The patron saint of adultery?

OK, one more, but this one is just for fun. I wonder if I have identified the patron saint of adultery?

Of course I don't really think so. Adultery is understood to be a sin, and all that … or at any rate that's true in any form of Christianity that also recognizes patron saints.

But when Debbie and I were in Glasgow, on Day 12, we visited St. Mungo's Cathedral—the big Glasgow cathedral. And along with all the other sights, we got the life of St. Mungo, also often called St. Kentigern. (Apparently he was named Kentigern, but Mungo was a nickname.)

Since coming home, I've looked up several websites to confirm the story of the saint as it was presented at the cathedral. No site that I have found up to now tells it the way they told it there, so I will present it from memory as well as I can. Two episodes are important.

The first is that St. Kentigern's mother became pregnant without being married. Her father was furious, and locked her in a chest which he threw into the sea. By a miracle, she floated unharmed from her home in Lothian across the Firth of Forth to Fife. There she was rescued by St. Serf, who cared for the mother and raised Kentigern.

As he grew up, he performed a number of miracles while still a boy and then set out on missionary work to convert the local pagans.

The second episode that struck me was when he was an adult. 

Queen Languoreth of Strathclyde was suspected of infidelity by her husband, King Riderch. Now, the websites that I have found all say she was innocent; but the version of the story told at the cathedral said quite plainly that she was guilty. According to this version, the King had given his Queen an expensive and very distinctive ring, and she in turn gave it to her lover. The King took her lover out hunting with him; and while the lover was asleep, the King took the ring from him and threw it into the river. When they came back to the palace, the King demanded that his Queen show him the ring he had given her. She asked for three days "to find it," and he locked her in a tower "while she looked." He also told her that if she could not produce the ring in three days, he would execute her for adultery.

The Queen got word to Kentigern. Unperturbed, Kentigern asked a friend of his to go fishing, and to bring him [Kentigern] the very first fish that he [the friend] caught. The friend did so. Kentigern sliced open the fish, retrieved the ring from his belly, and conveyed it to the Queen. Then the Queen presented the ring to the King, who knelt down to beg her forgiveness and they all lived happily ever after.

As I say, the websites I have found since I got home all insist that the Queen was innocent, and that the King (for unexplained reasons of his own) stole the ring from her and threw it into the river. But at the cathedral itself they spoke openly of "the Queen's lover," indicating that the King's suspicions were completely valid.

And all this leads me to wonder: Is Kentigern the patron saint and protector of girls who are having just a little too much fun? His mother was pregnant without a husband: the websites I've checked say she was raped, but the account at the cathedral never mentioned rape. And he pulls off a miracle specifically to protect the Queen of Strathclyde—who was committing adultery!—from the anger of her husband who suspected adultery. That sure sounds to me like he takes a special interest in protecting women of … well, … easy virtue.

I have yet to track down a copy of the Vita Kentigerni, or whatever his official hagiography is called. Maybe it's all spelled out clearly there, and the people who wrote the story for the cathedral tourists just goofed by omitting some important details. But for a while I did definitely wonder ….

Update (June 20, 2023): You can find a copy here of the Vita Sancti Kentigerni in English. It treats as follows the two issues that I questioned above.

• Kentigern's mother loved the Virgin Mary and wanted to imitate her by bearing a child while still a virgin. The author denies that she did so, and insists that she got pregnant in the usual way, by fucking. However, the author adds that Kentigern's mother never had any recollection of who the father was. He reminds us that some people lose their memories after drinking too much (ya think?) and other people lose their memories in other ways. So while he does not commit himself to specific details regarding what happened to her, he insists that she got pregnant from a human embrace and yet had no memory of it whatsoever. In this way he explains the legends that later claimed Kentigern was born of a virgin (because she swore definitively to her virginity) while not putting him on a level with Jesus. So the story doesn't say she was raped, nor yet that she fucked consensually, but leaves the question delicately unaddressed.
• On the other hand, the story makes it crystal clear that Queen Languoreth was guilty of adultery, and that Kentigern's miracle allowed her to escape punishment. (After that, she is said to have reformed her life completely.)

So I guess my argument is at least 50% valid, and the other 50% is left discreetly unclear. Good enough for me.