d passing beyond the gulf
of Vannes, and the promontory of Quiberon, chose for his habitation a
grot in a rock, upon the bank of the river Blavet, where he found a
cavern formed by nature extended from the east to the west, which on
that account he converted into a chapel. However, he often visited this
abbey of Rhuis, and by his counsels directed many in the paths of true
virtue. Among these was St. Trifina, daughter of Guerech, first British
count of Vannes. She was married to count Conomor, lieutenant of king
Childebert, a brutish and impious man, who afterwards murdered her, and
the young son which he had by her, who at his baptism received the name
of Gildas, and was godson to our saint: but he is usually known by the
surname of Treuchmeur, or Tremeur, in Latin Trichmorus. SS. Trifina and
Treuchmeur are invoked in the English Litany of the seventh century, in
Mabillon. The great collegiate church of Carhaix bears the name of St.
Treuchmeur: the church of Quimper keeps his feast on the 8th of
November, on which day he is commemorated in several churches in
Brittany, and at St. Magloire's at Paris. A church situated between
Corlai and the abbey of Coetmaloen in Brittany, is dedicated to God
tinder the invocation of St. Trifina.[2]

St. Gildas wrote eight canons of discipline, and a severe invective
against the crimes of the Britons, called De Excidio Britanniae, that he
might confound {309} those whom he was not able to convert, and whom God
in punishment delivered first to the plunders of the Picts and Scots,
and afterwards to the perfidious Saxons, the fiercest of all nations. He
reproaches their kings, Constantine, (king of the Danmonians, in
Devonshire and Cornwall,) Vortipor, (of the Dimetians, in South Wales,)
Conon, Cuneglas, and Maglocune, princes in other parts of Britain, with
horrible crimes: but Constantine was soon after sincerely converted, as
Gale informs us from an ancient Welsh chronicle.[3] According to John
Fordun[4] he resigned his crown, became a monk, preached the faith to
the Scots and Picts, and died a martyr in Kintyre: but the apostle of
the Scots seems to have been a little more ancient than the former.[5]
Our saint also wrote an invective against the British clergy, whom he
accuses of sloth, of seldom sacrificing at the altar, &c. In his
retirement he ceased not with tears to recommend to God his own cause,
or that of his honor and glory, and the souls of blind sinners, and died
in his bel