(ABOUT A.D. 450.)
[Anglican Martyrology of J. Wilson. In Brittany at Lok-Eguignar, where
the church is dedicated to him; the saint is commemorated on December
14th. Colgan by mistake, February 23rd. The Life and Martyrdom of S.
Fingar, written by one Anselm, but not S. Anselm of Canterbury, is
fabulous.]
There was a prince named Corotic[86] of Cornwall or South Wales, who
was a pirate and a persecutor at once. In, or about, A.D. 450, but
certainly just before S. Patrick left Munster, in 452, Corotic landed
with a party of his armed followers, many of whom were Christians, at
a season of solemn baptism, and set about plundering a district in
which S. Patrick had just baptized and confirmed a great many converts,
and on the very day after the holy chrism was seen shining on the
brows of the white-robed neophytes. Having murdered several persons,
these marauders carried off a considerable number of people, whom they
sold as slaves to the Scots and Picts. S. Patrick wrote a letter, now
extant, which he sent to these pirates, requesting them to restore
the baptized captives, and some part of the booty. The letter was
received with scorn, and S. Patrick was under the necessity of issuing
a circular epistle against them and their chief Corotic, in which he
proclaimed that he excommunicated and cut off from Christ those same
robbers and murderers, and forbade Christian people receiving them
and giving them meat or drink. He requested the faithful to read the
epistle everywhere, and before Corotic himself, and to communicate it
to his soldiers, in the hope that they and their master might return to
God.
[86] The Caradenc of the Britons, Caraduc of the Welsh, the Latinized
Caractacus.
It is probable that S. Fingar was one of the sufferers in this
expedition. He and his sister Piala were _probably_ carried to
Cornwall, and there put to death. But all this is very uncertain. The
life by Anselm tells the story thus: Fingar or Guigner, the son of the
Irish king Clito, and a convert to Christianity through the preaching
of S. Patrick, fled his country to avoid the consequences of his
father's wrath, together with several young nobles to Brittany, where
he was kindly received by the chief of the province, and having got
ample possessions from him, erected an oratory. Afterwards he returned
to Ireland, and there collected nearly eight hundred faithful, among
whom were seven bishops and his sister Piala. Leaving Ireland they
arrived at the port of Hayle, in Cornwall, anciently called Pen-dinas,
but now called Hayle, after S. Hija, an Irish virgin, who had set out
after them, on a leaf of a tree which had been blown into the sea, and
on which she was wafted to the Cornish coast. S. Hija received them
hospitably, and forwarded them on their way. At night they reached the
hut of a pious woman who invited them all in, and as there were not
beds enough for the whole company, pulled the thatch off her roof, and
strewed it on the floor. Then she killed her only cow, and served its
meat to the holy comrades, who satisfied themselves thereon, and then
S. Fingar took the skin, put the bones inside it, and having prayed,
the cow rose up whole, and began to low. Theodoric--this is Anselm's
version of the name Corotic--the earl of Cornwall, hearing of the
passage through his lands of this large party of saints, waylaid and
massacred them. S. Fingar planted his staff at his side, and stretched
forth his neck, and his head was smitten off at one blow. Then a
spring bubbled up from the ground moistened by his blood, and his staff
grew and put forth leaves beside the holy well.
It is almost needless to point out the utter worthlessness of this
fable. That there was a S. Fingar, and that he suffered under Corotic
is likely enough. The violence and murders committed by this piratical
prince are established historical facts. But if S. Fingar had been
a king's son, he would certainly have been mentioned in some of the
lives of S. Patrick, which he is not. Anselm says that his father,
Clito, was the most noble and powerful of the seven Irish kings who
received S. Patrick. Now there is nothing better authenticated than
that the head king at that time was Leogaire. The chief difficulty
according to Colgan, consists in the name Theodoric; but the name was
not unknown among the Britons. A Teudric, or Theodoric, was king of
Glamorgan, about the latter end of the sixth century, (Usher, p. 562.)
But Albertus Magnus maintains (De Sanctis Britan. Armor), that the
Cornubia spoken of in Fingar's Acts was Cornouaille, in Brittany, and
informs us that Fingar's festival is celebrated at Vannes, on December
13th. Lobineau, in his History of Brittany, mentions a Theodoric son
of Budic, and count of Cornouaille, but he lived late in the sixth
century. But probably Theodoric is a mistake for Corotic, made by some
copyist.