Holy and Right-Believing Elaeth ‘Frenin’, Monk of Anglesey

St Eleth Church, Amlwch, Wales

On the eleventh of November we celebrate the feast of Elaeth of the Welsh Age of Saints, a sixth-century Brythonic king of the Old North who lost his kingdom and subsequently became a monk on the holy island of Ynys Môn. He is venerated today primarily in northern Wales, and is associated closely with the other saints of Anglesey.

Elaeth ‘Frenin’ ap Meurig ap Idno belonged to the chieftains of Yr Hen Ogledd, who apparently did not have a particularly sterling reputation among the bards of old Britain in the years that they ruled, as Elaeth’s father Meurig is ‘clearly vilified’ in the Black Book of Carmarthen – a compilation in which two poems are attributed to Saint Elaeth himself. Their reputation apparently suffered on account of their inability to hold off the Picts. Elaeth was born to Meurig and his wife Onnengreg, probably at some point in the 610s or 620s, and acceded his father as a king or sub-king in Yr Hen Ogledd. He lost his kingdom, however, to the invading Picts and had to flee west and south into northern Wales.

Specifically, he fled to the isle of Anglesey, and sought shelter at Penmon Priory where Saint Seiriol ‘Gwyn’ was the reigning abbot. This happened around the year 640. Seiriol took a liking to the exiled king, and at the latter’s wish to quit the sæcular world gave him the monastic tonsure. It was probably after he became a monk that he wrote seven exhortatory poems under the title of ‘Cyngogion Elaeth’, collected in the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales.

Saint Elaeth also founded, according to tradition, St Eleth Church in Amlwch, which today belongs to the (Anglican) Church in Wales. Nearby this church is Ffynnon Elaeth, a holy well whose waters were held to have great healing powers, and which remained a common site of pilgrimage on Anglesey to the present – in the words of Angharad Llwyd, ‘the ancient well… is still held in some degree of repute’. Saint Elaeth lived out the rest of his life as a monk on Anglesey, and reposed probably shortly before the year 700. Holy Father Elaeth, king and poet and monk, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion of Saint Elaeth, Tone 8:

Thou didst exchange armed combat with the heathen
For the spiritual warfare of the monastic life, O Father Elaeth.
Look on those who now hymn thee,
O thou who didst praise God with thy poetic talents He gave thee,
And intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.