Fymbert
The Holy Fymbert, Bishop in the West of Scotland
Bishop
Commemorated 25 September — With the Aberdeen Breviary's Fymberrus
Fymbert is commemorated on September 25 as a bishop in the west of Scotland, assigned to the seventh century. His record is a calendar line and a breviary legend: the Orthodox England list transmits only "a bishop in the west of Scotland," and the Aberdeen Breviary, which commemorates "Fymberrus" on this day, tells one legend of his birth and nothing more. The sharpest fact about Fymbert is an identity question: Bishop Forbes, the historian of the Scottish calendars, treated Fymberrus as simply Finbar of Cork — whom the same calendar commemorates this same day — under his Scottish name. The calendar individuates the two, and so does this corpus, with the question recorded on both sides.
The whole transmitted record is as follows.
The list. Orthodox England — the York calendar's named upstream — has, at September 25: "Fymbert, 7th cent. A bishop in the west of Scotland." Nothing further.
The Aberdeen Breviary. The Breviary of Aberdeen (1510), the great repository of Scottish commemorations, keeps a saint of this name on the same day. As Forbes reports it, the Scottish account of "S. Finbar or Fymberrus" makes him born in the island of "Cathania," on the western side of Scotia, with "Rossia" to the south and the Orkneys to the east; the prince of the story is called Tigrinatus, and the saint, before and immediately after his birth, reproves him for cruelty — a legend which, as Forbes notes, accords with the printed Irish lives of Finbar of Cork. "With the exception of this legend," Forbes writes, "nothing more is said in the Brev. of Aberdeen of one who is known to hagiologists as S. Finbar, patron of Cork."
The Scottish cultus of the name. A bishop of this name gathered real veneration in Scotland: at Eddleston the yearly festival on September 25 was kept as the day "of S. Fynber, a bishop who obtained especial reverence in Caithness"; Adam King's Kalendar (1588) enters at September 25 "S. Barre first bischop of Cathenesse and confess. under king Malcolme the 3," dating him 1074; and the dedications to Barr in the west and north — Dornoch, the island of Barra, S. Barre's Island at Kilkerran, the Ayrshire parish of Barr — belong to the same cult. Whether any of this attaches to a distinct west-Scottish bishop or all of it to the Irish founder of Cork is exactly the open question below.
That is the record: no vita, no see that can be named, no secure century — the lists say the seventh, Adam King implies the eleventh — and a legend that belongs, on its face, to another saint's dossier.
Feast and commemoration
September 25 (church date; New Calendar civil September 25, Old Calendar civil October 8). The witness is the calendar of the Antiochian Archdiocese of the British Isles and Ireland (St Constantine York feed): "St. Fymbert, bishop in the west of Scotland (7th C)." Independent corroboration of the day: the Orthodox England list, the Aberdeen Breviary (Fymberrus), the Eddleston festival and Adam King's Kalendar all keep September 25 — though what they corroborate may be the Scottish feast of Finbar of Cork, per the identity question above. The OCA calendar for September 25 was checked live and does not carry him. No service is transmitted; the common of a hierarch would be used.
Iconography
No image of Fymbert under this name is known to this entry. The lost image of the saint at Kilbarr on Barra, annually wrapped in linen on the September anniversary (Forbes), belongs to the Barr/Finbar cult and is noted in that entry. Fymbert is listed in the the list of icons still being sought queue with no current lead.
Disputed questions
- Is Fymbert a distinct saint at all? Forbes's index rules flatly: "Fymberrus. See Barr" — the Aberdeen Breviary's September 25 bishop is, for him, Finbar of Cork in his Scottish veneration, and the birth-legend's agreement with the Irish lives supports him. Against this stands the listing tradition that the York calendar follows, which carries both "St. Finbar Barry, bishop of Cork" and "St. Fymbert, bishop in the west of Scotland" as two commemorations of the one day. Per the standing convention of this pass the question is recorded, not resolved: the witness individuates, so this corpus holds two entries with reciprocal notes. See the same question from the other side in Finbar of Cork.
- The century: 7th (the York calendar and Orthodox England) against Adam King's "first bishop of Caithness... 1074, under Malcolm III" — an eleventh-century dating incompatible with the lists, recorded here. If the Forbes identification holds, the true period is that of Finbar of Cork (†early 7th century), which happens to agree with the lists' century.