In this section, we invite you to discover the history of the Breton Saints. The Breton saints refer to Breton personalities venerated for the exemplary nature of their lives from a Christian point of view. Few of them have been recognized as saints by the canonization procedure of the Catholic Church (established several centuries after their death), but were designated by the people, their very existence not always being historically attested. Most of the vitae of Breton saints that have come down to us date from the 9th and 10th centuries or were rewritten in the context of the Gregorian reform which sometimes led clerics to remodel hagiographic documents, from oral traditions transmitted both in the old popular background and in the scholarly environment, in their interest (legitimization of the episcopal figure, of the merits of a reform of a monastic community). The development of the cult of these saints developed in the late Middle Ages when several families of the Breton aristocracy appropriated the hagiographic legends by justifying with genealogical arguments the special protection of a saint or his adoption as a substitute ancestor in their lineages.
Contemporary historians still have great difficulty distinguishing between imagination and reality. The historicity of the episodes in the lives of these saints thus often remains doubtful because these episodes are found in hagiography as they appear in customs or folklore. The very structure of the narrative of the vitae is found in other Lives of saints whose authors generally take up “literary conventions of a biblical model which shaped their modes of thought and expression”.
In 2022, around 170 Breton saints are represented, each by a statue, in the Valley of the Saints, in Carnoët.
June 29th is St. Per (Peter) Day
Per, or Pierre, dand his real name Siméon Bar-Yonah (translated as “Simon, son of Jonah”) according to the testimony of the Gospels, also called Kephas (the “rock” in Aramaic) or Simon-Pierreis a Jew from Galilee or Gaulanitide known for having been one of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. He is listed among the apostles, among whom he seems to have held a privileged position during Jesus’ own lifetime before becoming, after the latter’s death, one of the major leaders of the first paleochristian communities. He was probably born at the turn of the iis century of. J.-C. and died according to Christian tradition between 64 and 68 in Rome.
Catholic tradition makes him the “prince of the apostles”, the first bishop of Rome and the Catholic Church claims his apostolic succession to assert pontifical primacy, which other Christian confessions contest and of which the current pope is the representative.
To learn more, we recommend reading the interview below (and getting the book that goes with it)
Christophe Dickés: “Saint Peter is the most cited character in the Gospels after Jesus” [Interview]
Photo credit: DR
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