The monks of St Augustine's Abbey, Ramsgate wrote in their Book of Saints (1921), Guthagon (St.) (July 3)(8th cent.)

]ACCORDING to worthless popular tradition, and lections for the festival at Oostkerke, near Fumes; in Belgium, Guthagon, son of a Scottish king, came with his faithful servant Ghillo into Flanders, and settled at Oostkerke[a], where he died and was buried.His relics were elevated and enshrined by Gerard, bishop of Tournai, in 1159, and July 3rd is the day of this elevation.

He was probably some pious pilgrim of Irish or Scottish nationality, who died at Oostkerke, and popular imagination has exalted him into a prince.

[2]The hagiographer Alban Butler (1710–1773) wrote in his Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints under July 3, St. Guthagon, Recluse

HE was an Irishman of royal blood, who, forsaking the world to labour in securing eternal happiness, led a penitential, contemplative life at Oostkerk, near Bruges, in Flanders, with B. Gillon, an individual companion.

He notes that the Belgian Flemings tended to call all strangers Scots, but it is generally accepted that Guthagon came from Scotia, which could mean Ireland or Scotland.

[4] He continues, Some will have it, that he journeyed to Rome ; yet, although such pilgrimages to the shrines of the Apostles and martyrs there were undertaken by the Irish, Scots and Angles, soon after their conversion to Christianity, there does not appear to have been sufficient warrant for that statement in reference to St. Guthagon.

However, the clergy and people of that district reverently interred his body, according to tradition in the western part of the cemetery of Oostkerke.

The Calvinists profaned the relics of St. Guthagon after the Reformation, and they seem to have utterly destroyed them; nothing having remained but a tooth of the holy man, which had been transferred to the collegiate church of St. Saviour, at Bruges.

In the beginning of the last century, the tooth of St. Guthagon was kept in the church at Oostkerke, and on the 3rd day of each July, it was there exposed for the veneration of the faithful.