Hauts Lieux›The great stories

The hermits of Brittany: Gildas, Ronan, Hervé, Efflam and the saints who came from the sea

15 min read

From the Council of Tours (461) to the canonisation of Yves of Tréguier (1347): Gildas's De excidio c. 540, Friard at Besné in the 570s, Landévennec under the Benedictine rule in 818, Redon in 832, the Latin Lives written from the 9th to the 13th century, then Albert Le Grand (1637), Dom Lobineau (1725) and the Barzaz Breiz (1839)

Between the 5th and the 7th century, Britons from the island of Britain settled in Armorica; their monks and their hermits left their names to the parishes in plou, in lan and in loc, to a spring, a stone, an animal and a pardon. What is told of Gildas, Guénolé, Ronan, Hervé, Efflam, Cado or Méen comes from Latin Lives written in the monasteries between the 9th and the 13th century, rewritten in the 17th century by Albert Le Grand, and from a single contemporary description, the one Gregory of Tours gives of the hermit Friard, in the Nantes country. The route runs from the beach at Plestin to the Loire, from Rhuys to Landévennec and Locronan, untangling on the way the city of Ys and the foundations of the 6th century.