ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN DECEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 12th of December
Prayer to the Angels and the Saints
Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.
In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.
Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.
Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.
ST CORENTIN, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR
(First Bishop of Quimper, in Brittany) Saint Corentin was son of a British nobleman, and being educated in the fear of God, retired young into a forest in the parish of Ploe-Madiern, where he passed several years in holy solitude, and in the practice of great austerities.
Marcellus, who subscribed the first council of Tours, and the several other bishops who came over with the Britons into Armorica, had continued to govern their flocks without any correspondence with the French, being strangers to their language and manners.
ST CORENTIN WAS APPOINTED BISHOP OF QUIMPER
These being all dead, it was necessary to procure a new succession of pastors. St Corentin was appointed bishop of Quimper or Quimmer, which, in the British language, signified a conflux of rivers, such being the situation of this place near the sea coast.
The cities of Rennes, Nantes, and Vannes were reconquered by Clovis I., and subject to him and his successors, and only became again part of the dominions of the Armorican Britons in the ninth century.
AT THE TIME, FRENCH BISHOPS GOVERNED THOSE SEES
French bishops, therefore, governed those sees, and even the Britons who were settled in those parts.
But Lower Brittany was at that time independent; first under its kings, afterwards under counts.
The count of Cornouaille (said in the legends to be Grallo I., who died about 445), in imitation of Caradoc, count of Vannes, gave his own palace at Quimper to serve the bishop, part for his own house, and part for his cathedral. As low as in the year 1424, under an old equestrian statue in the lower part of the church was read this inscription: Here was his palace.
ST CORENTIN WAS CONSECRATED BY ST MARTIN AT TOURS
St Corentin was consecrated by St Martin at Tours, says the legend, but that holy prelate died about the year 397, and the first colony of the Britons was only settled by the tyrant Maximus under their first king Conan, in 383, and their last greatest colonies under Riwal or Hoel I., about the year 520, when they recovered under Childebert part of what Clovis had conquered.
It seems, therefore, most probable that St Corentin received the episcopal consecration from one of St. Martin’s successors at Tours. He subscribed the council of Angers in 453, under the name of Charaton.
HIS NAME OCCURS IN AN ENGLISH LITANY
Having long governed his church, worn out with his apostolic labours, he gave up his soul to God before the end of the fifth century, probably on December 12.
His name occurs in the English litany of the seventh century, published by Mabillon. His relics were removed to Marmourtier at Tours, in 878, for fear of the Normans, and are still preserved there.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints - 🎨 Gradlon and Corentin)
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