Gwyddfarch was a hermit and founder of a Celtic abbey at Meifod in Wales.[1]
He was a son of Amalarus[2] and disciple of Saint Llywelyn at Welshpool. About 550 AD he founded a monastery[3] at Meifod. This establishment became the mother church of several other monasteries and was a centre of the order for over one thousand years, and within a generation the monastery had become a centre of pilgrimage.
Gwyddfarch taught Tysilio,[4] who replaced him as abbot.[5][6]
Legend holds that near the end of his life Tysilio talked the aging abbot out of a pilgrimage to Rome.[7] He died about the year 610.[8]
He is commemorated on 3 November.[9]
References
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- ^ St. Gwyddfarch, Hermit of Moel yr Ancr, Wales.
- ^ "Montgomeryshire Churches Survey", Clwyd Powys Archaeological Trust
- ^ Saint Tysilio and St marys Church.
- ^ Elizabeth Rees, Celtic Sites and Their Saints: A Guidebook (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2003), p. 121.
- ^ Llandysilio - St. Tysilio's Church, Anglesey History
- ^ "Parish Church of St Tysilio and St Mary, Meifod". British Listed Buildings.
- ^ Baring-Gould, Sabine. A Book of North Wales (Library of Alexandria, 2016)
- ^ Baring-Gould, Sabine and Fisher, John. The Lives of the British Saints, vol. III, London, The Honorable Society of Cymmrodorian, 1911, p. 220
- ^ St. Gwyddfarch, Hermit of Moel yr Ancr, Wales.