Gildas the Albanian

Gildas the Albanian (also called Gildas the Scot) appears in some sources as an early British saint, but our source shows that he is a spurious saint: he was invented in the 17th century to explain inconsistencies in the medieval sources about Saint Gildas the Wise, author of a chronicle of Britain. So there is no distinct historical person of whom we can tell the story.

The tradition found in the old lives of Gildas, repeated by Alban Butler in 1798, says that he was the son of Caunus, a king in northern Britain, killed in war by King Arthur. Gildas is said to have become a monk, to have withdrawn with Saint Cadoc, abbot of Llancarfan, to desert islands, from which they were driven by pirates from the Orkneys. He is said to have struggled then on the islands of Ronech and Ecni, preached repentance, and withdrawn to Glastonbury, where he died in 512.

In reality these accounts belong to Gildas the Wise, and the role of "the Albanian" was only to reconcile dates that seemed not to fit. We have no sure feast day for him.