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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).



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