Saint Non and Saint Dewi of Wales
The second of March is the feast-day of Saint Non, the mother of Dewi Sant, and a beautiful and virtuous anchoress of Mynyw. She founded a number of churches in South Wales. She travelled in her later years to Cornwall and Brittany, in both of which places she is still venerated as a local patroness.
Non [also Nonna or Nonnita] was born to Cynyr Ceinfarfog and his wife Anna ferch Meurig around the year 475. She thus would have been the half-sister of Saint Samson of Dol and the aunt of Saint Cybi. Having been interested in holy things since she was a child, drawn to the Church, when she reached adulthood she retired from the world and took up residence at a lonely hermitage at Tŷ Gwyn on the coasts of Dyfed. Here she lived a life of holy seclusion and struggle against the passions.
Her hermitage was discovered by Sant ap Ceredig [Latin Xanthus], a prince of a neighbouring kingdom north of Dyfed. Seeing that it was inhabited by a beautiful and pure young woman living alone, Sant was seized by an evil and condemnable compulsion. The prince took Saint Non by force and impregnated her. Rhygyfarch’s hagiography Dewi Sant of says that the earth thrust up two rocks around Saint Non to show her innocence. Never once before, and never once after she had been violated by the prince of Ceredigion, did she know a man; she lived in holy chastity and subsisted on bread and water throughout her pregnancy. She left Tŷ Gwyn after this incident, and began to wander.
She came into a church in Dyfed thereafter to beg for alms. She stood at the back of the Church, but when the priest – a man identified by Rhygyferch erroneously as Gildas, but who was more likely (based on the chronology alone) to have been Saint Ailbe as in other hagiographical sources – came out from behind the altar screen to give the homily, he found of a sudden that he could not use his voice to preach. The people asked the dumbstruck priest what had happened, and he told them that he could speak to them normally, but could not preach. He then asked them all to leave the church and stand outside the doors so he could preach. Ailbe came to the door and tried to preach again, but he once again found himself stricken dumb. He turned into the church and cried out, ‘Come out of your hiding place, I bid you in God’s name!’
The frightened Saint Non showed herself, and Ailbe asked her kindly to leave the church for the duration of the homily, and let the people come back inside so he could preach – and indeed he found his voice then, and let it ring like a trumpet. When the folk asked why he had been unable to preach, Saint Ailbe bade Saint Non come before him. Non, an unwed woman who was clearly and visibly pregnant, showed herself before him, her head bowed. But instead of chastising her as the parishioners expected him to do, Ailbe fell on his knees before her. He prophesied that Saint Non bore in her womb a holy child, a child who would follow Christ in all things, who would outshine all the other saints in Britain. This was the reason that he had fallen silent in his homily, for he had been deemed unworthy to preach even in the presence of an unborn Saint Dewi.
Before Saint Non’s time of delivery came, certain druids in Dyfed came before a heathen subregulus with a troubling prophecy. They told him the day and hour and spot that a child would be born in Wales, whose power and authority would cover the whole land. The tyrannical subregulus, like Herod, took it into his mind that the child would come to overthrow him, and so he took himself to the place the druids had told him of – that is, Caerfai – and watched it jealously, promising that any woman he found there resting or loitering would be put to his sword. But it happened that on the foretold day, a mighty storm blew up with gale-force winds, thunder and lightning and hailstones, such that none dared to venture out of doors. None, that is, save Saint Non, who was kept safe from the winds and ice of the storm by the divine power, which kept her constantly in a serene light that seemed like a shaft of sun. Saint Non leaned upon a stone at Caerfai when the time came to give birth, and pressed against it in her labour pains, leaving the impress of her hand in the rock. When at last Saint Dewi was delivered, the rock cleft itself in two out of sympathy for the mother’s travails, and a holy well sprang forth. The pure water from Saint Non’s well became known for curing mental disorders. The split stone later became the altarpiece for a church built on the site.
Saint Non brought her newborn son to the village of Llaneilfyw to be baptised by Saint Ailbe. It happened that as he was brought there, a well of the purest water sprang forth for the purpose of her son’s baptism. Saint Dewi, after he had been dipped in these waters, was presented to a certain monk there who had been born deformed, without eyes and without nostrils. But upon receiving the newly-baptised Dewi into his hands, and sprinkling some of the baptismal water on his face, his eyes and nose became fully formed and he gained his sight and smell for the first time since his birth.
Saint Non raised her son Dewi for the first five or so years of his life close by Mynyw. She gave him first to Saint Germain for his education, and subsequently to Saint Illtud Farchog. Once Saint Dewi had reached adulthood and embarked himself on a life of holiness, Saint Non again took up the life of an anchoress. She went, as many southern Welsh holy men and women did, to Cornwall. There is a village in Cornwall – Altarnun near Camelford – with a church and holy well dedicated to the mother of Dewi Sant. Another holy well attributed to Saint Non exists at Pelynt a little over twenty miles south of Altarnun, suggesting that she may have lived in both places. This is not unlikely, given that Saint Non ultimately came to Dirinon in Brittany, about ten miles and two small bights due north of Landévennec.
Saint Non apparently took on a number of female disciples both in Cornwall and in Brittany, and was a warm and loving spiritual mother to all of them. These disciples became the core of a cloister. There in Dirinon, Saint Non reposed in her old age, at peace in the Lord on the third of March, sometime in the middle of the sixth century. As a point of linguistic interest, the Breton diri in the toponym Dirinon, meaning ‘oaks’, is cognate to the dara of Kildare. Both Saint Non’s and Saint Brigid’s cloisters appear to have been founded in oak groves. As may be expected, Saint Non is venerated together with her son, in Wales, Cornwall and Brittany. Venerable Non, mother by blood of Saint Dewi and mother in Christ of many nuns, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!
Having given birth to the patron of the Welsh, most pious Non,
Thou didst rejoice to serve Christ God in thine appointed station.
Wherefore, O Saint, intercede for us that we may be saved
From the worldly spirit of dissatisfaction
And through God’s mercy be found worthy of eternal salvation.
Église Saint-Nonne de Dirinon, France
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