Thenna or Thenew

ON ST. THENNA OR THENEW, MATRON, MOTHER OF ST. KENTIGERN,

IN SCOTLAND.

From the Aberdeen Breviary and more recent Fasti.

ABOUT THE YEAR 580.

Thenna or Thenew, matron, in Scotland (S.)

BY THE AUTHOR J. B. S.

Thomas Dempster, compiler of the Scottish Menology, thus writes on this day: "At Dalgarnoch, of Thenna the widow, mother of St. Kentigern, a miraculous woman"; citing the Scottish Breviary, especially the Aberdeen, From the Scottish Fasti the cult seems to be established: the Calendar of Adam King, of Cheyne, etc. But Henschenius long ago warned, volume IV of May, page 184: "Dempster will find the same among learned men, when someone shall have brought into light even one at least of the similar monuments which he ascribes, several to each of the Saints commemorated by him." Camerarius, not unequal to the former, has more under another name: "St. Thametis, by others Thennat, queen of the Scots, and most celebrated especially in the province of Scotland called of the Clyde (Glottiana). She was the mother of St. Kentigern. Though placed in the midst of delights, yet by assiduous abstinence, frequent fasts, and long vigils, she did not cease to subject her tender body to her soul. When she was near death, she is said to have said: 'Lord Jesus, the kingdom which I received from thee, for thy sake I have forsaken' (for after the death of her husband she abdicated herself of all care of the kingdom, and gave herself wholly to contemplating divine things), 'place me, I beseech, in thy kingdom.'" Witnesses are adduced: Hunter in the book on the saints of Scotland, King in the Calendar, and others. If you compare these things with the first chapter of the Life of St. Kentigern on the XIII of January, you will straightway understand that things at least very doubtful are here sold as certain.

[2] Concerning the Life of St. Kentigern, in the cited place, Henschenius thus judged: lessons from the Life of St. Kentigern, "We edited the Life of St. Kentigern, bishop of Glasgow, on the XIII day of January, taken from Capgrave, but so stupidly put together by later writers from the tradition of the common folk, that we could have wished it absent from our work, or at least chastised with a graver censure." From these things nonetheless are to be taken the things which can be related of St. Thenna; for the elogium of Camerarius seems composed merely at his own discretion. I would indeed have rejected the Saint to the Passed-over ones, although both Ferrari and Castellanus also announce her, had I not judged that something more should be attributed to the often-cited Aberdeen Breviary, from which we are made more certain of the cult; whatever the nine lessons there expressed savor of the same style which Henschenius grieved was admitted into our Acts; besides that they invent other things also, which plainly demonstrate to the eye the muddy fount from which they flowed. The very title contains this paradox, that it wishes St. Thenna to have died under Eugenius II, in the year 445; whereas it is most probable that St. Kentigern her son prolonged his life beyond the middle of the VI century, concerning whom see the Commentary of Bolland.

[3] do not deserve to be recorded. To return to the Breviary, there exist there nine lessons in all, but so conceived that I judge them no more worthy of our work than the Acts of St. Kentigern, which our Elders would have preferred to be absent from it; this peculiar thing is added at the end of the last lesson, that all the days on which she lived she followed her son by living holily and blessedly, nor did she make a stay far from him at Glasgow, where she enjoyed the frequent conversation of her said son. At last, very many years being passed in the sanctity of life, she is carried up to the heavens with her said son Kentigern … and in the renowned city of Glasgow honorably delivered to burial; so that I do not see why she is placed at Dalgarnoch by Dempster and by those who followed him. The prayer of the Breviary, conceived in this manner, can somehow be admitted: "God, who didst will blessed Kentigern to be born of blessed Thenew, prevented by heavenly grace, grant propitiously that those who venerate her with sincere minds may be able to be freed from the perils of hell. Through," etc. And let these things be said enough concerning St. Thenna or Thenew.