Swibert

Saint Swibert, also known as Suitbert, Suidbert, Swidbert, or Suitbertus, was an Anglo-Saxon missionary bishop of the late seventh and early eighth centuries. He is remembered as a companion of Saint Willibrord in the conversion of the Frisians and as the founder of the monastery on the Rhine island that later became Kaiserswerth. He was born in the kingdom of Northumbria in England during the seventh century; no contemporary source preserves a precise year of birth. He belonged to the circle of English monks associated with Saint Egbert, who organized missionary work toward the still-pagan peoples of the North Sea coast from a base in Ireland, commonly identified as the monastery of Rathmelsigi.

In 690 Swibert went to the Continent with Willibrord and other companions, with the support of Pepin of Herstal, mayor of the palace of Austrasia. The Venerable Bede records that Swibert was one of this company and that his companions chose him for the episcopate. In 693 he returned to Britain and was consecrated bishop by Saint Wilfrid of York, who was then in Mercia. Bede states that this was done because the see of Canterbury was vacant at the time. After consecration Swibert returned to the Continent and preached among the Bructeri, a people living east of the Rhine in a region corresponding to parts of later Westphalia, as well as in neighboring districts of Frisia, Brabant, and the lower Rhine.

Pagan opposition and the insecurity of the frontier forced him from the country of the Bructeri. Pepin then granted him a dwelling on an island in the Rhine called Werth, later Kaiserswerth, near the site of present-day Düsseldorf. There Swibert established a monastery that became his residence for the remainder of his life and the origin of a lasting religious community and town. According to long-standing martyrological and local tradition he died at this monastery on 1 March 713 and was buried in its church.

His cult developed at Kaiserswerth, where his relics have been kept and were later placed in a medieval shrine in the church dedicated to him. He is venerated as a Benedictine monk and bishop. His feast day is 1 March. He is the patron of Kaiserswerth. He did not hold the papacy or a patriarchal see, and as a monk-bishop he is not recorded as having married. His recognition as a saint belongs to the early medieval pattern of local cult and entry into the martyrologies rather than to a later formal papal canonization.