ON SAINT GUIERUS IN CORNWALL AMONG THE ENGLISH.
CommentaryGuierus, in Cornwall among the English (S.)
G. H.
Cornwall, called by more recent writers Cornubia, once the seat of the Danmonii, and an illustrious County of the kingdom of the West Saxons, extends farthest of all Britain toward the setting sun. In Cornwall was a Church of Saint Guierus In the Western Hundred of this province is marked the place of Saint Neots, concerning which Camden has these things: "Near Lyskeard is a place which was once the Church of Saint Guerir, that is, if you interpret in British, Saint Medicus (the Healer): where, as Asserius writes, King Alfred, prostrated in prayer, recovered from illness. But when Neotus, a man of extraordinary sanctity, was afterwards buried in the same church, he so outshone the light of the other, that from that the place was called Neotestow, afterwards called Saint Neot's that is, Neot's place, now Saint Neots; and the religious men who served God there were called Clerics of Saint Neot, and had sufficiently rich revenues, as may be seen in the book of William the Conqueror." So Camden. Saint Neotus is venerated on July 31, on which day he is said in the Life edited by Capgrave to have died, and the year of his death is set down as 890 in Alford, Annals of the English Church.
[2] About King Alfred's illness being driven away, in the deeds of his, Asser the contemporary author writes: "When in Mercia he was solemnly celebrating the marriage, honorably arranged, there King Alfred among innumerable peoples of both sexes, after prolonged feasts day and night, suddenly and with immense pain unknown to all physicians, at once before all the people, he was seized with pain. For it was unknown to all who were then present, and even to this day daily observing it, seized by a grievous disease that, alas! (the worst thing), it lasted so long a time, from the twentieth year of his age to the fortieth and beyond, through so many years incessantly protracting, whence such pain arose. Many were saying it had been done by the favor and fascination of the people standing around: others by a certain diabolical envy, who is always envious of the good: others by an unusual kind of fever: others think it a fig, which kind of most troublesome pain he had also from infancy. prostrate in prayer, he was freed But at a certain time by divine nod, before he had gone to Cornwall for the purpose of hunting, and had turned aside to a certain church for the sake of prayer, in which Saint Gueryr rests, and now also Saint Neotus reposes there, he was relieved. For he was a diligent visitor of holy places, even from infancy, for the sake of prayer and giving alms. There long prostrated in silent prayer, he so entreated the Lord's mercy, that almighty God, through his immense clemency, would change the stings of his present and infesting infirmity into some other lighter sickness, whatever it might be, yet on this condition: that such infirmity should not appear outwardly in the body, lest he should be useless and despised. He feared leprosy or blindness, or any such pain, which so quickly makes men useless and despised by their coming. And his prayer being finished, he took up the journey begun, and not long afterwards, as he had prayed in prayer, he felt himself divinely healed from that pain, so that it was entirely rooted out." So Asser, who had written before, that in the year 868 Alfred, in the twentieth year of his age, had taken a wife, whom he says in writing he knew to be a widow after Alfred's death: hence Alfred was healed around the year 888; unless another disease, which he had suffered in adolescence, is said to have been taken away before the marriage was contracted, as Alford thinks in his Annals at the year 871, where he treats of Saint Guierus.
[3] The author of the English Martyrology, printed in the year 1608 and reprinted in 1640, Saint Guierus is venerated April 4 attempting to assign to individual days some Saint who flourished in England, Scotland, or Ireland, places Saint Guerirus on this fourth of April, citing Matthew of Paris in the Greater History at the year 871, from ancient monuments of Britain. That history is said to exist in the Sidneian library. But, as Vossius writes in De Historicis Latinis, book 2, chapter 58, "whether that part was of Matthew of Paris, or of another, let those who have seen it see." With this author cited, the author of the said Martyrology asserts that Saint Guierus was a Priest and hermit, he is believed to have lived as a Priest and hermit who, professing a severe kind of life in Danmonia, gathered a great opinion of sanctity, and deserved to be venerated by the provincials, with temples and altars erected. The same Saint Gunerus, Presbyter in England, Ferrarius has reported in his General Catalogue on this day: which we also do, not having thus far obtained any other day of ecclesiastical veneration and cult, much less the year or century, in which he flourished or migrated to Christ.