Saint Gildas of Rhuys
The twenty-ninth of January is also the feast-day of another great scholarly saint of the Orthodox Church, from as far west of Rome as Saint Frahât was as far east: Saint Gildas the Historian. Saint Gildas, who lived during the sixth century, was the foremost chronicler among the Britons of the fall of Roman Britain, and its invasion by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Gildas’s The Ruin and Conquest of Britain was a remarkable work of literature in its own right: a scathing indictment of the greed and misrule by Britain’s sub-Roman lords – one of whom happens to be, unfortunately, a distant ancestor of the Coopers. But it was also one of the primary sources for the early chapters of Saint Bede’s History of the English Church and People, and despite the two of them being on opposite sides of cultural and ecclesiological divides, Bede clearly had a high regard for his predecessor’s scholarly acumen.
Gildas was born in Alt Clut in Yr Hen Ogledd, ostensibly to Caw who was lord there between 495 and 501. He had four brothers. The Angles, who were attacking the Brythonic kingdoms of the Old North, drove Caw out of his kingdom and into Wales along with his brood, including Gildas. Gildas grew up in a sæcular vocation, married and fathered three sons – one of whom became the hermit Cenydd of Gower. He did, however, study with Saint Illtud when he was young, at the College of Saint Theodosius, where his fellow-pupils and friends included Saint Dewi, Saint Peulin and Saint Samson. It’s highly unlikely that our Saint Gildas is the same Gildas that prostrated himself before a pregnant Saint Non, as Dewi and Gildas the Wise were contemporaries. Saint Illtud loved Gildas, seeing in him the gifted scholar he had longed to become, and willed to teach him all manner of sæcular science and liberal arts, as well as the theological ones. Gildas himself, however, inclined toward the study of the Scriptures, and sought after the religious life.
Gildas and Samson were the two pupils of Illtud who helped the meek Saint Peulin to scare away the seagulls from Illtud’s crops. Fearing he would be blamed for allowing his master’s crop to be despoiled, Peulin asked for Gildas’s and Samson’s aid. After praying to God, the three boys were able to approach the gulls, who became tame and flightless in their presence, and were able to be herded like sheep to be penned in a barn. When Saint Illtud saw this, he wondered at his students’ faith, and commended them for it. Then he rebuked the birds and told them not to bother his crops again; they meekly obeyed.
When Gildas left Llanilltud Fawr it was to continue his studies in Ireland. He studied there from many masters and went from monastery to monastery collecting what wisdom he could from each, as a bee collects nectar to make honey. While living in Ireland he took orders to become a priest, and spent his time evangelising, teaching, healing and ministering to the poor in Armagh. He also at this time took upon himself an ascetic rule, which he kept to the end of his life: he ate only three meals a week, and betook himself to a strenuous schedule of vigils and prayers. At length, he was recalled to ‘the northern region of the isle of Britain’ (meaning Gwynedd and Powys in Wales) to preach against the paganism and Pelagianism that were then plaguing those regions. He was wildly successful in converting the northern Welsh to Christianity, who were attracted to his teaching in large part by his asceticism.
Saint Gildas was on good terms with his elder in Ireland, Saint Brigid of Kildare. The holy woman had been impressed by the studious youth and, when he had returned to Wales, sent to ask something of him that his service for Christ in Ireland might be remembered and venerated. Saint Gildas fashioned a metal bell with his own hands, and sent it back to Saint Brigid by the same messenger she had sent to him. She received it gladly and held the relic in reverence at her cloister.
The high king of Ireland, Ainmuire mac Sétnai, had also heard of the reputation of the learnèd and holy Saint Gildas, and sent an embassy to him begging him to come to Ireland again and minister to his people, who at that time were falling away from the correct doctrines. Gildas set sail once more for Ireland; and after he had made land, on the way to Tír Conaill he met a certain man afflicted with palsy, who had to go about on a hand-cart. Saint Gildas prayed to God and then knelt down to the man, bidding him rise and walk about on his feet. At once the man’s palsy was cured, and he stood up on two healthy feet, and reached out to the saint with two healthy arms. The man began to praise the name of Saint Gildas, but this earned a rebuke from the holy man, who told him instead that it was to Jesus Christ he ought to sing praises. But the man spread the name of Gildas about him all the same, such that Gildas was forced to flee from the sight of men and disappear into the Irish wilderness.
Saint Gildas was discovered by some who had known him from his first sojourn in Ireland, and they introduced him to the High King. From Tír Conaill Saint Gildas began to preach the true doctrines of Christ, and began patiently to explicate them to those who had inclined their ears to hæresy. By patient steps he began to instil the Orthodox faith in the hearts and minds of the Irish people. Saint Gildas set up a school, where he taught not only the sons of nobles, but also the landless and kinless poor. He even used what wealth was given him in gifts, to set free those who had been subject to slavery.
Towards the end of his earthly life, Saint Gildas went on pilgrimage. He chose to go to Rome, to visit the Tombs of the Apostles. He conducted several wondrous healings on the way, and sternly instructed the men he healed, not to give praises to him but instead to Christ by Whose power they were healed. His hagiography states that when he reached Rome, the citizens thereof were afflicted by the presence of a monstrous dragon with poisonous breath, which had already claimed the lives of many Romans. Gildas felled the wyrm with only his crozier and a prayer to God. Saint Gildas also spent some time in Ravenna and performed a notable healing there, restoring the sight and speech of a blind and mute man. He also fell among thieves on his journey back home, but passed through them unharmed by immobilising them with a prayer to God. He released them after he was safely delivered, but they fled from him – thieves would not plague that area for a long time afterward.
Saint Gildas longed to return home, but it was not to be – God had other plans. He made his way into Brittany, and found a suitable place for a hermitage on the Île de Houat in the Gulf of Morbihan, off the southern coast of the peninsula. He lived in solitude there for some time, but he earned a reputation among the local folk such that disciples were drawn to him. He went to the mainland, to Rhuys, and built for them an oratory near the mouth of the river Blavet, out of the outcrop of rock that jutted naturally from the bank. After the oratory he built a refectory and mill, as well as a hospital for the sick and a lazar-house. Travellers who visited Gildas and his disciples’ oratory were treated to great hospitality.
Gildas set himself up as the first abbot at Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, but his thought and sole concern in doing so was for the spiritual welfare of his disciple-monks. He placed himself in humility as the servant of all there. As for his teaching, ‘in his sermons, he exhorted men to atone for sins by alms, to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick and those cast into prison, to bury the dead, to return evil for evil to no man, to love fasting, to be always assiduous in watchings and prayers.’ And in these things he led first by example and did not lay upon his disciples burdens he would not bear himself. In this way he passed the rest of his earthly life, and he reposed in the Lord in peace among his brothers, around the year 570.
On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain, apart from a few epistolary fragments the sole surviving example of Gildas’s scholarly work, was written when Gildas was much younger, though he was almost assuredly living abroad at the time he wrote – probably in Ireland. Our knowledge of much of Britain’s history after the end of Roman rule there derives from Gildas – as well as our knowledge of the Christian Church in Britain under Roman rule. But even from this document Gildas’s profound erudition is evident enough. He alludes not only to the Holy Scriptures but also to the Æneid of Vergil and works of Platonic philosophy, as well as to patristic writings extant in both Latin and Greek. A particularly telling testament to Gildas’s reputation as a historian is this. The cautious Saint Bede, who in the History of the English Church and People ordinarily takes pains to cross-reference all the events and personages he describes between multiple sources and especially primary sources if he can, cites Gildas’s On the Ruin in large sections (particularly on the history of Christianity in Roman Britain) as his sole source, without question. On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain is preserved at the University of Cambridge.
Saint Gildas is remembered with fondness in Wales, Ireland and Brittany; the centre of his cultus is naturally enough at Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys. He has a holy well near Laniscat (as well as a menhir) and another near Magoar in the Côtes d’Armor, and yet another in Finistère in Brittany. He also had a shrine at Glastonbury Abbey, and has a church dedicated to his memory in Rosneath, Scotland. Wise and venerable abbot Gildas, meek friend of the poor and thundering chastiser of the proud and powerful, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!
Truly thou art surnamed ‘the Wise’, O righteous Gildas,
For in thy monastic solitude
Thou didst use thy God-given gift of words for His greater glory.
Teach us to despise nothing, that all our talents, however small
May be employed in God's service, for the salvation of our souls.
Abbaye Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys, Morbihan, Brittany
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