SAINTS OCTOBER 26

 SAINTS OCTOBER 26 "There is only one tragedy in this life, not to have been a saint."- Leon Bloy

ST. DEMETRIUS, MARTYR

St. Alfred the Great, 899 A.D. King of Wessex, scholar, and renowned Christian monarch. Alfred was born in 849, the fifth son of the Wessex king. During a journey to Rome in 853, he was accepted as a godson by Pope Leo IV. He was a great scholar, translating classics for his people, and early on seemed destined for a career in the Church. Instead, he became king and was forced to spend most of his reign in conflict with the Danes who were then threatening England. His work as a patron of the arts, literature, and especially the Church made him a beloved figure in England.  

St. Cuthbert, 758 A.D. Benedictine archbishop of Canterbury. He was a monk at Lyminge, in Kent, England, until about 736, when he was appointed the bishop of Hereford. About 740, he became the archbishop of Canterbury. He is remembered as one of St. Boniface’s correspondents in England.  

St. Eadfrid, 675 A.D. Founder of Leominster Priory and a priest of Northumbria and Mercia, England.

St. Bean. On December 16, there is named in the Roman Martyrology and in certain Irish calendars a Saint Bean in Ireland, who had been confused with the St. Bean whose feast is still observed in the Scottish diocese of Aberdeen, but on October 26, as founder of the bishopric of Mortlach in Banff which was the forerunner of that of Aberdeen. Nothing else is known about him. The fourteenth century chronicler Fordun, states that he was made bishop by Pope Benedict VIII, at the request of Malcolm Canmore, who is said to have founded an Episcopal monastery at Mortlach. If true, this would be between 1012 and 1024; but the See of Mortlach is generally said to date from 1063. St. Bean's dwelling place is supposed to have been at Balvanie, near Mortlach (Bal­beni­mor, "the dwelling of Bean the Great"). 

St. Evaristus, Roman Catholic Pope. St. Evaristus succeeded St. Clement in the See of Rome in the reign of Trajan and governed the Church about eight years, being the fourth successor of St. Peter.