Saint Petroc

There is very little written about Petroc that a careful reader can lean on. The Catholic Encyclopedia has no article on him. ⁴⁵ Alban Butler gives him a page under June 4 and leans on the antiquaries, the Tudor traveler John Leland above all, for what was still to be seen at Padstow and Bodmin. ¹ Richard Stanton's Menology of England and Wales, compiled by order of the Cardinal Archbishop and the bishops of Westminster, tells the life in a paragraph and adds a little from older calendars. ³ Two articles of the encyclopedia mention him only as the first teacher of Saint Kevin. ⁴⁵

Those are the sources for this page. The famous stories of Petroc, his animals among them, come from none of them, and they are left out here. ¹³⁴⁵

Butler says he received "the foundation of a virtuous education in Wales, his native country." ¹ Stanton says more: Petroc was the son of one of the princes of Wales, and when his father died he refused the succession, keeping only as much of his inheritance as a monastery needed. ³ Stanton's supplement quotes the antiquary William of Worcester, who wrote, in Latin translated here, that Petroc, "king of his country of the Welsh," left the kingdom to his younger brother. ³

A number of devout men joined him, Stanton says, but he soon went over to Ireland to study the Scriptures. ³ Butler puts the stay at twenty years "in sacred studies, and in the most fervent exercises of devotion and penance." ¹ Stanton says only that he did not return to Britain until after "a prolonged residence" there. ³

Ireland gives the one firm link between Petroc and a better-known saint. Butler's notice of Kevin of Glendalough says that the boy, born in 498, was put at seven "under the tuition of St. Petrocus, a Briton, who spent twenty years in Ireland," and that after five years with him he was sent on, on Petroc's advice, to three holy hermits in 510. ² The encyclopedia's article on Kevin says simply that he was "educated by St. Petroc, a Briton." ⁴

The article on the School of Glendalough, by John Healy, gives the fullest account. Kevin's earliest tutor, it says, was "St. Petroc of Cornwall, who had come to Leinster about 492, and devoted himself with considerable ardour to the study of the Sacred Scriptures, in which his pupil also became proficient." ⁵ It is a short sentence, and it is the best evidence there is of what Petroc himself studied and taught. ⁵

Butler and Stanton tell the next part in a different order. In Butler, Petroc goes on pilgrimage to Rome and then, coming back to Cornwall, shuts himself up in a monastery he founded at the place later named for him, Petrocs-Stow, now Padstow, at the mouth of the river Camel. ¹ In Stanton he settles at Padstow first, governs the monastery there "in great sanctity for many years," and only then makes a long pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem. ³

Butler names three of his disciples at Padstow, Credan, Medan and Dachan. ¹ Stanton's calendar keeps them on June 4 with their master, as Croidan, Medan and Dagan, "his zealous co-operators in the foundation of Padstow." ³

From Padstow he went inland to Bodmin, near the middle of Cornwall, where he founded a second monastery and a great church. ¹³ Butler says the place was anciently called Bosmana or Bodmanachie, "The Mansion of Monks," from the size of his community. ¹ King Athelstan later endowed the church, it was served afterward by secular clergy, and in the reign of Henry I it became a house of Augustinian canons. ¹³

Butler notices that Dugdale calls Petroc a bishop, and that some therefore distinguished a Petroc of Bodmin from a Petroc of Padstow. ¹ He does not accept it. Irish abbots of the time, he says, were sometimes raised to the episcopate in their own monasteries, and the two titles were used loosely in the legends; but no list of the bishops of Cornwall and no record at Exeter has his name, and every account has the same Petroc leave Padstow for Bodmin. ¹

He died at Bodmin "about the year 564, on the 4th of June." ¹ Stanton says he stayed there to the end of his life, "leaving a reputation of extraordinary sanctity." ³

His body stayed at Bodmin, except once. Butler says the relics were carried off privately in 1178 to the monastery of Saint Meen in Brittany, and that on the complaint of Roger, prior of the canons at Bodmin, the king of England had them brought back the following year. ¹ Stanton dates the theft to 1177, names the thief as a monk called Martin, and says Henry II got the relics back "by severe threats," though a small portion stayed at Saint Meen. ³

In Leland's time, under Henry VIII, his shrine and tomb still stood in the eastern part of the church at Bodmin, near the high altar. ¹ William of Worcester says, again in translation, that he lay "in a beautiful shrine" there, before the chapel of the Virgin. ³ Butler adds that churches and chapels were dedicated to him in Cornwall and Devon, and one in the Nivernais in France. ¹

None of the sources used for this page names Saint Petroc patron of anything. ¹³ Butler calls him the "titular saint" of Bodmin and of several other churches and chapels in Cornwall and Devon. ¹

Saint Petroc's feast is June 4, the day he died. ¹ The Roman Martyrology lists him that day, "In Cornwall, Saint Petroc of Wales, abbot," in its Italian text, translated here. ⁶ Stanton keeps his deposition at Bodmin on June 4. ³

He was kept in Brittany as well. Butler says some churches and monasteries there ordered his feast kept as one of the first class, with an octave, and Stanton says it was still kept with solemnity at Saint Meen under the name of Saint Perreux. ¹³

By Stanton's account he could have been a prince, and kept only enough of his inheritance to found a monastery. ³ By Butler's he then spent twenty years as a student in another country before he founded anything of his own. ¹

What survives of his teaching is one sentence about a small boy in Leinster who learned the Scriptures from him. ⁵ The boy became Saint Kevin. ⁴⁵

The rest is two monasteries, three disciples remembered on his day, and a church where his body lay for nearly a thousand years. ¹³