St. Egwin of Evesham

St. Egwin of Worcester (died 30 December 717) was an Anglo-Saxon of royal kindred who became the third bishop of Worcester, in the kingdom of Mercia, around 693. A zealous reformer, he labored to correct abuses among clergy and laity and to uphold the discipline of Christian marriage and morals, which won him powerful enemies who complained of his severity, leading him — by later tradition — to undertake a penitential pilgrimage to Rome.

He is best remembered as the founder of Evesham Abbey, which according to the monastery's tradition arose after a swineherd named Eof, and then Egwin himself, beheld a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary at that spot. Egwin obtained royal and papal confirmation for the abbey, which became one of the great Benedictine houses of medieval England and a center of Marian devotion. Noted for his own tender love of Our Lady, he governed his see with holiness until his death and was venerated as a saint, his relics enshrined at Evesham.