In a message dated 3/23/00 10:15:40 AM GMT Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
> FINGAR, martyr, and PIALA, virgin and martyr (about A.D. 450)
>
> There was a prince named Corotic [Caractacus] of Cornwall or south
> Wales, who was a pirate and a persecutor at once. In, or about, A.D.
> 450 . . . 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 . . . 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.
Shtop! Shtop! I think there'sh been shome mishtake here, shurely? - St Gonery
of Bondi.
These details do not accord with the monk Anselm's Life of St Fingar or
Guigner printed by the Bollandists (which states he was martyred by
Theodoricus / Teudur, a legendary prince of Cornwall), or that published by
Le Grand (Dec 14th, Vie des saints de Bretagne). Also, Coroticus is _not_ <
"Caractacus" (an incorrect form of Caratacus > Caradog), and the object of
Patrick's wrath was probably Ceredig Wledig, king of Strathclyde (rex Aloo) -
not Cornwall - and the raid has been dated to 458x471. Doble thought that
Gwinear and his companion Meriadoc were Welsh missionaries who toiled first
in Cornwall and then in Brittany, with their "conhospites", Derwa and Ia, who
shared with them in the establishment of churches in the valley of the Conner
(Doble, Saints of Cornwall, p.110).
Henry Gough-Cooper
visit the Scottish Place-Name Society website at
http://www.st-and.ac.uk/institutes/sassi/spns/index.htm
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|