Feast Day: March 29 Canonized: Pre-Congregation — venerated from the sixth century in Wales; feast in the Roman Martyrology Order / Vocation: Lay confessor — Welsh king turned hermit Patron of: Newport, Wales · Soldiers · Those who have repented a violent past
The King Who Gave Away His Kingdom and Ate Ashes on His Bread
Gundleus — the Latin form of the Welsh name Gwynllyw — was a king, a warlord, a cattle raider, and a kidnapper before he became a saint. He was the eldest son of the king of the Dimetians in South Wales, and when his father died he gave away his share of the kingdom to his six brothers, an act of unusual generosity that gave no one confidence he was going to keep behaving unusually. He desired to marry Gwladys, daughter of the prince Brychan. When Brychan refused the match, Gundleus kidnapped her. He and Gwladys then lived a riotous and violent life together for years — raiding, fighting, the kind of life the Welsh border kingdoms made possible in the fifth century.
He had children. One of them was Cadoc, who became the greatest Welsh saint of his generation, founder of the monastery of Llancarvan, a figure of immense holiness. It was Cadoc who turned his parents around. He preached repentance to them, and they heard it. The tradition says an angel appeared to Gundleus in a dream and showed him a vision: a white ox with a black spot above its forehead. He set out to find the ox. When he found it on Stow Hill near Newport, he knew this was the place. He founded a hermitage there — a small wooden structure on the hilltop — and began a life he had not lived before.
Cadoc eventually convinced his parents to separate and live as hermits. Gundleus did so. He wore sackcloth. He ate barley bread strewn with ashes. He drank water. He gave himself to constant prayer and manual work. The man who had built his life on violence and acquisition reduced himself deliberately to almost nothing, and discovered in the reduction something he had never found in the abundance.
On his deathbed, Saint Dyfrig and his son Cadoc came to him and gave him the Last Rites of the Church. He died in peace around 500. His hermit's cell became an important shrine. A church was built over it that was rebuilt in stone in the ninth century — stone being rare in Wales at the time — a testament to the importance of his cult. That church is now Saint Woolos Cathedral in Newport, the seat of the Bishop of Monmouth. The black ox of his vision stands in sculpture in Newport's city center today.
He is for those whose first half of life was not their best half. He is for the man who, having been violent and acquisitive, finds the door still open. He is the proof, in stone on a Welsh hilltop, that the warlord can become the saint.
Prayer to Saint Gundleus
O God, who called Saint Gundleus from the raider's life to the hermit's cell, and who used even his violence to produce in him the hunger that only You could satisfy, grant through his intercession that those whose past is dark may find the door open still, and that the penitent may become what the violent man could never be. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saint Gundleus, pray for us.
| Born | c. 450 — South Wales |
| Died | c. 500 — Stow Hill, Newport, Wales — peaceful death as hermit |
| Feast Day | March 29 |
| Order / Vocation | Lay confessor — King of GwynllΕ΅g, hermit |
| Canonized | Pre-Congregation — venerated from the sixth century in Wales |
| Body | Stow Hill hermitage; Saint Woolos Cathedral, Newport, Wales |
| Patron of | Newport, Wales · Soldiers · Penitent sinners · Those who repent a violent past |
| Known as | Gwynllyw (Welsh) · Woolos (English) · Gundleus (Latin) · Gwynllyw the Warrior · Gwynllyw the Bearded |
| Connected saints | Saint Gwladys (wife) · Saint Cadoc (son) · Saint Brychan (father-in-law) · Saint Dyfrig (administered Last Rites) |
| Their words | "There is no retreat in the world such as in this space which I am destined now to inhabit. Happy therefore is the place, happier then is he who inhabits it." (on founding his hermitage) |
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