SAINT ALDATE

Saint Aldate

Feast day: February 4
Died 577

Bishop and leader of Gloucester, England. Aldate's life is not detailed historically. He is reported to have served as bishop of the region and to have roused the countryside to resist pagan invasion forces.


Saint Aldate was a bishop of Gloucester, venerated as a saint with the feast day of February 4. Aldate's life is not detailed historically, but he was probably a Briton killed by the Anglo-Saxons at Deorham. He is reported to have roused the countryside to resist pagan invasion forces. He is mentioned in the Sarum and other martyrologies; his feast occurs in a Gloucester calendar (14th-century addition);
churches were dedicated to him at Gloucester and Oxford, as well as a famous Oxford street: St Aldate's, Oxford and a minor street in Gloucester. But nothing seems to be known of him: it was even suggested (unconvincingly) that his name was a corruption of 'old gate'.