Saint

Gwen Teirbron
BornBrittany
Died5th or 6th century
Venerated in
Feast

Gwen Teirbron (French: Blanche; Latin: Alba Trimammis or Candida; possibly English: Wite) was a Breton holy woman and wife of Fragan who supposedly lived in the 5th or 6th century. Her epithet is Welsh for '(of the) three breasts'.

Veneration

Popular devotion interpreted Gwen's unusual physical and spiritual fecundity by God's gift to her of a third breast. Her iconography followed suit. Gwen is invoked for women's fertility. She is commemorated on 3 October in the Catholic Church (although this has been transferred from Saint Candidus of Rome), and on 18 July (NS) by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in Australia.[1]

Children

References

  1. ^ Canberra Parish of the Russian Orthodox Church (Abroad). Brief Lives of Saints, 2007.
  2. ^ a b c d Butler, Alban. The lives of the fathers, martyrs, and other principal saints, volume 1, p. 275 (Henry & Co. 1857).
  3. ^ a b c Baring-Gould, Sabine and Fisher, John. The Lives of the British Saints: The Saints of Wales and Cornwall and Such Irish Saints as Have Dedications in Britain, Volume 3, p. 38 (1911).
  4. ^ Baring-Gould, Sabine and Fisher, John. The Lives of the British Saints: The Saints of Wales and Cornwall and Such Irish Saints as Have Dedications in Britain, Volume 2, p. 9 (C. J. Clark, 1908).
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