Old Kea Church Tower, Cornwall
‘Remember, remember, the fifth of November…’ True, the Gunpowder Plot and Guy Fawkes are of course the common folk remembrances of the English on this day, and of course they’ve gotten a new lease on life thanks to that delightful mad genius of the graphic novel medium Alan Moore, but it sometimes escapes remembrance that in addition to being the date of the Gunpowder Plot, the fifth of November is also celebrated in southwest England and Brittany – and in the Holy Orthodox Church – as Saint Kea’s Day, the feast of a fifth-century Irish missionary hermit, later a bishop, who came to evangelise the coasts of Cornwall and Devon. We remember both Saint Kea today, and also his faithful helper and deacon Saint Fili who accompanied him.
This young monk from Ireland was apparently of noble birth and profoundly educated, but he gave up all his wealth to the poor and abandoned the life of a courtier for the life of a holy man when he was old enough to make the decision. The story of Saint Kea [also Quay in French, (Lan-te-)Ké or Ché in Breton, and Kay or Keyne in English] is strikingly similar to that of Saint Ia, the sister of Ss Euny and Erc. His hagiography opens much as Saint Ia’s does: watching from the southern shores of Ireland, seeing his brother-monks depart in their coracles for the heathen shores of Western Britain, and longing above all things that he might go with them. Burning with missionary zeal, he went to a certain promontory on the shore, which was a large boulder of granite, and prayed to God that if He willed it, Kea might go and preach the Gospel among the heathen Cornish.
And then the wonder happened. Just as with Saint Ia, a leaf floated by which by the power of her prayers was transformed into a coracle large enough for her to ride, so too with Saint Kea the very rock upon which he prostrated himself became broad and hollow. As the tide rose around the oblivious saint who was still lost in prayer, the waters of the sea lifted the granite rock off its perch on the shore and carried it out onto the open water. It floated as calmly and as lightly as any coracle made from hide. Saint Kea sprang to his feet upon seeing this, and in trembling awe cried aloud to God: ‘To Thee and only to Thee, my God, do I trust my soul!’
Saint Kea spent many days on the water in his unlikely granite boat, drifting hither and thither as the tides willed, or blown this way and that by the winds and waves. Despite not having food or drink with him, Saint Kea was sustained by his faith, and he knelt upon the rock three times a day and prayed fervently to God. At length, the faith of the saint brought him safely to the mouth of the Fal River on the southern coast of Cornwall, and he landed at a spot on the western shore at the confluence of the Fal and the Truro, which today still bears his name. It was here that he set up a hermitage and oratory for himself, which at length grew into a monastery. The only remains of this monastery, the Old Kea Church, are the ruins of a tower which still stands there.
There is a holy well that is dedicated to Saint Kea near the Old Kea Church. There are also place-names associated with Saint Kea in Devon – such as Landkey – which attest to his missionary presence there. It’s a near certainty, given the toponyms to this saint in Brittany, that he ended up across the Channel as well and founded churches there: like that at Saint-Quay-Portrieux on the Côtes d’Armor. He is said to have reposed in the Lord on the first Saturday in October, in Cléder in Finistère. He may also have had some connexion with Saint Gildas, who is said to have fashioned one or a set of the excellent Celtic bells for the saint.
Saint Kea is also associated with a younger British bishop, the ill-attested Saint Rumon of Tavistock (f.d. 30 August), who may have assisted Kea in founding his monastery after his landing. Saint Fili [also possibly Scofili] is an equally-obscure figure, though he is portrayed as a deacon assisting Saint Kea in the mediæval Cornish hagiographic tradition, and he is putatively the patron saint of Philleigh on the opposite shore of Truro from Kea, as well as Caerphilly in Wales. Local tradition has it that Saints Kea, Rumon and Fili worked to organise churches all around the Fal Estuary, and even fortified the area to defend against Saxon pirates. Even after the later conquests of Devon and Cornwall by Wessex, the kings of Wessex and England kept alive each local cultus of the Brythonic saints, and even revered them themselves – in much the same way that the Saxon Saint Ælfrǽd venerated the Cornish Saint Neot. Holy hierarch Kea, by whose faith even rocks were made to float, pray unto God that our souls might not meet shipwreck, but that we too may be saved!
Apolytikion to Saint Kea, Tone 1:
Thou wast unsparing in thy missionary labours
In Brittany and Cornwall, O Hierarch Kea.
As thou didst make the flame of the Orthodox Faith
Burn brightly in the face of defiant paganism,
Pray to God for us,
That we devote our lives to confronting the paganism of our times
For the glory of Christ's Kingdom and the salvation of men’s souls!
St Philleigh Church, Cornwall
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