Saint Petroc

Catholic Saint

Saint Petroc-Welsh monastery founder and monk

Feast Day : June 4

Patronage: glovers; skinners; against storms at sea; Padstow, Cornwall

Petroc is one of the best-known Cornish saints, whose cult also extended to Devon, Wales and to Brittany in France. Accounts of his life are mostly fiction Petroc probably was the son of a chieftain of southwestern Wales; he likely belonged to the royal house of Ghent. He became the namesake of what is now Padstow in Cornwall (Petrock-stow) and established a monastery there. He also established a community in Bodmin, which was the religious capital of Cornwall into the Middle Ages. In 1177, a canon of St. Petroc’s Priory, who had a grievance against the priory, stole the saint’s body and took it to the Saint-Meen abbey in Brittany. The body was returned in an ivory shrine. The legends of Petroc say that he renounced his royal heritage to seek the religious life and went to Ireland to study. He returned to Cornwall and founded the monasteries.

Following the directions given by angels, he went on a pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem, and lived for seven years as a hermit on an island in the Indian Ocean, subsisting on only a single fish placed before him at intervals according to divine will. He produced numerous miracles, such as raising the dead, vanquishing a dragon, healing (including another great dragon, who had a piece of wood in its eye) and creating springs of water. Various towns in Cornwall, Devon, Wales and Brittany take their names from Petroc