Church of St Budock, Cornwall
The eighth of December is the feast-day of Saint Beuzeg [also Budoc] of Dol, a Breton abbot and bishop who grew up in Ireland. He is associated not only with his fellow abbots of Dol, Samson and Maelor, but also with Saint Maodez, whose early story is similar enough to his that the two men may have been twin brothers. He was also the tutor and spiritual father of one of the sons of the holy couple Fragan and Gwen – Saint Gwenolau.
The mother of Saint Beuzeg and Saint Maodez, a saintly and long-suffering Breton woman named Senara, was married to a rather distrustful Breton prince, the king of Goello who reigned in Tréguier. When she was several months pregnant, her stepmother began to whisper in her husband’s ear that the child was not his. Enraged, the husband of Senara ordered that she be locked inside a barrel and thrown into the sea to drown. However, the all-merciful God had compassion upon this innocent woman and her unborn children, and not only sustained their lives aboard their makeshift craft for five months, but so arranged it so the currents bore them to Ireland. As the hagiography goes, Saint Brigid assisted Senara in childbirth, blessed her newborns and gave her to know in a vision where the poor woman would wash ashore: at Youghal in County Cork. Saint Beuzeg – who according to the hagiography could talk soon after he was born – was baptised and raised in the abbey at Youghal in Ireland. He became a monk there, and then an abbot.
Some long while afterward, both Senara and Beuzeg (and presumably Maodez as well – though at the time he was living as a hermit in Cornwall) were welcomed back to Brittany. Senara’s stepmother had fallen deathly ill and, in fear of her soul, confessed and repented of her lies against her innocent stepdaughter. Senara’s husband had sought her out and found her in Ireland, and was reconciled happily to her, but he himself soon fell ill and died. Abbot Beuzeg became a hermit, and lived on the Île-de-Bréhat. Other Breton locales associated with Saint Beuzeg are Porspoder and Plourin, where he was supposed to have set up hermit’s cells. Another explanation is given in the Life of Saint Gwenolau, that it was more the violence the British were suffering from their Saxon neighbours that caused Beuzeg to flee into Brittany. Nevertheless, it was at Île-de-Bréhat that, according to the Life of the later saint, Gwenolau was entrusted for his education to Saint Beuzeg by his devout parents.
Later Saint Beuzeg would return to the mainland of Brittany from his island hermitage and meet Saint Maelor, the second bishop of Dol who succeeded Saint Samson. Maelor was apparently so impressed by Beuzeg that he willingly relinquished the Bishopric of Dol to him. Upon his election Beuzeg ruled in the see of Dol for 26 years, and reposed peacefully in the Lord sometime in the early 600s. His saintly cultus is of course strongest in Brittany, but he is also venerated in Cornwall and Wales. Holy bishop Beuzeg, faithful shepherd of the Breton flock, pray unto Christ our God for our salvation!
Thou wast miraculously preserved from the ocean’s fury
And, being sustained by the hand of God,
Thou didst devote thyself to His service, O Hierarch Beuzeg.
Being showered with temporal and spiritual honours both in Armagh and in Dol,
Thou didst labour to win souls for Christ,
Therefore we implore thine aid,
Begging Christ our God that He will save our souls.
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