Hi, it’s Lize.
In the previous video, we saw how, after a night spent remaking the world, heavily drenched in theology, Lord Caduon gave Saint Méen lands located near the Meu river, in the forest of Brocéliande. Saint Méen, also called Meven or Mewen, and in English Saint Mewan, built the Saint-Jean de Gaël monastery, next to the spring with curative virtues which was a renowned place of pilgrimage since the Middle Ages. According to Dom Lobineau, author in 1723 of the Lives of the Saints of Brittany, the monastery was created around the year 600 ; Dom Plaine, in his Unpublished Life of Saint Méen from 1884, places the construction rather around 570.
Like most saints, Mewen could perform miracles : for example, he forbade the animals which destroyed the abbey’s crops from continuing their ravages. With a sign of the cross, they plunged into the forest and never returned. Magic of the sign of the cross! So much for a simple warm-up customary to the Breton saints.
But what Dom Lobineau finds much more worthy of interest is the Haeloc affair. Not nice, the Haeloc : a proud lord, intractable, haughty, merciless, without respect for sacred things and extremely cruel. It seems that he had put one of his servants in a dungeon for a trifle. And not content with having thrown him into this dark dungeon and condemning him to death, he also had him tortured. The unfortunate man was uttering very justified cries when Saint Méen came to pass by. The latter, touched with compassion, went to Count Haeloc and humbly asked him, in the name of Jesus Christ, to free the poor man. The count, who had nothing to do with Jesus Christ or his representatives on earth, sent him away with insults and contempt. But Mewen never gave up, especially if someone spoke badly to him, and he complained of the offense to his God. We can blame God for a lot of things, but let’s recognize that when it comes to defending his saints, he is there. As proof, the prisoner’s chains suddenly broke, the doors of the dungeon opened and the unfortunate servant ran to take refuge in the monastery of Saint Méen. Count Haeloc was very unhappy with this divine intervention and he sent his people to catch up with the fugitive, with orders to bring him back in chains. Mewan blocked their access to the abbey, threatened them with terrible punishments in the afterlife, perhaps also with a curse on their descendants for seven generations, in any case, they returned to the castle sheepishly. Haeloc, as we have said, cared neither for the curses nor the flames of Hell, he rushed towards the abbey, broke down the doors, copiously reviled Saint Méen and left with his prey. So Mewan put on his outraged Breton face – Bretons are nice people but you shouldn’t come and insult them at home – and he told the count that as punishment for his bad behavior, he would die within three days. The other laughed, made fun of him, but on the way back, fell off his horse, broke his whole body… plus a thigh ! Well, it’s in Lobineau’s text : he broke his whole body and broke one of his thighs. I have a doubt about what this thigh represents. In short, he is in agony, he repents, calls Saint Méen, apologizes, humiliates himself before God, Mewan gives him absolution and lets him die ! This does not at all suit our Dom Lobineau, a Benedictine monk who preaches a religion of divine mercy. And now he rewrites the Vita. “No,” he said, “it couldn’t have happened like that, moreover in the Vita of saint Malo, this same repentant Haeloc is forgiven,” and in a stunning transformation, he becomes kind and only does good to those around him. Well, then, it’s each one’s own Vita : in Malo’s life one is pretty cool, in Mewen’s, if one can get rid of a bad guy, one doesn’t hesitate to kill him. After this, Saint Méen left the monastery and went on pilgrimage to Rome. » In the spirit of penitence and piety, as his handwritten Legend assures us, » Dom Lobineau also tells us. Then not a word about what he does in Rome, we go directly to his return through Angers. That’s a nice ellipse. An ellipse is when the author is silent about a moment in the narration or summarizes it in a few words. Here, nothing is said about this event in the life of Saint Méen. However, at the time, a Brocéliande-Italy round trip was not a “Weekend in Rome”! Ellipses excite me ! I have to try to understand, I have to search, I have to look for what is being kept silent.
Let’s see. Dom Lobineau told us above that the monastery had been built around 600, but Dom Plaine places the trip to Rome between 580 and 600. To conciliate the good graces of both of them, I place the trip around 595. What’s going on in Rome at this time ? And first of all, who is the pope ?
Gregory I, said Gregory the Great, pope between 590 and 604. Tell me, Mr. Lobineau and Mr. Plaine, are you kidding ? Do you expect me to believe that under Gregory the Great, Saint Méen went to Rome only to pray over the holy relics of Peter and Paul ? Saint Méen, with skills as a political negotiator recognized by Samson ; Gregory the Great, the pope who wanted to unify all Christendoms under the law of the Church of Rome – that means his own ? Who wanted to force the Bretons of Little and Great Britain as well as the Irish to celebrate Easter on the date decided by Rome – that means by him ? Who wanted to force Breton monks to give up their shaved tonsure at the front and long hair at the back ? Who led the greatest campaign to convert the Angles to Catholicism, the Angles, those sworn enemies of the Britons of Great Britain, barbarians who invaded their lands and pushed them westward, pagans whom the British monks absolutely refused to convert to the religion of Christ, for fear of finding them in Paradise and enduring them for eternity ? No, really, Mr. Lobineau, would you have me believe that Saint Méen undertook the trip to Rome simply to visit two or three churches and return all perky to his Breton forest… humming psalms ? Well, since everyone tells the story in their own way, I’ll give you my own version.
Gregory I was a die-hard convert. As soon as he saw a pagan, he had to evangelize him. In the Catholic faith, not in Arian Christianity, these heretics who claimed that Jesus could not be God as much as his Father, since the Father was necessarily born before the Son, therefore had existed before Him, therefore Jesus having a beginning could not be eternal like his Father, so he was different. For Gregory, in accordance with the first council of Nicaea, Jesus is God just as much as his father, the Father and the Son are of the same nature, of the same substance because they are one and the same God. How is this possible ? We don’t know, but that’s precisely what faith is. Well, that’s not our subject : what interests us is to understand why Saint Méen came to Rome. It is said that one day, while Gregoiry was shopping… he found some cute, blond little children for sale on the slave market. He asks where they come from. He is told that they were captured from the pagan people of the Angles, those who invaded part of the island of Brittany. Pagans ! He finds these cherubs more and more adorable ! “Deum de Deo”! he exclaims, “God born of God”! Little Angles ? No, little angels ! And happy with his joke, he decides to send a group of Roman monks to convert these savages. “That’s what he did !” » in 596.
Furthermore knowing that Gregory would have wanted to rely on the Celtic monks of Wales and Cornwall to bring these Angles, their neighbors, to the religion of Christ but that, as seen previously, they had no desire to share the same god with their invaders, then, we can very well imagine that Samson, our Samson de Dol, great strategist, sent his nephew, the super negotiator Mewan, to Rome, to see what Gregory was up to. Let’s not forget that Samson and Mewan came from Wales, therefore standing by their friends back home. And as Gregory considered himself the master of Christianity, in every case, learning of the presence of Saint Méen in Rome, he summoned him with the firm intention of rallying him to his cause. But when he told him that he was right about everything, just because he was the Pope : for the date of Easter, for the conversion of the Angles, for the rôle of women in the liturgy and what’s more when he told Mewan to go get a haircut… it didn’t go very well.
We had already noted that Mewen was a real Breton, stubborn as a donkey. He got really angry, “Who are you to talk to me in that tone ? Who are you to forget that we were the first to teach the word of Christ on the island of Britain, you deny us to convert little blondies ? And he left, furious, red with anger, beating the flagstone floor of the Pope’s palace with his stick. And he walked, walked, walked again, he couldn’t calm down. “Cut my hair !” Cut my hair ! Never ! » He walked like that until Angers, still angry. So, obviously, the first poor dragon that came across his path took a dear price ! And there you have it, I’m back with the Vitas of friends Lobineau and Plaine. I wasn’t very nice to Gregory, but hey, I said I couldn’t stand ellipsis. To make up for it, I will record a video on Gregory when I have finished the Tro Breiz. He seems like a complex character to me, this man.
Back to the dragon. He had taken up residence near Angers on the land of a pious lady who was very inconvenienced by it. She asked Mewan for help ; he went and found the dragon, wrapped his stole around its neck, dragged it like a little dog towards the Loire, into which he threw it, the dragon “was suffocated”. I gather that dragons can’t swim, which may be useful information one day. I’m going quickly because all the Breton saints do that, we even have a dedicated word : “sauroctones”. It sounds, it comes from ancient Greek : σαῦρος, “lizard”, and κτόνος, “killer”. The lady, very happy, gives him all the lands that the dragon occupied. If she didn’t care more than that about her lands, why did she have the dragon killed ? But this allowed Saint Méen to build a monastery there, which Legend calls Monopalium or Monopalm. He installed monks from the abbey of Gaël there and until his death, he resided sometimes in one abbey and sometimes in the other. Before his death, we still have to evoke the Judicaël episode. We have practically no information in the texts of Dom Lobineau, Dom Plaine, nor in the Vita Meveni, probably written by the monk Ingomar at the abbey of Saint-Méen around 1084. You can refer to my videos on Saint Malo where this story is told. Judicaël was the heir to the throne of Domnonée, but his brother Haeloc (him again), poorly advised by a treacherous tutor, had seized the throne. Judicaël flees, finds refuge with Saint Méen and becomes a monk. Then he regains his throne, is an exemplary king, he makes numerous donations to the monastery of his benefactor and with the feeling of duty accomplished, returns to end his days at the abbey of Gaël.
In June 617, Mewan began to feel weak, an angel warned him that it was indeed time for him to prepare to join his creator. Then Mewan calls his monks and tells them all the affection he has for them, gives them his final advice so that they practice charity and humility in the love of God. Among the monks was Austell, presented as his nephew, or his favorite. Austell was crying, he was devastated : “How can I live without you, my dear master ? I so wish we were never separated ! Life will be such a long ordeal without you ! » Saint Méen replies : “Do not grieve, my son, in seven days you will follow me and come to join me for eternity. Get ready, your wait won’t be long. » Austell did not ask for that much, but in fact he did die seven days later.
Also, be wary of excesses of lyricism and sadness, in case your dying person is a Breton saint who uplifts you, you can never be too careful.
Mewan dies, he is placed in the tomb. Austell dies seven days later and the monks thought they would fulfill their wish by placing his body in the saint’s tomb. The tombstone is lifted and… miraculously, the corpse has moved aside, delicately lying on its side to make room for his dear disciple. Dom Lobineau saw the so-called tomb of Saint Méen and he claims that it is strictly impossible because there is not enough room for two. I went to see the sarcophagus in the abbey and although it is probably not the one from the 7th century, we can assume that it resembles it, and I will say in conclusion that… in my opinion… if well in love, why not ! I’ll let you form your own opinion when you visit the beautiful abbey of Saint-Méen-le-Grand and the source, which is a little out of the way.
Sainte Anne must have lingered on the way, but we no longer have time to wait for her, we will meet her directly at Patern’s in Vannes. Kenavo everyone !
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