Morwenna

Saint Morwenna (Morwenna of Cornwall, of Morwenstow) was a saint of Cornwall, England, of the early or mid-⁠sixth century, patron of the village of Morwenstow in north Cornwall. She is commemorated on 8 July. In Orthodox tradition her commemoration is also kept on the third Sunday after Pentecost, the day of the Synaxis of the Saints of Britain and Ireland. She is a local saint, also venerated in the Anglican and Catholic traditions, and we have no report of a particular canonization.

Life

Morwenna first appears in the twelfth-⁠century Life of Saint Nectan, where she is listed, with Saints Endelient, Mabyn and Menfre (among many others), as a daughter of the Welsh king Brychan of Brycheiniog. Her name is thought to be cognate with the Welsh word for "maiden", though it is also said to come from "mor" and "gwenn", "white sea". Like many of her brothers and sisters she crossed the Bristol Channel to the kingdom of Cornwall, where she settled at Morwenstow, in the north of the present county. She was trained in Ireland before crossing to Cornwall. She lived in a little hermitage at Hennacliff ("the Raven's Crag"), afterwards called Morwenstow ("Morwenna's holy place"), near the top of a high cliff overlooking the Atlantic, where the sea is almost constantly stormy and from where, in certain atmospheric conditions, the coast of Wales can be seen. With her own hands she built a church there for the local people. It is said that she carried the stone on her head from beneath the cliff, and where she once stopped to rest a spring gushed forth to the west of the church.

Early in the sixth century, while she lay dying, her brother, Saint Nectan, came to see her, and she asked him to raise her up so that she might look once more on her native shore. She was buried at the church in Morwenstow. A painting was later found on the north wall of the church, thought to represent Saint Morwenna: a gaunt woman clasping a scroll to her breast with her left hand, while the right, raised, blesses a kneeling monk. As a local saint she is depicted in a stained glass window of the parish church, dedicated to Saint Morwenna and Saint John the Baptist (Saint John was added when the church was given to the hospital of Saint John the Baptist at Bridgwater). The first parish church at Morwenstow was built in the Saxon period, and only the font survives from it.

Morwenna's Well

According to Nicholas Orme, a holy well in the parish, over five hundred metres west of the church, "halfway down a precipice", is nowadays associated with her; it is dry, and the well house is a listed building. In legend it is the place where she stopped to rest while carrying stones from the beach to the church on the cliff. Western scholars often confuse her with "Marwenne" of Marhamchurch and with "Moren", the patron of Lamorran.