oved solitude in the island of Horac, (in Latin Horata,)
according to Usher, in 570, but according to Ralph of Disse, in 581.[6]
St. Gildas is patron of the city of Vannes. The abbey which bears his
name in the peninsula of Rhuis, between three and four leagues from
Vannes, is of the reformed congregation of St. Maur since the year 1649.
The relics of St. Gildas were carried thence for fear of the Normans
into Berry, about the year 919, and an abbey was erected there on the
banks of the river Indre, which was secularized and united to the
collegiate church of Chateauroux in 1623. St. Gildas is commemorated in
the Roman Martyrology on the 29th of January. A second commemoration of
him is made in some places on the 11th of May, on account of the
translation of his relics. His life, compiled from the ancient archives
of Rhuis by a monk of that house, in the eleventh century, is the best
account we have of him, though the author confounds him sometimes with
St. Gildas the Albanian. It is published in the library of Fleury, in
Bollandus, p. 954, and most correctly in Mabillon, Act. SS. Ord. Saint
Belled. t. 1, p. 138. See also Dom Lobineau, Vies des Saints de
Bretagne, (fol. an. 1725,) p. 72, and Hist. de la {310} Bretagne, (2
vol. fol. an. 1707,) and the most accurate Dom Morice, Memoires Sur
l'Histoire de Bretagne, 3 vol. fol. in 1745, and Hist. de la Bretagne, 2
vol. fol. an. 1750.
Footnotes:
1. Armorica, which word in the old Celtic language signified a maritime
country, comprised that part of Celtic Gaul which is now divided
into Brittany, Lower Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Touraine. Tours was
the capital, and still maintains the metropolitical dignity. By St.
Gatian, about the middle of the third century, the faith was first
planted in those parts: but the entire extirpation of idolatry was
reserved to the zeal of British monks. Dom Morice distinguishes
three principal transmigrations of inhabitants from Great Britain
into Armorica: the first, when many fled from the arms of Carausius
and Allectus, who successively assumed the purple in Great Britain:
Constance made these fugitives welcome in Gaul, and allowed them to
settle on the coast of Armorica about the year 293. A second and
much larger colony of Britons was planted here under Conan, a
British prince by Maximus, whom all the British youth followed into
Gaul in 383. After the defeat of Maximus, these Armori
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