Saint Livinius
The Martyrdom of St Livinus -Rubens, 1633
Born	c. 580 Ireland
Died	(657-11-12)12 November 657 Sint-Lievens-Esse,Flanders
Venerated in	Eastern Orthodox Church Roman Catholic Church
Feast	12 November

SaintLivinus (c. 580 – 12 November 657), alsoLivinus of Ghent, was an apostle inFlanders andBrabant, venerated as a saint and martyr in the Catholic tradition and more especially at theSaint Bavo Chapel, Ghent.^[1] His feast day is 12 November.

Details of the biography of Deventer saintLebuinus were used to compile thePassio of St Livinus.^[1]

The legend goes that Livinus was born from Irish nobility. Upon studies inEngland, where he visitedSaint Augustine of Canterbury, he returned toIreland. He was bishop of Dublin in 656.^[2] He later went on aperegrinatio Domini and left Ireland forGhent (Belgium) andZeeland (Netherlands) where he preached. During one of his sermons, Livinus was attacked in the village of Esse, nearGeraardsbergen by a group of pagans who cut off his tongue and head.^[3]

The villages ofSint-Lievens-Esse, where he was murdered, andSint-Lievens-Houtem, where he was buried, were named after him, as well asMerck-Saint-Liévin in northernFrance.

His remains were transferred to Ghent around the turn of the millennium, but went missing and are believed to have been destroyed in 1578 during the SecondIconoclasm.

Recent research questions the existence of Saint Livinus.^[1][4][5] There are resemblances between Saint Livinus andSaint Lebuinus ofDeventer (Netherlands), an English missionary who died in Deventerc. 775 and who is commemorated on 12 November in theUtrecht diocese. Both figures were engaged in the christening of pagans in theLow Countries and were confronted with similar conflicts and clashes. It has been argued that monks of the Saint Bavo Abbey in Ghent, Livinus' presumed place of residence, have launched the cultus of Saint Livinus and found inspiration in the life of Saint Lebuinus.

A hagiography of the saint (edited in Migne,Patrologia Latina, 89) was formerly ascribed toSaint Boniface.^[6]

• Coens, M. (1952). "L'auteur de la Passio Livini s'est-il inspiré de la Vita Lebuini?".Analecta Bollandiana.70 (3–4):285–305.doi:10.1484/J.ABOL.4.00029.
• Coens, M. (1963). "Litanies Gantoises".Recueil d’études bolandiennes. Subsïdia Hagiographica 37. Brussels. pp. 258–70.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Holder-Egger, O. (1886). "Zu den Heiligengeschichten des Genter St. Bavosklosters".Historische Aufsätze dem Andenken an Georg Waitz gewidmet (in German). Hanover. pp. 644–59.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• On the Livinus Gospels:
  • McGurk, Patrick (1963), "The Ghent Livinus Gospels and the Scriptorium of Saint-Amand",Sacris Erudiri,14:164–205,doi:10.1484/J.SE.2.303326 Reprinted in McGurk (1998),Gospel Books and Early Latin Manuscripts. Ashgate.
  • Nees, Lawrence (2001). "On Carolingian Book Painters: The Ottoboni Gospels and Its Transfiguration Master".The Art Bulletin.83 (2):209–39.doi:10.2307/3177207.JSTOR 3177207.
  • Nees, Lawrence (2002). "Evangeliarium van Livinus". In Patrick de Rynck (ed.).Meesterlijke middeleeuwen: Miniaturen van Karel de Grote tot Karel de Stoute, 800–1475 (in Dutch). Zwolle and Louvain. pp. 104–5.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

• [1] Website of DARCOS (Service for Archeology in Sint-Lievens-Houtem) on Saint Livinus, p. 3, 25 and 29

• 7th-century Irish Christian clergy
• Medieval Irish saints on the Continent
• Irish expatriates in the Netherlands
• 580 births
• 657 deaths

• Source attribution
• Use dmy dates from April 2020
• CS1 maint: location missing publisher
• CS1 German-language sources (de)
• CS1 Dutch-language sources (nl)
• Year of birth uncertain