Date unknown. According to medieval recounting, Saint Ivo was a Persian
bishop who enjoyed great honour and luxury in his own land but he
yearned for a more disciplined and arduous life. Together with three
companions he went to England. They settled as hermits in the remote,
wild fenlands in Huntingdonshire. There they died in the 7th century
and would have been forgotten.
However, about 1001, some relics with a bishop's insignia were found in Slepe
(near Ramsey abbey). Following a peasant's revelation in a dream, these
episcopal remains (bones) were identified as those of St. Ivo. The four
bodies, including that believed to be Ivo, were translated to Ramsey
Abbey, where a holy well sprung up, at which many miracles were
performed as recorded by Ramsey's third abbot, Whitman.
About a century later, light appeared at night reaching from Ramsey to
Slepe, which was interpreted as meaning that the bones of Ivo's
companions should be translated back to Slepe, where a new foundation
from Ramsey could enjoy this subsidiary shrine.
Saint Ives in Huntingdonshire is named for him. Goselin ("Vita S.
Yvonis" in
Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, civ. 84 ff), who died
about 1107, says that Ivo's cultus had been extant for a century.
The Saint Ives, formerly Porth Ia, in west Cornwall, however, is named
for
Saint Ia (f.d. February 3)
(
Attwater,
Benedictines,
Bentley,
Farmer,
Husenbeth).
In art, Saint Ivo is portrayed as a Persian hermit with the attributes
of a bishop. He is venerated at Huntingdonshire (Saint
Ives, Ramsey)
(
Roeder).