Meriasek

Saint Meriasek, Bishop (Breton: Meriadeg) is a saint of Cornwall and Brittany, whom tradition places in the sixth century. His life is known chiefly from Beunans Meriasek, a religious play in the Cornish language preserved in a single manuscript of 1504, and from a few other sources.

According to these accounts, Meriasek came of a ducal family in Brittany. King Conan Meriadoc wished to marry him off for political reasons, but he gave up his inheritance and became a priest. He worked wonderful cures, crossed the Channel and built an oratory at Camborne in Cornwall. Persecuted by King Teudar, he returned to Brittany, where he founded a chapel at Josselin, on the lands of the Viscounts of Rohan. Crowds came to him for his miracles, and he withdrew to Pontivy. Tradition says that he healed many lepers and disabled people, drove off the highwaymen of Josselin by prayer, brought water from rock and calmed a storm. He became Bishop of Vannes but still wore a hair shirt and cared for the poor. He was buried in the cathedral of Vannes.

He is the patron of Camborne, where his holy well was long thought to heal the mentally ill. By his legendary will his feast falls on the first Friday of June, and in some places it is kept on 7 June. He is a saint of the undivided Church, honoured locally.