Menez Bré et chapelle Saint-Hervé

Pédernec

The Menez Bré is only three hundred metres high, but it stands alone in the plain of the Trégor and from it one can see the sea. The Life of Saint Hervé, the blind bard of the Léon, places on it an open-air council: the seven bishops of Brittany, gathered at Hervé's suggestion, are said to have pronounced there the anathema against Conomor, the prince who murdered his wife Triphine. A variant of this Life, copied in the 17th century, adds that "a chapel in honour of the Seven Saints of Brittany" was built at the place that bears the name of mountain of Bré. It is one of the rare places of collective worship of the founders, and André-Yves Bourgès has suggested that the people of the Trégor in the time of Saint Yves — around 1300, when two women pilgrims from Lanmeur met him on the road to Lannion — may first have directed their steps towards this chapel rather than towards seven cathedrals. It has not kept its name: from the middle of the 15th century it was placed under the patronage of Saint Hervé, perhaps by confusion with an abbot of Bégard of the same name who died in 1370 and was buried there; historians see in this a sign of the rapid fading of the pilgrimage of the Seven Saints. The present chapel, rebuilt in the 16th and 17th centuries by the lords of Cleuziou on older foundations, keeps a fountain that tradition has spring up under Hervé's prayers.

Wikipédia — Menez Bré ↗

Getting there : From Pédernec or Louargat (leave the N 12 at Louargat), a small road signposted "Menez Bré" climbs to the summit; car park near the chapel. The view is freely open in all seasons, from the monts d'Arrée to the pink granite coast; the chapel opens for the pardon and in season (enquire at Pédernec).

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound