Saint Corentin of Quimper
The twelfth of December is the feast-day of another of Brittany’s great founders of abbeys, the fifth-century Saint Corentin, the first abbot and bishop of Quimper. He has become something of a larger-than-life figure in local Celtic folklore due to his dealings with Gralon, one of the local Breton princes, and his daughter Dahut. Regardless of these folkloric references, Saint Corentin nonetheless occupied a position, and a certain spiritual style very similar to, that of the later Saint Neot of Cornwall. He is closely associated with his contemporary Saint Gwenolau, with whom he was supposedly close friends.
Saint Corentin [also Kaourintin or possibly Cury] was almost assuredly a Welshman by origin, and likely accompanied some of the first settlers from Great Britain to Armorica when the Welsh were being besieged not only by Picts and Saxons but by illness, starvation and hæresy. He grew disillusioned with the world at a young age, and desired a life of solitary holiness in the forests of Ploudiern. He spent several years here in holy solitude, engaged in ascetic self-denial. The clergy and hierarchs of Brittany, during these early years of British resettlement in the northwest of Gaul, had little if any intercourse with those of the Franks, for the Franks held to different customs and had a different temperament. After the first generation of British clergy in exile from their island home died, the following generation were chosen from among themselves. This was how Saint Corentin was named bishop of Quimper, where he had his little hermitage. (This Breton name, which is actually kemper in that language or cymer in Welsh, comes from the Common Brythonic word for ‘confluence’.)
How he came by that hermitage is another tale. Corentin had lived a life of total selflessness for a long time before, giving all that passed into his possession to folk sick or suffering or otherwise in need, and leaving nothing for his own comfort. He became renowned for his generosity, far beyond Armorica into the Frankish-speaking parts of Gaul. He ate wild herbs and roots for his food. Beside his little cell in the Ploudiern there was a spring. Within this spring, the hagiography tells us, lived a fish, which whenever Corentin cut a fin from it to serve as his meat for the day, would wondrously regrow on the fish the following day. The prince of Cornouaille, Gralon Meur, came to visit Saint Corentin, who shared with him the cut of the wondrous fish. Shortly thereafter Gralon Meur granted to the holy man his own castle at Quimper to use as a monastery.
As mentioned before, Saint Corentin figures prominently in Breton folklore. In particular, he was the subject of a Brythonic romance of the city of Kêr-Ys. In that legend, Gralon King is presented, a ruler who takes a sorceress as his wife. Though his wife dies early, she leaves behind her their newborn daughter, Dahut, who grows up a bit spoiled by her fond father. Because Dahut was born at sea, she develops a great love for the sea, and demands of Gralon that he build for her a city on the sea – Kêr-Ys. Ys is protected by a series of interconnecting locks and dikes, controlled by a set of gold keys which Gralon keeps on his person. One night, Dahut stole the keys from her father, and used them – she thought – to unlock the banquet hall to admit a secret lover of hers. Instead, she opened the dikes and flooded Kêr-Ys, killing everyone there. However, Saint Corentin ran to the king’s side and urged him to flee before the deluge hit, and he did so, taking Dahut with him on horseback. As the water overtook them, Dahut was slowing the horse down. Saint Corentin called to Gralon to throw his daughter off into the waves, for it had been she who had caused the flood. Gralon did so, and as his daughter drowned it is said that she turned into a selkie. Other versions have it that it was Saint Corentin himself who struck Dahut off Gralon’s horse with his crozier. Still others hold that it was not Saint Corentin at all, but instead Saint Gwenolau.
Another legend has it that Saint Corentin was named and anointed as bishop by Saint Martin of Tours himself, though this seems unlikely from the chronology. It is more likely that he was appointed by a successor of Saint Martin in the same see. Saint Corentin attended the Council of Angers in 453, and affixed his name there as ‘Charaton’.
Being an active missionary, abbot and bishop was a great deal of effort, and yet Saint Corentin undertook it all without complaint. He wore himself out in these exertions, however, and passed to the abode of blessedness toward the end of the fifth century. Saint Corentin has been remembered by the Breton people of northwestern France, but he was also commemorated in a seventh-century Old English litany. Saint Corentin may or may not be the same person as the Saint Cury who preached in Devon and Cornwall and who lived as a hermit in a cell on one slope of Mount Menehout. Holy father Corentin, pray with us unto Christ our God for the deliverance and healing of our souls!
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