Saint Samson of Dol

Samson was born in South Wales to parents of noble but not royal birth, whose names come down as Amon of Dyfed and Anna. ¹ The 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia makes her Anna of Gwynedd; the Norwegian bishops' saints database and CatholicIreland.net both say she came from Gwent. ¹²⁴ katolsk.no adds that the marriage was long childless, and that his parents gave him to God in thanksgiving. ²

He was handed over as a small child to Saint Illtud and grew up in Illtud's monastery at Llantwit Major, in Glamorgan. ¹² He showed exceptional talent in his studies ¹, and katolsk.no repeats the Vita's claim that he learned the alphabet in a day. ² Saint Dubricius (Dyfrig) ordained him deacon and then priest. ¹² CatholicIreland gives the year of his priesthood as 531. ⁴

The ordination of so young a monk caused trouble. katolsk.no and CatholicIreland both report that two of Illtud's nephews, monks of the same house, resented him, and katolsk.no tells the Vita's story that they tried to poison him and the poison had no effect. ²⁴ Whatever happened, he left.

He went to another monastery to practice greater austerity, possibly the one on Caldey Island off Pembrokeshire, and some years later became its abbot. ¹ katolsk.no says the abbot before him, Piro, died by falling into a well after drinking too much, and that Samson, who did not drink, set about restoring discipline. ² CatholicIreland describes the house Piro left as so lax that Samson could not bring it under control. ⁴

Some Irish monks returning from Rome then called at the monastery, and Samson was so struck by their learning and holiness that he went back to Ireland with them and stayed some time. ¹ While there he received the submission of an Irish monastery, and on his return to Wales he sent one of his uncles to govern it. ¹ CatholicIreland and katolsk.no suggest it may have been a house at Howth. ²⁴

By now his reputation as a worker of miracles drew more attention than he wanted. He resolved, in Huddleston's words, to found a new monastery or cell "far from the haunts of men," and withdrew with a few companions to a lonely place on the banks of the Severn. ¹ He was found, and his countrymen made him abbot of a monastery once ruled by Saint Germanus. There Dubricius consecrated him a bishop without a particular see. ¹ katolsk.no dates the consecration to the feast of the Chair of Peter, February 22, 521, which it calls the only certain date in his life. ²

Huddleston says an angel warned him to leave, and that after some delay he sailed for Brittany. ¹ The longer accounts give him a long stop in Cornwall first. He landed near Padstow and made for the monastery of Docco, now St. Kew, whose monks sent a wise brother named Winiau (CatholicIreland calls him Winniavus) to tell him, tactfully, that he had better go elsewhere. ²⁴ He took the hint. ⁴

CatholicIreland places him next in the Scilly Isles, where an island now uninhabited still bears the name Samson, and on Guernsey, where St. Samson is the island's second port. ⁴ It sets him among a whole generation of Welsh monks moved by the same spirit of "wandering for Christ" as the Irish peregrini, "pilgrims for Christ." ⁴

He landed near Dol and built a monastery there, which became the center of his work as a bishop in the region. ¹ katolsk.no says the land was given by a Gallo-Roman named Privatus, whose wife Samson had healed of leprosy, and that he founded another house at Pental in Normandy. ²

His title is less simple than it looks. Huddleston says that on a visit to Paris King Childebert nominated him Bishop of Dol, but that Dol did not become a regular see until about the middle of the ninth century. ¹ katolsk.no treats the later claim that a pope made him a metropolitan archbishop as an invention of the Breton bishops, who spent centuries arguing with the archbishops of Tours. ²

One document comes close to him. The acts of a council held in Paris in 557 are signed by a "Samson peccator episcopus," Samson, a sinner and a bishop, and CatholicIreland and katolsk.no both think it was probably he. ²⁴ The same sources say he went to the Frankish court to plead for Judual, the Breton ruler held there by Childebert; CatholicIreland says the queen put him through a series of strange trials and finally tried to poison him before the king released Judual. ²⁴

He lived to the age of 85 and was buried at Dol. ¹ katolsk.no says he died peacefully among his monks and lies beside his cousin and disciple Magloire. ²

Several early lives exist. The oldest, printed by Mabillon and again by the Bollandists, claims to draw on information from Samson's contemporaries, which, Huddleston notes, would place it about the year 600. ¹ Dom Plaine edited another and fuller life that he thought older still. ¹

katolsk.no is more cautious. It dates the Vita somewhere between 610 and 820, reports that scholars are divided over it, and points out that some of its episodes are drawn from the Samson of the Book of Judges and that it shows the clear influence of Sulpicius Severus's life of Saint Martin. ² Even so, it calls it by far the oldest life of a British Celtic saint, and a rare window on the links between the Church in Britain, Ireland and Brittany. ²

Dol was overwhelmed by a tidal wave in 709, CatholicIreland says, and no trace of his monastery survives. ⁴ His relics were scattered by the Norman raids. katolsk.no follows them to Paris and Orléans, and says the English king Athelstan acquired an arm and a crozier for Milton Abbey and gave relics to Canterbury and Salisbury; CatholicIreland names Canterbury and Ely. ²⁴ The cathedral at Dol, rebuilt in the thirteenth century, is dedicated to him and to Magloire, and its windows tell their story. ²

He is counted among the seven founding saints of Brittany, with Pol Aurelian, Tudwal, Brieuc, Malo, Patern and Corentin. ²⁴ katolsk.no notes that he is one of the few Welsh saints in the Roman Martyrology, where his name entered through Usuard. ²

None of the sources consulted names a patronage for Saint Samson. ¹²⁴ He is honored as one of the founders of Christian Brittany, the cathedral of Dol bears his name, and katolsk.no counts sixteen French communes and several old churches in England and Cornwall named for him. ² In art he is usually shown with a cross or a pastoral staff, a dove and a book, sometimes striking a spring from the ground with his staff. ²

Saint Samson's feast day is July 28, the day of his death. ² The Roman Martyrology enters him on that day as abbot and bishop at Dol, who spread the Gospel and the monastic discipline he had learned in Wales from Saint Illtud. ³

Samson kept trying to get away. He left Llantwit, then Caldey, then a hermitage on the Severn that he had chosen precisely because nobody would find him there, and each time he ended up with more responsibility than before. ¹⁴ The life does not present this as a failure of nerve or a lack of steadiness. It reads as a man repeatedly asked for more than he had planned to give.

The sources are honest that he was not always welcome. Illtud's nephews resented him, the monks of Caldey resisted him, and the community at Docco sent a polite message asking him to move on. ²⁴ He moved on. ⁴

He signed his name, if the signature is his, as a sinner before he signed it as a bishop. ²⁴ Brittany remembers him as one of its founders. The one line he may have written himself puts the sinner first.