Saint Nectan of Hartland
The seventeenth of June is the commemoration of the martyrdom of Nectan, a holy Welsh recluse who died near Hartland in Devon. Among the elder sons of the righteous (and fecund) Brychan Brycheiniog, Saint Nectan is one of the most celebrated of the saints of southern Wales and Cornwall. He even figures somewhat in Arthurian legend, having been consulted by the Knights of the Round Table before they began their search for the Holy Grail.
Nectan left his father’s court in Brecknock when he was a young adult. He sought to imitate the Desert Fathers of Ægypt, particularly Saint Anthony, and pursue an anchorite’s life of lonely ascetic struggle. (In this way, Saint Nectan would inspire entire generations of Celtic holy men and women after him, who sought the hermit’s abode.) He ventured southward, faring across the Bristol Channel, and came across an exquisite small valley near Stoke, some miles north of the Cornish border in Devon. There, a holy well sprang up to greet the saint and provide water for him. Nectan moved forty paces off and there constructed his small monastic cell. He later had another cell, as the tradition goes, at St Nectans Glen in Cornwall, near Tintagel. He made his cell by a waterfall on the River Trevillet and drew water from a ‘kieve’, or a pool, at the base of the waterfall. He would also climb up out of the glen on stormy days when ships were approaching, and he would ring a silver bell from his promontory to warn them away from the outcroppings of rock in the channel below.
Saint Nectan was seen by his siblings and half-siblings as the leader of their spiritual community, and the sons and daughters of Brychan would gather together at Stoke to take counsel with him. Under his guidance, the children of Brychan evangelised much of Devon and Cornwall. Nectan was close to his sisters, particularly Saint Gwen of Talgarth and Saint Mwynen. Both of them chose to live nearby Hartland, and made their abodes in far northern Cornwall or western Devon. Saint Nectan attended Mwynen on the holy woman’s deathbed, and obeyed his sister’s last request to lift her high on a hill by Morwenstow, that she might again see the cliffs of Wales across the Channel before she died.
Saint Nectan is renowned particularly for his service to the poor and needy, and he would leave his hermitage and go around the countryside, meekly offering his aid to any who needed him. It is said that he even sailed to Armorica on one such faring. At one time, he helped a Cornish swineherd named Huddon recover his lost pigs, and in thanks Nectan was given two cows and two calves, so that he might daily have milk and not go wanting for food.
These cows were stolen from him by two robbers. Saint Nectan managed to track the robbers to New Stoke and find them, together with his cows. He attempted not to forcibly return them, but instead to get the robbers to repent and turn to Christ. The robbers became angry and drew their swords, and one of them beheaded the saint. After he was beheaded, Nectan rose and took up his head, and carried it back to the holy well by his cell in Stoke, where he lay it down. Wherever drops of his blood fell, foxgloves sprang up. The robber who had beheaded Saint Nectan, upon seeing this, went out of his mind. However, the other robber took up a spade and buried the saint at Stoke. Many wonders occurred at the grave of Saint Nectan.
There is also a legend of Saint Nectan that connects him with Æþelstán King. On the eve of battle at Brunanburg in 937, a plague swept through the ranks of the English army. One young soldier from Devon, whose tent was next that of Æþelstán King, found that he had been infected with this plague. He made loud cries that night to God and to Saint Nectan to save him. His frightened pleas were so loud that they awoke the king and his þegnas.
And behold, after midnight, Saint Nectan appeared to the young man and touched the infected part of his body, healing him with wondrous speed. In the morning, the king’s men had the soldier hauled out of his tent and presented to the irked king, who wondered why this young soldier had roused them all from sleep with his cries. The young soldier admitted that it had been he who had disturbed the king’s rest, and those of the men around him, and he gave Æþelstán to know why. He recounted how he had felt and seen the plague take hold of him, and how he had cried out to God and to the saint, and how overnight he had been cured by the visitation of the saint.
A curious Æþelstán asked to learn more about Nectan, and the young soldier told him about the Welsh hermit’s life, his love for the armly folk of Devon, and the effectiveness of his prayers. He even urged the king to ask Saint Nectan’s intercession on the day of the battle, and the English would surely carry the victory. As the young man advised, so Æþelstán did: and the battle of Brunanburg was won just as the young Devonian said. In the wake of Brunanburg, Æþelstán King bestowed generous honours and lands on the Church in Devon, in thanksgiving that he had won the battle and that his armies had been delivered from plague, and for the rest of his life retained a belief in the efficacy of Saint Nectan’s prayers.
The cultus of Saint Nectan is still strong in Devon and Cornwall, and also at Exeter and Wells in England. However, two sites in Brittany, where Nectan was supposed to have travelled, also bear his name. The Russian Orthodox chapel of Saint Symeon and Saint Anna at Combe Martin in northern Devon also venerates Saint Nectan. Holy hermit and martyr Nectan, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!
O holy Father Nectan,
You followed the bidding of the Lord
And left your father and mother for His sake to embrace the hermit’s life.
Faithful follower of Christ unto death,
Pray that He may save our souls.
St Nectans Church, Hartland, Devon
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