Here is the text of Albert the Great in The Lives of the Saints of the Brittany Armorique concerning the Life of Saint Cado.
Saint Cado by Albert the Great
Saint Cado estoit natif de la grande Bretagne & fut fils d’un Prince, qui regnoit en un canton de ladite Isle, lequel s’appelloit Guillenus, descended from the race of the Great Constantine, & his mother was called Gudalusa, daughter of Brahanus, Roy from part of Ireland. He died around the year 522. under Pope Saint Hormisda, Emperor Justin I, & King of Brittany Armorique Hoel II, of this name. His parents were warned by a holy Hermit, named Menechesias, to have him baptized; what they did, that they themselves were peasant and idolatrous. Being old enough to ride a horse, his father having declared war on another Prince, his neighbor, wanted to give the leadership of his army to Prince Cado, who, wishing to fight under the flag of the Cross of Jesus Christ, went out in dress disguised, from his father's palace, & by paths aside, withdrew into a desert, where he submitted to the direction & obedience of a Saint Hermite & remained twelve years in his company, living on bread & water & of some vegetables, with a rare example of Holiness.
II. One day, the Hermit, his master, sent him to fetch a fire from some shepherds who retired to a cave near the Hermitage, who, laughing at him, did not want to give him any, until he promised to to carry it within it, to its Hermitage; Saint Cado consented to it; &, having said his prayer, he took great coals, & put them in his bosom & carried them to his master, without his coat or his skin being offended. ; ce que ces pasteurs ayans veu, ils luy demanderent pardon, & son maistre commença desormais à le regarder, non plus comme son disciple, mais comme un grand amy & serviteur de Dieu. Le maistre pasteur des troupeaux d’un grand Seigneur, nommé Polentus, neighbor of the Hermitage of Saint Cado, quarreled him once, and wanted to pierce him with his Lance; but God punished him on the spot, for he became blind & crippled in his arms, &, having repented of his fault & having asked the Saint for forgiveness, he was healed by his prayers; what the Prince Polentus having heard, he gave the Saint a piece of land, called Sober, to build a monastery there, which he did in a short time; & one of the workers who worked in the building having been killed by his companions & thrown into a pond, the Saint by his prayer, made a parish! he dead body on the surface of the water & resuscitated it.
III. Having populated his monastery with Sober, he went on a trip to S. André in Escosse, where he resuscitated a dead man, & made great conversions by his fervent Preachers, then crossed the sea, crossed Armoric Brittany, & found S. Goüard & S. Liliau in Aquitaine , & from there embarked in Marseilles to go to Palestine, where he visited, with great devotion, the SS. Places, & then returned to Rome, where he kissed the feet of Pope S. John III. of the name, & thence returned to his Monastery in the year 562, having spent seven years in his travels. It was customary to retire from Caresme, to an island in the sea, named Enes Barren, to be more solitary there & away from the conversation of men, &, at Pasques, he returned to his Monastery, to solemnize the Feste in the company of his Religious, who are in increasing number, he founded another Monastery , more ample & spacious, & called it Land-Carvanan, that is to say, Eglise des Cerfs, because he used deer from the next forest, to cart stones & other materials necessary for the building of said Monastery, making these animals as familiar, deprived & domesticated, that if they had been horses, and drawing no less service.
IV. He was Abbot of this new Monastery for two years, until the year 564, that having chosen a small number of his Religious, he crossed the sea & came to anchor at the coast of Brittany-Armorique, in Vennes , & got used to a small island, which we now call Enes-Cadvod, in the Parish of Belz, which isle was filled with serpents; but the Saint purged it by his prayers, and we hold that, since, it is not there. He built a small monastery there; &, seeing that the people of the surrounding country came to visit him there, he built a beautiful bridge over the arm of the sea which is between the said island and the mainland, joining the mouth of the river Estell, which having been demolished, was by it remade yet another time. He lived in this place, with a rare example of Holiness, until the year 567, that by command of God, he left Brittany, &, having traveled through France, crossed the mountains & arrived in Italy, where he stopped for some time in the town of Benevent, of which the Evesque died, he was elected for his Successor, &, at his coronation, was appointed Sophias.
V. Estant élevé à cette Dignité, il veilloit soigneusement sur son troupeau, lequel il gouverna jusques environ l’an cinq cens septante, qu’estant, une nuit, au plus fort de son Oraison, un Ange luy apparut & luy donna l’option de quel genre de mort il vouloit terminer sa vie ; alors, le saint Prélat, jettant amoureusement les yeux sur l’image du Crucifix, répondit : « Puisque mon Sauveur est mort pour moy en Croix, je desirerois (si telle estoit sa Volonté) avoir l’honneur de répandre mon sang pour luy. » A quoy l’Ange repartit : « Réjouis-toy, serviteur de Dieu, d’autant que ton desir sera accomply ; demain, tu passeras de cette vie miserable à la gloire perdurable & recevras la Couronne de Martyre. » Cela dit, l’Ange disparut. Saint Cado se leva de son Oraison, recita la revelation qu’il avoit euë à quelques uns de ses plus familiers, se disposa à dire la Messe, pendant laquelle la ville fut surprise par une armée de Barbares lesquels, entrans de furie dans l’Eglise, mirent tout au fil de l’épée & tuerent ce saint Prélat à l’Autel, luy ayans transpercé le corps d’un coup de lance. L’ennemy s’estant retiré, ceux qui s’estoient sauvez du massacre recueillirent le saint Corps, l’ensevelirent en son Eglise, &, depuis, ses Ossemens furent levez de terre & mis en une Chasse d’argent. Dieu a manifesté la gloire de ce saint Prélat par une infinité de miracles, qui se sont faits, tant à son Sepulchre, qu’és lieux où il a demeuré és deux Bretagnes, lesquelles furent, depuis, honorées de quelque portion de ses Reliques qu’un Religieux de son Monastere de Land-Carvanan brought there, notwithstanding the precautions that the Beneventines could take there, which, fearing to be deprived of this precious treasury, did not allow the entry of his Church to any Breton.
SAINT CADO IN ARMORICA & ITALY
Pendant que saint Gildas habitait l’austère et pittoresque ermitage appelé dans son histoire « l’oratoire de la Roche sur Blavet » il vit arriver et s’installer à huit lieues de lui un saint des plus connus de la Grande-Bretagne, l’un de ses collaborateurs les plus assidus dans ses grandes missions d’Irlande, l’ami dont le monastère avait été, dans l’ile de Bretagne, son asile ordinaire et le principal siège de son enseignement. C’est en effet à Lancarvan Where Nant-Garban, where his friend was then abbot, that he had written the first part of his book By Excidio Britaniæ (the ruin of La Betagne).
This friend was Saint Cado, one of the most original figures of the British Church in the VIe century. The oldest Life we have of him, written five centuries later, is so disfigured that we can hardly recognize the main lines of his role and his physiognomy. One of his characteristic traits is his many travels; he travels all over the island of Brittany and Ireland, visits the Gaul, Italy and even Rome (according to his legend) there Greece and Jerusalem. He owed a visit to Armorica to his friend Gildas, who in Great Britain had presented him with a text from the Gospels written by his own hand and a beautiful soft-ringing bell, also cast by his hand, for Gildas was very good and very expert worker in metal art.
It was on his return from one of his trips to Italy that he landed in his islet in Morbihan; he landed with his disciples and said:
- With God's help and under your good pleasure, my brothers, this is where I want to stay.
- Master, whatever pleases you is acceptable to us.
And promptly they set up a small monastery there. What made this foundation notable was the church, an elegant stone construction and above all the bridge, also in stone, by which Cado unites the island to the mainland..
How long did he stay in this place where his memory has remained so alive? - No one can tell.
Did he still live there now? - Did he come back to stay on the continent?
- Here two opinions are present: according to the Latin legend, after having founded Lancarvan and several other monasteries in Great Britain, he went to Benevento in Italy, first fulfilled the abbey functions there, was then promoted to episcopal dignity and finally gathered there the palm of martyrdom. “But,” adds Dom Plaine, “all this has seemed so improbable for three centuries to most hagiographers that a number of them have come to suppose that it was the town of Benavenne (Benaventa now Woedon, in the county of Northampton) in England. Sometimes the saint was even dubbed by claiming that the founder of Lancarvan had nothing in common with the bishop-martyr of Benevento. The learned Benedictine demonstrates that it is impossible that the holy bishop was martyred in England, then he established, according to the traditions of the countries which knew Saint Cado: Cambria, Armorica, and Benevento, that "until the XVe century these three countries seem to have been unanimous in affirming: 1o that S. Cado-Sophius had for a father a king of Wales ; 2o that he had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times and that to Rome seven times; 3o that he had died in Benevento pierced with a lance while he was celebrating mass. However, such facts are clearly most characteristic. The second in particular belongs only to our saint, and alone would be sufficient to prevent it from being confused with another saint. We must therefore accept these traditional data as being the expression of historical truth.
But when and how does the holy bishop suffer martyrdom? — Dom Plaine regards it as certain that he received death when the king to nothing Totila "took Benevento by storm in November 542, razed its walls, and committed many excesses of all kinds, as is apparent from the lively reproaches addressed to him by Saint Benedict, when this barbarian king came to visit him during his stay at Benevento who is very close to Monte Cassino. »
THE WORSHIP OF SAINT CADO IN BRITTANY
Pas de saint plus populaire ; pas de saint plus négligé par la liturgie. Le own de Vannes grants him a simple lesson and a commemoration; the own de Quimper does not even mention the holy martyr bishop, as venerated in Cornwall and Leon as in the land of Morbihan.
He is patron of Saint-Cadou (deanery of Sizun, diocese of Quimper);
From Saint-Cast (near Dinan, diocese of Saint-Brieuc).
Until the Concordat of 1801, he was patron of the parish of Cadélac, whose church, which became a chapel, in the parish of Loudéac, perished in a fire in 1803.
Dom Plaine says that perhaps the parish of Cast (deanery of Chateaulin, diocese of Quimper), was originally under the patronage of Saint Cado, but the name of Cast comes from the old Latin name of this locality: Castrum.
Je connais peu de chapelles dédiées à saint Cado. Après avoir naturellement cité tout d’abord Belz, l’ancienne église priorale dépendante de l’abbaye de Sainte-Croix de Quimperlé, depuis qu’Alain Fergent la lui eut donne en 1089, aujourd’hui simple chapelle, mais toujours entourée de vénération ; dom Plaine indique encore la chapelle de N.-D. de Clérin, en Saint-Clet (diocèse de Saint-Brieuc) ; saint Cado n’y est que second patron, mais beaucoup de pélerins y viennent se recommander à lui pour la guérison des maladies d’yeux. En Guégon (diocèse de Vannes), une chapelle de saint Cado est mentionnée par le répertoire archéologique de N. Rosenzsweig. Dom Plaine ne parle pas de la chapelle de Saint-Cadou en Gouesnac’h ; elle est placée dans un endroit charmant, au fond d’une anse formée par l’Odet (rivière de Quimper), à peu de distance de son embouchure. Il y a trente ans, cette chapelle possédait un lambris enrichi de très curieuses peintures représentant des scènes de la vie de saint Cado. Sous le prétexte que le pardon y amenait certains abus, on le supprima ; la chapelle abandonnée fut bientôt une ruine et un jour la toiture s’écroula, entraînant dans sa chute le lambris avec ses belles peintures. La chapelle a été restaurée, le pardon rétabli, et avec lui les luttes des jeunes paysans ; puisqu’elles ont reparu, ce n’était donc guère la peine de livrer à la destruction l’ancienne chapelle ; il aurait suffi d’empêcher les braves lutteurs du beau pays de Fouesnant de changer leurs honnêtes amusements en scènes de sauvagerie.
In Melgven (deanery of Bannalec, diocese of Quimper), the Chapel of Coatampodou dedicated to Saint Cado was up to the Concordat of 1801 from the parish of Cadol, which itself probably drew its name from the name of the martyred bishop. Another chapel in Moëlan.
We find statues of Saint Cado in the churches and chapels mentioned above, and in addition & Kerpert (XIe century), Saint-Michel-en-Grève, Plestin, Ploumiliau (diocese of Saint-Brieuc); Plouarnel-Quiberon (diocese of Vannes); in Landrévarzec, in the chapel of N.-D. by Quilinen (XVe or XVIe century), Plogonnec, parish church (statue from the same period); Redené, chapel of the castle of Rosgrand; church of Leuhan and a beautiful painting on the paneling of the church of Bodeo, finally, Dom Plaine quotes a last statue, but which no longer exists in the new church of Moëlan (diocese of Quimper).
A regrettable disappearance is that of the two wooden crosses, of Saint Cado, not long ago exhibited in the chapel of Rosgrand where I have seen them several times.
The name of Saint-Cadou was given to a cove located near Carnoet, on the Léta, Quimperlé river.
SAINT CADO & THE BRETON KNIGHTS OF THE FIGHT OF THE THIRTY
D’aprés le Barzaz-Breiz, this is what they sang while marching against the English:
Lord Saint Kadok, our patron, give us strength and courage, so that today we overcome the enemies of Brittany.
If we return from the fight, we will present to you a belt, and a gold coat, and a sword, and a cloak blue as the sky;
And everyone will say looking at you, ö blessed holy Lord Kadok: "In paradise as on earth, saint Kadok has no equal!" "
After quoting these stanzas, an expression of confidence, M. de la Villemarqué adds:
"Winners in this famous fight where Beaumanoir drank his blood, the knights bretons faithfully fulfilled their vow:
He would not have been the friend of the Bretons, the one who would not have uttered cries of joy on seeing our warriors return, broom flowers on their helmets;
He would not have been a friend of the Bretons nor of the saints of Brittany either, the one who had not blessed Saint Kadok, patron of the warriors of the country;
He who had not admired, who had not applauded, who had not blessed and who had not
point sung: "In paradise as on earth, Saint Kadok has no equal. "
From what I said above, we can see that the protector of the valiant knights of old is invoked today by the fighters of our pardons; one also asks of him, not only the rigor and the suppleness in the members, but the purity in the blood. V. r S.
MONUMENTS OF SAINT CADO
Il existe encore le pont bâti par saint Cado pour rejoindre à la terre l’ile qu’il avait choisie pour résidence dans la rivire d’Etel. Il est long de cent mètres, large de quatre, et compte seulement deux arches qui étonnent par leur hardiesse et les dimensions des énormes blocs de granit qui les composent. Il faut que la solidité en soit à toute épreuve puisque l’administration des Ponts-et-Chausses ne lui a pas cherché noise et continue faire passer là-dessus la grande route allant de Port-Louis à Belz et à Auray.
The monastery in 1089 became dependent prior of Sainte-Croix de Quimperlé, by a donation of the duke Alain Iron. The current chapel dates back almost entirely to the 11the century, dividing into three naves three bays with semicircular apse. The semicircular arcades rest on square pillars with simple cutters, the triumphal arch falls on engaged columns with capitals garnished with foliage and interlacing.
On the walls of the nave are hung four paintings representing scenes from the life of the saint, and which are especially precious by the legends which explain the topics:
English by birth, Prince of Clamorgant,
Then Abbot, comes, disembarks and resides here.
The judgments of God ceaselessly meditating,
This is how he, pilgrims, lived here.
To the evil pirates in this place attacking him
He said: I am without good, lonely here.
Oratory, my work, farewell! he said crying,
Belz, will I forget you? No. He lashed out from here.
At the apse of the church is the fountain of the saint, and further on the last vestiges of the old monastery known as the house of Saint Cado.
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