ON SS. KENAN AND KERRIAN, KENAN ALSO CALLED COLLEDOCUS, IN GREATER BRITAIN OR IN IRELAND OR IN ARMORICAN BRITTANY,
IN THE FIFTH CENTURY
CommentaryKenan or Colledocus, confessor in Britain. (S.)
Kerrian, confessor in Britain. (S.)
BY C. D. S.
[1] St. Kenan, from a Life which is not shown to be ancient, St. Kenan, who Albert Le Grand says was surnamed Colodocus among the Bretons and whom he himself calls by the vernacular name Ké, no ancient martyrologies or other documents mention among the saints. The first mention of this kind occurs in the supplement to the martyrology published in English after the middle of the 18th century by Richard Challoner, bishop, vicar apostolic of the London district A Memorial of ancient British Piety or a British Martyrology, London, 1761., in which supplement there is announced at the 5th day of November: In Lesser Britain, the festival of St. Colledocus, confessor, and of St. Kerrian, hermit. Yet that some Life of a certain St. Kenan was known before the middle of the 17th century is established from a compendium of this Life which is read in James Ussher [Britannicarum ecclesiarum antiquitates (London, 1687), p. 508. The first edition of this work came out under the title De primordiis ecclesiae Britannicae in the year 1639.], in these words: He Kenan, as is read in his Life, a Connachtman by race, was as a boy one of those fifty hostages whom the magnates of Ireland gave to king Laoghaire (under whom St. Patrick came here), who lived at Tara and ruled all Ireland. Freed from his tyranny by the efforts of St. Kiaran [So from the chronological index which Ussher himself compiled and added to his work; in this place, however, Kistani is read, by a printer's error, as it seems.] the bishop, and trained in good morals and letters by the most religious man Nathan, he afterwards went to Gaul, and at the city of Tours, in the monastery of St. Martin the bishop (he having already been dead for some years), put on the monastic habit and was exactly instructed in regular discipline. Returning thence, first in Connacht
he converted very many to the Christian faith; then, making for Leinster, in the place which to this day is called the Wood of Kenan, he built a church and gathered many people to Christ; and at length, having set out into the lands of the Eugenian nation (named from king Eugenius, whose granddaughter Ethne is recorded to have been the mother of Kenan himself), he destroyed an idol there and its altar, and in its place built a Christian church, over which he set his beloved disciple St. Congellus.
[2] and from another entirely different, Thus far Ussher, who, however, brought forward nothing from which we might judge what credit can be attributed to that Life, nor did he in any way indicate that this Kenan was celebrated with any cult either in Lesser Britain or on the 5th of November. But an entirely different narrative was handed down by Albert Le Grand in his work on the lives of the saints of Brittany, first published in the year 1636, which he entitled La Vie de saint Ké ou Kenan, surnommé Colodoc, evesque et confesseur, le 5 novembre [The Life of Saint Ké or Kenan, surnamed Colodoc, bishop and confessor, the 5th of November]. According to this writer, Kenan, born in the island of Britain of Ludunus his father and Tagu his mother, noble and wealthy people, and raised to the episcopal dignity in his homeland, soon laid aside the burden together with the dignity and went off into the province of Wales, and there, in a certain wood whose name was Ros-ene, divinely shown to him not without manifold prodigy, he settled with a few disciples to lead the hermit's life. There, when eight oxen which the saint used for tilling the land had been snatched from him by a certain fierce prince ruling that place, as many stags offered themselves of their own accord in place of the oxen and performed their office. And the prince, afflicted with a very grave illness and restored to health by the prayers of St. Kenan, after he had acknowledged and amended his fault, granted the saint a fairly ample estate of land, on which he built a monastery and gathered not a few monks. Afterwards he resolved to migrate thence into Armorican Brittany, and, having landed on the coast of Léon, he fixed his seat in the village of Cléder Dép. Finistère., where he built a small convent and spent the rest of his life, returning once, however, meanwhile to the island of Britain to reconcile peace between two British princes. When he had attempted this in vain, he returned to his convent in Armorica; whence he departed to the blessed life on the first Saturday of the month of October [Whence Castellanus in his Universal Martyrology consigned his memory to the 7th of October.], about the year 495, and was buried in the oratory of his hermitage. But afterwards, that oratory having been utterly destroyed amid the tumults of war, it had already fallen from the memory of men in what place the saint lay. But, he himself appearing, the place was revealed and the body found in the cemetery of the village of Cléder; whence it was afterwards translated into the monastery of Ros-ene in England, which he had first founded.
[3] attributed to a writer otherwise unknown, So, roughly, Albert Le Grand [Vies des Saints de la Bretagne Armoricaine, ed. D. L. Miorcec de Kerdanet (Brest-Paris, 1837), pp. 675–81. That anonymous Breton poet, however, who is cited here and there by this more recent editor in the notes under the name Le poète Breton de 1600 the Breton poet of 1600, manifestly drew the matter of his poem from the Life published by Albert.]; but for all these things he brings forward no other surety than a certain priest of whom it is entirely unknown when he lived and what older sources he used: Cette Vie, escrite en Latin d'assez bon style pour le temps, par un certain Maurice, Vicaire de ladite Eglise de Cleder, et gardée és Archives d'icelle, en a esté tirée par extrait fidelle, et a moy communiquée par Mre. Sebastien, Marquis de Rosmadec, Comte de la Chappelle, Baron de Molac, etc., Fondateur de ladite Paroisse [This Life, written in Latin in a fairly good style for the time, by a certain Maurice, vicar of the said church of Cléder, and kept in its archives, has been drawn from them by a faithful extract and communicated to me by Messire Sébastien, Marquis de Rosmadec, Count of La Chapelle, Baron of Molac, etc., founder of the said parish] Ibid., p. 681..
[4] That the same holy man is treated in both these narratives hardly anyone would suspect. Yet John Colgan undertook to demonstrate it somehow, in a certain note on the Life of St. Iaova, bishop of Léon, in which he is reported to have summoned St. Kenan to himself, whom he made both priest and canon and then gave him the parish of Plou-Kernaw to administer Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae, p. 442, num. 13.. which Colgan strove in vain to reconcile with one another; Of this Kenan, then, Colgan discourses thus Ibid., p. 443, num. 11.: Albert Le Grande (sic) has in his book on the Saints of Armorican Brittany the Life of St. Kenan, surnamed Calodock, whom he reports was born in Greater Britain of Ladanus his father and Tagua his mother, and dwelt in the church of Ros-ene, and thence came into Armorican Brittany with his disciple St. Kieranus about the year 472, and died about the year 495, and is venerated on the 5th of November. Whence he is compelled to assert that he was different from St. Kenan, the disciple of St. Iaova, who, he writes, was present at his master's death in the year 554. For my part, in the first place, I find in no English or British fasti or histories any saint by the name of Kenan, of British race. In the Irish ones I find three saints of this name. One is St. Kenan, confessor, whose natal day Marianus Gorman and the Martyrology of Donegal report is celebrated on the 29th of November. Another is St. Kenan, abbot, whose memory, together with the same, the Martyrology of Tallaght and Maguire relate is celebrated on the 25th of February. The third is that celebrated prelate of Duleek, whose natal day the same authors, the Calendar of Cashel and the Martyrology of Salisbury relate is celebrated on the 24th of November, who, Ussher too writes in his Chronological Index, set out in the year 450 for Gaul and stayed there for some time … and in the additions to his book De Primordiis Ecclesiae Britannicae, page 1070, somewhat more fully thus. Here there is copied the passage of Ussher's work which we recited above, num. 1, from the other edition of it. But I would have the reader notice that in no way, either in this place or in the chronological index, is it indicated by Ussher that this Kenan of whom he writes is the same as the bishop of Duleek of this name. Now there follows in Colgan: If a very few errors are corrected in what Le Grande relates of him, the reader will easily discover with me, from what has already been said, that that St. Kenan whom Le Grande calls by the surname Calodok is the same as he who was prelate of Duleek in Ireland. For four indications especially persuade me of this. First, the identity of name, since no other saint of the same name is found among the Britons. Second, the agreement of place and time, since this Kenan is read to have been in Gaul about the year 450, where he probably also remained afterwards until the year 472 and some following years. Third, that Kenan Caladock is read to have had as fellow disciple St. Kerianus, who seems to be Kieranus of Saighir, through whose efforts St. Kenan of Duleek, having been freed, set out for Gaul. Fourth, that there is today in Ireland a place called Ros-ene, which name it seems to have obtained from Ethne, the mother of St. Kenan of Duleek. Nor does it matter that the mother of St. Kenan Calodoc is called Tegua by Le Grande: for Tegua could easily have crept in for Ethna by a fault of the copyists, as by a similar fault too his father seems to be called Ludunus, whereas he was truly called Sedanus, as the Calendar of Cashel at the 24th of November, the Sanctilogium Genealogicum c. 36, and others relate.
[5] But on what slight and uncertain foundations all this rests everyone sees, and at length it must be confessed that about our St. Kenan nothing certain has reached us besides the name and the cult. And the same must be said a fortiori of St. Kerrian, But Kerrian is known from a few words of this other Life. of whom we have found no mention anywhere besides those few words which are read in the Life of St. Kenan published in French by Albert Le Grand: Saint Ké arriva enfin a Cleder et y ayant enterré son condisciple l'hermite Kerianus, il tomba luy-mesme malade … [Saint Ké at last arrived at Cléder, and having buried there his fellow disciple the hermit Kerianus, he himself fell ill …] Vies des SS. de Bret., ed. cit., p. 680., and the announcement in the British Martyrology of Richard Challoner Above, num. 1., taken, as is indicated there, from the work of Guy Alexis Lobineau, who was the first, unless I am mistaken, to adorn Kerrian with the title of saint [Les Vies des Saints de Bretagne (Rennes, 1725), p. 26; ed. Tresvaux, vol. I (1836), p. 64.], but, what seems strange, though he had proclaimed the Life of St. Colledocus published by Le Grand to be entirely fabulous Ibid., p. 25., nonetheless asserted that Kerrian was the companion of Colledocus, and died in the village of Cléder, and was given burial there by Colledocus Ibid., p. 26., all of which he could have found out from that Life alone.
[6] [Yet not a few places or chapels prove the ancient cult of them, or at least of one or the other] But, although old written documents about the cult of St. Kenan or Colledocus and of St. Kerrian are lacking, nonetheless they say that this ancient cult is demonstrated by not a few churches or oratories and even villages named by the name of one or the other, under the vernacular word Ké. Of this kind are indicated the church and village of Saint-Quey (or Saint-Qué), in the former diocese of Tréguier near the town of Lannion Dép. Côtes-du-Nord., and Saint-Quay, in the former diocese of Dol In the same department., three leagues distant from the town of Saint-Brieuc. But this latter church now venerates as patron, in place of St. Kenan, St. Caius, pope and martyr; the other has now been abolished. The church of the village of Cléder has as principal patron St. Peter the apostle, and as secondary St. Kenan, in whose memory a Mass is sung every year on the 2nd of October. There was besides to be seen in the cemetery of the same village a chapel in which the body of St. Kenan had first been laid, but that chapel was destroyed about the year 1787. All these things Kerdanet refers to St. Kenan or Colledocus Op. cit., p. 681, notes 1 and 2., but Lobineau to St. Kerrian, contending that the vernacular name Ké was wrongly attributed by Albert to Kenan and suits Kerrian alone. Lobineau also asserts that one of the bones of St. Kerrian is kept in the treasury of the cathedral church of Saint-Brieuc, and that a church was dedicated under his name in the village of Querrien or Kerrien near Quimperlé Dép. Finistère., where, however, at the end of the 17th century St. Caraunus, that martyr of Chartres, was substituted as patron; which seems to have been done also in the village of Cavan near Lannion Lobineau, ed. 1725, p. 26; ed. 1836, pp. 65, 66.. But neither of those writers indicates, besides his own opinion, any historical monument by which to confirm it, or to refute others who think that by the word Ké or Qué or Quay there is signified St. Quinocus Cf. Chastelain, Martyr. univ., at the 1st of October. or St. Kebius.
[7] adorned with the name of Kenan. Besides the places cited in the preceding number, there are indicated in the latest edition of the work of Albert Le Grand Quimper-Brest-Paris, 1901, p. 567. certain others, which are commonly called Plouguernau, Lan-Guénon, Glomel, L'Hermitage, Plélo, Saint-Guénon and Plogoff.