

St. Gelasius

February 27 · Martyr
St. Honorina

St. Honorina

February 27 · Virgin, Martyr
← All 1727 saints in the library
Sources & notes

Feast-day sources

Sources

Credits

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897), digitized text from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.

From “Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/St. Alnoth,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907–1914), via Wikisource. Public domain. Matched by name and feast date; text unedited except for our bracketed notes in grey.

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897), digitized text from Project Gutenberg. Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.