St Petroc, abbot
and confessor
(Feast day,
June 4)
This
6th-Century Celtic
Christian saint
(c. 468 - 564) who banished monsters, remains
the favourite saint of the people of Cornwall, UK.
Petroc
was the son of a Welsh king and remains the most famous saint of Cornwall.
According to Welsh legend, he was a younger son of the chieftain Glywys
Cernyw of Glywysing (now Glamorgan).
He has given his name to Llanbedrog,
a village of the Lleyn
peninsula, 'llan' being an old Welsh word meaning an enclosure, and used to denote the land on which
churches were built.
One antique document
described him as being "handsome in appearance, courteous in speech,
prudent, simpleminded, modest, humble, a cheerful giver, burning with
ceaseless charity, always ready for all the works of religion because
while still a youth he had attained by watchful care the wisdom of riper
years".
For thirty years "he so afflicted
his flesh with vigils and cold that for the curbing of illicit impulses of
seething pleasure he very often spent the night in the middle of a torrent from
cock-crow until dawn". He ate nothing but bread except on Sundays, when "for
the sake of reverence of the resurrection by the Lord, he modestly tasted some
little condiment".
Miracles
Like many saints, Petroc was a miracle worker. Near the
shore next to the river Haile, on one occasion at harvest time, the kindly saint
was asked by surly reapers if he would produce a spring of sweet
water, and this he did simply by striking his staff on a rock "whereupon a
very clear spring of water issued before their eyes, which has not ceased to
remain now, very salubrious to drink". Nearby lived a holy hermit named
Samson, who, just when the saint was in the district, God saw fit to strike
paralysed, so that Petroc could heal him, which he did.
A tribune by the name of Cynam or Cynan, who was racked
with pain, had Petroc come to him in a vision while asleep. The saint ordered
that Cynam free certain prisoners that he held, and that if he did as commanded,
he would be healed. Cynan did as suggested, and it was so. Even by touching the
'sacred garment' of the man, a woman was restored to health.
More remarkably, a huge dragon that lived in the
wilderness near the saint's cell, had a splinter stuck in his right eye. This
dragon was in such pain that he put aside his ferocious and voracious ways and
went to see Petroc at his church, where the saint was engaged in prayer "and,
with bowed head, for three days lay first on the threshold, awaiting the
miracles of God".
At Petroc's command, the dragon was "sprinkled with a
sprinkling made with water mixed with the dust of the pavement". Immediately
upon the application of the medicine, "the wood being removed from [his] eye, he
was healed, wonderful thing!" He "returned to [his] solitary wallow". A woman, thirsting in the night, drank water from a jug, by which she
swallowed a small serpent [and] languished for many years. And when no
physicians could help her, she was brought to the holy man. He, naturally, gave
to the sick [woman] a drink with earth and water being mixed. At once, with this
having been swallowed, the woman vomiting the three foot (although dead)
serpent, with her health regained that same hour, gave thanks to God.
To Jerusalem and India
It is sometimes alleged that
Jesus Christ learned arcane knowledge in India – it is a belief explicitly
held today in India even by many academic scholars of archaeology and history.
So it's of interest that Petroc, too, was claimed by an early hagiographer* to
have visited the sub-continent, and perhaps there he, too, learned many esoteric
things that he brought back to early medieval Europe.
He travelled to Rome, we are
told, and then to Jerusalem, where, at the tomb of Jesus he "poured out pious
prayers and tears which broke out through remorseful joy", then he continued
east towards India, and "came as far as the eastern ocean" where "exhausted by great lassitude, he fell asleep on the shore". When he awoke,
he saw a small boat, just big enough for one man, which he entered, and it took
him without sail or oars to an unknown island where he remained, leading a
contemplative life for seven years, living with the holy men whom he found
there. He was fed from time to time with a single fish provided for him by God.
When these seven years had passed, an angel of God appeared to Petroc in a
vision , saying: "Do now, servant of God Petroc, proceed. For the Lord, by whose
command that fish, with which he fed you for seven years, has remained entirely
whole, commands, and that vessel in which you were brought here is at hand for
you to depart."
The angel told him that when
he had crossed the sea, he would find a staff which he had left standing near a
wolf which the Lord had prepared for him as a colleague, "leading the way so
that he might take upon himself [Petroc's] safe guidance", and that God
would lead him to a place where the saint would do his further work. Thus Petroc
departed and arrived in western Britain, where he found all the things that had
been told him by the angel.
The monster, Tregeagle
In Cornwaile's fair land,
bye the poole on the moore.
Tregeagle the wicked did dwell.
John Penwarne, 'Tregeagle; or Dozmare Pool'
In Cornwall
there is a legend of a spectre or monster by the name of Tregeagle, and
Petroc figures in this curious tale, of which there are numerous variants.
WHO has not heard of the wild
spirit Tregeagle? He haunts equally the moor, the rocky coasts, and the blown
sand-hills of Cornwall. From north to south, from east to west, this doomed
spirit is heard of, and to the day of judgment he is doomed to wander, pursued
by avenging fiends. For ever endeavouring to perform some task by which he
hopes to secure repose, and being for ever defeated. Who has not heard the
howling of Tregeagle? When the storms come with all their strength from the
Atlantic, and urge themselves upon the rocks around the Land's End, the howls
of the spirit are louder than the roaring of the winds. When calms rest upon
the ocean, and the waves can scarcely form upon the resting waters, low
wailings creep along the coast. These are the wailings of this wandering soul.
When midnight is on the moor or on the mountains, and the night winds whistle
amidst the rugged cairns, the shrieks of Tregeagle are distinctly heard. We
know, then, that he is pursued by the demon dogs, and that till daybreak he
must fly with all speed before them. The voice of Tregeagle is everywhere, and
yet he is unseen by human eye. Every reader will at once perceive that
Tregeagle belongs to the mythologies of the oldest nations, and that the
traditions of this wandering spirit in Cornwall, which centre upon one
tyrannical magistrate, are but the appropriation of stories which belong to
every age and country. Tradition thus tells Tregeagle's tale.
Hunt, Robert (ed.), Popular Romances
of the West of England, 1903, 3rd edition
Tregeagle (pronounced 'Dree-gaygle') had been a
wicked, murderous wealthy man in the Bodmin district long ago. His ghost was
troubling the locals, and Petroc's aid was sought to rid them of the demon.
The ancient lore is inconsistent on this, and the monster [or serpent] seems to
have become confused or conflated with an actual wicked person of the name Jan
Tregeagle, although in a Latin tale*, the serpent was one originally inflicted
on the locals by a savage man named Teudur (Tendur; Teudur; Tendurus). Petroc
made a chain, forged with his own hands, every link of which he welded with a
prayer, and bound the monster, banishing it (either into the sea or to Berepper, or Bareppa, beach).
There, Tregeagle was condemned to carry sacks of sand
across the estuary of the River Loo, and to empty them at Porthleven, until the
beach was clean. Petroc must have known that the tide always flows from Trewavas
Head round the coast towards 'the Lizard', and that the sand would be
constantly carried back as fast as the demon could remove it.
Though the demon was thus consigned to a Sisyphian task, the poor
fishermen who inhabited the coast around Porthleven now had the howlings of
Tregeagle to contend with, just as the dwellers of Padstow had before Petroc's
solution.
"Tregeagle was laden with a sack of sand of enormous
size, and was wading across the mouth of the estuary, when one of those wicked
devils, who were kept ever near Tregeagle, in very idleness tripped up the
heavily-laden spirit. The sea was raging with the irritation of a passing storm;
and as Tregeagle fell, the sack was seized by the waves, and its contents poured
out across this arm of the sea.
"There, to this day, it rests a bar of sand, fatally
destroying the harbour of Ella's Town. The rage of the inhabitants of this
seaport, – now destroyed – was great; and with all their priests, away they
went to the Loo Bar, and assailed their destroyer. Against human anger Tregeagle
was proof. The shock of tongues fell harmlessly on his ear, and the assault of
human weapons was unavailing.
"By the aid of the priests, and faith-inspired
prayers, the bonds were once more placed upon Tregeagle; and he was, by the
force of bell, book, and candle, sent to the Land's End. There he would find no
harbour to destroy, and but few people to terrify. His task was to sweep the
sands from Porthcurnow Cove round the headland called Tol-Peden-Penwith, into
Nanjisal Cove. Those who know that rugged headland, with its cubical masses of
granite, piled in Titanic grandeur one upon another, will appreciate the task;
and when to all the difficulties are added the strong sweep of the Atlantic
current, – that portion of the Gulf-stream which washes our southern shores,
– it will be evident that the melancholy spirit has, indeed, a task which must
endure until the world shall end.
"Even until to-day is
Tregeagle labouring at his task. In calms his wailing is heard; and those sounds
which some call the 'soughing of the wind,' are known to be the moanings of
Tregeagle; while the coming storms are predicated by the fearful roarings of
this condemned mortal."
The tale is a later variant of the early medieval legend that tells of Teudur, a savage man who punished his neighbours by causing serpents and all kind of noxious worms to gather in a swampy lake. After his death the starving serpents destroyed and ate each other – all except for one, which tore cattle to pieces and devoured human beings. In one version, Petroc led Tregeagle, bound with a handkerchief, to the coast and banished the monster to solitary places across the sea.
Petroc and Britain
Petroc's name was given to
many places in Devon, Cornwall and
Wales. In his old age, he withdrew to a
hermitage on Bodmin Moor. Petroc was buried at
Padstow, which became the centre
of his cult. There are 18 churches dedicated to him in Devon, plus others in
Cornwall and south Wales. By the 11th Century, Bodmin had become the centre
of his cult, which also
flourished in Brittany,
France.
t Petroc may even have taken Christianity to
Brittany, where more than 30 churches are dedicated to him (under the name
Perreux). He was also the titular saint of a church in the French canal province of
Nivernais (a former
province of France, around the city of Nevers and the département of Nièvre).
However, it might be that his many disciples carried his cultus across the
Channel, and in France there are churches built to him, by the name Perreux.
In 1178, a disgruntled
canon named Martin stole his relics (body parts) and gave them to Saint-Méen's
Abbey near Rennes, Brittany, but they were returned to Bodmin the next year at the
request of Roger, its Prior, after the intervention of Bishop Bartholomew of
Exeter and King Henry II. During the Reformation, the saint's head was hidden
from marauding Protestants, and was not rediscovered until the 19th
century, no doubt an occasion of huge rejoicing throughout Cornwall.
St Petroc's Church at Bodmin figures in the legends associated with King
Arthur. It is often
presumed that the first we know of the tales of the 6th-century
Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table was written, centuries after the
supposed king's life, in 1146 by Geoffrey
of Monmouth in his monumental work, History of the Kings of Britain.
There are earlier sources, but Geoffrey's is the one with the greatest number of tales.
However, there is a piece of evidence that appears to predate the History,
at least by a few years. A chronicle, written in 1146 by one Hermann of Tournai,
named De Miraculis S. Marie Laudunensis ('On the Miracles of Our Lady
of Laon') relates certain events that took place in the year 1113.
Hermann relates that a group of nine canons from the
church at Laon, France, visited the town of Bodmin in Cornwall. Proudly told by
locals that they were in the "Lands of King Arthur", the clerics were shown
various local sites that were associated with the fabled king, such as Arthur's
Chair and Arthur's Oven.
During their sojourn at St Petroc's abbey, a man with a withered arm came to
them requesting healing. During their conversation with the man, he mentioned
that King Arthur was still alive. The Frenchmen ridiculed him for saying such a
thing, but a crowd of onlookers supported the man's strange belief and a brawl
broke out.
The fact that these events were supposed to have
happened in 1113 refutes the view that Geoffrey of Monmouth invented King Arthur
as a fiction. Historia Brittonum, written in the 9th century by the rather unreliable
chronicler, Nennius, who
possibly had access to documents dating back at least four centuries, also
refers to someone who might have been the legendary
king.
In art, Petroc is generally portrayed as a bishop holding a church, or as a bishop with a
stag, harking back to one he sheltered from hunters.
*Quotations from Vita
I Petroci (Life of St Petroc), translated by Dr Karen Jankulak
