Saint Peulin of Léon
The twelfth of March in the Orthodox Church is the feast-day of Saint Peulin: a missionary and founder of monasteries broadly and deeply venerated throughout the Brythonic world, both in Britain and in Armorica. He was blessed in this life with a truly prodigious span of days, and he used them for the sake of his own repentance and for the enlightenment of countless others across three different countries. One of the major founding patron saints of Brittany, he also has a well-established cultus in Wales and one in Cornwall as well.
Saint Peulin [also Paul Aurelian, Pawl Hen, Pol de Léon or Paulinus] was born to the Romano-British lord Perfir [Porphyrius] of Penychen, a cantref in Glamorgan in southern Wales. He was the cousin and friend of Saint Samson of Dol. Some family links are asserted by some authorities to exist between Peulin and the Brythonic virgin-martyrs Juðwara and Sidwell, but these associations are somewhat doubtful on chronological grounds. He joined the Church, somewhat against his father’s wishes, and went to Cor Tewdws in Llanilltud Fawr (now Llantwit Major) to study under Saint Illtud Farchog. Two of his fellow-students and close friends at Llantwit Major were Dewi Sant and Gildas the Historian. These four pupils – Peulin, Dewi, Samson and Gildas – were all witness to a great wonder that Saint Illtud worked: driving back the tides from Llantwit Major and reclaiming the coastland from the sea.
When Peulin was fifteen years old, and still a student of Saint Illtud’s at Cor Tewdws, he was given the task of watching the monks’ crops and scaring away the birds (particularly the gulls) that would eat the grain. However, Peulin was much too mild and meek for this task, and the gulls ended up eating much of the crop. Fearing that he would be blamed for the loss, Peulin prayed to Christ to aid him in scaring the gulls. Going out the next day, he, Dewi, Samson and Gildas found the seagulls to be perfectly tame, and they discovered they could herd them like sheep and lock them in a barn. In this way the crops at Llanilltud Fawr were saved.
He made such rapid and complete progress in his studies both of sæcular knowledge and of the virtuous and Christ-seeking life, that he was recommended by Saint Illtud himself to pursue combat against the passions in solitude. He may have lived some time in Devon before attending school at Cor Tewdws, and he almost certainly moved back there – there was, up until the twentieth century, a St Paul’s Church founded by him in Exeter. He moved back to Wales and established a small hermitage at Llanddeusant in Caerfyrddin, where he was ordained a priest by Saint Dyfrig. He lived a life of service and good works in Caerfyrddin, and word of his holiness spread far.
Saint Peulin’s reputation preceded him in the court of Margh, the King of Cornwall. Margh invited Peulin to evangelise in Cornwall, offering him a place in his court at Caer Bannauc, and Saint Peulin accepted. But the personalities of the two men were markedly different, as were their priorities. This proves to be the case over and over again in the lives of the Welsh saints; hermits and kings very rarely get along well – unless the king has some predilection for the eremitical life himself. Margh desired to make Peulin Bishop of Cornwall, and Peulin showed himself most unwilling to accept. The timocratic prince of Cornwall was grievously offended by this refusal of so great an honour which he was able to bestow, and his relationship with Peulin soured. Saint Peulin left the court of Margh King after the latter refused him a request that he might borrow from the king one of the seven exquisite Celtic bells (in the same style as the ones Saint Nectan and Saint Ternan had) which he used to call his guests to dinner.
After leaving the court of Cornwall, Peulin travelled to visit his sister’s small hermitage at Gulval, by the sea. This sister, who appears as Sidwell in the traditional hagiography, was probably not the virgin-martyr of Exeter, but was likely instead named Welvola. Peulin’s holy sister spoke to him of how the tides came near to ruining her home and its attendant fields, and Saint Peulin then affected a wonder for her similar to that he’d seen Saint Illtud perform. He asked her to place a string of pebbles along the water’s edge at low tide. He then spoke a prayer in the name of the Holy Trinity, and the pebbles planted themselves deep below the sand and grew into a chain of great connected boulders, forming a sea wall that kept the high tide from reaching her anchorage.
After this, Saint Peulin acquired a coracle and sailed in it from Gulval to the coast of Brittany. He seems to first have been blown off-course, however, as he ran aground at Staverton in South Devon and sought first to establish a church there. The hagiography has it that his efforts to build a church there failed at first, for God disapproved of the site Saint Peulin had chosen. For three days, he would collect all the materials he needed to build, and for three nights everything he had built would disappear. A similar thing happened at sites chosen against God’s will by other Welsh saints, like Brynach. On the fourth night, Saint Peulin moved the site of his construction some ways off; this seems to have met with the Lord’s approval, for the Church of St Paul de Leon still stands there.
Saint Peulin set sail once more, and this time his coracle took him to the isle of Eusa, off the far northwest coast of what is now Finistère in Brittany. The main settlement there is still called ‘Lambaol’ after him. He established a monastery here with the help of twelve priests who had followed him from Cornwall. He lived a very austere life in this island, never dining on flesh meats but subsisting wholly on a diet of bread and water – except on feast days when he would partake modestly of fish.
Saint Peulin regularly ventured out of his island monastery to serve and heal and teach among the Bretons of that coastal region, particularly along the northern coast. It was as he spent his time thus, that he drew the attention of the local prince – a chieftain named Withur. Withur was a more circumspect lord than Margh of Cornwall had been, and was more flexible in his habits – but also more subtle in getting what he wanted. In his hagiography, when Saint Peulin meets with Withur on Enez Vaz, he describes the bell he had desired from Margh’s court; and a wonder occurs soon after. After cutting up a fine salmon to be shared at dinner, Withur found lodged within its belly the self-same silver bell that Margh had refused Saint Peulin.
To Peulin, Withur gave not only the bell, but the isle of Vaz itself and his own capital city of Ocismor (the modern-day town of Saint-Pol-de-Léon), where Saint Peulin established a church and monastery, which he filled with devout monks brought over from Wales and Cornwall. First, however, he had to face and defeat a great fire-breathing dragon armed with the sword of prayer and the armour of faith – such hagiographical tales, however, are often ways of describing the conversion of pagans to Christ and the destruction of idols.
Whereas Margh of Cornwall had been proud, stubborn and overbearing, the Breton lord Withur proved to be subtle and manipulative in getting what he wanted. Withur also desired that Saint Peulin be made a bishop in Léon, but he knew that if he broached the matter directly he would be met with firm refusal. And thus he arranged for Peulin to bear to the court of Childebert, King of the Franks, a message of secret import. The matter contained in the missive, however, was that Childebert was to spare no effort and brook no refusal in settling the omophor upon Peulin’s shoulders – whether Peulin would have it thus or not. In this way Withur arranged that Peulin should be ordained as the first bishop in Finistère.
Saint Peulin ruled wisely as bishop in Léon for many years, though it seems he longed for the peace and simplicity of the life of a simple monk or hermit as he had enjoyed in times before. Several times he made plans to retire his bishopric and settle it upon one of his disciples – first Joevin, then Tigernomagle – but each time the disciple who took over the bishopric of Léon died early, and Peulin was again compelled to take up the crozier in his own hands. He often made retreats into his isle at Vaz, and while on one of these retreats he met with Saint Breandán of Clonfert on one of his voyages.
Saint Peulin lived to the age of one hundred and four, having been born in 476 and having reposed in the Lord on the twelfth of March in the year 580. The holy man reposed in the midst of one of his solitary retreats on Enez Vaz. His relics and his bell were taken to Saint-Pol-de-Léon and interred in the church he had founded there; his omophor was kept in Enez Vaz and is still revered there as a holy relic. Churches dedicated to Saint Peulin are found in Wales at Llandovery, in Cornwall at Paul and Penzance, in Devon at Staverton, as well as in Brittany at the several places he lived, including Lambaol and of course Saint-Pol-de-Léon. Holy hierarch Peulin, meek and humble missionary among three nations, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!
Cathédrale Saint-Pol-de-Léon, Finistère
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