Saint Mewan of Brittany
Two saints and friends in Christ, with their feasts a week apart, are commemorated on the twenty-first and twenty-eighth of June, respectively. Fellow-disciples of Saint Samson, Mewan and Austell accompanied the saint from Wales into Cornwall, and from Cornwall into Brittany. The two of them remained close even after Saint Samson’s repose.
By tradition, Saint Mewan was a relative on his mother’s side of Saint Maelor, who succeeded Samson as the second Bishop of Dol. He was born into a wealthy family of southern Wales, but put his fortunes aside when Samson arrived in Cornwall, to follow him as disciple. With him also went a Cornish priest, his friend Austell. Saint Samson directed his disciples Mewan and Austell to preach and baptise, heal and exorcise the folk they met upon their way, and through the prayers of Christ and His humble Welsh servant they were successful in all these things.
The three of them journeyed together into Brittany, where Saint Samson directed his two disciples to preach the Gospel in the environs of the Koad Pempont, which has been immortalised in the Arthurian canon as the magical forest of Brocéliande, in which mission they persisted even after Saint Samson reposed. Saint Mewan impressed the local potentate, a certain Caduon, so much with his devotion and his effectiveness in working wonders, that Caduon gave up all his worldly possessions to provide him with funds and land on which to build a monastery. This monastery, which was originally dedicated to Saint John the Forerunner, is today the Abbaye de Saint Méen near Rennes. In Mewan’s own day it gained a particular reputation for the sanctity and regularity of its cloistered life. He even tonsured Saint Judicaël, the High King of Brittany who renounced crown for cloister, and who is today regarded as a national hero.
So successful was Saint Mewan in attracting men to the cloistered life that he would later found another abbey further to the southeast in Angers, after the one near Rennes became too crowded. Saint Austell meekly followed and supported Saint Mewan throughout his life, the two being inseparable and of one mind. When Saint Mewan reposed in the Lord on the twenty-first of July, 617, it was Saint Austell who attended his deathbed. Austell himself died exactly one week after on the twenty-eighth, and the two of them were interred in the self-same grave at the Abbey of Saint John.
Some of the relics of Saint Mewan and Saint Austell were claimed by Glastonbury, and others by the Benedictine Abbaye de Saint-Florent-le-Jeune in Saumur. Mewan in particular enjoyed a flourishing cultus in Old England as well as in Cornwall; the two holy friends even lent their names to two neighbouring parishes in Cornwall, St Mewan and St Austell. Holy friends and brothers Mewan and Austell, pray unto Christ our God for our salvation!
Holy disciple of Saint Samson of Dol,
Thou didst persevere in thy resolve and enter a monastery in Brittany.
Thou didst press on in thy holy struggle
And establish thine own monastery.
O holy Mewan, pray for us to Christ our God
That our souls may be saved.
Light of Cornwall and pillar of the Faith,
Holy Austell, disciple of Samson:
Thou wast a fellow-labourer with Saint Mewan,
In such companionship that thou didst die with him and share his grave.
Pray to Christ our God to grant us His great mercy.
Holy Trinity Church, St Austell, Cornwall
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