*Ø* Blogmanac | June 4 | A saint from Cornwall and a connection with King Arthur
The sixth-century Celtic saint, Petroc, was the son of a Welsh king and remains the most famous saint of Cornwall. 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”.

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 center of his cult. There are 18 churches dedicated to him in Devon, plus others in Cornwall and south Wales. By the eleventh century Bodmin had become the centre of his cult, which also flourished in Brittany, France. St Petroc may even have taken Christianity to Brittany, where more than 30 churches are dedicated to him (under the name Perreux). He is also the titular saint of a church in the French canal province of Nivernais. However, it might be that his many disciples carried his cultus across the Channel.

In 1178, by a disgruntled canon named Martin stole his relics (body parts) and gave them to Saint-Méen's Abbey near Rennes, Brittany, but 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.

In art, Petroc is generally portrayed with a stag, harking back to one he sheltered from hunters

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.

Nennius and the British Chronicles
More on Arthur at Wilson’s Almanac

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