Saint Ivo of Ramsey | |
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Honored in | Roman Catholic Church |
Major shrine | Ramsey Abbey |
Feast | 24 April |
Patronage | St Ives |
Saint Ivo (also known as Ives) was a Cornish bishop and hermit, and became the eponymous saint of St Ives, Huntingdonshire. He appears in the historical sources in 1001/2 when a peasant allegedly found his coffin while ploughing at Slepe (what became St Ives).[1] The Abbot of Ramsey, Eadnoth the Younger, founded a monastery there as a daughter-house of Ramsey Abbey, providing Slepe as well as part of Elsworth and Knapworth as endowment.[2] On 24 April 1002, Abbot Eadnoth translated Ivo's body, along with two of his companions, to the mother house at Ramsey.[3]
Ivo was a Cornish saint.[4] Rumours of a Persian link came about when Withman, Abbot of Ramsey, heard in the Holy Land of a Persian bishop named Ivo; subsequently the link to the Fenland Ivo was written down by Goscelin of St Bertin.[5] The tradition is completely spurious.[6] It is possible that Saint Ivo is a male double of Saint Neot, a suggestion made by historian Cyril Hart on the basis of the strangeness of two Cornish saints so close together far away in eastern England.[4] Saint Neot turned up in Huntingdonshire around 1000 too.[7]