Description

Oil Dedicated to St Neot (Patron for Fish)

St Neot is a saint of the ninth century who lived as a monk and hermit in Cornwall. He is mentioned in an interpolated passage in Asser’s Life of King Alfred and died around AD 870. He is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic and Western Orthodoxy. His legend is preserved in two Latin “lives” and one Old English “life,”. Dating from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. With other mentions preserved in later chronicles.

Neot, who is said to have stood four feet tall. Seems to have begun his adult life as a soldier. Later renouncing a martial lifestyle for life in a monastery.He served as sacristan at Glastonbury Abbey but later lived in Cornwall. At first alone, then with a growing group of other monks near Bodmin Moor. He was remembered because of his good work in caring for the poor.

Tradition states that King Alfred visited him for his counsel and it is in a book about Neot that we read about King Alfred burning the cakes when hiding from the Danes at Athelney.

Two of the fifteen stained glass windows in the church of St Neot, Cornwall portray the saint. One of them consists of scenes from the life of the saint. Neot’s bones were preserved as a holy relic in the Cornish village of St Neot.

St Neot’s body was removed from Cornwall to Eynesbury in Huntingdonshire in around 980 when a monastery was founded there. The monks returned with their prize, pursued by angry Cornishmen.