The Glasgow Cathedral

And some thoughts about St. Mungo

When Nick and I recently visited Scotland (in March, now nearly a year ago!) the first place we went to was the Glasgow Cathedral.

I love Glasgow Cathedral, and I so wanted Nick to be impressed with it (though compared to European cathedrals, it isn’t the grandest). And he was. He loved it so much, that on our very last day in Glasgow, we went back and wandered through it again, thus beginning and ending our trip to Scotland with this ancient and holy place.

I’ve written a lot about St Mungo and his cathedral (look up my past Substack posts in January for an idea…). What new can I say about it?

That you can feel the love inside that place. Despite the vandalism and destruction that occurred at the time of the Reformation, including smashed-up windows and destroyed altars, at a key moment, the citizens of Glasgow armed themselves and protected the stone Quire Screen from destruction, which is a miracle.

Looking up at the quire screen coming up from the crypt. March 2024.

When I lived in Glasgow, I would visit the Cathedral every Christmas Eve. This feeling of love would reach out to me in my loneliness, and cheer me when I was missing my family.

It had been ten years since I’d been down in the crypt (it was closed when I had come back for visits), and I had forgotten where the shrine of St Mungo was. Going down there with Nick and discovering it again had a feeling of pilgrimage to it. We had just come from the airport and were jetlagged and tired. I knelt at a prie dieu kneeler and said a prayer while Nick wandered around, admiring the huge stone columns and the old artefacts discovered when there was an archaeological excavation back in the 1990s.

Sitting on the rim of the well, March 2024.

We also visited the holy well, which existed before the cathedral was built, and was incorporated into the wall of the crypt.

This magnificent cathedral, built in the 12th century, is dedicated to Saint Kentigern (or Saint Mungo as he is more commonly known), who lived from 518 to 614 AD. At the time that this cathedral was being built, a hagiography of the saint was being penned, by Jocelyn of Furness. In this account of the saint’s life, he gives this beautiful description:

Saint Kentigern is said to have had a favorable appearance with a body of medium height, although more likely considered tall. Also it was considered that he was of robust strength, and his endurance for any kind of work, whether according to his body or to his spirit, was in a certain measure unfailing. And he was beautiful to look upon and comely in form. Having a countenance full of grace and reverence, a dove’s eyes, and the cheeks of a turtledove, he brought to his own love the affection of all who looked on him. And showing abundantly the cheerfulness of the outward man as the sign and most faithful interpreter of his inner goodness, he poured out over all a certain contentment of spiritual delight and exultation, which the Lord had laid up as a treasure for him.

~ Vita Sancti Kentigerni, Jocelyn of Furness, trans. Cynthia Whiddon Green

I went into more detail about the life and miracles of St. Mungo two years ago, which you can read here:

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But what stood out to me today in reading this physical description of the saint was not that his eyes were like a dove’s (something that impressed me when I was a student at Glasgow Uni), but the love and spiritual delight he engendered in those around him.

Nick standing in front of a famous street art depiction of St Mungo.

This survives in the city today. It’s what inspired those men hundreds of years ago to protect the cathedral. It was something I felt as as student, and it’s something Nick and I felt being there in March. That love from St. Mungo survives for the people of Glasgow. It is present, not only inside the cathedral walls, but on the busy streets, in the museums, shops and parks.

An old iteration of the Glasgow coat of arms, tucked away in the crypt of the cathedral.

St Mungo is on the Glasgow City coat of arms, as well as a shortened version (“Let Glasgow Flourish”) of a saying attributed to the saint:

Lord, let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of thy word and the praising of thy name.

~ Saint Kentigern