Gwen Teirbron

Gwen Teirbron (French Blanche, Latin Alba Trimammis or Candida) was a Breton holy woman, the wife of Fragan, who is said to have lived in the fifth or sixth century. Her epithet in Welsh means "of the three breasts". She is commemorated on 18 July and on 3 October.

She is said to have fled from Wales with her husband and their twin sons, before the Saxons, and found refuge in Armorica, in the bay of Saint-⁠Brieuc, in a place later called Ploufragan. According to some sources she was a daughter of King Budic II of Armorica. She was the mother of Saints Winwaloe (Guénolé), Jacut and Wethenoc (the twins), and of Saint Creirwy (Klervi). Saint Cadfan is named in some sources as her son by another marriage, to Eneas Ledewig.

Popular devotion interpreted her unusual fruitfulness, bodily and spiritual, as a gift from God of a third breast, with which she nursed the holy children, and her iconography followed this idea. Those who pray to her ask her help for the fertility of women. The troparion remembers the two spouses as noble exiles who fled to Brittany in troubled times and set up churches to the praise of God, while their children brought joy to the Breton people. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia commemorates her on 18 July in Australia, and in the Roman Catholic Church the day of 3 October was transferred to her from Saint Candidus of Rome.